Cultural Studies as Performative Research in a Digital Age

This paper aims to explore the nature of digital culture research, and the fitting methodology. Although it is still felt to be a novelty, it is not so different from the more general domain of Cultural Studies. The aim of research for both domains is meaning, or the challenge to understand the dynamics of the encoding and decoding process. Both domains endorse a wide variety of subjects, although typically the concrete methodology of Cultural Studies still remains restricted to qualitative approaches. The question of quantitative data and their analysis is highlighted in digital culture, and we should consider both its opportunities and limitations for the research at hand. In our reflection, Cultural Studies research emerges as a performative enterprise, and this is one of its unique distinctions as a research domain.