UNIVERSITY OF TURKU

Faculty of Humanities

School of History, Culture and Art Studies

Department of Cultural Production and Landscape Studies

Digital Culture

ÖSTMAN, SARI: ”Millasen päivityksen tästä sais?” Elämäjulkaisijuuden kulttuurinen omaksuminen.

Doctoral dissertation, 213 p. and 11 appendice pages

Doctoral Programme Juno

August 2015

The main objective of this work is to understand how people have become culturally appropriated life-publishers during the years 1995–2014. The research material triangulation consist of 30 thematical writings, 19 interviews and more than 70 personal internet publications. The informants are Finnish women and men of age, who have participated the study of their own will. Theoretical context combines the theory of cultural appropriation by Mikael Hård and Andrew Jamison with the socialization theory of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The study is accomplished with methodological triangulation consisting of close reading and observing within the years 2008–2015.

The main research question is: What happens in the process of cultural appropriation of being a life-publisher. The appropriation of technology-engaged phenomenon is examined from the actors’ point of the view.

Life-publishing has become common in Finland since the 1990ies. It focuses in the actor’s life, and it happens in several social media environments with several different techniques. My results indicate that the cultural appropriation of being a life-publisher happens mainly on the practical level. It happens in three intertwined phases, during which the internalization happens: during the tentative appropriation, the actors appropriate the life-publishing type of actor; during the deepening appropriation, they appropriate the active role of life-publisher; and, finally, during the deep appropriation, a partial identity of life-publisher.

Keywords: cultural appropriation, digital culture, Internet, intimacy, life-publishing, life-publisher, publicity, social identity, social identity work, socialization.