Article : Consumption and digital commodities in the everyday (Mark Poster)
“Media are as old as culture, influencing, constraining, enhancing and generally making possible from the beginnings of human society the practice of culture”
“The modern city is becoming a labyrinth of images” (Michel de Certeau)
- a threat to agency, as a deterministic system that eviscerated the freedom of the individual and group.
Postmodern and modern consumption:
[postmodern consumption]: while the consumer renders products part of her/himself, becoming part of the experience of being with products (expresses one’s identity)
[modern consumption]: consumer objects represented social status
Thus identity becomes more mobile and fractured, subject to alternations in what and how one feels at the moment.
Globalization:
- hybridity of consumption patterns
e.g. exhibition of African art that depicted black African hairstyles as imitations of afro-american styles
The role of digital media play in the emergence of post-modern consumer culture:
Digital media radically transform both the cultural object and the subject position of the consumer.
[ Digitized cultural objects ] e.g. consumers become producers through the action of reproduction and distribution
Resistances of consumers toward culture industry:
[music and film]
Analogue record-->CD--> mp3 files -->digitally encoded movies
[TV commercials]
TV commercials – rests on the idea of delivering audiences to advertisers
, meaning tv programming is first and foremost a vehicle to attract audiences for the ‘real’ messages transmitted by tv
remote controls --> digital tv recorders
To conclude:
New technologies offer consumers the power to bypass or resist the commodification of cultural objects through ads
Shift of identities -->Consumers are also producers, distributors, reproducers of the commodity.
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I think my presentation had highlighted most of the theoretical concepts regarding consumption patterns (such as the labyrinth of images, the role of digital media in the post-modern consumer culture, resistances of consumers toward culture industry etc.)
ReplyDeleteOne point to clarify regarding postmodern and modern consumption is that, the postmodern consumption also allows people become active consumer. This can also be found from the language theory – e.g. it is argued that newspaper readers are passive because they are bombarded by ads, indeed, this is a kind of active consumption because readers can selectively read they want to read: they can bypass the ads, or not believe in what they have read.
Frankly this article is quite theoretic and difficult to understand, hope all of you can have a clearer concept regarding this topic and enjoyed my presentation!