Content submitted by Mary tagged with "semioticdemocracy"

The Politics of Linguistics in the Digital Age

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 12/05/2008 at 17:41

I thought this image was an interesting commentary on how digital trends are outpacing offline politics.

Although anti-immigration activists demand that English become the US's official language, on the Internet traditional English is radically changing due to the rise of user generated content like the image above and LOLcats. This new democratic form of content creation is the source of new slang and norms of spelling and grammar (like the word "serosly"), which is being developed at a rate that I would imagine is unprecidented.

When conservative demand that we protect our American culture from change, they forget that

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David Weinberger on Fame Culture We Create

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 28/04/2008 at 15:43

Last Friday I went to ROFLCon, the “rolling on the floor laughing” convention. It was a two-day event organized by an enterprising group of Harvard undergrads (and sponsored by the Berkman Center) to celebrate and explore internet memes and culture.

Why is this an appropriate topic for blog on digital activism, you might ask. Although the conference was ostensibly about funny Internet memes it was really about how Internet is fueling the growth of user-generated culture - cultural democracy, if you will. Internet fame, which Berkman fellow David Weinberger discussed in his keynote address, is a perfect example of

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Semiotic Democracy: The Political Mashup

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 24/01/2008 at 12:27

A video mashup compares Hillary Clinton to cinematic go-getter Tracy Flick.
 

Semiotic democracy is a process by which ordinary citizens redefine culture by remixing and repurposing cultural elements and then disseminating them to a mass audience. The internet has been hugely helpful to this effort. While people have always been able to reinternpret cultural, they have never before had the ability to broadcast these reinterpretations to a mass audience. This final step is key, because it is only through mass redistribution that a reinterpretation of culture can become a generally-accepted norm. The internet, through personal web sites, blogs, and video

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Semiotic Democracy on YouTube

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 15/09/2007 at 18:04

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post that not many people read about semiotic democracy, the defining of culture by ordinary people who reinterpret and disseminate their own interpretations about what cultural elements. Yeah, it was really theoretical. Maybe it was even boring. Well, these two videos provide an example that I think really drives home what semiotic democracy is all about.

This is a video made a crazed fan of Britney Spears defending her against her detractors. The over-the-top melodrama made it an instant hit and the creator, Chris Crocker, gained his 15 seconds of fame,

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Semiotic Democracy and Rayt

Posted by Mary in Rayt it! on 30/08/2007 at 10:40 AM

The theory of semiotic democracy states that ordinary people can re-define and create culture. We are not merely the passive receptacles of judgements, beliefs, and traditions. We can re-work these semiotics (signs) and in so doing re-work culture.

screenshot of Rayt comments at the top of www.whitehouse.gov: One thousand comments on the White House web site is like one thousand people with megaphones knocking on White House door.


In the broadcast age of radio, television, and newspapers it was not so easy to publicly present a personal interpretation of culture. We received our information and entertainment through technology controlled by

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An Introduction to Semiotic Democracy

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 30/08/2007 at 9:46

Note: The idea of semiotic democracy - the collaborative public definition of cultural signs (semeîon in Greek) - is gaining popularity, particularly as it applies the the Internet. Here's a passage on semiotic democracy from my case study on the citizen journalism web site OhmyNews. Please feel free to correct my interpretations.

 

Citizen reporters take part in the semiotic process of creating meaning within a culture. They cease to be a passive audience for the culture products which reflect the priorities of others and instead create their own cultural products which reflect their own priorities. Given wide enough

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