Participatory Cultures

Hi everyone!
I hope you’re all well and that the stress of end of semester isn’t getting you down. I was thinking about this weeks first lecture overview and how close we’re getting to the end of semester, it’s almost scary. This is my final semester and, like everyone currently studying, I’m getting a little bit stressed out. It’s too hard to do work consistently over the whole semester; I know very few who successfully get to a subjects close without worry. But enough about that lets talk about this weeks lecture. John tried to quickly go over the content of the lectures he took, all of them in only an hour and a half. It wasn’t easy! But I want to pay particular attention to new media culture theories in this blog, and I’ll make an effort to write another one tis week focusing on the other areas he examined.
One of the questions John asked in the lecture “are new media cultures emerging due to the technology? Or is this because of the social?”
I’m not exactly sure how to answer this question, as it is really all areas being shaped and transformed by each other. Without the need, there would be no reason to develop the technology, without the social aspects; there wouldn’t be a base for the culture, and without the culture, why would the social be flourishing in such a way. To examine this we need to look at all areas surrounding the cultures themselves and he `Internet, why ahs this technology affected so many. These are…
Transformation and social organization
Practices
Networks
Hegemony and the cultural and economic struggles attributed with the internet and the digital divide
Communication
Knowledge and exchange; and all the complexities that go with them
Identity; gender identity, social identity and the powers of anonymity
Power relationships; money and the corporation- which seems to be the enemy in this class; I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a bohemian sticking it to the man, down with corporate attitudes before, and I’m in visual arts!
But what does al this mean? And, how does it affect the way in which we manage and control these new medias? (This is a question of protocol, and I think I’ll save it for another blog…watch this space)
Marshall has looked at new medias and the changes that have occurred since they have been widely developed, and sites on example of new media communities uniting as the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle to discuss globalisation and world trade agreements. A mass of protesters came to voice their opinions on such a travesty in human rights. But how did they all mobilise? This protest was international, interracial and full of people from different backgrounds, often speaking in different languages. They meet and mobilised via the internet, this new media source had created such a following of users already, that it had the power to unite so many people, numbers of which hadn’t been seen since thev1930’s. (Marshall: 2004: p34)
“It functions pull together multiple points into moments of connected structure and coherence that can disperse as quickly as they are congealed. The assemblage facilitated through the internet allowed for the development of the Seattle moment and the periodic reappearance of this politics at other international trade meetings that have occurred in Quebec, Genoa, Melbourne and Washington over the last half-decade.” (Marshall: 2004: p34)
But what does this all mean?
Basically, Marshall is discussing the ability for the internet and the new media’s to inform and connect us all, it has no barriers through race, culture, class and nations, but instead, in theory, is utopian, fast passed and all accepting.