According to Lev Manovich's Wikipedia entry, new media has the following attributes (illustrations supplied by the present blog):
1. Numerical representation: new media objects exist as data
2. Modularity: the different elements of new media exist independently
3. Automation: new media objects can be created and modified automatically
4. Variability: new media objects exist in multiple versions
Kurt Ralske, MOMA display screens
5. Transcoding: a new media object can be converted into another format
