Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

technologies introduce new social ways of perceiving and producing spaces. The social practices
that take place in these new social spaces are marked with a nonlinear spatial logic, the logic of
space of flows, which describes the complex networks of co-production and social control (Castells
2009).
The advent of digital communication platforms gave way to not only new spatial practices and
resources for place-making but also new methodological frameworks and research designs, the
variety of which extends from the broad framework of internet research (Mann & Stewart 2000), to
the so-called virtual methods (Hine 2005) or virtual ethnographies (Hine 2000) and to research in
CVEs (Schroeder 2011). Particularly with the emergence of notions such as 'collective intelligence'
(Lévy 1997), web 2.0. (O’reilly 2005) and 'convergence culture' (Jenkins 2006), research on coproduction
activities in digital media increasingly gained attention. O’Reilly’s framing of the socalled
‘web 2.0’ emphasizes the role of collaborative content-generation and collective meaningmaking
as emerging global phenomena, and provides a theoretical backdrop for the study of online
digital platforms and the cultures of collaborative social networks such as SL. The socio-cultural
theories on networked societies and co-production of user-generated content often refer to the
notion of ‘collective intelligence’, which was coined by French media scholar Pierre Lévy (1997). In
his book, Lévy outlines a social history of space as: nomadic space, territorial space, industrialized
spaces of commodities, and knowledge space that is made possible by sharing and co-production
of knowledge through global information networks. Although Lévy’s ideals may seem far-fetched
and not realistically correspond to the institutional development of the commercial Web, his
analysis of transformations of social space has influenced many contemporary theories. His
concepts ‘collective intelligence’ and ‘knowledge space’ are important notions for the analysis of
digital media. American media scholar Henry Jenkins’ theory of ‘Convergence Culture’ (i.e. Jenkins
2006, Jenkins et al. 2009; also see Defilippi et al. 2006) is among the most popular interpretations
of Lévy’s ideas on a larger socio-cultural scale. In this, he focuses on issues such as the structures of
participation and power relations between media users (as consumers) and media producers. In
Jenkins’ view, media users hold a certain amount of power through their selective behavior as
consumers, while digital media technologies allow production and consumption to be
democratized. On the other hand, critiques of Jenkins’ convergence culture idea (i.e. Fuchs 2011a,
2011b) focus on the limitations of participatory culture and the challenges for participatory
democracy. They emphasize issues of politics, power, corporate domination and exploitation.
Fuchs (2011b) advocates the use of the notion ‘prosumption’ to explain the intricate relations of
production, consumption and surveillance in Web 2.0 communities.
3