Residual media refers to media that are not new media, but are nonetheless still prevalent in society. The term is offered as an alternative to the term old media. Residual media attempts to act as a corrective to the idea that when media become old, they absolutely become obsolete, or “dead media.” Residual media “reveals that, ultimately, new cultural phenomena rely on encounters with the old”.[1] While old media can, and often does, become obsolete, they do not die. Instead, old media persist in our culture—either in storage units or landfills, or as cultural capital for niche groups—or they can be moved to other parts of the world and other cultures. Regardless of where they end up, the media is not dead, they are still very much living, changing, and evolving. Residual media helps show that the transition between old and new media is not simplistic, well-defined, or sweeping. Examples of residual media include film cameras and film, record players and LP records, radio, letters, and postcards, etc.
Residual media was first defined in the edited collection Residual MediabyCharles R. Acland. The term itself stems from Raymond Williams' study of culture’s dominant, emergent, and residual forms. The residual forms, Williams says, are “experiences, meanings and values which cannot be expressed in terms of the dominant culture,” but “are nevertheless lived and practiced on the basis of residue—cultural as well as social—of some previous social formation”.[2] In relation to media, the dominant culture would be new media, while the residual would be the forms of media that have come before, but are still in use regardless of the new supplanting them. Williams’s definition of the residual is also important because it emphasizes that these old forms of media are “still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present”.[2] Residual media, though antiquated or seen as lesser than the new media, still exist in the present and still affect that which is dominant. The way we interact with the old still informs the way we interact with the new, and the new informs the way we interact with the old. The idea of residual media is closely related to Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's theory of Remediation (Marxist theory).
