Deuze,+Mark.+Participation,+Remediation,+Bricolage

=Deuze, Mark. "Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture."=

The Information Society April-June 2006: 63-75. Web 21 March 2011.

=Abstract= In this essay the arrival of a digital culture is investigated in terms of its principal components. A digital culture is portrayed as consisting of participation, remediation, and bricolage. "Using the literature on presumably “typical” Internet phenomena such as the worldwide proliferation of independent media centers (indymedia) linked with (radical) online journalism practices and the popularity of (individual and group) weblogging, the various meanings and implications of this particular understanding of digital culture are explored" (Deuze 1). As proven through this essay, digital culture can be seen as an emerging set of values, practices, and expectations regarding the way people (should) act and interact within the contemporary network society. This digital culture "links to trends and developments predating the World Wide Web, yet having an immediate impact and particularly changing the ways in which we use and give meaning to living in an increasingly interconnected, always on(line) environment" (Deuze 1). =Argument= Mark Deuze argues that digital culture can be defined by its forms of radical online journalism, blogging, and independent media centers. While Deuze acknowledges the significant impact digitality has on culture, he argues that the new forms opened up by digital means are not new forms of culture, but rather show an emerging individualized society. Deuze points to three aspects that indicate an individualized society: literature that has recently been written on the challenges posed by radical online journalism in which a change has occurred between consumers and producers, the abundance of open publishing, and the popularity of "individualized storytelling," like blogs.

While technology has greatly impacted the way in which we share information, Deuze points out that the elements that make up our "new media" have always been there. Deuze quotes Lessig who states that "digital technologies will...enable anyone to capture and share content," which is what human beings have been doing since "the dawn of time" (64).

What has changed, Deuze posits, is the way in which we form reality by means of information. Indymedia is an important aspect of this. Deuze defines Indymedia as "loosely organized set of social arrangements developing around practices and ideals of open publishing" (65). Included in Indymedia is blogging and podcasts. In our individualized society, no longer does one need authority or credentials to be a reporter and informer. Anyone can report news, and therefore shape reality--Deuze calls this "radical journalism" because it drastically changes traditional forms of journalism by switching the roles between the "news producers" and "news consumers" (65).

Both Manovich and media historian Stephens, Deuze claims, describe new media as a culture that uses remediation--the relationship between old and new media in which new media forms from old media, while old media refashions itself to "answer to the challenges of new media" (68). Manovich and Stephens also include bricolage--an assembled reality that it personal, as aspects of new media. Deuze adds to their argument by stating that digital culture also includes participation. The popularity of blogs and wikis indicate this change from static truths offered by "authorities," to personal reshaping of reality. News websites, Deuze comments, are now also showing aspects of bricolage, as many display content from other media, such as audio and video clips. Some news websites also include blogs of viewers. Videogame creators actively listen to their fans and produce games based on what they write on the web. These examples reveal a developed individualized society that is made up of the three aspects of new media: remediation, bricolage, and participation.

=Key Passages= “In short: In the proliferation and saturation of screen-based, networked, and digital media that saturate our lives, our reconstitution is expressed as: 1. Active agents in the process of meaning-making (we become participants). 2. We adopt but at the same time modify, manipulate, and thus reform consensual ways of understanding reality (we engage in remediation). 3. We reflexively assemble our own particular versions of such reality (we are bricoleurs)” (66).

“I would like to add an element of distantiation inherent in all contemporary refashioning practices. Distantiation can be understood to mean a manipulation of the dominant way of doing or understanding things in order to juxtapose, challenge, or even subvert the mainstream” (68).

“What is amazing about a digital culture—rather than a print, visual, or information culture—is that it fosters community while at the same time can be fueled by isolation” (71).

“Digital culture, in other words, can be characterized by participation, remediation, and bricolage as its key elements, sustained through ongoing self-production, which gets expressed particularly in online (blogging, indymedia, radical online journalism) phenomena” (71).

=Selected Works Cited= For a complete Works Cited, see pages 23-28.