Broadcasting, Telecommuncations and Mass Media Professor Hector Postigo and Professor Tarleton Gillespie of Cornell University’s Department of Communication were awarded a $237,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the project titled “Cultural Production in the Digital Age: Defining a New Research Agenda.”

For the research project, Postigo and Tarleton are convening an international research group composed of 15 to 20 leading scholars and graduate students from communication, science and technology studies, sociology and anthropology in order to advance inquiry in the field of cultural production and digital media. With the generous support of the Science, Technology and Society division of the National Science Foundation, they will hold two workshops (one at Cornell and one at Temple), support graduate student research assistants and maintain an online research database. At the first workshop, invitees will develop a yearlong research agenda addressing issues of technological design and participatory practices among media consumers.

Specific questions they seek to answer include:

• Will the traditional concerns for media concentration diminish as the diverse blogosphere and a “see for yourself” mindset among information consumers challenge the journalistic “authoritative voice?”

• Is the structure of the public sphere changing, given the rise of wikis, blogs and social network sites that allow users to participate in discourse?

• Will alternative voices from groups typically marginalized in media find a place within the unlimited spectrum of the Internet?

• How does technology facilitate, impede or enforce these emerging cultural dynamics?

• In the age of open source and networked collaboration, can users build their own systems of production to “circumvent” obstacles to unfettered user-centered cultural production?

• Will the public discourse taking shape online come to resemble these venues, for better or for worse?

Throughout the year, between the first and second workshop, participants will contribute to ongoing discussions via an online public knowledge project, where their developing thinking and research on the issues central to project will take shape and accept feedback from the larger academic and practitioner community. At the second workshop, participants will convene to present the findings of the yearlong collaboration, compiling these into book format for publication or research proposals for further funding.