Transcript Cultural Transitions in Southeastern Europe

Digital culture – a shared space
for citizens-users-consumers
Intercultural Dialogue and Digital Culture - Zagreb,
20-21 November 2008
Aleksandra Uzelac, Institute for International
Relations, Zagreb, Croatia
From Culture to Digital culture
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digital culture
virtual culture
cyberculture
e-culture
internet culture
new media
convergence culture
Culture as information and
communication
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“words communication or information … refer to the essence of
community and human relations” (Pasquali, 2003: 198).
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information as a non-rival good - “its consumption by one person
does not make it any less available for consumption by another”
(Benkler, 2006)
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“Information contents are cultural products” … “information is a part
of a society’s cultural fabric”. (Hamelink, 2003: 124).
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“ to communicate refers to a process of sharing, making common or
creating a community” (Hamelink, 2003: 155).
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the transmission view of communication - messages are transmitted
and distributed in space; the ritual view of communication - the
maintenance of society in time through the representation of shared
beliefs within a community . (Carey, 1992)
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“each society constantly recreates itself through communication by
constantly redefining its collective reality, its culture” and “culture is
a memory, collective memory, dependent on communication for its
creation, extension, evolution and preservation” (Foresta, Mergier,
Serexhe, 1995: 19).
Technology - enabler of (digital)
culture
 all technologies intervene in the
human environment and modify it to
a certain extent, thus changing the
conditions of existence of different
cultures. So it could be said that
technology affects and reflects
particular societal shifts.
Communication technologies – from
tool to social ecology
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Communication technologies have significant influence, for
the way they are used can affect changes in the essence of
our communicational and cultural patterns.
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Technologies related to information and communication
cannot be viewed as passive instruments, but rather as
interactive systems that radically modify our cognitive
capacities (Dascal, 2006).
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Technology does not just linearly cause certain effects, but
in combination with many other elements it “ creates
conditions of possibility that suggest possible futures
rather than determine them” (Hawk and Rieder, 2008:
xvii).
Networked reality
 the networked information economy in which peer production and sharing
have a significant role – it results in
diversity of information and perspectives.
 the networked public sphere - in
which many more individuals can
communicate their viewpoints and
observations to many others “in a way
that cannot be controlled by media
owners and is not as easily corruptible by
money as were the mass media”.
(Benkler, 2006)
Engaging space
 “Attention in the networked environment is
more dependent on being interesting to an
engaged group of people than it is in the
mass-media environment, where moderate
interest to large numbers of weakly engaged
viewers is preferable” (Benkler, 2006: 13).
Participatory aspects of digital
culture
 participatory platforms – new ways of
social and political engagement and
quick, ad-hoc reactions to current
issues
 social, political and cultural (i.e. nonmarket) motivations prevail over
market-based ones
Social production and cultural
sector
 Social production presents new sources of
competition for cultural and media
industries producing information goods.
 New context - cultural professionals are put in a
situation in which they are (more or less)
sharing control with users.
 Users claim the right to use and re-use
existing information and cultural
expressions that are available in the digital
environment
Opportunities for intercultural
communication
 Building shared spaces
 Engaging users
 Building knowledge resources that
everyone can contribute to and share
 Scripting different forms of solidarity
into the mainstream system
Thank you for your attention!
Aleksandra Uzelac
Institute for International Relations
Zagreb, Croatia
[email protected]