Key Concepts in

Critical Cyberculture Studies

NOTE: Strangely enough, definitions are seldom definitive.

Almost any important word has multiple, sometimes conflicting definitions. These keywords will, along with the “Glossary” in our course text Web Studies, represent “working definitions” to give us a common vocabulary for discussion.

cultureCulture is one of the most complex, contested words in our language.

Culture involves at least three components: what people think, what they do, and the material products they produce.

For our purposes: a culture consists of the collection of stories people tell, the actions they take, and the objects they produce in order to give meaning to their lives as members of a particular group.

cyberculture(s)

Cyberculture is the collective name for all the meaning making practices that take place in and around the internet.

I use the term “cybercultures” in the plural to note that this overarching culture can be analyzed only when it is broken down into smaller “subcultures.”

cyberspace(s)“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions … A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system” -- William Gibson Neuromancer (1984).

That the term “cyberspace” was coined by a science fiction writer 10 years before the Internet existed, yet has become a common term for describing it, reminds us that part of the reality of the Net is that it is an imagined space.

The imagined place in which cybercultural interactions happen.

For our purposes, we will sometimes pluralize it to “cyberspaces” in order to remind ourselves that imaging this space as single, seamless one may be misleading.

subculturesA “subculture” is a coherent, smaller collective within a larger culture. There are ethnic subcultures, religious ones, game playing ones (Dungeons and Dragons) work-based ones, political ones, fan subcultures, etc.

Cyberspaces are packed full of various subcultures, defined by chat rooms, news groups, MOOs and MUDS, favorite websites, fan sites, etc.

Some subcultures can be characterized as “dominant,” others as “oppositional” or “alternative” (when they explicitly or implicitly challenge mainstream cultural values, forms, ideas, or styles).

textAny unit of meaning isolated forthe purposes of cultural analysis.

The “text” in a given analysis could be as small as a single image on one web page, or aslarge as the whole internet.

Web “texts” can include words, still pictures, animations, video, audio, even the touch of a keyboard. Analyzing web texts will mean looking at one or more of these elements, and often their various interrelations.

encoding/codes/decoding

Encodings are the meanings made by the producers of texts

Codes are the material “signs” (words, images, sounds) present in aa text.

Decodings are the meanings made by audiences

Note: this does note refer to “computer code” in our context, but rather to cultural coding via language, sound and image.

ideology

2. Unconscious or hidden tendencies to offer aviewpoint that supports the self-interest of a particular group of people. Thus, the “ideology” of a “text” is its unconscious or hidden political bias in favor of one group over another.

1. Consciously held and systematic political ideas(traditional defintion).

All texts have ideological bias -- certain views of how the world is or should be -- built into them.

Sometimes that bias is intentional, but more often it is structured into a text unconsiously.

Claims to pure objectivity or neutrality, or claims that something is “natural” or “unnatural,” are among the strongest forms of ideological bias since they attempt to remove the possibility of cultural debate.

ideological bias

hegemony

The process through which elite or dominant groupsgain consent to their rule from subordinate socialgroups without force, physical violence or overt coercion.

Usually this is done by convincing the subordinategroup that the dominant group “knows best” or is acting in the “best interests” of the subordinate group or that resistance is futile (inducing apathy is one of the great tools of dominant social forces).

Hegemony is largely an unconscious, social process, nota conscious conspiracy.

hegemonic processes

Hegemony is always in process, never fully achieved, never complete. There is always some resistance, some counter-hegemonic processes at work. Sometimes the dominant forces use even this resistance to their advantage, however, by pointing dissent as proof of free choice, while continuing to dominate most social institutions.

Hegemony is often achieved through saturation. It is not that alternatives to the “mainstream” do not exist, but rather that they tend to get drown in that main stream amidst so many messages favorable to those with power (it far easier, for example, for most Web users to find mainstream websites than to find alternative ones because of hegemonic control of portals).

Myth

Repeated stories that take on a central pattern of significance in a culture by linking many smaller stories together.

Myths are the narrative form of ideology, the way ideology is turned into stories that are taken for granted as truths about the culture.

Myths are usually neither wholly “true” nor wholly “false.” They are partial truths made to seem like absolute ones.

Key social variables in cyberculture analysis

Social classRace/ethnicityNationalityUrban/RuralGenderSexual orientationAgePolitical ideologyTechno-knowledge

gender & sexism

Gender: the system of meanings and representationsattached in a given culture to sexed bodies as fixed or “natural” identities

Under U.S. cultural norms, gender is fixed as masculineand feminine qualities attached to male and female bodies.

