Online Culture

The article focuses on the axiological aspects of consciousness under conditions of the development of contemporary media culture and e-culture. Relying on theories of media-philosophy the author considers the media as a main factor of the determination of human value in the information society. The research is aimed at eliciting the peculiarities of modern media culture in the context of an existential and axiological approach that enables the determination of the effect the development of the mediasphere in modern culture has on the world of human values. In this case, media (mediasphere) is understood in its broad sense as a sphere of electronic communication with diverse forms of appearance and electronic mass media, generating the global information space. The author suggests the analysis of the penetration of communication e-culture (and its forms) and media-culture. The author argues that the values of media-culture (freedom, personality orientation, pragmatism, and other) developed under the conditions of information and ethic pluralism, which give a person more responsibility of spiritual choice.

The paper presents the working definition of AI. It claims that AI has to be examined in relation to AS. The paper argues that the human-machine-interdependence is a new reality of artificial sociality. It envisages AI research as a multidisciplinary and potentially a-disciplinary scientific activity. The questions the Theses raise: What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances? Can AI technologies solve modern society's problems and bring human beings to a new level of community and well-being? Are there "no-AI areas" in society? prejudice. Do human biases and prejudices influence AI technologies? The paper’s essential assertion is that the challenges posed by AI technologies and AS should be addressed à propos three P’s of the capitalist society: private property, profit, price.

It has become a commonplace among media pessimists to see digital culture as inaugurating the end of books and reading. Conversely, our article examines how book and reading culture are adapted to the internet in various ways. Books and reading are at the center of an impressive number of popular digital platforms and practices, such as book blogs, or book related communities on Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube. These practices transcend the binary thinking about 'old' and new' media that can often be found in commentaries on the contemporary medial landscape, where book reading is more often than not understood as an inherently valuable medial activity, while the use of new media is seen as more problematic.
After mapping the main elements of this 'two media cultures' debate, we turn to two case studies in order to examine which ideas and ideals about the purposes and effects of reading are implicit in this emerging new reading culture on the internet. We first discuss the "Guardian Reading Group" as an attempt by a traditional newspaper to use the affordances of web 2.0 to open up traditional book review formats to an interactive reading community. Our second exemplary case is the phenomenon of BookTube, a subdivision on the video sharing platform YouTube where millennials celebrate reading, using book culture as a form of self-fashioning and socializing. Our media-ecological analyses show how these phenomena can be understood as a snapshot of the socio-cultural functions attributed to different medial practices at this particular moment in time. At the same time, they also outline how the understanding of these functions are embedded in long historical traditions of (novel) reading and its symbolic dimensions.

Research on celebrity and public persona derives from fundamentally interdisciplinary sources. Although at its core, the study of public personality has been the object of investigations by those more closely associated with media and communication, the key disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, political science, social psychology, and even anthropology and history have been part of its analysis. Celebrity identifies the “extra-textual” dimensions of the famous, in which the lives of the renowned are followed, read, and reported. It is a public celebration of individuality that is (but not exclusively) connected to consumer culture and democratic capitalism. Through these larger cultural tropes celebrity has had its strongest affiliations with the contemporary entertainment industries, particularly in terms of how they are covered by the media and the press for further value beyond the cultural forms that are often the origins of stardom—the public individual’s performances in fields such as film, television, sport, and popular music. Celebrity is a site of celebration and derogation in any culture: these public individuals are truly exalted and given a status beyond others, but they are also ridiculed for their believed-to-be unearned credentials for having such a public platform and voice. Moreover, the study of celebrity and public persona is also an investigation into the connection between the populace and these public personalities, where parasocial relations most evident in fandom identify how celebrities embody audiences with an affective connection that is truly powerful in contemporary culture. That power of embodiment and connection that celebrities possess is subsequently exploited by the media industries to promote and sell new connected cultural products. Identifying celebrities as part of a spectrum of public personas links the study of celebrity to the investigation of the celebrated and famed in a variety of professions and fields well beyond entertainment. Thus, the term persona is used in these studies of public personalities to acknowledge the mask that is deployed to present a public version of the self for this external consumption and reading by an audience, a collective, a network, a nation, a citizenry, or a community. Research into public personas has led to related studies of political leadership, self-branding, notoriety in business, and reputation management, and research delves into the presentation of the public self by greater portions of the populace in online cultures. Celebrity and public persona is a field in which research aims to investigate the significance and meaning of various versions of the public self in both contemporary culture and historically.
To cite: P. David Marshall.(2015) “Celebrity and Public Persona.” Oxford Bibliographies in "Communication". Ed. Patricia Moy. New York: Oxford University Press, 15 January available online: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841-0159.xml?result=2&rskey=Th4ZyD&print or http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841-0159.xml
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199756841-0159

