Fashion bloggers and Instagrammers seem to enjoy a coveted lifestyle–one replete with international jet-setting, designer-comped fetes, and countless other caption-worthy moments. Yet the attention lavished on these so-called “influencers” draws attention away from a much larger class of social media content creators: those aspiring to “make it” amid a precarious, hyper-competitive creative economy. I tell […]
I wanted to share a new essay, “#Trendingistrending: When Algorithms Become Culture” that I’ve just completed for a forthcoming Routledge anthology called Algorithmic Cultures: Essays on Meaning, Performance and New Technologies, edited by Robert Seyfert and Jonathan Roberge. My aim is to focus on the various “trending algorithms” that populate social media platforms, consider what they do as a set, and then […]
This month, Yale University Press publishes a new book, This Program is Brought to You By… : Distributing Television News Online, by Josh Braun, a co-founder and regular contributor to Culture Digitally. Included in this post is a link to the introduction. In addition, we asked some Culture Digitally regulars to read it ahead of […]
Last week, the interwebs were abuzz with reactions to the most recent attempt to conceptually delineate the generation-formerly-known-as-Y: the “yuccie.” A rather unpalatable term to be sure, the “yuccie” is an acronym for Young, Urban, Creatives; its Reagan-era ancestor, the yuppie, is but a specter of these self-enterprising, digitally networked, creative aspirants. Mashable contributor (and […]
Below is an excerpt from Casey O’Donnell’s book, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (MIT Press, 2014). – How to Play (Use) This Game (Book) – The structure of this book is performative. It imitates the level structure of the Nintendo Entertainment System game Super Mario Bros. (SMB) to highlight the importance that games and […]