ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates some of the challenges which occur when documentary film praxis adapts to the cultural context of Web 2.0. It focuses on Life in a Day (LIAD), the first crowd-sourced, YouTube-based documentary with a massive global outreach. A global work of imagination in Appadurai's terms, the film is marked by the confluence of three distinct practical logics of cultural creation. The chapter proposes to conceive Life in a Day as an example of a specific ritual approach to communication a documentary less focused on conveying information then on creating a sense of globalized commonality. It offers a close look at the participatory design and the discursive strategies used in Life in a Day and explores the cultural dynamics of media participation: the negotiation of representational power, the notions of belonging, the ways in which cultural difference is discursively domesticated and an understanding of how aesthetics is understood to bestow meaning on everyday life in a Web 2.0 environment.
