Volume index - Journal index - Article index - Map ---- Back

Comunicar Journal 30: Audiences and screens in America (Vol. 15 - 2008)

The active pleasures of expression and communication

https://doi.org/10.3916/c30-2008-01-003

James Lull

Abstract

Based on Lull’s recent book «Culture-on-Demand: Communication in a Crisis World» (2007) and on the author’s view of audiences as active participants in all forms of human communication, this article argues for the place of human expression and symbolic power in contemporary media and cultural studies. It also discusses how modern communication technology reinforces and extends the expressive potential of ordinary citizens in the normative contexts of everyday life. This contribution introduces the concept of cultural open sourcing as fundamental to the increasing democratization of communication processes and distribution of social power ona global scale.

Keywords

Human expression, interactivity, symbolic creativity, symbolic power, cultural open sourcing

PDF file in Spanish

References

Appiah, K.A. (2006): Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. New York (WW), Norton.

Benjamin, W. (1970): Illuminations. London, Jonathan Cape.

Castells, M. (2001): The Internet galaxy. Oxford (UK), Oxford University Press.

Chaney, D. (2002): Cultural change and everyday life. Hampshire, Palgrave.

Engelbart, D. (2005): Bookstrap Institute (www.bootstrap.org).

Evans, D. (2001): Emotion. Oxford (UK), Oxford University Press.

Friedman, T. (2005): The world is flat. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Giddens, A. (2000): Runaway World. London, Routledge.

Gillmor, D. (2004): We the media. Sebastopol (CA), O’Reilly.

Kunstradio (2005): www.kunstradio.at/PROJECTS/CURATED_BY/RR/mainframe.html.

Levy, S. (2004): Something in the air. Newsweek, July 7.

Lull, J. (2007): Culture-on-Demand: Communication in a Crisis World. Oxford (UK), Blackwell Publishing.

Nye, J. (2004): Soft Power. New York, PublicAffairs.

Rheingold, H. (2002): Smart mobs. Cambridge (MA), Perseus.

Simon, E. (2004): Digital cameras change perception of war (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4925611).

Soros, G. (2002): George Soros on globalization. Oxford (UK), Public Affairs, Ltd.

Thompson, J.B. (1995): The media and modernity. Cambridge (UK), Polity Press.

Willis, P. (1990): Common culture. Boulder (CO), Westview.

Willis, P. (2000): The ethnographic imagination. Cambridge (UK), Polity Press.