Toxic work culture, scientific mimicry in the carnivore diet, the discriminatory aesthetic of the clean girls, mukbang live streams: the trends that emerge on online platforms reflect the volatility of these environments – temporary and shared expressions of topics, ideas, styles, and behaviors. Some stabilize over time, generating genuine spaces of digital culture, in which users recognize themselves and interact. The mechanisms of mutual influence that are activated in these spaces can generate significant social repercussions, making forms of awareness-raising necessary both within and outside digital spaces.

The exhibition addresses the theme of Digital Media and Information literacy (DMIL) through eight artifacts that speak about trends that are particularly followed on social media and often polarizing. DMIL concerns what it is necessary to know, and be able to do, in order to participate actively in digital society: a constantly evolving objective, linked to the dynamic nature of digital spaces and to their global and commercial reach.

The eight exhibited artifacts invite critical reflection on these phenomena: observing their recurring narrative and visual forms, the ways in which they contribute to constructing shared meanings and to engaging “digital followers,” in order to learn to recognize their possible risks and social effects.

In a shared process of critical reflection, the public has a central role in the exhibition: each artifact includes a first moment of contact with the theme, and a second moment of evaluation, through which to express one’s own point of view creatively.

Beef, streams, vibes is the result of research carried out by 53 students of the master’s degree program in Communication Design, at the Politecnico di Milano, coordinated by DensityDesign Lab.