The role of mashup music in creating Web 2.0’s democratic promise

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21690331
AutoresEllis Jones (0000-0003-0351-8350, University of Oslo, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume27
Fascículo4
Páginas1112-1128
Data de publicação2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoConvergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1354-8565 • E-ISSN: 1748-7382
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1354856520983758
OpenAlexW3127594504
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas38

This article employs Stuart Hall’s concept of ‘articulation’ to show how, in the mid-2000s, a loose coalition of tech activists and commentators worked to position mashup music as ‘the sound of the Internet’. Key aesthetic characteristics of mashups were utilized to present Web 2.0 as a specific kind of democratic, participatory media environment – one that had the power to dethrone old social institutions, and to render various kinds of borders and boundaries redundant. This short-lived articulation between mashup and the Internet has had significant benefits for contemporary platforms that have made their fortune on user participation; it has been less beneficial for the longevity of mashup as a genre. Thus, this article inverts the standard presentation of mashup music and network technologies. Generally presented as a musical culture that needed the Internet, mashup can be more fruitfully understood as a music culture that the Internet needed. This reformulation provides cause to question our contemporary relationship to ‘digital optimism’ more generally

Citizen journalism · Democracy · Mashup · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Studio · Telecommunications · The Internet · Web 2.0 · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Law · Music History and Culture · Social Media and Politics