Live System User Icons as Mediums and Pop Culture Models

Alek Tarkowski

Users icons are a service offered by some blogging applications which allow Internet users to represent themselves with graphic files. This article looks at user icons as a separate medium characterised by particular culture practices and ongoing media production. From this perspective, user icons are spaces where pop culture is generated at the interface of mass media cultural production and everyday lives of Internet users. This text presents the process of popular cultural production in the context of user icons and sees it as proof of the general potential of the Internet for cultural innovation.

KEYWORDS

pop culture, mass culture participation, users' icons, blog