Web Culture

As you do your digital ethnography, you are going to be running into digital culture in various manifestations. Some of the key terms to keep in mind are remix culture, participatory culture, and the presence of the vernacular. Web culture intersects most explicitly with writing studies through issues of authorship, copyright, and rhetorics, as well as simply by the sheer volume of text and writing produced in many web 2.0 environments. If according to the "stewards," of literacy,online literacy is of a lesser kind, then the steward of literacy just quoted has done an embarrassingly bad job thinking about the ways in which writing usurps or competes with reading in online environments.

While we are on the topic of we culture, here is some electronic literature that has been officially sanctioned by the powers that be. Such "high art" is in an environment competing with examples of fan culture, some of which are NSFW, like this one.


At any rate, the key terms and concepts to keep in mind as we move forward are:

1. Remix Culture

2. Participatory media

3. Social production

4. Copyright

5. Prosumers