Digital culture refers to the emerging set of values and practices expressed through online news and media. It is shaped by individualization, globalization, and user participation. Indymedia exemplifies this as a platform for participatory, open publishing and collaborative storytelling. Principal components of digital culture include values that empower individual identity and politics through blogging. It also involves the convergence of media forms and traditions as well as the remixing of new and old media. Digital media relies on active participation, remediation of reality, and personalized assembly of information through bricolage.

2. Digital culture
An emerging value system & set of expectations
expressed in the activities of news and online
information media makers & users
An expression of individualization, post nationalism
and globalization
Does not imply that eventually we‟ll all be online, but
assumes that the way humans and machines interact
in an increasingly digitized society leads to an
emerging „digital culture‟

3. Indymedia in Digital
Culture
It‟s a form of user-generated participatory content or
“we media”
Loosely organized and developed around
practices/ideals of open publishing and collaborative
nonlinear storytelling (such as in weblogs)
Serves as a platform for the production/dissemination
of news and information

4. Principal Components Of
Digital Culture
Values/Practices the multitude need in order to
have the freedom to make an identity and
participate in identity politics
Expressed and reproduced via blogging/open
publishing etc and doesn‟t necessarily constitute
to digital culture as a whole but the preferred
values that go along with it

5. Principal Components
cont.
Information Culture- the convergence of media
contents/forms, national/cultural traditions,
characters/sensibilities, a mixing of culture and
computers
Remediation- the mix/remix of old and new media
Bricolage- the highly personalized, continuous
assembly/disassembly of reality

6. Digital Media relies on participation:
1. We‟re active agents in the process of media making (we
become participants)
2. We doubt/modify reality (we engage in remediation)
3. We assemble our own particular versions of this reality
(we become bricoleurs)
• Digital Culture isn‟t defined just by convergence of
devices, we reproduce it via our perceptions of reality

7. Participation
“Hypersociability”- social consists of networked
individualism, “enhancing the capacity of individuals
to rebuild structures of sociability from the bottom
up.”
News has now evolved into a
collaborate, participatory activity. Online Peer to
Peer news is considered more reliable and preferred
compared to more traditional business to consumer
news
More and more people have the tools to
create, circulate, archive content (via

8. Active partcipation

9. So to put that in context…
How are social movements (such as the Occupy
Wall Street movement and the Middle East
Uprising via social media) prime examples of
participatory culture in media? (Via twitter etc)

10. Participation cont.
People are more willing to voice their concerns and
claim their place in society (and have the available
tools) but usually only do so if they feel their personal
interests are at stake
Do-it-yourself culture, people are claiming the right to
be heard rather than spoken to which is the case in
traditional media
We see this in Web 2.0, which has gone from a one way
flow to a two way flow
Why is participation relevant to the spread of digital
media?

11. Remediation
Immersed in the system while at the same time
attributing legitimacy/credibility to a self
definition of working against/outside of the
system as well from within
How webloggers tend to do what they do in
distantiation from what journalists do, while at
the same time remediating some of journalism‟s
peculiar strategies, techniques and content

12. Bricolage
Incorporates practices and notions like
borrowing, hybridity, mixture and plagiarism
Such as content cocreation, “Wiki” based software
and Peer2Peer networks
In journalism, seen in „shovelware‟ or the
repurposing or windowing of content across
different sites to reach potential audiences.
Journalists reuse and redistribute content originall
produced by other media

13. In Conclusion
Digital Culture is created, reproduced, sustained
and recognized via social systems like politics,
economy etc.
It fosters community but can be fueled by
isolation. We can „feel‟ connected to everyone in
the system without actually going anywhere