Digital Cultures

The term “Digital Cultures” refers to the fact that our current situation is significantly structured by digital, computer-based and networked technologies that have emerged under historically contingent conditions and have been shaped through cultural practices and human knowledge. On the one hand, digital media that process, store, and transmit data act as transformative or shaping factors on and in cultures. They are transforming human knowledge production as well as practices of connection, relationship, exchange, competition, and communication. Digital media reconfigure social inclusion and exclusion and play a major role in the material transformation of our living environments. On the other hand, human practices and forms of knowledge production facilitate the constant reconfiguration of digital media. Therefore, new spaces of possibility and fields of experimentation are constantly emerging for us to shape digital technologies and practices of being together, acting, and perceiving. Accordingly, the term “Digital Cultures” implies both the challenges of critically reflecting on and re-characterizing the shaping of cultures by digital media as well as the potential of cultivating and shaping them with the goal of greater participation, ecological responsibility, and social cohesion.