[ecrea] new book - Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production

Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production
M.T. Schäfer

New online technologies have brought with them a 
great promise of freedom. The computer and 
particularly the internet have been represented 
as enabling technologies, turning consumers into 
users and users into producers. This thoughtful 
study casts a fresh light on the shaping of user 
participation in the context of, among others, 
popular discourse in and around new media.

Schäfer?s groundbreaking research into hacking, 
fan communities and Web 2.0 applications 
demonstrates how the dynamic of innovation, 
control and interaction have shifted the 
boundaries of the traditional culture industry 
into the user domain. The media industry 
undergoes a shift from creating content to 
providing platforms for user driven social 
interactions and user-generated content. In this 
extended culture industry, participation unfolds 
not only in the co-creation of media content and 
software-based products, but also in the 
development and defense of distinctive media 
practices that represent a socio-political understanding of new technologies.

"Profound and meticulously researched work, which 
has expanded my worldview."--Howard Rheingold, 
lecturer at U.C. Berkeley's School of Information 
and visiting lecturer at Stanford University's Department of Communication

"Bastard or not, the reality we are creating 
together [through digital culture] is an odd and 
often unconscious collaboration between people, 
corporations, and technology itself. Schaefer has 
patiently, deliberately, and quite engagingly 
exposed this hidden landscape of cultural 
production, and shown us what we might do to 
direct it toward positive, even evolutionary 
ends."--Douglas Rushkoff, lecturer in the 
department of Media Studies, The New School University

Mirko Tobias Schäfer lectures in digital culture at Utrecht University.
Media Matters * ISBN 978 90 8964 256 1 * ? 32.50 
* February 2011 * Paperback * 256 pages, 10 b/w illustrations
For more information or a course adoption copy 
please contact Paul Carls on (p.carls /at/ aup.nl)
Or PLEASE VISIT WWW.AUP.NL

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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