Participatory culture

[2] Since technology now enables new forms of expression and engagement in public discourse, participatory culture not only supports individual creation but also informal relationships that pair novices with experts.

In 2009, Jenkins and co-authors Ravi Purushotma, Katie Clinton, Margaret Weigel and Alice Robison authored a white paper entitled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.

The emergence of the Amateur Press Association in the middle of the 19th century is an example of historical participatory culture; at that time, young people were hand typing and printing their own publications.

The evolution from zines, radio shows, group projects, and gossip to blogs, podcasts, wikis, and social networks has impacted society greatly.

Fanfiction creators were one of the first communities to showcase the public could participate in pop culture,[7] by changing, growing, and altering TV show storylines during their run times, as well as strengthening the series’ popularity after the last episode aired.

In countries where cellphone usage exceeds use of any other form of digital technology, passing information via mobile phone has helped bring about significant political and social change.

Instead of merely watching, users are actively involved in making decisions, navigating pages, contributing their own content and choosing what links to follow.

[24] In July 2020, an academic description reported on the nature and rise of the "robot prosumer", derived from modern-day technology and related participatory culture, that, in turn, was substantially predicted earlier by Frederik Pohl and other science fiction writers.

In her book, The Culture of Connectivity, Jose Van Dijck emphasizes the importance of recognizing this distinction in order to thoroughly analyze user agency as a techno-cultural construct (2013).

Dijck (2013) references Leon et al. (2011), giving an example of an experimental study where “a number of users may be selected to perform tasks so researchers can observe their ability to control privacy settings “(p. 33).

[31] Jenkins uses this term to describe how some fans go through content like their favourite movie and engage with the parts that they are interested in, unlike audiences who watch the show more passively and move on to the next thing.

[32] Specifically, fans use what they have poached to become producers themselves, creating new cultural materials in a variety of analytical and creative formats from "meta" essays to fanfiction, comics, music, and more.

[37] The current interactions and interfaces of participatory culture fails to "challenge the hegemonic dominance, legitimacy and appropriateness of positivist epistemologies; theorize from the margins; and problematize gender".

Participatory Culture is also seen as a more democratic form of communication as it stimulates the audience to take an active part because they can help shape the flow of ideas across media formats.

[45] Examples include Harry Potter Alliance, Invisible Children, Inc., and Nerdfighters, which each leverage shared cultural interests to connect and organize members towards explicit political goals.

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik identified three mechanisms used to translate cultural interests into political outcomes:[46] Social and participatory media allow for—and, indeed, call for—a shift in how we approach teaching and learning in the classroom.

[48] He finds a growing body of academic research showing the potential benefits of participatory cultures, both formal and informal, for the education of young people.

Including Peer-to-peer learning opportunities, the awareness of intellectual property and multiculturalism, cultural expression and the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.

YouTube offers the younger generation the opportunity to test out their content, while gaining feedback via likes, dislikes, and comments to find out where they need to improve.

Through modern tools (including electronic commerce supported by the Web), humans are empowered to do many tasks themselves that were done previously by skilled domain workers serving as agents and intermediaries.

While this shift provides power, freedom, and control to customers (e.g., banking can be done at any time of the day with ATMs, and from any location with the Web), it has led also to some less desirable consequences.

Not only do consumers who are resistant to making use of the affordances of participatory culture have decreased access to knowledge, goods, and services, but they are less likely to take advantage of the increased leverage inherent in engaging with businesses as a prosumer.

On the one hand, those youth who are most advanced in media literacies are often stripped of their technologies and robbed of their best techniques for learning in an effort to ensure a uniform experience for all in the classroom.

For beginners this can be overwhelming and teaching kids as well as adults how to access what is pertinent, reliable and viable information will help them improve how they utilize media technologies.

This is identified as a "breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants" (Jenkins et al. pg.

For example, throughout most of the last half of the 20th century learners who wanted to become journalists would generally engage in a formal apprenticeship through journalism classes and work on a high school newspaper.

A key goal in media education, then, must be to find ways to help learners develop techniques for active reflection on the choices they make—and contributions they offer—as members of a participatory culture.

As teachers, administrators, and policymakers consider the role of new media and participatory practices in the school environment, they will need to find ways to address the multiple challenges.

Challenges include finding ways to work with the decentralization of knowledge inherent in online spaces; developing policies with respect to filtering software that protects learners and schools without limiting students' access to sites that enable participation; and considering the role of assessment in classrooms that embrace participatory practices.

Jenkins et al. believes that conversation surrounding the digital divide should focus on opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills required to take part rather than get stuck on the question of technological access.