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How to understand digital culture: Digital culture - a resource for a knowledge society?
According to Jenkins, “how those various transitions unfold will determine the
balance of power in the next media era” (Jenkins, 2006: 17).
With physical limits among the various media removed in the digital environment,
media industries could ensure an easy flow of content among different platforms, so
economically it made sense for them to merge. The trend towards concentration of
media ownership in today’s society is continually increasing. It is a problem as it
stifles competition among the various media, lowers diversity and raises barriers to
participation for other players. These large concentrated media industries are
pursuing profit as their main goal and users are not able to influence them easily. On
the other hand, cultural and media industries have a powerful hold over multiple
public spheres, thus shaping popular reality but, as Deuze comments, “with a
deliberate focus to sell audiences as target demographics to advertisers” (Deuze,
2007). This situation impacts on the quality of the public sphere in modern societies
that the media should be enabling. It is not simple to find an answer to the question of
how to preserve the media’s democratic potential and ensure media pluralism in an
increasingly commercialized context. 11
The other side of the coin that the digital networked environment enabled is wide
participation of users in the virtual sphere. It seems that “the same communication
technologies that enable interactivity and participation are wielded to foster the
entrenchment and growth of a global corporate media system that can be said to be
anything but transparent, interactive or participatory” (Deuze, 2007: 247). This
situation can also be read in reverse and it could be said that digital networks provide
various alternative platforms for communication and this changes the position of the
traditional mass media and moderates its power. Among the immense amount of
information available on the Internet an interested user can find a diversity of
perspectives on any googled issue. This information comes from a diversity of
sources – traditional media, the profit sector, NGOs, the research community,
individuals, the educational sector – name them and you will find them. This diversity
of information and perspectives is a product of what Benkler calls the networked
information economy in which peer production and sharing have a significant role.
According to Benkler the most important aspect of this economy is the possibility it
opens up for reversing the control focus of the industrial information economy and
reversing trends of concentration and commercialization (Benkler, 2006: 32).
11 The commercial mass media have been widely criticized for their failures as a platform for
public discourse. The main issues being the imbalance of influence of citizens which is a
consequence of media owners’ excessive power to influence what issues will be given
space in the media, as well as big influence of advertisers, and the limited intake pool of
issues and views presented - journalists being the main contributors.
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