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Vincent Miller, Understanding Digital Culture (2nd ed.). Book review by Admilson Veloso da Silva
International Journal of Communication , 2022
The intersection of technology and contemporary society is a rich field for academic exploration, and it has become trendy in communication science, especially with the rise of the Internet, smartphones, social media platforms, and artificial intelligence, to mention a few. In addition to that, it is also a constantly and rapidly changing topic due to new inventions and their appropriation by users. In Understanding Digital Culture, author Vincent Miller explores, explains, and analyzes aspects related to digital culture from both descriptive and critical perspectives. The author opens the book by providing a review of previous technologies, more specifically television in the second half of the 20th century and discusses it as a "revolutionary technology" with the contributions of Raymond Williams (1975/1990). In this review, I will start by presenting an overview of Miller's work, the author's main ideas, the structure of the book, and a discussion of its strengths, weaknesses, and contributions to digital culture research.
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2022
In July 2017, the UK’s Department of Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) had the word ‘digital’ added to its title. This addition reflected a formal revision of the department’s remit and the addition of responsibility for the UK’s digital infrastructure to its existing concerns. The re-named department’s first strategic report, published in 2018, was Culture is Digital, a document that celebrated and sought to further cement relations between the traditional concerns of culture ministries (i.e. with the funding and regulation of access to arts, heritage, and media provision within a territory) and an emerging and increasingly established ‘digital economy’ facilitated by the widespread availability and use of information and communication technologies and devices. In presenting this special issue, we identify this moment in the development of the UK’s policymaking as exemplifying an intensification of the relationship between the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘digital’ which has been taking place around the world. This shift merits scholarly attention within cultural policy studies that considers not just what these technologies may or may not do for the sector and its institutions but to begin to take seriously the cultural values that underpin them.
Springer eBooks, 2016
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