"The process of cultural globalisation does not always imply cultural homogenisation.
Rather, it can be seen as a process of cultural ‘glocalisation’ and hybridisation where
cultures continuously interact with and interpret each other to engender a hybrid
cultural form. As Arjun Appadurai (1993) contends, neither centrality nor peripherality
of culture exists in the context of cultural globalisation. Rather, transnational cultural
forms are likely to circulate in multiple directions.

This is particularly evident when examining Gothic & Lolita – a Japanese fashion trend
which has emerged since the late 1990s. Applying Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s theory of
‘globalisation as hybridisation’ (2004), and Roland Robertson’s concept of ‘glocalisation’
(1995), this article attempts to explore how this fashion trend manifests the process of
cultural ‘glocalisation’, hybridisation, and interaction through the localisation of Western
Goth subculture and especially, historical European dress styles in Japan. In addition,
it explores how the fashion signifies the idea of ‘reverse’ flow of culture through an
ethnographic observation of an English-speaking online community devoted to the
trend. The analysis of the online community also seeks to establish the idea that this
transnational cultural flow serves as an alternative to the local culture."

In the era of networked affordances, misogynistic men’s groups have been rapidly growing and have contributed to several physical fatal attacks along with the propagation of gendered online harassment and e-bile. It is thus important to study the organisational structures and communication dynamics of these groups to provide insight into why they have been successful in recruiting members and how they further spread and normalise misogynistic beliefs. One such misogynistic group is MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way). This study seeks to understand the structure and content of discussion within the forum of the official MGTOW website. To do so, it undertakes a content analysis of comments (n=1012) inspired by Freelon’s (2010, 2015) multi- norm approach to studying online communication, which draws on the liberal individual, communitarian and deliberative models. It also assesses the broader patterns of commenting (n = 628,745) participation amongst users (n = 33,863). The results suggest that debates on the forum combine elements of each communicative approach and that this reflects a contradiction in their underlying ideology of separation and individualism. In addition, it was found that topics of conversation primarily focused on two topics: women (the majority of which unfold in a misogynistic way) and defining MGTOW – both as a collective identity and a personal journey.

A marca distintiva do LabCom, Laboratório de Comunicação Online, foi sempre o fazer. Quando o iniciámos, há 10 anos, já tínhamos a experiência da criação de uma biblioteca, de um jornal e de uma revista, todos online, correndo sobre bases de dados. Com efeito, a Biblioteca Online de Ciências da Comunicação, a BOCC, criada em maio de 1999, o lançamento do jornal Urbi et Orbi em janeiro de 2000, e da revista Recensio, em 2001, e, em particular, a investigação e experimentação feitas no âmbito do projeto “Akademia – Tecnologia da Informação e Novas Formas de Jornalismo
Online” (2000-2004), financiado pela FCT, possibilitaram um saber fazerúnico em Portugal no âmbito da comunicação digital. O LabCom tornou-se conhecido em Portugal e, sobretudo, no Brasil pelas bibliotecas (BOCC,
Lusosofia), revistas (Doc-Online, Estudos em Comunicação), e a editora online (Livros LabCom).
Com o saber fazer veio a investigação muito específica em áreas que a digitalização e a Internet revolucionaram, nomeadamente a informação, em geral, e o jornalismo, em particular, a comunicação e a deliberação políticas, o design, a comunicação multimédia e o cinema. Hoje, o LabCom
conta com três grupos de investigação que estruturam a divisão do presente volume: Informação e Persuasão; Media, Identidade e Cidadania; Cinema e Multimédia.
Os textos, aqui incluídos, oferecem uma amostra do estado da arte do que se faz no LabCom. Não são um resumo de investigações passadas, mas sim investigações presentes que, na grande maioria, vêm na senda dessas investigações. Não seria difícil, mediante a arqueologia dos textos presentes,
encontrar muitas das publicações que fazem o património do LabCom, em particular os Livros LabCom. Os três volumes Informação e Comunicação Online – i) Jornalismo Online, ii) Internet e Comunicação Promocional, iii) Mundo Online da Vida e Cidadania, publicados em 2003, e que consubstanciaram o projeto Akademia – contêm o gérmen de muito do trabalho que agora se apresenta aqui. Há, no LabCom, uma continuidade de investigação que manifesta a identidade de uma unidade de investigação muito própria no espaço lusófono.

