Bastard Culture! How User
Participation Transforms Cultural Production (MediaMatters, Volume 6)
New online technologies
have brought with them a great promise of freedom. The computer and particularly the Internet have been represented as enabling
technologies, turning consumers into users and users into producers. Furthermore, lay people and amateurs have been enthusiastically
greeted as heroes of the digital era. This thoughtful study casts a fresh light on the shaping of user participation in the
context of, among others, popular discourse in and around new media.Schäfer's groundbreaking research into hacking, fan communities
and Web 2.0 applications demonstrates how the dynamic of innovation, control and interaction have shifted the boundaries of
the traditional culture industry into the user domain. The media industry undergoes a shift from creating content to providing
platforms for user driven social interactions and user-generated content. In this extended culture industry, participation
unfolds not only in the co-creation of media content and software-based products, but also in the development and defense
of distinctive media practices that represent a socio-political understanding of new technologies.
Author:
Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press; Illustrated Edition (February 4, 2011)
Language:
English
Paperback: 250 pages
ISBN-10: 9089642560
ISBN-13: 978-9089642561
UNSPSC Code: 55101500
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