Workshop ‘Cultural Mediators in the Digital Age’
In the second round of this event we explored how much of the early cultural intermediaries literature within cultural studies (emerging from the late 1980s-1990s) and across a range of industries (fashion, music, popular media/magazines, for example) is relevant to today’s cultural forms in the digital age. Specifically, the aim of the symposium is to gather experts on cultural industries to discuss and analyse how consumers’ practices performed in digital spaces (e.g. blog, social media, and websites) are facilitating the emergency of new cultural and economic forms in this industry. It will be cross- disciplinary and cross-sector, seeking also to examine the differences, synergies and similarities across key cultural industries (for example, fashion, music, print/publishing, film, food, gaming).
We will explore the practices, identities, and discourses of cultural mediators in the digital age from a broad range of disciplines – including sociology, media studies, geography, anthropology, cultural studies, STS. Questions and topics include but are not limited to:
How do CIs create meaning and valorise cultural products in the digital age?
How do their practices vary across industries (e.g. music, media, fashion, design, and food) in the digital age?
What role do digital technologies (particularly social media) play in the practices of CIs?
What forms of labour are emerging from consumers’ social media practices of mediation around goods and flows produced in the cultural industry?
How are the off- and online practices of CIs regulated, and by whom?
What type (s) of value (s) (e.g. economic, symbolic) are consumers producing through their online practices of mediation?
What kind of knowledge do consumers produce and circulate through social media in relation to flows and goods produced in the cultural industry?
Theoretically, what kind of sociological, cultural, and economic concepts and theories serve to understand online practices of mediation in relation to flows and goods produced in the cultural industry?
This Workshop was organised by the School of Communications at University Adolfo Ibanez, the Culture, Media and Creative Industries Department at King’s College, and the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.