Collaborative Research: Cultural Production in the Digital Age ?Defining a New Research Agenda

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In the past, the relative scarcity of production resources and capacities meant that media could offer only narrow channels by which citizens could engage in cultural production. That public discourse increasingly came to resemble those narrow channels, in sometimes problematic ways. Today, the ever increasing ubiquity of personal computers, content production software, and mobile devices, the penetration of broadband internet connections both in the United States and across the post-industrial world, and the rise of server-side applications for circulating content to vast social information networks, all have forced researchers to reconsider this relationship between cultural production and public discourse. This project will assemble a small group of international faculty and graduate students from a mix of disciplinary backgrounds who are already asking compelling questions in this area, along with technology designers whose tools intervene in current cultural production practices. This group will establish a virtual research group for one year, anchored by face-to-face meetings at either end, in order to develop vital, inter-disciplinary tools for better understanding the interplay of digital technologies and cultural production in contemporary social contexts. We aim to meet five objectives:1) Foster interdisciplinary dialogue on issues of cultural production and its relationship to digital technology, socio-technical networks, and cultures; 2) map core areas of research and identify collaborative opportunities and existing research gaps; 3) Envision alternative information platforms premised on the insights gained in the workshop, designed both to serve and interrogate public expression on a societal scale; 4) produce a public, online resource that will draw together a wider set of scholars similarly engaged in these questions; and, 5) facilitate graduate student training, by including graduate students with relevant dissertation projects.The project will contribute to science and technology studies, games studies, and other social science inquiry into digital cultural production. The project's broader impact will include the development of theoretical contributions and proposals for future empirical research. Results will be available online, presented at professional meetings, submitted to selected journals, such as New Media and Society, The Information Society, and Convergence, and published in an edited book.