Media Cultures of Value: Economy, Politics, and Art in Web3

Values don’t just fall from the sky. They are shaped by media, infrastructure, and social practices. With new protocols and media objects – such as smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs – Web3 not only extends platform capitalism but also redefines value, labor, and community. While these technologies reinforce proprietary markets and corporate governance structures, they simultaneously open up alternative new ways of organizing life, challenging traditional economic and social models. This issue builds on the hybrid workshop “Digital Biedermeier – or Radical Democratic Utopia? NFTs as Interfaces of Cryptocurrencies”, organized by Johannes Bennke at the Humboldt University Berlin and Mirjam Schaub at University of Applied Sciences (HAW) Hamburg in October 2023. The issue brings together eight contributions by media scholars, artists, and curators who examine different media cultures of value – exploring protocols, infrastructures, labor, NFTs, art, and political stakes of Web3 governance.