The subject of this book is the changing landscape of cultural policy caused by digital communication and online cultural production, consumption and distribution. Selected cases are analysed in order to illustrate significant encounters between digital technologies, digital communications and cultural policy , and to place them in a broader theoretical spectrum within new directions in cultural policy research. Digital technologies and digital communication have been an integral part of our everyday lives for quite some time now. We are constantly connected to hardware, software and various interface s through our use of computers, tablets and, of course, the smartphones that we frequently pull from our pockets as part of our daily rhythm of accessing and engaging with culture. We meet this culture encoded in digital form, as Manovich (2001) observed, when describing the language of new media, through cultural interface s which facilitate our interactions with cultural data. It is not only the cultural interface which forms these interactions, however, as the communicative infrastructure, the technologies in question and their relationships to the wider issues of political economy, regulation and policy also play a crucial role in understanding these complex dynamics. It is certainly true that mobile and other pervasive media, ubiquitous computing, cloud computing, extended Wi-Fi services and advanced communication infrastructures, give citizens multiple ways to connect, interact, create and share. It is equally true, however, that all these digital activities, which are experienced spatially both online and offline, leave traces of recognisable data that is used for various purposes.
But what are the consequences in terms of cultural consumption and production when cultural items are digitised, and what are the cultural policy implications of these communication patterns? There is certainly no shortage of keywords that account for changes in both cultural and communicative processes, as well as alterations in production and consumption patterns. Some of these suggest emancipatory and empowering dimensions pushing the power balance in favour of citizens, while others point towards critical elements inherent in digital communication. The former are epitomised in concepts such as produsers and produsage (Bruns 2008), prosumers (Toffler 1980), creative audience (Castells 2009), productive enthusiasts (Gauntlett 2011) and interactive audience (Jenkins 2006). The latter are concerned with privacy and surveillance capitalism (Mosco 2014; Zuboff 2015, 2019), digital labour (Scholz 2013), produsage/prosumer commodity (Fuchs 2010, 2014), communicative capitalism (Dean 2008) and free labour (Terranova 2013). Regarding the consequences for cultural manifestations and representations, some scholars have indicated a shift from object-oriented culture to exchange-oriented culture (Stalder 2005), from read-only culture to read-write culture (Lessig 2008) and from ‘sit back and be told’ culture, to ‘making and doing’ culture (Gauntlett 2011). These terms will be discussed further in chapters that scrutinise digital cultures and cultural policies of participation , but are mentioned here to make apparent certain tensions and the polarisation which characterises much literature concerning access to and participation in digital cultures. One of the aims of this book is to provide perspectives and analysis that move beyond such polarisation and examine how these relate to digital cultural politics.
Digital cultural politics needs to be defined in a manner that contains both poles; a view that accounts for the role of cultural policy in shaping citizens’ communicative online environments on a micro level—the level at which citizens enact their agency within the communicative structures provided by various hardware and software, as well as on a macro level—the level characterised by the communication infrastructure of cross-mediated digital communication and how this relates to communication, media and cultural policies . Indeed, one of the ambitions of this book is to facilitate a discussion that brings the often-separated fields of cultural, media and communication policies closer together, and to consider whether such rigid distinctions make sense when accounting for digital cultural politics. In addition to the macro approach, focusing on infrastructures, and the micro approach, focusing on citizen agency and engagement , this book also treats digital cultural politics using a meso approach. This in-between approach facilitates discussion of archival politics and institutional politics , where the focus is on some of the challenges and opportunities that digital technologies and digital communication present for established actors within the field of cultural policy , such as archives, public service broadcasters and museums , but also plays with the idea of perceiving celebrated social media platforms , and platforms like YouTube and Spotify, as possibly the most influential modern cultural institutions .
The book is, therefore, based on the assumption that digital technologies and digital communication bring certain challenges to established understandings of the field of cultural policy , and aims to demonstrate these by analysing concrete cases. In order to do this, the book is structured in two sections: foundations and manifestations. The foundations comprise Chaps. 2 and 3, which engage with further explanations of digital communication and digital cultures, and which analytical benefits arise from treating cultural, media and communication policies together in the context of digital cultural politics. These chapters constitute the macro approach, and are meant to provide the outer shell and context for the book. Chapter 2, Digital communication, digital media and cultural policy , is divided into three sections, starting with thoughts on cultural policy and digital media and how these relate to digital communication. Concepts such as algorithmic culture, digital culture and convergence culture will be viewed from the perspective of digital communication, where particular focus will be placed on the production, consumption and distribution patterns of and between different communication platforms . In the Cultural policies of participation section, this discussion will be further grounded in an account of the advocates and sceptics of these processes. The purpose of these chapters is, therefore, not only to account for what “digital” means when added to “cultural policy ” but also to place it within a context of emancipative/affirmative and colonising/critical discourses within writings on digital communication and cultural policy .
Chapter 3 is dedicated to the politics of cultural, media and communication policies . The chapter argues that digital cultural politics cuts across established distinctions between these three fields. Convergence and converging regulation are keywords in this context. This is evidently a complex issue, and the approach taken in this chapter is to explain the advantages of treating cultural, media and communication policies together as digital cultural politics. This further means treating notions such as data politics , algorithmic cultures, global media policy and platform societies in relation to digital cultural politics. To explain why these concepts are relevant, elements of the EU’s telecommunication package, audiovisual media regulations and general data protection regulation (GDPR) will be analysed in order to demonstrate some of the challenges caused by convergence . One of these challenges is that the old distinction between content and transmission is still used in current EU regulation. This distinction does not, however, apply to the converging regulatory framework of commercial social media, such as Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and Snapchat, or a platform like YouTube , and, therefore, the regulation and use of these services by cultural institutions , public service broadcasters and citizens is unsure, to say the least. User-generated content that moves between different social media platforms thus creates hybrids that reveal loopholes in current regulatory frameworks. Indeed, user-generated content transmitted on social media challenges established notions of transmission, content, jurisdiction, producer, consumer, user, audience, platforms , private and public communications, and this chapter aims to demonstrate this by explaining the ...