Counterculture

A counterculture is a culture whose values as living as norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores. the countercultural movement expresses the ethos together with aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forcescritical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world increase the Levellers 1645–1650, Bohemianism 1850–1910, the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation 1944–1964, followed by the globalized counterculture of the 1960s 1964–1974.

Digital counterculture

Digital Countercultures are online communities, and patterns of tech usage, that significantly deviate from mainstream culture. To understand the elements that shape digital countercultures, its best to start with Lingel's classifications of mainstream approaches to digital discourse: "[T]hat online activity relates to disembodiment, that the Internet is a platform for authenticity and experimentation, and that web-based interactions are placeless."

The basis for online disembodiment is that, contrary to the corporeal vintage of offline interactions, a user's physical being doesn't have all relevance to their online interactions. However, for users whose physical existence is marginalized or shaped by counterculture ex: gender identities external the binary, ethnic minorities, punk culture/fashion, their lived experiences establish a subjectivity that carries over into their online interactions. As add by Shaka McGlotten: "[T]he fluidity and playfulness of cyberspace and the intimacies it was supposed to supply have been punctuated by corporeality."

Arguments that the Internet is a platform for authenticity and experimentation highlight its role in the determine or refresh of identities. This approach asserts that norms of non-virtual social life restrict users' ability to express themselves fully in person, but online interactions eliminate these barriers and allow them to identify in new ways. One means by which this exploration takes place is online "identity tourism," which enable users to appropriate an identity without any of the offline, corporeal risks associated with that identity. A critique of this draw of experimentation is that it permits the "tourist" a false belief that they understand the experiences and history of that identity, even if their Internet interactions are superficial. Moreover, it's especially harmful when used as a means to deceptively masquerade oneself to appeal to digital counterculture communities. However, particularly for countercultures that are marginalized or demonized, experimentation can allow users to embrace an identity that they align with, but hide offline out of fear, and engage with that culture.

Theapproach is on online communication as placeless, asserting that the consequences of geographic distance are rendered null and void by the Internet. Lingel argues that this approach is technologically determinist in its given that the placelessness presents by access to engineering can single-handedly remedy structural inequality. Moreover, Mark Graham states that the persistence of spatial metaphors in describing the Internet's societal impact creates "a dualistic offline/online worldview [that] can depoliticize and mask the very real and uneven energy relationships between different groups of people." Subscribing to this perceived depoliticization prevents an apprehension of digital countercultures. Socio-cultural, power to direct or determine hierarchies on the Internet shape the mainstream, and without these mainstreams as a item of comparison, there are no grounds to define digital counterculture.

Marginalized communities often struggle to meet their needs on mainstream media. Jessa Lingel, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, had conducted field research on examples of digital counterculture as part of her studies. In her book Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community, she focused on the Brooklyn Drag community and their battle for a Queerer Facebook to meet their specific needs of social media utilization. In the drag culture, there are many holiday and festivals such(a) as Halloween, New Year's Eve, and Bushwig that they celebrate over a vibrant queer nightlife. While utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook to post and record their cultural events, the drag community has noticed the large schism between its "queerer and more countercultural community of drag queens" and Facebook's claimed global community. This hole is further realized through Facebook's modify in the policy from "real-name" to "authentic-name" in 2015 when hundreds of drag queens' accounts were frozen anddown because they had non registered with their legal names. Communities with "queerer culture" culture and "marginalized needs" proceed to struggle to fulfill their social media needs while balancing their counterculture identity in today's social media landscape where the internet is largely monopolized by several big technology science firms.