Derived from Vladimir Nabokov’s eponymous 1955 novel and its pre-adolescent heroine, seen by the older male narrator as a ‘nymphet’, the ‘Lolita’ look typical in the United States, for example—generally characterized by highly eroticized adolescent or preadolescent girls—has stirred controversy in many Western societies. Japanese Lolita fashion, on the other hand, is characterized by images of women adorned in elaborate dresses with delicate fabrics inspired by stylistic interpretations of early-modern European clothing such as Rococo and Victorian dresses. The style thus exudes the look of European bisque dolls, yet one senses there is something odd about these Japanese ‘European’ dresses.

Lolita style also references various forms of contemporary popular culture, including Western Goth subculture, manga, anime and Visual-kei (Visual-Rock) music—a Japanese music genre popular in the 1990s, typified by musicians wearing elaborate make-up and hairstyles, with flamboyant, rather androgynous costumes. Although it is practised by a small group of people, Lolita fashion has received substantial media and academic attention, perhaps due to its visually spectacular and eye-catching nature. Moreover, the presence of Lolita fashion has increasingly been noted in locations worldwide. But why do people wish to dress in Lolita fashion?

When discussing cultural flows within a transnational context, often the focus of debate is the issue of whether cultures tend towards unification or. In this chapter however, I am interested in whether flows of culture override or dissolve cultural differences in the places they reach, via an examination of Lolita fashion. The first section focuses on Lolita fashion in the Japanese context. Paying particular attention to its stylistic aspects, I examine one of the ways in which historical European clothing has been appropriated in Japan. The second section looks at the Lolita trend outside Japan by way of a textual analysis of an Anglophone on-line community for Lolita fashion lovers, ‘EGL (Elegant Gothic Lolita) The Gothic & Lolita Fashion Community’. In so doing, I will explore how concepts such as ‘local’ and ‘global’ have been relativized or renegotiated in Lolita fashion.

Scholarship to date agrees that the internet has weakened the Chinese
Party-state’s ideological and discursive hegemony over society. This article documents a recent intervention into public discourse exercised by the Chinese state through appropriating and promoting a popular online catchphrase—“positive energy” (zheng nengliang). Analysing the “positive energy” phenomena using Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony and discourse, the authors argue that the relative effectiveness of this hegemonic intervention rests on the semantic versatility of “positive energy”, which enables “chains of equivalence” to be established between the label’s popular meanings, on the one hand, and its propagandist meanings, on the other.

Persona is a public presentation of identity. One of the key values of a persona is its consistency in its presentation of the self. This article is designed to be the first exploratory steps and overview in charting the idea of seriality in relation to persona and its utility as a concept to describe the constancy and transformation of identity that is now elemental to understanding contemporary persona or the public presentation of the self and its online manifestations. Seriality in terms of persona is first investigated from its entertainment culture origins – with its use in the constitution of characters in fiction in novels, films, games and most prevalently in television. Several examples of serial persona will be analysed with an emphasis on how television has constructed often the most powerful personas: Kevin Spacey’s persona as Frank Underwood in House of Cards and James Gandolfini’s persona as Tony Soprano are discussed in greater detail in terms of the economic, cultural and affective value of serial persona and its associated formations of risk. It then explores the blending of the fictional and the real in seriality through how popular music performers – in particular Eminem - construct an authentic register of persona to allow for the exploration of the self through emotion and connection. The article concludes with thinking how seriality is connected to the constitutions of online identity and links the concept with aspects of virality and meme culture and their constructions of value, patterns and constancy as it relate to the presentation of the public self.

