Today, there is a recognizable social construction process of cultural artifacts on the web. With the advent of New Media technologies, modern perspectives provide opportunities to combine multiple known theories with respect to actions, dialogues and products and offer an explanation as to what can help to define aspects of culture, as they are discoverable in virtual spaces. The question is however with all the varied multimedia displays of knowledge and information that today’s culture dynamically produces how do we identify the components that specifically define our modern culture?
The overall social context within which culture takes place has expanded to include both offline and online spaces. This new wider cultural dimension is made up of two essential components – a context and the elements within the context. In this age of Web 2.0, the context has been even further redefined by the New Media paradigm shift and away from mass media conventions. As stated in the New Media Handbook: "In the days of mass media, a ... three part framework encompassing production, text and audience dominated media research..." According to Lievrouw & Livingstone, New Media perspectives have now reshaped this view and established that "artifacts, practices and social arrangements [are] broader terms than production, text and audience; they are also more thoroughly 'socialized' and inherently culturally and historically conditioned" (Lievrouw & Livingstone, p.2-3).
In order to analyze the movements inside the new and much larger cultural context of both online and offline worlds, Gordon Wells’ concept entitled "Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity" is most relevant for this discussion. Incorporating the important principles of Discoursing (the use of language in interactions with others that plays a role in almost all human activities) and Activity Theory (the principle that human activity is always mediated by artifacts of various kinds) these well known theories have been considered anew, first by Vygotsky in 1978 when he first established the principle of Mediation and then by Gordon Wells who proposes an additional interpretation to mediation theory. Wells believes there is a "Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity". Given that discoursing is very commonly recognized among scholars as playing an essential mediating role in the development of culture over all of human history, Wells suggests Discursive Mediation "takes the form of a transaction between two human participants with respect to the object of their action" (Wells, p.160).
The concept of a "Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity" is best described by “two rather broad but different ways in which discoursing mediates action. In the first, [ancillary] discourse facilitates (or sometimes hinders) some form of material action, such as building a house, playing a team game or navigating a ship into harbor. ... In the second manner of mediation, [constitutive] discourse functions to co-construct a 'possible world' (Bruner, 1986) about which participants share and compare their beliefs, evaluations, and intentions to better understand and possibly improve them or to consider courses of action..." (Wells, p.164). In particular and as pertains to the idea of the online cultural space, Wells refers to the "possible world" that maps most logically to the idea of cyberspace. "I describe this world as a possible one because ... the world to which the participants refer is not necessarily available to sensory perception but is being created and interpreted through discourse itself " (Wells, p.164).
Wells suggests discursive mediations consist of transactions that use the artifact as an object of an exchange. He then formed two conclusions about the role of discoursing in activity. First, that discoursing always functions as a mediational means in achieving the goals of the action in which it occurs. Second ... non material action is typically structured by cultural scripts" (a.k.a.: genres) ... " so the discoursing that mediates joint action is structured by discourse genres, which are also cultural artifacts (Bakhtin, 1986)" (Wells, p.176).
This is a vital consideration because it fundamentally addresses how activities and exchanges between people are characterized in any context, whether it is on or offline evidenced by an object of an exchange. With this conceptual framework that helps to explain how actions are mediated by discourse. It is also possible to then better grasp what humans are socially constructing on the web that result in demonstrations of cultural meaning and evidence of these demonstrations that are left behind. With that in mind, I propose that web-based interactions are "transactions" and the very same kinds of discursive mediations Wells describes and that the use text and multimedia act as objects of an exchange on the web. Fluid at their conception, these objects of an exchange become cultural artifacts that change through use and perception and seemingly solidify. This idea of an evolution toward a stasis in culturally agreed upon knowledge and understandings are supported in the introduction to New Media Handbook. The editors discuss the “dynamic links and interdependencies among artifacts, practices and social arrangements. ... These dynamic interrelations are not infinitely flexible, however, and ... can and do become routine, established, institutionalized and fixed." (Lievrouw & Livingstone, p.3). And as artifacts necessarily become fixed, cultural evidences appear to increase, telling an ever-broader story as time pushes on and even turbulent cultures eventually stabilize. In the article Cyberspace and the American Dream, E. Dyson states, "Second Wave" (of New Media) "ideologues routinely lament the breakup of mass society. ... to reconstitute society in Third Wave terms, we need to jettison... the false assumption ... that diversity automatically brings more tension and conflict in society. ... If 100 people all desperately want the same brass ring, they may be forced to fight for it. On the other hand if each of the 100 has a different objective, it is far more rewarding for them to trade, cooperate and form symbiotic relationships. Given appropriate social arrangements [and exchanges of objects via discourse], diversity can make for a secure and stabile civilization" (Dyson et al, p.302). It is here that I conclude that a Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity creates exchanges that do work to solidify what culture becomes bit by bit. This process of exchange ultimately helps us identify exact measures of culture that can be found in the expanded social continuum, online as well as offline.
Dyson, E., Gilder, G., Keyworth, G., & Toffler, A. (1995) Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age (Release 1.2, August 22, 1994), 295-308.
Lievrouw & Livingstone, (Eds.) (2006) The Handbook of New Media, Updated Student Edition. London. 1-14.
Wells, G. (2007) Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity. Mind, Culture and Activity, 14(3), 160-177.
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