Radical culture in the digital age: A study of critical new media practice.

摘要

"Radical Culture in the Digital Age: A Study of Critical New Media Practice," examines the nexus between society and culture within oppositional new media practice, particularly in the ways ruling forces in cyberspace such as conglomeration, copyright maintenance, FCC policy, case law, network surveillance, and capital investment give rise to cultural responses that route around these mechanisms of influence and control, resulting in open source journalism collectives, radical net.art, hacktivism, and files sharing networks---a techno-popular front. This research and scholarship focuses on the pressure point between policy and practice, regulation and resistance. As cultural activists intervene by pushing the boundaries of legality and digital agency, they leverage the unique context of the Internet as a networked, decentralized, relatively non hierarchical environment that facilitates symbolic manipulation, technological innovation, political collaboration, and media distribution, benefiting a culture of resistance. While foregrounding the collaboration of offline and online efforts, this dissertation explores how radical uses of new media can contribute to new forms of social organization, activism in the arts, and a critical theory of new media. Ultimately, this work explores the radical potential of leading online practices of cultural resistance and indicates how new technology can be used by all of us to help secure a public commons in the face of corporate globalization.