La presente investigación se propone analizar dos estéticas contemporáneas: el cyberpunk y el vaporwave. Ambas basan su imaginario creativo en una sociedad tecnológica, motivo por el cual se abordan cuáles son sus principales temáticas e iconografías con la finalidad de acercarnos al estudio de sus diferencias y cómo interpretan los nuevos avances tecnológicos, prestando especial atención a la realidad virtual.

The present research intends to analyze two contemporary aesthetics: Cyberpunk and Vaporwave. Both base their creative imagination on a technological society, because of this we try to see what their main themes and iconographies are in order to approach the study of their differences and how they interpret new technological advances with special emphasis in virtual reality.

Celebrity has developed into a particularly powerful and pervasive trope for contemporary culture. It works at organising what we perceive as significant and this is made evident through its permeation of what constitutes news. Similarly, celebrity has been well documented in terms of its capacity to shape our entertainment: stardom is at least one of the cultural economies in which our stories and fictions are selected or read and recreated in popular culture. This article argues for the development of persona studies, where research on the celebrity is a subset of a wider study of how the self and public intersect and produce versions and identities that in some way continue to support the wider demands of our work economies.

This article explores social media users' circulation of a Twitter hashtag #IranJeans as it reflects a complex transnational dialogue about Iranian identity markers in a globalized mediascape. By conducting a thematic analysis of 140 tweets and photos shared under #IranJeans, this study draws attention to the ways in which social media provide users a unique space to address global political discourse, reconstruct their identities, and refute cultural misconceptions on a transnational level. The study presents this transcultural dialogue as an " affirmative opposition, " focusing on identity construction processes that simultaneously critique and rearticulate existing cultural binaries. This, in turn, expands the discussion of identity construction from older generations of mass media to new, online, media platforms.

Sometimes a particular concept—a simple term—is the spark to a series of ideas. It might be ostentatious and perhaps hubristic that the editors of an issue on persona might imagine that their choice of the term persona has provided this intellectual spark. Fully aware of that risk, we want to announce that it has. The response to the call for papers related to persona was our first sign that something special was being initiated. The sheer number and interdisciplinary breadth of the abstracts and ultimate submissions was evidence that the term ‘persona’ was the catalyst to an explosion of ideas. As the responses flowed into the journal and to us, we became aware of the meme-like qualities of the many interpretations and history of the term, each with its own idiosyncratic coding of patterned similarity. The reality of this development is that it was not entirely unexpected. The editors have been developing the concept of persona and persona studies over the past four years, and persona studies has emerged from a congruence in our collective research interests as an interdisciplinary investigation of the presentation of the self in the contemporary moment. Together, we have been involved in the development of the Persona Celebrity Publics Research Group (PCP) at Deakin University. Within that group, we have concentrated ourselves in the Persona Research cluster, made up of a group of 15 or so academics along with another smaller group from other institutions. Emerging from our work is the forthcoming book entitled Persona Studies: Celebrity, Identity, and the Transformation of Public Culture (forthcoming Wiley 2015). Both the book and the research group are intent on exploring what has been altering in our worlds, our cultures, and our communities that make us think the new intensified play of the personal in public needs closer scrutiny. The impetus for us as a team of scholars is quite clearly linked to the uses of online culture and how greater aspects of our lives are now involved in public displays, mediated displays, and a peculiar new blend of interpersonal and presentational constructions of identities and selves.

This article seeks to explore how Internet media is shaping transnationally-mediated South Asian music subcultures. Rather than serve as a literature review of new media and South Asian popular culture, this paper is especially interested in how particular music websites, discussion forums, social networking sites, and IP-based technologies in general are facilitating the creation of progressive South Asian virtual spaces. One particular South Asian musical scene, ‘Taqwacore’, a transnational Muslim punk music scene, is used as a case study. Reference is made to other non-Muslim diasporic South Asian musical scenes including Asian electronic music and Bhangra as well to contextualize Taqwacore. Ethnographic research (participant observation and interviewing) was conducted both online and offline using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, discussion groups, and face-to-face meetings.

