Digital Culture: Old and New

When looking at Digital Culture, Creeber approaches the matter from both side, old media and new media. Placing old media and modernism as a responds to the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century and new media or postmodernism after that.

In terms of modernism, Creeber links it back to the works of the Frankfurt School, "a group of European Marxists who were struck with how American mass culture shared many similarities with the products of mass production" (Creeber, 2009, p12) Discussing their concept of standardisation, referencing Adorno's work on popular music, Creeber states how the concept of standardisation can be relevant to all aspects of the mass culture, keeping the masses "deluded in their opression by offering a form of homogenized and standardized culture" (Creeber, 2009, p13) If this were indeed the case then, culture as it was, was simply a repeating pattern with slight changes every time, similar television shows, films, magazines and novels. Also through the use of semiotics, signs could help unravel how the audience were being manipulated and also to "reveal whose realities are privileged and whose are suppressed" (Chandler, 2004 a:15 in Creeber, 2009, p14) Since most forms of media were "standardised" semiotics was a good way to analyse social standing, judging by how the signs were read.

Postmodernism, on the other hand, when focusing on semiotics, calls upon the idea of polysemy, meaning that texts could posses multiple meanings, rendering the modernist belief of one ideological meaning void, focusing on the signifier and the signified. Creeber focuses on the elements of new technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality, also on the aspect of "DIY citizenship" (Hartley, 1999: 177-85 in Creeber, 2009, p18) The ability to have a second identity, built on different conventions, allows the user to have themselves defined in different ways, contrasting with Creeber's view that "identity is primarily a matter of heritage" (Creeber, 2009, p18) Taking on Jenkin's view of participatory culture, websites like Youtube and Facebook highlight how the media is now open for interpretation, "the hypertextual 'cut' and 'paste' culture of New Media" (Creeber, 2009, p19)

Although there have been some changes from modernism to postmodernism, the idea behind postmodernism and new media still needs to be developed and explored more, in order to truly understand its influence and effect on other mediums.

Bibliography

Creeber, G (2009) Digital Theory: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, S (2009) Case Study; Digital Aesthetics in Ed. Creeber, G and Royston, M (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media: Maidenstone: Open University Press