Since the new media era, the change of social communication reality has led to the change of the concept of communication field, which has prompted the traditional research on the relationship between media and audience to change to the research on the relationship between new media and users.

In the early days of the birth of new media technology, optimistic technological determinism often dominated, and when the proportion of new media technology diffusion gradually increased, scholars always turned to social shaping theory in time to explore why the application of new media technology would have a social impact in social and historical situations, thus promoting the process of social shaping.

"New media" is a historical, relative and mobile concept, which has different meanings in different historical and cultural contexts. Whenever a new communication technology is born, the definitions of "new media" and "old media" will be updated, and this definition will be stable in a certain historical period until the next communication technology update.

At present, the "new media era" refers to the historical period since the birth of digital information communication technologies such as computer technology, Internet technology and mobile terminal technology.

The new media era is characterized by digital communication, network communication and global communication. Here, the new media does not simply point to the communication technology and the media form itself, but at the same time points to "products or equipment used to communicate or transmit information;" The activities and practices of disseminating or sharing information; Social arrangements or organizational forms formed around the above equipment and practices. "In other words, it is different from the new media in the mass media era and its related communication practice and social situation.

The study of new media is no longer just the production, text and audience that occupied the core of communication studies in the past, but under the interaction of media, practice and society, new media can produce unique influence different from traditional media, especially in the context of media integration and media society, how new media can become a field where power relations can develop.