Virtual communication processes of open and distance education: Some contributions from the cultural studies field

Abstract

The pressures of the information and digital culture exhibit innovation, but also a hegemonic power, and act in reciprocity with the global economy. Theoretical concepts and practical actions need to be revisited, to build equity in virtual communication. A sociological-cultural focus of communication mediated by technology, cannot occur without holistic and trans-disciplinary attention, and its contrast in practice. This will result in wider interpretations with regard to the socio-historical, political and cultural explanations related to face-to-face and virtual socialization/education programs. The cultural studies and critical theory contribute to situate and deepen the study of these sociological-cultural-technological variables, within digital trans-media dynamic reality. They show how technology drives contradictory far-reaching changes in the anthropological, epistemological and communication/educational social dimensions; and, then, in open and distance education programs. The dominant hegemonic logic is linked to the privileges of artefacts, which are not always the most suitable and/or transparent, within the late capitalism system which legitimizes only one sector of a socio-political–economic structure, with power, although it is said that ICT for open learning is more equitable. Many contradictions hold the illusion of a horizontal pluralism, currently more so with Massive Open Online Courses.

Introduction

From a revalorization of the Cultural Studies (CS) approach, virtual communication must be reformulated from a sociological and cultural global view, related to the social and cultural phenomena of everyday life, in a scientific fashion. This makes a contribution for reflective analysis of virtual communicative interaction in pedagogical proposals. We also aim to know more of these phenomena in the information and knowledge society and digital culture, to recognize the role of virtual socialization in its configuration, and the impact of the technological mediations.

From the 1980s onwards, ICT has multiplied through substantial and impressive development. It has spread a variety of information without contextualizing and addressing its many criticisms. The main aspects in this context are the telematic exchange by processing, storing and distributing information, which crosses every socio-cultural process and contributes to the scientific–technological production of knowledge.

in this framework, we can observe open and distance programs, mediated by (the pressure of) ICT, the global market and the international structure of power. This takes place by means of virtual, small, mobile and connected devices. Although distance education has existed historically since the 19th century (if not before), for instance by postal correspondence and other techniques and systems, it is more and more important today, and everywhere, because computing power which enables e-learning is now ubiquitous.

The socio-political and cultural reflective focuses within CS, express increasing interest in knowing more about ICT at mediated processes and its application in open learning. The aim is to demystify the theoretical and practical implications of the instrumental rationality of the technological devices and subjacent ideas and conceptions.

The objectives of this paper are:

to attempt to understand the complexity of the pedagogical virtual mediations, from the CS focus;

to analyze these mediations within open/distance education programs by artificial devices and formats; and

to reinvent alternatives, within a socio-cultural and technologic co-evolution, towards a critical and appropriate virtual pedagogy. ¹

So, it is evident that Cultural Studies with its multiple explanations, discourses referred to –incorporating the notion of ‘agency’ towards generating empowerment and reflections – holds the possibility of deconstructing the actual hegemonic sociopolitical-technological power.

It is not true that technologies are the best and most valuable alternative solution for the problems: they increasingly display contradictions and paradoxes, although they are linked to constant innovation for social change. Not all the problems are reduced to technical or information matters.

Nevertheless, we have to agree that, historically, technological mediations exist. The holistic and interdisciplinary contributions of the CS will illuminate this. ICT and social virtual networks present new questions and require a new socio-cultural understanding, aiming to overcome the linear mechanic reproduction logic by transference to pedagogical projects. We can analyze contradictions and paradoxes, which generate e-exclusion, not respecting cultural diversity and an unequal digital representation of the citizenry, if the commitment is to a genuine democracy.

Many areas need to be analyzed: one of them is to recognize that the political and symbolic rationalities are eliminated from the discussions, and the subtle efforts seek superfluous consumer habits and devices with the intention of increasing profits and minimizing the genuine needs and interests of the people. Futhermore, and worse, there is the promotion of expectations and desires to buy more new technological devices without looking to rebuild social values.

Other analyses related to accommodating coherence between the global virtual design and its non-contextualized/localized implementation – as an ethical demand – look for an appropriation of all the complex elements, towards achieving educational technological equity.

Multiple contradictions and paradoxes between the proposed designs and the (manipulated) effects of ICT in general and pedagogical mediations inserted into a global world cause several impacts in real life, essentially in socialization/education, in the minds, actions, attitudes, etc, of children and youth, and people in general.

