The Cyberdemocratic Network

“Modernism is the umbrella term we give to the way that human society responded to the changes that took place during the industrial revolution.” (Creeber, 2009, p11)

Through new media, we have changed the way we participate and consume media, in turn increasing the interactivity of audiences. This has caused a “remix culture” to form, blurring the lines between author and audience, original and replica. Creeber views this culture as “The hyper-textual ‘cut’ and ‘paste’ culture of New Media – that seemingly encourages sampling, poaching and remixing ” (Creeber, 2009, p19) this in turn according to him “produces not only copy-right problems, it also further confuses the very means by which we conceive of the media and its relationship with its audience.” (Creeber, 2009, p19)  The treasured “memes” of the internet are a perfect example of this remix culture, each meme is re-contextualised via each author, stemming from the merging of sub-cultures or ideas. The original author is lost, “The people who make and the people who watch are slowly becoming the same group” (Anon, 2011, 0:25) distance is no longer an issue as “things move back forth between different countries all the time, it’s so easy to” (Anon, 2011, 3:40).

“This increased interactivity among the New Media audience has also prompted some critics to suggest that there has even been an increased ‘democratization’ in the nature of New Media compared to old.” (Creeber, 2009, p20) This has resulted in the theory of the “Citizen Journal”. Multiple blogs and social networks document the everyday lives of millions of people portraying just one example of how ordinary people can become actively involved in the production of the media, therefore “moving power away from the ‘author’ into the hands of the ‘audience’” (Creeber, 2009, p20) This would have been the Frankfurt Schools nightmare, and I hardly imagine memes would live up to their idea “that only ‘high art’ (particularly a strain of it known as the ‘avant-garde’) could sustain the role of social and aesthetic criticism.” (Creeber, 2009, p12)

New media has given the consumer not only the ability to become the producer, but also the ability to have a say in the media. It gives each and every person a platform to share ideas and collaborate with others. Creeber even suggests “the Internet provides a ‘Habermasian public sphere’ – a cyberdemocratic network for communicating information and points of view that will eventually transform into public opinion. As voting on the Internet becomes more widespread so it may increase our democratic rights even further.” (Creeber, 2009, p20)

Bibliography

Anon, (2011), “Visual Culture Online, Off Book, PBS Arts” accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL7R9CjkxjY&noredirect=1

Creeber, G. (2009) DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubbit D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in Ed. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidenstone, Open University Press