Newspeak and new media: contemporary Orwell in interactive environments

Abstract

Almost seventy years after its publication, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a canonical work of twentieth-century British literature, preserves its relevance not only in relation to politics, but also in relation to its portrayal of the boundaries of the individual in an authoritarian state. Drawing on theories in new media scholarship, and building on existing literary analyses of Nineteen Eighty-Four, this thesis examines Orwell’s last novel through the lens of digital culture. It focuses on the connections between the effects of Newspeak –the language created by Orwell in the novel –and interactive environments. In so doing, it aims to revive the core ideas that exist in Orwell’s story and analyze their significance for new media.