New Book: Digital Culture, The Changing Dynamics

The book 'Digital Culture: The Changing Dynamics' has been published by the Institute for International Relations (IRO). The title was edited by Biserka Cvjeticanin and Aleksandra Uzelac, Scientific Researchers at IRO and Editors of the Culturelink publications.

Aleksandra Uzelac: How to understand digital culture: Digital culture – a resource for a knowledge society?; Rob van Kranenburg: New realities, new policies?; Helena Popović i Hajrudin Hromadžić: Media users: from readership to co-creators; Tomislav Medak: Transformations of cultural production, free culture and the future of the Internet; Jaka Primorac i Krešimir Jurlin: Access, piracy and culture:  the implications of digitalization in Southeastern Europe; Joost Smiers: Copyright and the digital age: a contradictio in terminis; Biserka Cvjetičanin: Challenges for cultural policies: the example of digital culture; Vesna Čopič: Digital culture in policy documents: the national(istic) perception of cultural diversity - The case of Slovenia;Ana Žuvela Bušnja i Daniela Angelina Jelinčić: Managing culture in virtual realms: policy provisions and issues - A European perspective; Herve Fischer: Ecology of the media and hyperhumanism; Jane Finnis: Turning cultural websites inside out: changes in online user behaviour, Web 2.0 and the issues for the culture sector; Lidia Varbanova: The online power of users and money: can culture gain?; Carlos A. Mas Zabala i dr.: A glance at the Cuban culture through its cultural portals.

Digital culture is a new complex notion: today digital trends are increasingly interloping with the world of culture and arts, involving different aspects of convergence of cultures, media and information technologies, and influencing new forms of communication. The new possibilities created by ICT – global connectivity and the rise of networks – challenge our traditional ways of understanding culture, extending it to digital culture as well. So, culture today should be understood as an open and dynamic process that is based on interactive communication, and we cannot think of it as an enclosed system which makes up a 'cultural mosaic' with other similar or diverse cultural systems. The ICT and especially the Internet, has given these interrelations a new dimension, by changing our relation towards knowledge and knowledge society, by intensifying the flow of cultural goods and services, and by causing a new understanding of cultural creativity.

The book entitled Digital Culture: The Changing Dynamics, is the result of discussions among experts, members of the Culturelink Network and IMO's researchers, in the course of the past few years on the impact of information and communication technologies on culture and the changes that in the context of the information era affect established cultural practices and concepts. The inspiration for producing this book rose from the meeting of experts at the Culturemondo conference, held in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2006, hosted by Culturelink. Informal debates led to the proposal to unite different approaches, opinions and reflections about the phenomena transforming the world today into one book focusing on digital culture.

If you want to order the book
More info about the book 'Digital Culture: The Changing Dynamics' click here

Follow-up

The second Regional workshop of cultural portals, Belgrade 2007

Magacin Culture Centre, Kraljevica Marka 4



The second workshop of cultural portals from the SEE region was held on December 3-4, 2007 in Magacin Culture Centre in Belgrade, organized again by SEEcult.org with the support of the Goethe-Institut Belgrade, and bringing together the most active members of the inSEEcp in order to assess the results of joint activities and plan the agenda for 2008.



Among the participants, beside the representatives of the inSEEcp’s members (Artservis.org and Evrokultura.org, Slovenia, Culturenet.hr and Kulturpunkt.hr, Croatia, and SEEcult.org Serbia), was also Anja Seeliger, founding member of from Perlentaucher.de and SignandSight.com.



Reviewing joint activities between two workshops, participants from region agreed on network’s name inSEEcp, discussed about drafts of possible joint projects and possibilities to apply on several open calls due to need to find basic financial resources for further activities. Also was talking on possibilities for exchange of contents (writing, translating, publishing…at least one text monthly on actual cultural politics or related specific themes), as well as about possibility to establish a network for training new young collaborators (writers, editors… as inSEEcp’s internship program) etc.



Beside some organizational issues, like establishing rotating coordination, the workshop was dedicated to some concrete joint projects and among the conclusion of the workshop is to create inSEEcp’s blog on some of free services (like Blogger.com), where should be posted the Network’s manifesto, as well as data base on forming the network and its founding members, cultural policy in respective countries in the region regarding culture on internet and other related topics. In 2008 are also planed monthly features on themes of common interests,



SEEcult.org announced the third workshop in Belgrade until the end of 2008, which should bring together all participants from the first workshop, as well as new potential members from the region. Due to lack of money - not only for joint actions, but also for individual portal’s activities, the participants concluded that there is necessity for extra fund that will enable further networking, which is also one of the main tasks of coordination team.





The conclusions were presented at the panel discussion on the theme “Culture policy and Internet - SEE region and Europe”, moderated by the Goethe-Institute Belgrade’s director Jutta Gehrig. All participants presented situation in their respective countries, which again attracted significant interest of public, as well as print, electronic and Internet media.





All photos in this post by Tihomir Stojanovic, http://creemaginet.com/ (c)



(Text by Vesna Milosavljevic, SEEcult.org)

The inSEEcp’s History

The Informal Network of South-East European Cultural Portals - inSEEcp was founded in November 2006 in Belgrade as the result of the first regional meeting and workshop of the representatives of key cultural portals from the region of former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia).

The workshop “Culture on the Internet / Networking Participants in the Cultural Domain in South-East Europe through Specialized Internet Portals”, was the first initiative of that kind in the region, followed with the second workshop in December 2007, also in Belgrade, and other various activities of the founding members, including the inSEEcp’s blog as a joint platform for further various on-line and off-line actions for advocacy in culture on internet and cross-border cooperation, as well as for broadening the network.
(Text by Vesna Milosavljevic, SEEcult.org)