Digital information technology's impact on rave culture*

Digital information technologies offer liberating, emancipating opportunities for the creation of new communities and spaces where young people can belong, yet they can be constraining and oppressive as well.

Digital information technologies could be considered constraining and oppressive in terms of access and usability, and the broad appeal and reach of digital information technologies has actually been a disadvantage to some cultures in terms of removing exclusivity.

For example, the majority of web content is written in English, which means that users must be literate in the English language, or hope that the website they wish to visit has alternate versions which have been translated into their language. The web also favours fast internet access and users without disabilities, as seen in the design and layout of many popular websites such as YouTube, which is better suited to broadband connections, inaccessible to the blind and does not yet provide captions for the hearing impaired.

To expand on my LJA6 essay on rave culture, digital information technologies have played a part in allowing access to what was once regarded as an ‘underground’ rave scene. The proliferation of change and growth in rave culture has traditionally not been openly accepted by the community itself even prior to digital media, forcing fandom and culture cycles.

With the integration of ‘dance’ music in commercial radio broadcasts, enduring news reports of illegal drug busts, films portraying the subculture, and websites dedicated to advertising rave culture, some aspects of this culture’s entrance into the mainstream, in what was once an “underground, pre-commercialised rave scene” (Siokou & Moore 2008, p. 56), is now regarded with nostalgic mourning by authentic raver identities (Siokou & Moore 2008, p. 56, Brabazon 2002, p.20).

So in a sense, digital information technology has removed the ‘exclusivity’ from what was once an underground practice, much to the dismay of the rave culture’s fandom as this has attracted thousands of punters who didn’t adopt their beliefs and practices, thus mutating the culture.

*Discussion Forum Activity posted on 1st April, 2009 by Maria Tan

CMNS6060 - eCulture and Audiences, The University of Newcastle