2.3 Activity 2: How can digital media offer disempowered communities control over their own images and stories? Provide some examples if you can.

Srinivasan’s article touches on the possibilities new media can bring to disempowered communities when the technology is appropriated to meet their own “cultural, political and social visions” (Srinivasan 2006 p. 497). He demonstrates the role social media can play in preserving “cultural histories”  through the sharing of “native languages, songs and rituals” (Srinivasan 2006 p. 507) through social media environment. His example Tribal PEACE is described as a bottoms-up project where members of 19 geographically dispersed Native American Reservations control the content submitted to an online space specifically designed for the purpose of teaching and preserving cultural heritage. The content submitted is chosen by a committee made up of reservation members and access to it controlled through a password protected website (Tribal PEACE an Inter-tribal Educational Initiative).

This example shows how new media can empower communities to keep their cultural identity alive through a controlled purpose built learning environment that operates outside that of educational institutions. It does not however mean that these cultural stories and images are in some way protected from use by others. The cultural stories of the Native Americans can still be told through movies – and altered and changed to suit the largest possible audience in a cross-cultural mingling that Jenkins refers to as “corporate hybridity”(Jenkins 2006 p.167). It does not stop stereotypical representations by other forms of media; it does however provide a space where members of disempowered communities can share cultural information without restriction or influence.

 Jenkins, H. 2006. Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence, Fans bloggers and gamers: exploring participatory culture: New York University Press.

Srinivasan, R. 2006. Indigenous, ethnic and cultural articulations of new media. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9: 497. http://ics.sagepub.com/content/9/4/497 (accessed 15/10/11).

  Tribal PEACE an Inter-tribal Educational Initiative. http://www.tribalpeace.org/ (accessed 17/10/11).