Claire Taylor (University of Liverpool)

1. Modern Languages
Approaches to Digital
Culture
ClaireTaylor, University of Liverpool

2. Digital as object of study
•rise of digital forms of communication and dissemination
Re-think existing literary and cultural formats
Re-think disciplinary boundaries
Re-think geography and embeddeness
Re-think what a ‘text’ is
Re-think what an ‘author’ is

3. Main Issues for Digital Culture Analysis:
1. Multiple disciplinary approaches
2.Paratext as much as the text
3. Following the content, following the flows
4.Ethics and the content creator

4. 1. Multiple Disciplinary Approaches
•conventional literary,
filmic, or cultural
genres:
•‘a novel’…. ‘a film’….

5. Multiple Disciplinary Approaches:
(New) Hybrid Genres
• Twitter-poetry
• Electronic ballads
• Blog-aphorisms
• Hypertext short stories
• Blognovel
• Collective novel
• Hypertext documentaries
• Anipoemas
• Microrrelatos.....

6. Going Beyond our Comfort Zone..
• hypermedia ‘novel’:
• text, audio, still and moving
images, user interaction…
• visual culture, film studies,
computer game studies, as
much as literary theory…..

7. Disciplinary Norms...
• Literary criticism: attention to literary style and form
• Focus on use of language: metaphor, imagery, rhythm...
• Film analysis: attention to visual style and form
• Focus on mise-en-scene, composition, framing, camera angles...
• Computer game studies: attention to ludology
• Focus on gameplay, interaction, avatar...
• Scholar learns tools of trade and applies them

8. Digital Cultures
• Possibilities to combine multiple sources
• Content creators online: frequently combine visual, textual & technical
features
• ‘convergence cultures’ (Jenkins): flow of content across multiple media
platforms
• ‘multilinearity, consequent potential multivocality, conceptual richness, and
[...] reader centeredness or control by the reader’ (Landow)

9. Problems or challenges for digital culture
analysis
•Need to have tools from different disciplinary
backgrounds at our fingertips
•Need to be aware of potentials of new media
•Need to avoid technological determinism
•Need to be sensitive to cultural context

10. 2. Paratext as much as ‘TheText’
• Not just ‘the text’ itself
• The surrounding
paraphernalia
• Framing, borders, position
within the page, font size,
sidebar, customised headings,
images…

11. Paratext
• variety of other texts surrounding posts:
banners, taglines, side-bars, footers,
blogrolls, links, and a host of other blog
elements (Moody 2008)
• customization
• ‘framing content’ and paratexts (Gray
2010)

12. DigitalTools Disrupt ‘TheText’…
• ‘The weblog collapses many of the common assumptions made about texts,
as it complicates the distinction between author and audience through the
multivocality of both direct commenting, and the reader’s ability to reorder
the narrative in myriad ways. Owing to its ongoing creation over an
undefined period of time, the weblog becomes a text that constantly
expands through the input of both readers and writers.This absence of a
discrete, “completed” product’ (Himmer 2004)

13. Ruta Pacífica de las mujeres
https://www.rutapacifica.org.co/

14. 3. Following the Flows….
• Digital requires study of texts and
practices
• flows, re-circulations, and re-postings
just as significant as ‘finished’ object
• shifts in our understanding of what a
‘text’ is

15. Following the Flows…
• following the links embedded within
content
• and the paths which content took
from original site of publication to
dissemination on other platforms
• How content may be picked up and
given greater visibility by its reposting
• Meaning of a text/image may be
affected by its reposting

16. Why do we need to follow the flows?
• Ken Maclean (2009: 866) : digital objects are ‘affected by the spaces
through which they move’
• 1. ‘increases the likelihood that copies will acquire unintended meanings
since the interpretive contexts they reappear in differ from the object’s
original one’
• 2. ‘reposting is not random’; non-random and strategic nature of reposting
means that digital objects build up ‘biographies’ as they travel
• 3. ‘reposting fosters the growth of interpretive communities’

17. Approaches to Following Flows
• Burrell ‘the field site as network’ (Burrell 2009: 195)
• Postill and Pink ‘social media ethnography produces ‘ethnographic places’ (Pink,
2009) that traverse online/offline contexts and are collaborative, participatory,
open and public’ (2012).
• Walker ‘how to construct the location of a project when the sites, technologically-
mediated practices, and people we study exist and flow through a wider
information ecology that is neither fixed nor can easily be located as “online” or
“offline”’ (Walker 2010: 23).
• Tori Holmes multi-sited ethnography; ‘travelling texts of local content’ (Holmes
2012)

18. 4. Ethics and the Content Creator
• Author is no longer (if ever was?) purely
public figure
• Author is human subject
• Implications: your positioning as
researcher, informed consent,
confidentiality, anonymity, risk…

19. Ethical Considerations:
• What are the initial ethical expectations/assumptions of the
authors/subjects being studied?
• e.g. do participants in this environment assume/believe that their
communication is private?
• The more closed the forum (e.g., secure domains for private exchanges),
greater obligations to protect autonomy, privacy, confidentiality.
• What ethically significant risks does the research entail for the subject(s)?
• If the content of a subject’s communication were to become known beyond
the confines of the venue being studied – would harm likely result?

20. Ethical Considerations According to Platform
• Direct communication, forums, social networking, personal spaces/blogs…
• Social networking, e.g. Facebook:
• Does the author/content creator understand and agree to interaction that
may be used for research purposes?
• Blogs:
• Could the analysis or dissemination of content harm the subject in any way?

21. Ethics – Essential resources
• Chart for Internet Researchers to Consider Ethics: https://aoir.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/01/aoir_ethics_graphic_2016.pdf
• Ethical decision-making and Internet research Recommendations from the
aoir ethics working committee: https://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf
• Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the
AoIR Ethics Working Committee (Version 2.0):
https://aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf

22. And finally.. Some practical tips
1. You can never have too many screen grabs!
2.Establish process for identifying and mapping relevant
content
3. e.g tagging and linking on tool such as delicious
4.Note-taking: document your flows through the material

23. •Any questions?