In less than a year, Lil Yachty (born in 1997) went from recording music in his bedroom in Atlanta to acting as a strong generational voice for an emerging youth. This paper explores the role of the Internet in Lil Yachty's rise to cultural prominence. Lil Yachty initially gained attention in online rap communities in late 2015 and his career skyrocketed after Lil Boat the Mixtape was released in early 2016. By the end of the year, he had released two mixtapes, was featured on a #5 Billboard Hot 100 hit, and appeared in a Sprite commercial with LeBron James. Lil Yachty proclaims himself the "King of the Teens," and the last song on his mixtape Summer Songs Part II features voice recordings of teenage fans confessing the considerable positive impact that his music has had on their lives. In the chorus, Lil Yachty himself croons, "So many people ask me how I do it," to which he admits, "I don't know, I don't know." This paper aims to clear up Lil Yachty's confusion. I look explicitly at how the Internet has influenced Lil Yachty's carer. His music has been described as "post-regionalist" in how it inhibits digital spaces more than physical ones. Consequently, Lil Yachty acts as a voice for a highly geographically dispersed yet technologically connected generation. I analyze and discuss the role of the Internet in how it strongly influenced both Lil Yachty's music as well as how his fans relate and understand themselves within it online. This paper concludes by further examining how Lil Yachty acts as a seminal example of the Internet's aesthetic influence on popular music as well as a means to understand how an emerging Internet-bred generation of music fans creates a sense of belonging online.

The concept of the public intellectual has always been a somewhat contested term. This article serves as both an introduction to the debates around what it constitutes and an entry point into how the new media environment is producing a different configuration of the public intellectual. Through key thinkers who have addressed the idea of the public intellectual internationally and those who have focused on the Australian context, this essay positions the arguments made by the authors in this special issue. Via a short case-study of TED, the conference and online idea-spreading phenomenon, it argues that the contemporary moment is producing and privileging a different constellation of experts as celebrities that match the exigencies of online attention economy. A shifted conception of the public intellectual is beginning to take shape that is differently constituted, used and situated, and this article helps to define the parameters for further discussion of these transformations.
To cite:  Marshall, P David and Atherton, Cassandra (2015), 'Situating public intellectuals', Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy, 156 (August), 69-78.

This essay situates the intellectual background, historical context, and theoretical and cultural justification for the development of Persona Studies. It explores the uses and deployments of the term persona and then situates the development of an expanding intellectual inquiry into persona studies and its value in understanding the  construction of the public and mediated self throughout contemporary culture. The article also serves as the launching pad of the new journal entitled Persona Studies and introduces the various issues in the inaugural issue.

Considering the recent failure of ACTA, this paper examines on-going debates surrounding the virtual art commodity, and the legal rhetoric of 'piracy'. The discourse created by digital copyright and entertainment industries depend on the criminalization of 'piracy' to legitimize their defnitions of ownership; an oppositional relationship that is called into question when concepts of value and ownership are critically explored. Through a 'cultural biography' (Gell 1998; Kopytof 1986) of this object in question, this paper examines the depth of dependence and contesting relationships between 'piracy' and the entertainment industry, questioning whether the pirate really is a criminal after all.

In the light of the existing literature on the issue of cross-cultural interface design, we carried out a small- scale study in order to check whether we could find cultural differences in local web sites. First, the experiment was conducted for university web sites. Our hypotheses with regard to cross-cultural variation were based on the well-known theory of Hofstede (6). Contrary to Hofstede's theory and findings, very little evidence of cultural differences in the interfaces of the web sites was reported. Subsequently, an online survey was conducted among webmasters of university web sites in an attempt to provide preliminary explanations for the findings. Because the results of the experiment were inconsistent with other previous research findings, we decided to repeat the experiment for a different type of web sites: newspaper web sites. This experiment confirmed the first results. Although the experiments done were on a small scale and had several limitations, the results ...

