Digital Cultural Communication: enabling new media and co-creation in Asia

Digital Cultural Communication (DCC) is a new field of research and design which seeks to build a co-creative relationship between the cultural institution and the community by using new media to produce audience-focused cultural interactive experiences (Russo and Watkins, 2005). By situating the development of cultural communities within DCC, the institution adopts a more representative curatorial practice and benefits through the creation of original community-derived content which can form new digital collections. The community benefits through improved ‘information literacy’ – the skills required to use digital technologies to engage in both cultural consumption and production (Russo and Watkins, 2004) – and can go beyond being a stakeholder of an institutional exhibition. Information literacy skills enable the community to both produce and consume its own original cultural content, in the form of narratives, wikis, blogs, vlogs or any other medium which is supported by the institution and connects to the audience. The institution ceases to be the sole custodian of cultural experience; instead it provides co-creative infrastructure for the community and distributes original cultural content to the audience via multiple platforms – physical, online and broadcast. This article uses a range of examples from around Asia to demonstrate how individuals and communities can benefit from the economy and immediacy offered by new media to co-create and distribute distinctive cultural content to broader audiences.