Collaborative Media, Production, Consumption, and Design Interventions

Collaborative platforms are everywhere in digital media. From emoticons to selfies, Drupal to Minecraft mods, the dominant form of interaction with digital systems involves some element of participation and adaptation. This principle has far-reaching consequences. For example, the Belgian police force builds its regional web presence entirely on an open source software stack—one open to modification by users. The implications for the structural application of collaborative media throughout society are significant. In this book, Bo Reimer and Jonas Löwgren, both professors at Malmö University in Sweden, make the case for a culturally dynamic design landscape that is alive to the social benefits of digital collaborative media. These benefits include the idea that academics in this field act as agents of transformation and as catalysts, deploying what they call a “designoriented mode of knowledge production.”