O presente trabalho busca compreender como se dá o desenvolvimento das produções textuais de fãs, as chamadas fanfictions, no contexto de suas comunidades específicas, tomando como exemplo os textos baseados na série estadunidense de televisão, The Walking Dead. Para tal, foi realizada a análise da plataforma de postagem e compartilhamento de fanfictions, o site Fanfiction.net, e uma revisão bibliográfica, com ênfase nos conceitos de Henry Jenkins (2009) sobre cultura de convergência e produtos transmidiáticos, e os de Raquel Recuero (2005) sobre comunidades virtuais e redes sociais virtuais. A partir de tais reflexões, entende-se que essas construções textuais se estabelecem de modo coletivo dentro das comunidades de fãs, sendo as trocas entre seus membros essenciais para o seu desenvolvimento. Dessa forma, este trabalho também possui o intuito de estimular novas produções acadêmicas com temáticas voltadas para os fãs e suas produções.

Title: “Rule no.3: Never raid with pants on.”–An Anthropological Study of Communication, Co-Operation and Friendship in the ’Virtual’World of Warcraft

Author: I. Haraldsson, 2017 Uppsala University The Department for Cultural Anthropology and Ethnography

The significance of technology and technological devices in the modern western society is steadily expanding, and affecting how the consumers of these products interact with one another. Both through these devices, but also how they interact without them the importance of studying these forms of interaction is therefore of rising significance.
This thesis explores the world of online-gaming in order to map out how the players use, and are affected by the virtual aspects of the platform theyuse to create and reproduce their social bonds with one another. By analysing the relationship between the virtual and the actual it is possible to shed light on the potentials as well as the limits of online communication. The thesis purpose is to add to a deeper understanding within the anthropological discipline for interpersonal interaction within the frames of virtual spaces. The research has been conducted through a qualitative ethnographic field study with a guild of players who interact through the game World of Warcraft. This thesis will show that there is a strong interaction between the virtual worlds and the actual world. Thus it is possible for events that occurred in either space to affect the player.

At its core, the power of the public intellectual is the capacity to make ideas move through a culture. This article looks at what kind of academic persona – that is, what kind of public self whose original status comes from intellectual work and thinking – navigates effectively through online culture and communicates ideas in the contemporary moment. Part of the article reports on a research project that has studied academic personas online and explores what can be described as ‘registers of online performance’ that they inhabit through their
online selves. The research reveals that public intellectuals have to interpret effectively that online culture privileges what is identified as ‘presentational media’: the individual as opposed to the media is the channel through which
information moves and is exchanged online, and it is essentially a presentation
of the self that has to be integrated into the ideas and messages. From this initial analysis/categorisation of academic persona online, the article investigates the online magazine The Conversation, which blends journalism with academic
expertise in its production of news stories. The article concludes with some of the key elements that are part of the power of the public intellectual online.
To cite: Marshall, P David (2015), 'Understanding the emerging contemporary public intellectual: Online academic persona and The Conversation [online]', Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy, 156 (August 2015), 123-32.

In the light of the existing literature on the issue of cross-cultural interface design, we carried out a small-scale study in order to check whether we could find cultural differences in local web sites. First, the experiment was conducted for university web sites. Our hypotheses with regard to cross-cultural variation were based on the well-known theory of Hofstede [6]. Contrary to Hofstede's theory and findings, very little evidence of cultural differences in the interfaces of the web sites was reported. Subsequently, an online survey was conducted among webmasters of university web sites in an attempt to provide preliminary explanations for the findings. Because the results of the experiment were inconsistent with other previous research findings, we decided to repeat the experiment for a different type of web sites: newspaper web sites. This experiment confirmed the first results. Although the experiments done were on a small scale and had several limitations, the results a...

The paper presents the working definition of AI. It claims that AI has to be examined in relation to AS. The paper argues that the human-machine-interdependence is a new reality of artificial sociality. It envisages AI research as a multidisciplinary and potentially a-disciplinary scientific activity. The questions the Theses raise: What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances? Can AI technologies solve modern society's problems and bring human beings to a new level of community and well-being? Are there "no-AI areas" in society? prejudice. Do human biases and prejudices influence AI technologies? The paper’s essential assertion is that the challenges posed by AI technologies and AS should be addressed à propos three P’s of the capitalist society: private property, profit, price.

