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  • The Cultural Significance of Web-Based Exchange Practices

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    Author(s)
    Fletcher, Gordon
    Primary Supervisor
    Alexander, Malcolm
    Year published
    2006
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    Abstract
    This thesis considers the cultural significance of Web-based exchange practices among the participants in contemporary western mainstream culture. The thesis argues that analysis of these practices shows how this culture is consumption oriented, event-driven and media obsessed. Initially, this argument is developed from a critical, hermeneutic, relativist and interpretive assessment that draws upon the works of authors such as Baudrillard and De Bord and other critiques of contemporary 'digital culture'. The empirical part of the thesis then examines the array of popular search terms used on the World Wide Web over a period ...
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    This thesis considers the cultural significance of Web-based exchange practices among the participants in contemporary western mainstream culture. The thesis argues that analysis of these practices shows how this culture is consumption oriented, event-driven and media obsessed. Initially, this argument is developed from a critical, hermeneutic, relativist and interpretive assessment that draws upon the works of authors such as Baudrillard and De Bord and other critiques of contemporary 'digital culture'. The empirical part of the thesis then examines the array of popular search terms used on the World Wide Web over a period of 16 months from September 2001 to February 2003. Taxanomic classification of these search terms reveals the limited range of virtual and physical artefacts that are sought by the users of Web search engines. While nineteen hundred individual artefacts occur in the array of search terms, these can classified into a relatively small group of higher order categories. Critical analysis of these higher order categories reveals six cultural traits that predominant in the apparently wide array of search terms; freeness, participation, do-it-yourself/customisation, anonymity/privacy, perversion and information richness. The these argues that these traits are part of a cultural complex that directly reflects the underlying motivations of contemporary western mainstream culture. The daily practices of Web-based search and exchange thus reproduce and reinforce this cultural complex. The empirical work of the thesis validates the critical assessment of western mainstream culture developed in the initial chapters of the thesis.
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    Thesis Type
    Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
    Degree Program
    Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
    School
    School of Arts, Media and Culture
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/2111
    Copyright Statement
    The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise.
    Item Access Status
    Public
    Subject
    Web-based exchange practices
    digital culture
    world wide web
    do-it-yourself customisation
    information richness
    contemporary western mainstream culture
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/365388
    Collection
    • Theses - Higher Degree by Research

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