Hector Postigo, BTMM associate professor at the School of Communications and Theater discusses “The Digital Rights Movement: Free Culture Activism & the YouTube Generation.”

This talk will explore the emerging “Free Culture Movement,” discussing its dynamics, ideology and impact on consumption and creation of mass media content. The case of the Free Culture Movement is used to weave together a number of themes currently debated by internet and digital media scholars in the field of mass communication.

These include 1) the tensions between optimistic participatory audience viewpoints on the power of a Web 2.0 audience and critical perspectives on the cooptation of audience “labor” by increasingly complex corporate owned systems of participation 2) the tensions between techno-legal regimes that regulate and shape participation and the resistance to those regimes through legal and extra –legal means and 3) the emergence of participatory rights discourses among media consumers vs. the legal and corporate discourse legitimating authors’ rights.