The technological mediations produce new perceptions with transmedia languages, messages and channels. The appearance of new sensibilities, narratives, readings and writings in digital styles have a significant presence in open and distance learning by means of the generation of virtual discursive practices, through the incorporation and use of cybernetic cultural resources (many of them in more horizontal participation by the Web 2.0: weblogs, Facebook, Twitter, I-pods, etc), but not always for a genuine improvement of formative quality efforts.

Such a trend causes not only the people to be constantly exposed to virtual pseudo-participation, adds, images of screens, publicity for consumerism, but also mainly to maintain and increase the general superfluous buying and spending, within international businesses corporations. ² Then, the process of globalization starts to become more and more unified itself, and serves as an important reason to be examined.

These reflections therefore make us recognize that CS, connected to Critical Theory, could provide inputs in order to learn more about the intersection of virtual communication/socialization and global standardized electronic applications.

This is very important for the public because of the general pedagogical implications, and for open and distance education programs, supported in the digital culture by unreal proposals, especially for cutting costs by Massive Open Online Courses (MMOC). ³

It is important to recognize that many cover and hide hegemonic linkages by means of the efficiency of the technical networks and subtle instrumental rationality, to enormous influences and implications.

This is the phenomenological analysis and socio-cultural-political interpretation that this paper articulates by critical thinking about formative mediations, to deepen the understanding and comprehension of the new digital culture.

Studying the virtual communication processes

Why is it interesting to study them from the field of cultural studies?

First, it is of interest with regard to reflecting on the nature, limits and merits of the technologies in interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary theories and practices, ⁴ and their implications for the study of distance and open education programs.

Second, taking into account the postmodern, the liquid hybrid society or late capitalism with its many paradoxes and contradictions, where the most perfect technological rationality promotes a fetishization of what scientific and technological knowledge is.

Third, as a consequence there are many tendencies represented by a relativism of the socio-historical validity of processes, which is not characterized by the production of concrete/tangible objects.

A projection of this would be reduction of communication science to ‘technological media science’ (of devices), without considering the phenomenon and the implicit process in human communication, on which individuals and cultures have been built.

Interdisciplinary CS research ⁵ shows how, today, society and culture create and share, recreate and design, distribute and consume the diverse mediated meanings, objects, etc, of our daily life through the Internet. A substantial pragmatic contraction, contemporarily granted to almost all of human accomplishments, is visible particularly not only in informal socialization but also in formal education, face-to-face and at a distance.

For example, an analysis of the social practices of youth, as a subculture of the university students in Buenos Aires, would consider not only observing that they belong to a high social class with their values and attitudes, but also mainly because the virtual educational programs are commodities to be commercialized in standardized proposals all over the world.

So, CS aims to understand and analyze socio-economic- political complex contexts, institutions and conventions, in which the cultural concepts and actions manifests themselves.

Continuing with the interests of the CS ⁶ field/approach to concerns, it views the intersection between cultural criticism and diverse sociologic-cultural and pedagogical processes. The attempt in the pedagogical arena is to reconcile holistically the artificial division of knowledge in isolated sectors in order to overcome the gap between theory and practice, explicit and invisible/tacit knowledge, educational designs and practical implementation without coherence, and to consider only the objective/universal rules as scientific forms of knowledge.

Academics, professionals and researchers in many fields are gathered together in CS observing how the convergence of electronic media and formats builds meanings, and its relationship to ideology, cultures and subcultures, social classes, ethnicity, gender, etc, and their connection to an ethical and political project.

Considering the Internet, ICT, the transmedia and networking, within the hyper-capitalist system, the economic crisis, and their expressions (literature, films, music), CS represents one of the theoretical possibilities for organic systematization/research that now signifies ‘digital culture’. For example, a study of a virtual network would consider the communication practices of children and youth at their interaction with the dominant ICT: Facebook and Twitter – and, in addition, their practices about people doing things or using devices, such as I-Pads, Flickr, etc, communicating, writing blogs, etc. The @ Generation has the peculiarity of not using the social networks (as adults do) but to become such social networks. These are 20 year-old children, and their identities were built online, with their compulsion to be always connected as ‘followers’.

