Forum Network

Public stations. Community Partners. World-class speakers. Free lecture videos. See what you think.

a public media service of

Public Broadcasting Service National Public Radio

By Topic

By Region

By Period

You may be using an older version of the Adobe Flash Player. To enjoy multimedia content on WGBH.org, please click here to upgrade to the latest version of the free Flash player.

Downloads

There are no downloads available for this lecture.

Folk Cultures and Digital Cultures

April 27, 2007

Lewis Hyde fellow, Berkman Center on Internet and Society

Thomas Pettitt professor, cultural studies, U of Southern Denmark

S. Craig Watkins writer

An MIT Communications Forum panel discusses the emergence of a new networked culture in which participants with differing intentions and professional credentials coexist and cooperate in a complex media ecology.

Are we witnessing the appearance of a new or revitalized folk culture? Are there older traditions and practices from print culture or oral societies that resemble these emerging digital practices? What sort of amateur or grassroots creativity have been studied or documented by literary scholars, anthropologists, and students of folklore? How were creativity and collaboration understood in earlier cultures? Are there lessons or cautions for digital culture in the near or distant past?

Series:

FRONTLINE: Digital Nation Series

Topics: Culture & Identity | Media & Technology

Tags: Activism | Computing | Web Media | Internet | Lifestyle

Presented By WGBH and MIT Communications Forum:

Cynthia Lopez: WAM! 2009 Keynote

Cynthia Lopez, vice president of American Documentary's P.O.V., delivers the keynote address at the 2009 Women, Action & the Media conference.

Media’s Mixed Messages to Women

Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Barnett discuss current research on women and work, which finds that the mass media proliferates messaging that is in extreme conflict with the reality of women's lives.

Jaron Lanier: You Are Not a Gadget

Computer scientist Jaron Lanier discusses his new book, You Are Not a Gadget.

Laughs with Planet Washington

The comedy duo Planet Washington opens Cambridge Forum's 2009 fall season with a benefit performance. Ken Rynne, an alum of the renowned Capitol Steps troupe, and his faithful piano accompanist, Frank Plumer, are Planet Washington.

Media and Movements

Alice Kim, Barbara Becnel, Liliana Segura, and Cassandra West describe how media tools and technologies can be harnessed for social change. They also look at what can be learned from the recent US presidential campaign to reshape grassroots organizing.

Lewis Lapham: Mixed Media

Lewis H. Lapham

Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham observes that the media these days speak in so many forked and foreign tongues - film, book, video game, broadcast, blog - that without a dictionary or a concordance it is hard to know who is saying what to whom.

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage)

Author: Lewis Hyde

Publisher: Vintage (2007)

Binding: Paperback, 464 pages

Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement

Author: S. Craig Watkins

Publisher: Beacon Press (2006)

Binding: Paperback, 295 pages

Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema

Author: S. Craig Watkins

Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (1999)

Binding: Paperback, 330 pages

Login or register to post comments