A REPORT ON “PARTICIPATION,REMEDIATION, “PARTICIPATION,REMEDIATION,

BRICOLAGE:CONSIDERING PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS OF DIGITAL CULTURE”

Digital Research and PublishingMendel Bernardino

Assumptions

1. All aspects of everyday life are to some extent influenced by and implicated in computerization.

Assumptions

2. Contemporary social changes accelerated by globalization, postnationalism and individualization are taken into account.

Digital Culture

• Digital culture or “cyberculture” isan expression of an increasingly individualized society in a globalized world.

Digital Culture

“ A digital culture as an underdetermined praxis is conceptualized as consisting of participation, remediation and bricolage.”

“ Digital culture can be seen as an emerging set of values, practices and expectations regarding the way people (should) act and interact within the contemporary network society”

§ Digital Culture gets expressed in electronic and digital media that are so deeply embedded in everyday life that they disappear…

Digital Culture

Digital Culture

§ Digital culture is an emerging value system and set of expectations as particularly expressed in the activities of news and information media makers and users online, information media makers and users online, whereas the praxis of digital culture as an expression of individualization, postnationalism and globalization.

Evidence of Digital Culture as an expression of individualization, postnationalism and globalization...

1. Literature on the challenges posed by (radical) online journalism in as much as these works refer to the changing relationships works refer to the changing relationships between the consumers and producers of news

Evidence of Digital Culture as an expression of individualization, postnationalism and globalization...

2. The proliferation of open publishing initiatives as particularly exemplified by the proliferation of independent media centres proliferation of independent media centres around the world.

Evidence of Digital Culture as an expression of individualization, postnationalism and globalization...

3. Popularity of all kinds of individualized storytelling online such as weblogs and podcasts.

Principal Components

§ ...those values and practices that people or rather the multitude needs in order to have the order to have the relative freedom to have and make an identity and participate in “life politics”.

Principal Components of Digital Cultures

1. Participation2. Remediation2. Remediation3. Bricolage

Participation

1. ParticipationØ “Alternative Media”

Ø defining principle of digital culture with the emergence of culture with the emergence of independent media centres as their commitment to open publishing, online and offline collaborative media production, and open source decision making processes show.

Participation

Ex. MasterChef Australia

Participation

¨ “Cultural Convergence”

> Must react to the consumer’s creation of content with awe and content with awe and respect.

Ex. John Mayer’s tweet

Participation

Source:http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/john-mayer-vocal-over-troubled-qantas-flight/story-e6frfq80-1225795770817

Participation

Source:http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/john-mayer-vocal-over-troubled-qantas-flight/story-e6frfq80-1225795770817

§ Open Source- This allows sharing, collaboration, access to

and control over software and using it to improve the product for global use.

Participation

improve the product for global use. - Has been acknowledged in the realms of

marketing, management, news media and all kinds of other sectors of the economy.

Ex. Vegemite iSnack 2.0 to Vegemite Cheesybite

Participation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5r3HAJh8es

Participation

http://www.howdoyoulikeyourvegemite.com.au/?go=forum

Participation

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vegemite-product-renamed-cheesybite-after-isnack-20-was-dumped/story-e6frf7jo-1225783722139

Participation

§ Shift from passive “informational citizenry to a rights based, monitorial and voluntarist citizenry.

§ “…a notion of citizens who have become increasingly willing and able to voice their concerns and claim their place in society- but do so (and often only) when their personal interests are at stake.

Participation

Remediation

§ Every new medium diverges from yet also reproduces older media, whereas old media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media. challenges of new media.

§ Distantiation- a manipulation of the dominant way of doing or understanding things in order to juxtapose, challenge or even subvert the mainstream.

Remediation

§ Distantiation§ “Hyperindividualization”

Examples of Distantiation

Remediation

§ Distantiation and Remediation

§ Bloggers§ Bloggers- do what they do in

personal distantiation from what journalists do, while remediating some of journalism’s peculiar strategies, techniques and even content

Remediation

“Bloggers define what they do as more or less similar to journalism but consider their voice

§ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/blogs/directory.html

consider their voice and opinions to be of added value and they feel this sets them apart from new media”(Neuberger, 2004)

Remediation

§ Blogs in Plain English§ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pW

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Bricolage

§ Definition- “ the creation of objects with materials to

hand, re-using existing artefacts and incorporating bits and pieces.” incorporating bits and pieces.” Harley (2002, p.22ff)

§ Attitude that prefers an assemblage and tweaking of multiple good copies over a single bad original

Bricolage

§ Open source movement using Wiki based software applications are all examples of a liquid modern interpretation of originality.

§ Open file exchanges across peer to peer networks is privileged over acquiring the original products of the industry at the counters of the overpriced corporate megastore

Open Source Movement

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:About#How_does_WikiLeaks_test_document_authenticity.3F

Bricolage

§ “In a virtual medium, one may reselect and rearrange elements until a pattern emerges which seems to satisfy the constraints of the task and the current purposes of the user.task and the current purposes of the user.

§ “…completion may be endlessly deferred in the medium in which everything is always “under construction.”’

§ Ex. Personalized homepages

Indymedia

§ a journalistic genre serving as a platform for the production and dissemination of new and information. While it is also a form of participatory user-generated content user-generated content (we-media) as it allows anyone to post and upload files, information and news without the formal editorial moderation or filtering process.

Indymedia

§ Indymedia sites tend to offer a wide array of links and topics, issues and places all over the world.

Bricolage

§ Journalists used content previously produced, used in other media such as audio and video clips, they acknowledge their sources, they clips, they acknowledge their sources, they attribute an active bricoleur identity to their users as they give people a change to find their own way through the information at hand.

Bricolage

§ Bloggers, construct narratives eclectically linking to each other and to content found while surfing the web surfing the web while adding private opinions, analyses in terms of Baudrillard’s second hand truth, objectivity and authenticity.

Bricolage

§ Network of bloggers linking to each other and to content found while surfing the while surfing the web, while adding private musings, opinions and analyses..

Challenges to Bricolage

1. What is credible information and what is not?

2. Bricoleur’s strategies are constrained by 2. Bricoleur’s strategies are constrained by pragmatic considerations such as sustainability to purpose, experience and competence of the individual in selecting and using “appropriate” materials.

Bricolage

§ All are interconnected. Ripple effect!§ Fosters community while at the same time

can be fueled by isolation. § Netiquette- evolving set of ethical guidelines § Netiquette- evolving set of ethical guidelines

for communicating and publishing online.

Bricolage

§ Netiquette- preferring the personal detached observation, heralding openness for all rather than access base on expertise claimed on the basis of institutional authority, attributing basis of institutional authority, attributing more weight to providing bottom up platform for individual voices instead of a top down delivering of messages based on a “mass” based perception of the common denominator.

Conclusion

§ Digital Culture in other words can be characterized by participation, remediation, and bricolage remediation, and bricolage as its key elements, which gets expressed particularly online ( blogging, indymedia, radical online journalism phenomena)

The End.

Thank you.