Rethinking Media Democracy and Citizenship commences its blog on matters relating to digital publics and digital dissent–welcome to Kelly Ladd, our Project Blogger! This updated Project News site will track related online events and news as we enter Year Three of this SSHRC-funded project.
Since we began the Project examining digital dissent in 2005, much has changed in the online world of social web. YouTube, for one, has spiraled into its massive orbit, while Facebook colonizes attentional economies across the web.
Our blog posts will amplify the research questions of our SSHRC project—but given the rapidly changing uses of the Social Web, some of what we will track will now includes not only “political†uses of the social web but the increasingly convergence of independent or alternative uses of these social media, with commercialized cooptation (ranging from corporations phishing Facebook, to Oprah running her own YouTube channel, etc.)
One frame for all the questions and posts is: how long will we see equal access to the net? Given the increasing urgency for advertisers to profit from online media, struggles over equal access to the net (so-called Net Neutrality) will be reflected in the new blurring of corporate and participatory user-generated cultures.