Cultural Transitions in Southeastern Europe
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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
digital culture
virtual culture
cyberculture
e-culture
internet culture
new media
convergence culture
Culture as information and
communication
“words communication or information … refer to the essence of
community and human relations” (Pasquali, 2003: 198).
information as a non-rival good - “its consumption by one person
does not make it any less available for consumption by another”
(Benkler, 2006)
“Information contents are cultural products” … “information is a part
of a society’s cultural fabric”. (Hamelink, 2003: 124).
“ to communicate refers to a process of sharing, making common or
creating a community” (Hamelink, 2003: 155).
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)
“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
Communication technologies have significant influence, for
the way they are used can affect changes in the essence of
our communicational and cultural patterns.
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).
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]