In this context, new forms of social behavior emerge, which eliminate the difference between real and virtual interactions, to be observed as re-interpreting the communication processes. However, beyond the socio-constructivism, electronic proposals start from the physical engineering route, ending up at the (schematic) linear model of communication (for example, Shanon, Laswell, etc), inclined towards the control of human behavior.

The scientific study of the phenomena and processes of virtual communication – signs, languages, formats – with multiple contexts, actors and intentions, would tend to overcome these limitations, given by:

the negation of the communicative phenomenon and its exclusive consideration of the increasingly sophisticated media with regard to artefacts; and

the false conception where devices codify realities, with manipulated effects, extensive to other elements.

In this way, it is essential to revalue the complex and specific character of virtual communication processes, with their occurrence in educational arguments – and ubiquitous /distance learning, where they play a central role. In practical terms our tele-socialized/educational analysis, considering the communication process, means:

a dialogue that defines the mediated distance existence, related to the proximity of a re-signified dialogue not only in physical terms, but in symbolic, expressive and cultural meanings, that is, the communicative rationality; and

the development of individuals’ discursive capacity through innumerable dimensions when appealing to various tech codes (words, images, signs, icons, YouTube-films, Flick- photographs, graphic designs, tokens from publicity and fashion, etc), in order to communicate at the heart of factual and virtual social relationships.

In the context of Cultural Studies and its application to the pedagogical field, the interpretations of ICT formats, codes and texts must include awareness of new habits of consumption of cultural symbolic objects/meanings, not only in their strengths but also in their limitations, to build an alternative proposal to face the ICT irruption with their many implications.

Consequently, it is easy to understand the need to invest in the educational development of the digital communicative competencies ⁷ . People will have to learn to achieve socio-cultural integration.

This means overcoming inequities, and achieving an e-inclusion in a global community – in harmony with nature and the environment – by virtual communication/educational programs.

Otherwise – and here lie the risks – the discourses will continue with social control, in the absence of a cultural reformulation of concepts, values, etc. like cultural workers, where they reassemble their lives.

In these contexts, Cultural Studies can observe diverse symptoms, such as:

uniformity: the sciences, research and education are placed at the service of a hegemonic global production embodied in a logic of control and subtle domination;

the negation of personal and collective projects to revalue the precarious/banal present, which neutralizes the past and the future;

to resist myths, to disarm exposed mysterious narratives and rebuild history in a rational and emotional way. ⁸

In this way, the issue of values and ethics cannot be relegated to the selection and combination of virtual media or technical supports only, without consideration of the pillars on which they are supported.

Criticism of the highly technological post-industrial society seeks, by means of these warnings, to transcend its risks or weaknesses from a superior and humanizing socio-political alternative pedagogic project.

Could it be possible?

Here, the concept of person and human groups is paramount to the extent that it becomes a point of departure and arrival of all the communication processes and educational designs, face-to-face and virtual. That is, to promote and improve the development of autonomy and emancipation as human potentialities, by means of technologies.

The emergence of the digital culture reinforces the interaction by screens and images9. It develops new mentalities and communication habits that require more sophisticated ways of thinking, organizing information and transmitting, not always linked to reflectivity. ¹⁰ The virtual culture invades vital spaces and modifies experiences, by a telecommunication convergence of transmedia interaction; but, at the same time, it weakens historical belief in ‘non-places’ of virtual social situations. ¹¹

Some deepening to a theoretical–practical understanding of the virtual communication process: the instrumental and communicative rationalities

It is still difficult to define what the complex ‘virtual communication ecology’12 is: it is hard to be multi-dimensionally theorized. CS examines how devices and messages are decided, produced, consumed, interpreted and used with unpredictable impacts in diverse contexts, considering the political, cultural, economic, semiotic, pedagogic, hermeneutic and social dimensions, as we noted above.

When deepening this understanding, it is convenient to include, briefly, some theoretical contributions to the CS, as follows:

Neomarxism, by adopting Hegel’s dialectic and conceiving that the whole is a unit of opposites in conflict, with sharp contradictions between the small globalized offshore elites and the polarized impoverished peripheries of ‘wasted lives’, migrants, etc. Here it is a valid interpretation of cultural consequences, according to the category of ‘nomadism’ as an example of the rupture of lives. ¹³ These are associated with global exchange, scientific research/development cooperation, technological innovation, etc, which have relevance and impact in social life, and it communication/pedagogical processes, real and virtual.

Phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics, ¹⁴ which claims that everything that is social is as much symbolic as intentional, and that social facts are discourses ‘to be interpreted’ in terms of intentions, instead of being explained in terms of interdisciplinary causes, because the human being is a biological, social, emotional, and intellectual being, as well as symbolic.

In this context, CS has the hybrid perception of two worlds: globalized and localized, in touch with the postmodern communication narrative, that are present in social virtual networks, as ‘simulacrum’ ¹⁵ : It is composed by references with no real referents, a hyper-reality that does not exist, or exists by a dominant dissimulating through propagated on an endless banal (re)producibility online.

The deconstruction of interpretations of those simulated and liquid^16,17 realities are the bonds of postmodern society, which refers to the worlds of signs and images created by ICT as a hyper-reality, destroying what actually happens in real life.

The ‘humanistic-socio-philosophy’ criticizes the latest manifestation of capitalism in crisis, which inhibits genuine expressions, while denying the distinction with regard to the relationship between science, technology and ideology, from structuralist and poststructuralist approaches18, following the Haberas ideas that technology is ideology, underlying the research interpretive–qualitative approaches.

The Critical Theory is a broad approach to destabilize established knowledge, emphasizing that all knowledge is a cultural construct historically contextualized and, sometimes, biased. ¹⁹ The varied pressures of the dominant hyper-capitalist system and its search for profits, through the global market, provokes a calculus ethos with an interpretation of costs–benefits simply to maximize incomes by means of all strategies. Everything then shows instrumental directions, manipulated many times by rigid conceptions and stereotypes.

According to the Frankfurt School, a ‘critical’ theory may be distinguished from a ‘traditional’ theory because of the particular ‘practical moral sense’. They do not ‘merely seek to provide the means to achieve some independent goal’, but rather to seek ‘human emancipation’ in circumstances of domination. ²⁰

However, Critical Theory is adequate only if it meets explanatory and normative criteria, as well as practical issues, in order to proceed toward awareness for social change, and transforming contemporary capitalism into a consensual and equity form of social life with a genuine democracy. ²¹

The technocracy phenomena and the instrumental rationality is, in this way, the theoretical support of a hidden ideology based on no more than technical artefacts, economic policies and decisions. The result is to put in last place the expressive cultural world through a dispute to overcome the hegemony of symbolic power. ²²

To state it simply, the so-called ‘objective’ knowledge is illusory, within the ‘Francfortian’ approach, which claims that the configuration of the world is not neutral, but rather a result of the socio-political spheres, which penetrate science and technology, literature and linguistics, psychology and sociology, philosophy and ethics, education, gender, virtual environment design, etc.

This ‘official’ knowledge has to be deconstructed under the co-evolution lens of a digital culture, in the post-modernist and post-humanism trends. ²³ They provide the descriptive and normative bases for a comprehensive but provisional analysis and inquiry, based on decreasing domination and increasing self-reliance, autonomy and emancipation. Such is by the cultural-symbolic communicative rationality.

In every contexts and in virtual educational environments it is important to examine cultural practices and their relation to power.

We need to study their linkages, mediators and formats with regard to analyzing them in socio-historical–cultural situations; that is, where organizations and individuals assume roles of decision makers and administrators, and establish interactions to be executed on the part of virtual programs designers, evaluators, virtual tutors and students. For example, it is perceived that the authority is behind the norm: vague and anonymous.

So, the macro and micro-mechanisms of power are revealed in the pedagogical arena, in the decision making for some potential users that are being authorized and/or allowed, stimulated or inhibited, through their participation and recreation of meanings, within the communication networks.

But this issue is not simple, because the technology is not in itself deterministic: it reflects the global trends and decisions.

In other words, the problem is to recognize which voices compose the positions held or from where the discourses come and will take place, as a possibility of the presence or absence of ‘glocal’ production of knowledge.

That exists within a strategic mediated pedagogical relationship, which bonds and moves (because it is never fixed) the various roles that comprise an educational face-to-face and virtual program.

The points remark, for instance, the way that the behavior is modeling in different aspects of purposes and motivations, regarding the official status quo of organizations, curricula, courses, among others, which, in the practice, are carried out by virtual mediated educational interactivity. ²⁴

Thus, these socio-cultural communication distance education systems are processes that model minds, wills and reasons for interaction between individuals and artificial objects, with a subjacent know-how of hidden conventions and agreements.

