Main Article Content
Abstract
The notion of creative city has been extensively discussed both in academic debate as well as public discourse, including on Asian context. However, a tendency to study only on strategic government policies in relation to this matter has led many multidimensional aspects being left behind. One of these important aspects is the creativity-based activities initiated and conducted by local groups, communities, or collectives on a daily basis apart from so-called the official city programmes. This paper that derives from participatory paradigm takes into account this kind of practice, and seek the meanings of participatory culture as everyday life in urban context. The participatory initiatives discussed in
 this paper as the empirical cases are “Tobucil & Klabs†in Bandung, Indonesia and the street arts in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. Considering the current context that participation is getting more mediated (Livingstone, 2013), I employ digital ethnography and documentary photography as the methodological standpoints to understand the digital media practices – i.e. online engagement – that also intertwine with the offline engagement in these two particular cases. I argue, the creativity-based initiatives in these two Southeast Asian cities lead to new insight in understanding media and creativity in current Asia. Additionally, informed by the work of Henri Lefebvre on “social space†and developed it further, I also argue that this certain participatory culture lead to the production of networked space in relation to city identities. This could contribute in forming a new theoretical model in understanding the interplay between media, participation, and urban cultures in digital era.
Keywords: City identity, creativity; digital ethnography; digital media; documentary photography; everyday life; networked space; participation; Southeast Asia.
Article Details
Copyright (c) 2017 Asian Journal of Media and Communication (AJMC)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).