Interesting links, questions and discussions

One of the central elements to explore through the study of new media is the kind of ‘structure of feeling’ (derived from Raymond Williams) that its various forms and practices have produced. New Media Cultures has emphasized the need to move from reception studies to incorporate some dimension of production studies and it has relied upon cultural studies to help navigate this new direction.

Cultural commodities have become ultimately less contained – less discrete – and it is now important to investigate this sensibility in the way people use new media to make sense of their worlds.

With the development of napster and kazaa and other techniques of filesharing, the new researcher of new media must become better informed about the domain of intellectual property along with organizations such as WIPO.

New directions for research that I would like to explore further are involved with studying the boundaries of the cultural commodity and the meaning of cultural value as articulated by the culture industries and the many cultural producers that have no intention of making profit from their work. With the commodity’s boundaries of value and exchange now much more porous, there is a great deal more work that needs to be done in the realm of how audiences and users make meaning and transform cultural commodities through their uses and experiences. Simultaneously, it is clear that the cultural industries are working to incorporate this will-to-produce in culture through accommodating this new sensibility in their commodity structures (for example the electronic game).

I hope you have enjoyed the website and that it has expanded the value and dimensions of the book in provocative ways. There is a great deal more thinking, analysing, researching and studying to be done to unpack the emerging new media cultures.

P. David Marshall