These relationships need now a critical cultural reflection on the heterogeneity, inequality and diversity presented on the interconnected world, and its presence in the emergent regions, as Latin America or the South of the world.

The CS interpretation proposes the ‘systemic reflexivity’, as a socio-cognitive practice, part and condition of a Critical Theory of the network society and the digital culture. ²⁵ Its individual and collective substratum is the work with the same tools and dynamic available on the Internet, in order to appropriate them and to strengthen an alternative epistemology, criticizing the same features of/in the same context.

The analysis of the open and distance education based on some cultural studies contributions

The study of e-learning programs demands a genuine understanding, in an interdisciplinary approach, looking for transparency of the hidden mechanisms of these educational programs, proposals, curricula, materials, etc, in order to demystify them.

The point is that the people are constantly being exposed to virtual advertisements, images of screens, product publicity, and so on, without any explanation of the many ideological components, and its influence to consume, exhibit, as extended social expectations. Beyond this increase, ‘new’ uses of ICT formats and networks appear, in virtual educational environments, as ‘solutions’ to the crisis academia, beyond the promoted technological interactivity of Web 2.0 and its participation in e-learning programs.

Because the technology is performative, that is it decides and imposes the rationality about ‘what is possible’, we do not have to believe idyllically that MOOC will overcome the technical–instrumental rationality, into pedagogy, with the belief that, dealing with virtual YouTubes and web-bibliography, learning will automatically improve in their processes and results. Another contradictory aspect is the uniformity generated under the mask of the abundance of participation and many inputs compared with the products involved on a massive scale; a reduction of power that hides its distributions in contrary social models because, under the information architecture of the open online and massive proposals, lies a power structure. ²⁶

Once again: the technical tools will optimize their mechanical logic of the relationship between goals and means within hierarchical structures, without considering that this implies a social control. As a consequence, education, culture, and so on are being dominated by technocrats and the investments of major transnational telecommunication companies, who are the ‘experts’ in producing meanings, without evaluating consequences; but, rather, only profits.

It is not true that technologies are the best and most valuable alternative solution, although they are linked to constant innovation.

ICT and social virtual networks present new questions and require a new understanding related to overcoming contradictions and paradoxes regarding e-exclusion, a lack of respect for cultural diversity and the equal digital representation of the citizenry, if the commitment is to a genuine democracy.

How should the technological avalanche be handled?

Virtual open distance learning must respond to the new pedagogical interdisciplinary framework facing the paradoxes that realities show us, in order to deconstruct them.

A paradox is a true declaration only in its appearance. It transports an auto-logic opposition or leads to a contradictory situation, which a knowledgeable person considers believable, including common sense.

Among the multiple examples, it is visible by way of the positive and negative aspects, present in diverse contradictions of the social web 2.0 and its formats.^27,28 For instance, to believe that we are more capable individually of selecting the diverse options, begin to be reduced by the recommendation/‘following system’ (Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, among others), which insert us in a uniform culture.

Today, the linkages, media and mediators are and act as a kind of democratization provided by the huge, fast, and endless global virtual information flux, produced and consumed all over the world.

So, on the one hand, it contributes to the 21st century cultural socialization and expansions: on the other hand, its unequal, penetrating and disciplinary effects provoke discrimination, in access to and use of ICT, invaded by ‘liquid’ values.

The decontextualized tendency of ICT and virtual networks means social control and cultural discipline for individuals. Virtual educational environments in general work under linear technological ‘corset’ (restrictive) platforms – according to owner or free/creative common modalities – in a reduced interpretation of what teaching and learning are, without considering the uncertainty of life for human beings. Nevertheless, we are compelled to continue working with appropriate technology, towards reaching other values, as noted earlier.

Cultural studies issues for studying a virtual pedagogy

There are some major issues that Cultural Studies should take care to study, at the intersection of virtual pedagogy and communication process, devices and applications, digital platforms, etc, as media which reinforce the illusory meaning (in an 90%) of the digital culture, leading only to consume and elude what is essential. At the same time, the resources for streamlining and amplifying communications in a way that is unchecked – for us ‘info-intoxication’ – are not critically prioritized and evaluated: once more, selling illusions.

