Participatory Culture

Participatory Culture

• Henry Jenkins - 2006
• Idea - Instead of being a passive audience, audience is now more active and participate more in the media society.
• Opposite to the consumer culture, pro-sumer culture - someone who produces as well as consuming. E.g. instead of just watching TV, people make own videos and upload to Youtube.

5 Main Concepts of the Participatory Culture:

1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).

Participatory culture has been around longer than the Internet. 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. These publications were mailed throughout a network of people and resemble what we now call social networks. The evolution from zines, radio shows, group projects, and gossips to blogs, podcasts, wikis, and social networks has impacted our culture greatly. With web services such as Ebay, Blogger, Wikipedia, Photobucket, Facebook, and YouTube, it is no wonder our culture has become more participatory. The implications of the gradual shift from production to produsage are profound, and will affect the very core of our culture, economy, society, and democracy. These web services allow people to produce, upload and share their own products such as sound on SoundCloud and pictures on Tumblr. Perhaps in the future, Youtube could provide editing services to continue this participatory culture = Convergence.