Sexism: the practice by which one gender is givensystematically greater social, economic, cultural and/orpolitical power over the other.

racism vs. prejudice

Where racial prejudice has to do with personal “attitudes,”racism is a power relationship in which prejudice has been “systematically structured into institutions”(political, economic, social, and cultural)

It is possible to have “racism” without “prejudice”when a no longer attitudinally racist group continuesto benefit from racist structures and institutions.

race & racism

Race is a socially constructed category by which certain physical characteristics common to most members of a group are ascribed to all members and given positive value (racial supremacy) or negative value (racial degradation).

Race is a biologically insignificant fact given great social significance.

Racism is a power relationship by which racial prejudice is systematically structured to the advantage of one group and the disadvantage of another.

formationA “formation” is a historically changing, but relatively stable, structure of practices and ideas by which social categories of identity (racial, gender, class, sexuality) come into being and become dominant for a time.

The term formation, as we will be using it, was first used in association with race as in “racial formation” (Omi and Winant). We will generalize this idea to talk about, gender formations, class formations, as well as racial formations, among others.

Formations generally hide their historically variable reality under claims to be the natural order of things.

cultural competencies

Cultural competency refers to the degree of knowledge of a given community sufficient to understand and represent it adequately and fairly.

Obviously, it is a relative concept since no representation of a culture, subculture or community can be perfect. Cultural competency usually emerges from deep, lived immersion in a culture, but may sometimes be gained from serious, sympathetic study from outside that culture.

subject position

Production side: the “ideal receiver” of a text “encoded” into that text.(When a website is designed, who is consciously thought to be the “target” audience, or who is unconsciously assumed to be that audience.)Audience side: the “actual social position” throughwhich a text is “decoded” (Who actually uses a website, and how does their social position shape how they use the site.)

The socially structured positioning of an individualvis-à-vis the wider culture according to the key variables of race, class, gender, etc.

Culture in Motion

ProductionProcess

"encoding"

Textor

"code"

ReceptionProcess

"decoding"

The Process of Making Culture

Elements of a Critical Cyberculture Studies

Production & Political Economic Analysis

Textual Analysis

Audience/Reception Analysis

According to David Silver critical cyberculture studies analyzesfour main, overlapping, interacting areas:

1) Critical cyberculture studies explores the social, cultural, and economic interactions which take place online;

2) Critical cyberculture studies unfolds and examines the stories we tell about such interactions;

3) Critical cyberculture studies analyzes a range of social, cultural, political, and economic considerations which encourage, make possible, and/or thwart individual and group access to such interactions;

4) Critical cyberculture assesses the deliberate, accidental, and alternative technological decision- and design-processes which, when implemented, form the interface between the network and its users.

Four Domains of Critical

Cyberculture Studies

1) Critical cyberculture studies explores the social, cultural, and economic interactions which take place online

What various motivations bring people online -- work, play, sex, education, buying, selling, meeting etc. -- and what happens to them when they get there?

Who does what in cyberspace and to what end?

To what extent are their desires met?

To what extent are their desires changed?

What possibilities for personal transformation exist and to what extent are they realized?

What possibilities for group tranformation exist and to what exent?

2) Critical cyberculture studies unfolds and examines the stories we tell about cyberspace and theinteractions that occur there

How do the stories the culture tells about cyberspace compare to what actual happens in that space?

How do those stories in turn impact what happens in cyberspace?

3) Critical cyberculture studies analyzes a range of social, cultural, political, and economic considerations which encourage, make possible, and/or thwart individual and group access to such interactions

How should we define access to cyberculture(s)?

How much and what kind of access is desirable and for whom?

What barriers to access have existed in the past and what barriers exist now?

What has been meant by the term “digital divide” and how should that divide (or those “divides”) be bridged or eliminated?

4) Critical cyberculture assesses the deliberate, accidental, and alternative technological decision- and design-processes which, when implemented, form the interface between the network and its users.

Who makes the hardware upon which cyberspaces depend and under what conditions?

Who makes the software that shapes what can and cannot be done in cyberspaces?

What “wetware” design decisions shape the look of cyberspaces and with what cultural consequesences?

What cultural ideas get built into the Web “interface” and which ones get left out?