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Burri-Nenova, Mira --- "User Created Content in Virtual Worlds and Cultural Diversity" [2010] ELECD 138; in Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira (eds), "Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity

Editor(s): Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446830

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: User Created Content in Virtual Worlds and Cultural Diversity

Author(s): Burri-Nenova, Mira

Number of pages: 39

Extract:

3. User created content in virtual worlds
and cultural diversity
Mira Burri-Nenova*

INTRODUCTION
States have felt compelled to intervene in conventional markets for audio-
visual media to correct the inherent market failures and secure some public
interest objectives, among which cultural diversity has been prominent, in
particular in the European tradition. In the past decade or so, however, the
media landscape has been profoundly transformed due to the pervasive digital
technologies, the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web, which
between them have changed the entire information and communication envi-
ronment.1 They have also given birth to distinct new phenomena and
processes, such as peer production, user participation and interaction. These
correspond to new patterns of business and consumer behaviour that surface
along the whole value chain of cultural content creation, distribution and
consumption, and transform it. It is not unlikely that these novel processes,
which are essentially dynamic in nature, have in store even more radical
changes down the line.
While it is debatable (if not to say improbable) that the existing
analogue/offline cultural policy measures can still appropriately achieve their
objectives in the modified `old' audiovisual media, such as television,2 a ques-
tion that is becoming increasingly pressing is whether indeed the `new' media,
such as digital games, are themselves in dire need of culturally-oriented inter-
vention. The urgency of this need is contingent on the augmented economic,
societal and cultural value of these virtual realities and their effect upon real


* ...