The field of Cultural Studies and its approaches to and research on electronic linkages should be studied for two reasons: first, to conduct a general socio-historical analysis of the specific changing relationships of human (just cyborgs) activities, mediated by technological processes and devices; and, second, to explore the dynamic and specific relationships of these planned and modifiable online educational open programs and pedagogical practices.

Virtual formative communication, as a linked construction, is formed by situated cultural tools and leads, through interaction, to various domains in cognitive structuring and the development of higher socio-psychological functions of thinking where the person communicates, interacts, learns, etc.

The socio-cognitive perspective is linked to network communication mediated by technologies, which have to activate minds to build and share specific knowledge. The mind creates and manipulates mental images (visual or not, virtual or not) in an individual and collaborative way, in the brain. The ideas and concepts are mental images, connected not only in personal neuronal networks but also in a common communicative one. It is transmitted by the language – for us by the convergence of Internet symbolic codes– metaphors, semantic organizers, etc.

It is easy to see how these processes are related to virtual pedagogy, e-teaching and ubiquitous learning.

It is a polymorphic, interdisciplinary concept, multi-represented in social, cognitive and semiotic sciences, etc, which enables the exchange of infinite symbolic flows between the socio-cultural agents and the technological devices, co-determining the conditions and forces of the mediated production of meaning. This deals with how knowledge is socially communicated, managed and distributed, by means of the Internet and networking, in its inherent negotiations. This is a valuable input to the field of CS as input to a Virtual Pedagogy.

Education needs to exploit the high cognitive functions of individuals, using them project, research and solve problems, to anticipate scientific and critical alternatives, to face the unknown, to develop moral values, and so on. ICT and networks must be demystified, forcing comparisons between their presence and absence, taking action to contrast them, in several contexts, to practice a digital critical reading on the Internet, strategic writing, self-regulation or monitoring (meta-cognition) of learning processes, in diverse environments. In addition, co-evaluated with users, the community, etc, it will provoke a commitment to creative, prudent and respecting contacts – in number and quality of the interactions – and not merely simple ‘followers’, according to quantitative criteria, which hide multiple phenomena.

Consequently, the virtual socio-educational linkages which, by definition, have a relational character, will be represented by the actions or activities, interventions, resources and/or virtual materials and programs. The facility to build sense and to recognize the symbolic–cultural rationality, within those processes, face-to-face or for distance learning, is noteworthy.

It has to be conceived to increase the participation, creativity, equity and expressiveness, with regard to cultural-communicative logic, by non-conventional practices of production of knowledge through virtual interaction/interactivity. Within this environment, the protagonist agents and agencies, in a dialectic relationship, react to the establishment with the same and known cultural tools; but that, still, is in a low proportion and does not always take place.

The introduction of the conceptual reinterpretation of ICT in pedagogy is to surpass the artificial reductionism, towards the consideration of the genuine pedagogical role in technological teaching and learning: it will run to a real cultural reconstruction.

The ICT interaction/interactivity occurs within ‘physical and psycho-social’ virtual spaces/places for cultural and pedagogical linkages that do not set aside the resistance of the mental representations, reluctances, erroneous conceptions, fears, values, social beliefs, stereotypes, and so on, of individuals and institutions.

In this way, for the study of interaction it is necessary to articulate concepts originating in an epistemological option/model, a psycho-sociology, a cultural anthropology, semiotics, etc, to understand the assembly of the subjectivity (and identity), hopes and desires of the user/participant/learner, professor, etc, with diverse content. Thus we may observe the power of technological supports and the potency of the formats of the new communication circuits, which many times hide contradictions, as noted earlier before.

Some tentative conclusions: an open discussion

An general conclusion arising from research on the approaches of/in the CS field towards a virtual pedagogy could be a proposal to build a utopia as a concept that contributes to articulate some improvement of the theoretical–practical coherence and comprehension of ideas and actions, hopes and ideals, program design and implementation. It serves to overcome the opposite coexisting logics in politics, the economy and culture, which show contradictions.

In the same way, it can provide many opportunities to recognize diverse alternative scientific–technological views of the communicative/educational processes of individuals, groups, and organizations, within commitment to social change.

The utopian ideal is to appropriate the cultural–electronic tools, on the basis that the potentially liberating power of virtual technologies should not be reduced but rather that individuals should be helped to conquer it, in formal and informal, face-to-face and distance education. It is a genuine pedagogic, social and cultural challenge for the field of Cultural Studies.