- Participatory culture
Participatory culture is a
neologism in reference of, but opposite to aConsumer culture — in other words a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers ). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type ofpublished media . Recent advances in technologies (mostlypersonal computer s and theinternet ) have enabled private persons to create and publish such media, usually through the internet. This new culture as it relates to the internet has been described asWeb 2.0 .The internet has come to play an integral part in the expansion of participatory culture because of its ability to reach large populations of people in a comparatively small amount of time. The potential of participatory culture has been investigated by professor
Henry Jenkins ofMIT .Participatory Culture and Technology
As
technology continues to expand the number of ways thatcommunication may take place it has also increased the opportunities for consumers to create their own content. Barriers like time and money are beginning to become less significant to large groups of consumers. For example, the creation of movies once required large amounts of expensive equipment, but now movie clips can be made with equipment that is affordable to a growing number of people. The ease with whichconsumers create new material has also grown. Extensive knowledge of computer programming is no longer necessary to create content on the internet.Relationship to Web 2.0
Not only has hardware increased the individual's ability to submit content to the internet so that it may be reached by a wide audience, but in addition numerous internet sites have increased access. Websites like
Flickr ,Wikipedia , andFacebook encourage the submission of content to the internet. They increase the ease with which a user may post content by allowing them to submit information even if they only have an internet browser. The need for additional software is eliminated. These websites also serve to create online community provides motive for the production of content. These communities and theirweb services have been labelled as part ofWeb 2.0 .O'Reilly, Tim. (2005-09-30). What Is Web 2.0. O'Reilly Network. Retrieved on 2007-05-01]Potential Benefits of Participatory culture
Participatory culture has been hailed by some as a way to reform communication and enhance the quality of media. According to professor Henry Jenkins, participatory culture is beneficial because it increases the number of those who produce media and increases the amount of
competition . Competition forces producers to pay more attention to the needs of consumers who can turn to other sources for information.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture:Where Old and New Media Collide, New York University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8147-4281-5] As participation becomes easier, the diversity of voices that can be heard also increases. At one time only a few mass media giants controlled most of the information that flowed into the homes of the public, but with the advance of technology even a single person has the ability to spread information around the world. The diversification of media has benefits because in cases where the control of media becomes concentrated it gives those who have control the ability to influence the opinions and information that flows to thepublic domain .Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale, 2006. ISBN 0-3001-1056-1] Media concentration provides opportunity for corruption, but as information continues to become accessed from more and more places it becomes increasingly difficult to control the flow of information to the will of an agenda. 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 input their own ideas and assume a less passive role.Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale, 2006. ISBN 0-3001-1056-1] The democratic tendency lent to communication by participatory culture allows new models of production that are not based on a hierarchical standard. In the face of increased participation, the traditional hierarchies will not disappear, but "Community, collaboration, and self-organization" can become the foundation of corporations as powerful alternatives.Tapscott, Don. Anthony D. Williams. Wikinomics:How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Penguin USA: New York, 2006. ISBN 1-5918-4138-0] Although there may be no real hierarchy evident in many collaborative websites, their ability to form large pools of collective intelligence is not compromised.Potential Drawbacks of Participatory Cultures
Meta-Design: A Design Methodology Supporting Participatory Cultures
Educational Implications of Participatory Cultures
Cultures are substantially defined by their media and their tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. Unfortunately a large number of new media are designed to see humans only as consumers; and people, particularly young people in educational institutions, form mindsets based on their exposure to specific media.The current mindset about learning, teaching, and education is dominated by a view in which teaching is often fitted "into a mold in which a single, presumably omniscient teacher explicitly tells or shows presumably unknowing learners something they presumably know nothing about" (Bruner, J. (1996) The Culture of Education, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA ] . A critical challenge is a reformulation and reconceptualization of this impoverished and misleading conception. Learning should not take place in a separate phase and in a separate place, but should be integrated into people's lives allowing them to construct solutions to their own problems. As they experience breakdowns in doing so, they should be able to learn on demand by gaining access to directly relevant information. The direct usefulness of new knowledge for actual problem situations greatly improves the motivation to learn the new material because the time and effort invested in learning are immediately worthwhile for the task at hand — not merely for some putative long-term gain. In order to create active contributor mindsets serving as the foundation of participatory cultures, learning cannot be restricted to finding knowledge that is "out there". Rather than serving as the "reproductive organ of a consumer society" Illich, I. (1971) Deschooling Society, Harper and Row, New York, ] educational institutions must cultivate the development of a active contributor mindset by creating habits, tools and skills that help people become empowered and willing to actively contribute to the design of their lives and communities.Beyond supporting contributions from individual designers, educational institutions need to build a culture and mindset of sharing, supported by effective technologies and sustained by personal motivation to occasionally work for the benefit of groups and communities. This includes finding ways for people to see work done for the benefits of others being "on-task", rather than as extra work for which there is no recognition and no reward.
ee also
*
Prosumer
*The Long Tail
*Remix culture
*Hypersociability
*Transmedia storytelling
*Affinity spaces
*Constructed World References
External links
* [http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning]
* [http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/10/confronting_the_challenges_of.html Henry Jenkins Weblog Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century]
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