ABSTRACT A marca distintiva do LabCom, Laboratório de Comunicação Online, foi sempre o fazer. Quando o iniciámos, há 10 anos, já tínhamos a experiência da criação de uma biblioteca, de um jornal e de uma revista, todos online, correndo sobre bases de dados. Com efeito, a Biblioteca Online de Ciências da Comunicação, a BOCC, criada em maio de 1999, o lançamento do jornal Urbi et Orbi em janeiro de 2000, e da revista Recensio, em 2001, e, em particular, a investigação e experimentação feitas no âmbito do projeto “Akademia – Tecnologia da Informação e Novas Formas de Jornalismo Online” (2000-2004), financiado pela FCT, possibilitaram um saber fazer único em Portugal no âmbito da comunicação digital. O LabCom tornou-se conhecido em Portugal e, sobretudo, no Brasil pelas bibliotecas (BOCC, Lusosofia), revistas (Doc-Online, Estudos em Comunicação), e a editora online (Livros LabCom). Com o saber fazer veio a investigação muito específica em áreas que a digitalização e a Internet revolucionaram, nomeadamente a informação, em geral, e o jornalismo, em particular, a comunicação e a deliberação políticas, o design, a comunicação multimédia e o cinema. Hoje, o LabCom conta com três grupos de investigação que estruturam a divisão do presente volume: Informação e Persuasão; Media, Identidade e Cidadania; Cinema e Multimédia. Os textos, aqui incluídos, oferecem uma amostra do estado da arte do que se faz no LabCom. Não são um resumo de investigações passadas, mas sim investigações presentes que, na grande maioria, vêm na senda dessas investigações. Não seria difícil, mediante a arqueologia dos textos presentes, encontrar muitas das publicações que fazem o património do LabCom, em particular os Livros LabCom. Os três volumes Informação e Comunicação Online – i) Jornalismo Online, ii) Internet e Comunicação Promocional, iii) Mundo Online da Vida e Cidadania, publicados em 2003, e que consubstanciaram o projeto Akademia – contêm o gérmen de muito do trabalho que agora se apresenta aqui. Há, no LabCom, uma continuidade de investigação que manifesta a identidade de uma unidade de investigação muito própria no espaço lusófono.

The article focuses on the axiological aspects of consciousness under conditions of the development of contemporary media culture and e-culture. Relying on theories of mediaphilosophy the author considers the media as a main factor of the determination of human value in the information society. The research is aimed at eliciting the peculiarities of modern media culture in the context of an existential and axiological approach that enables the determination of the effect the development of the mediasphere in modern culture has on the world of human values. In this case, media (mediasphere) is understood in its broad sense as a sphere of electronic communication with diverse forms of appearance and electronic mass media, generating the global information space. The author suggests the analysis of the penetration of communication e-culture (and its forms) and media-culture. The author argues that the values of media-culture (freedom, personality orientation, pragmatism, and other) dev...

One of the key transformations in contemporary culture is the insistent demand to construct a public persona. Constructing a persona for navigating through life is not new; what is new is the naturalization of producing a mediatized version of this public self. The complexity of producing an online public identity involves the labour of monitoring and editing ourselves, connecting with strategic purpose to others and building recognizable reputations. This article both identifies and concludes that what we are experiencing is the work and relative value of producing a mediatized identity—a persona—which is a form of identity often linked to celebrities in our traditional media industries and now pandemic in contemporary culture.

Simultaneously celebrated and denigrated, celebrities represent not only the embodiment of success, but also the ultimate construction of false value. Celebrity and Power questions the impulse to become embroiled with the construction and collapse of the famous, exploring the concept of the new public intimacy: a product of social media in which celebrities from Lady Gaga to Barack Obama are expected to continuously campaign for audiences in new ways. In a new Introduction for this edition, P. David Marshall investigates the viewing public’s desire to associate with celebrity and addresses the explosion of instant access to celebrity culture, bringing famous people and their admirers closer than ever before.