Digital technology has profoundly altered our world and daily lives, including the ways we engage with arts and culture. Internet-connected devices have put at our fingertips opportunities for participation and interactivity that open infinite possibilities for creativity – opportunities for us to experience, explore, play, make, share, co-create and connect.
Today, online engagement can be understood as operating within a ‘dual economy’. In this dual economy, established models of intellectual property rights and revenue creation sit uneasily alongside ‘new media’ concepts of easy access and sharing for common good. Negotiating this ‘dual economy’ requires understanding the new-found power of audiences but also the influence of commercial platforms that trade on user data. The internet has provided new opportunities to circumvent traditional and commercial models of culture through sharing and accessibility. But it has also created new intermediaries in the form of dominant platforms. These platforms have sprung up to ‘capture and commodify’ the participatory impulses of digital cultural engagement (for example, gifting, sharing and collaboration).
