Gunther Kress says about the complexity of new media composition, "But this one person now has to understand the semiotic potentials of each mode–sound, visual, speech–and orchestrate them to accord with his or her design.
However, with the advent of applications like HyperCard for the Apple Macintosh, the focus in media research shifted to hypertext's implications in the writing classroom.
Identity is an important aspect of authorship in many new media writings in this manner, then, especially in situations like Internet forums.
Digital medias are in a constant state of flux (versus the relative fixity of traditional text) because several transformations may occur.
Jay Bolter says, "In the new theory of representation, in the present technological context of electronic, multimodal, multimedia textual production, the task of text-makers is that of complex orchestration.
Gunther Kress remarks on the potential for teaching design via new media composition in the classroom: Design takes for granted competence in the use of resources, but beyond that it requires the orchestration and remaking of these resources in the services of frameworks and models that express the maker's intentions in shaping the social and cultural environment.
Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin say: No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other social and economic forces.
These educational formats also typically deal with analogue texts, but provide technologically based resources for this composition process via digital feedback and revision techniques.
Because media theory focuses so much on specific, often technical aspects of writing, it has much room for overlap, and facilitates other theoretical composition pedagogies.
Media theory aligns well with collaborative learning because, with the advancement of technology, writing can easily accommodate multiple authors.
Another example is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where authorship is relatively open to the public, so various writers may inform others of their knowledge and build on others' to create a constantly evolving definition and explanation of a certain topic.
These theories challenge traditional notions of hierarchies in relation to certain social groups, like race or gender, and how this affects writing.
Media theory breaks down the hegemony that "pure text" has over other modalities by utilizing "non-traditional" methods and modes of writing through the use of technology.
There is a democratization to media theory because everyone is involved in the creation and consumption of a text because of common features like public access and interactivity.
In terms of concrete pedagogy, Massively Open Online Classrooms (MOOCs) work to break down hierarchies by encouraging learning in an informal setting with partially anonymous users, which potentially allows for minorities to let their voices be heard without worrying about discrimination.
This often results in the addition of new media production as a last-minute addendum, "as a strategy for adding relevance or interest to a required course.
[23] Related to this, teachers are also frequently concerned that they do not have the ability or knowledge required to teach writing with new media and multi-modality to students because they are often unfamiliar with constantly evolving technologies.
Multi-media works are especially subject to concern over criticism as appropriation and remixing are rampant and even encouraged in composition classrooms and as debates over SOPA occur.
For instance, the commonly used spelling and grammar checkers of certain programs can be seen as possibly halting the natural progression of language and the creative use of it by encouraging writers to stay within the realm of standard vernaculars.
Texts written in new media encounter different rhetorical situations and contexts, and thus do not fit the standards that teachers are familiar with.