Digital culture and theory

The rise of the Digital culture of today was and still is a development and reaction of certain events throughout the life span of 'new' and 'old' media. Glen Creeber discusses how the effects of the development of old media and modernism to the rise of new media during a post-modernism period, which has lead to the Digital age being a product of all past cultural revolutions and is merely a stepping stone to the next cultural and media change. Looking at the events that inspired change between modernism and post-modernism Creeber shows how the technological changes and cultural conditions of the time periods made new media inevitable.

Early nineteenth century modernism was the start of how society reacted to cultural changes after the industrial revolution. This industrialization lead to the growth of mass culture and the tension between modernism and mass culture. Even though both rely on each other, during this modernism period people saw modernism as away to analysis the difference between high cultural society rather than the mass produced standardized society. Drawing upon the work of the Frankfurt school and their approach to mass culture, Creeber used their discussion on the fordist philosophy to show how the same method had effected different mediums and their products. Newspapers and television broadcasting had to adjust after the industrial revolution. BBC's John Reith argued "broadcasting should be used to defend 'high culture' aginst the degrading nature and influence of mass culture." (Creeber, 2009 p.13)

After the Frankfurt school the Structuralist movement used semiotics in combination with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics, they helped analysis texts through a system of signs which is still used today. "by 'decoding' these 'signs', Semioticians could gradually unravel the means by which an audience were being manipulated." (Creeber, 2009, p.14) these helped show us how media was understood going into the start of the twentieth century/ post- modernism.

Post-modernism is most associated with the post-industrial economy change from a production-economy to a service-economy. Much like Margaret Thatchers approach to the British economy, this was due to the decline in heavy industry. With the economy changes, society changed to a consumer society which was enforced by the rise in technology and new media, this had its own effect on society. "consumption and leisure now determine our experiences rather than work and production. This means that consumer culture come to dominate the cultural sphere" (Creeber, 2009, p.15)

This shows that the advancement of new technology and the effects they had on culture and society gave way for the growth of new media and in turn has already gave way for more development in certain media branches, for the digital age to come.

Bibliography

Creeber,G. (2009) Digital theory: theorizing New Media. Berkshire. Open University Press.

New Media is Born

When we look back on our history we can pick some events that helped form New Media, as we know it today. Through time we have seen media change as are technologies have developed and advanced. If we think of Marshall McLuhan's "Medium is the Message" and depicted how McLuhan explains each era of media. For example the Tribal, Detribalization, Retribalization era’s.

If we now think about what was happening in the world round the time as McLuhan puts it as the detribalization era. During this time we discovered how use different techniques such as Henry Fords product line to mass produce object faster and cheaper which then lead to the Industrial Revolution which was a period were these new manufacturing processes give rise to new media forms such as comics, and newspapers.

During what McLuhan calls the Retriblzation era we can see a cultural shift in our society, as old modernism ideologies were being push aside with new postmodernism’s idea. “So while modernism tended to search for meaning and truth, postmodernism appears to accept that the pursuit for such universal truth is futile.” (Creeber,2009, p.3) With these new postmodernism Idea we seen the rise of pop culture as we used new ways of thinking to mass-produce culturally products. For example Andy Warhol used these new ways in thinking to become one of leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. This is why Warhol’s work is often conceived as intrinsically.

During the Industrial Revolution we seen the necessary advancement in technologies through modernism cultural ideological values and new manufacturing processes to form a society where postmodernism values where a common thing. Through these new ideas we can see the foundations that new media have been set on. All new media content can be mass-produced at a click of a button, we have begun to simply pick what identities we want to adopt and what ones we want to reject. This allows the individual to decide how they define themselves rather than having to stick to the limited numbers of choices which are set out form are past events.

Glen Creeber and Royston Martin (2009). Digital Cultures. Berkshire: Open University Press. 3.