Debates in Digital Culture 2019/Preamble

As the title suggests, this is a book which seeks to record contributions to the understanding of a specific set of topics, loosely grouped under the subject area of "Digital Culture", of particular salience to 2019.

It is put together through the combined talents and efforts of a cohort of students taking the undergraduate module FMSU9A4 during the Spring Semester 2019 at the University of Stirling in Scotland, UK. It is an assessed educational project. We would like to thank the Wikibooks community for assistance given in the course of this project, and also encourage leniency in dealing with our work - we are all beginners in the world of wiki here, but are keen to learn!

The aim of this educational project is, firstly, for students to record the content of their learning and their contributions to this book will reflect their studies on one of the featured themes. This will appear in the form of a series of Collaborative Essays, and therefore this Wikibook is a sort of edited collection or anthology, much like examples found in academic publishing. However, secondly and most importantly, the hope is that students will learn the values associated with working at different levels as individual researchers, as research teams, and as part of a research community on Wikimedia and other open knowledge platforms. That is to say: producing knowledge; collaboration and sharing; and peer-reviewing the work of others for the good of the community throughout Wikimedia, but in particular on Wikibooks.

Students will thus gain hands-on experience of a wiki environment, and what it is like to be part of a knowledge-building community, within the auspices of one of Wikimedia's large projects (i.e. Wikibooks) and make something that adds to currents in the academic field of digital media and society.

Note that while this is a class project, anyone may contribute as Wikibooks does not permit "ownership" of material.