Participatory culture
Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers. The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.
Overview
Recent advances in technologies have enabled private persons to create and publish such media, usually through the Internet. 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. This new culture, as it relates to the Internet, has been described as Web 2.0. In participatory culture, "young people creatively respond to a plethora of electronic signals and cultural commodities in ways that surprise their makers, finding meanings and identities never meant to be there and defying simple nostrums that bewail the manipulation or passivity of 'consumers'."The increasing access to the Internet has come to play an integral part in the expansion of participatory culture because it increasingly enables people to work collaboratively, generate and disseminate news, ideas, and creative works, and connect with people who share similar goals and interests. The potential of participatory culture for civic engagement and creative expression has been investigated by media scholar Henry Jenkins. 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. This paper describes a participatory culture as one:
- With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
- With strong support for creating and sharing one's creations with others
- With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
- Where members believe that their contributions matter
- Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another.
History
Forms
Forms of participatory culture can be manifested in affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving, and circulations. Affiliations include both formal and informal memberships in online communities such as discussion boards or social media. Expression refers to the types of media that could be created. This may manifest as memes, fanfiction, or other forms of mash-ups. When individuals and groups work together on a particular form of media or media product, like a wiki, then they engage in collaborative problem solving. Finally, circulation refers to the means through which the communication may be spread. This could include blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and even some forms of social media. Some of the most popular apps that involve participation include: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok.Fanfiction creators were one of the first communities to showcase the public could participate in pop culture, by changing, growing, and altering TV show storylines during their run times, as well as strengthening the series’ popularity after the last episode aired. Some fan fiction creators develop theories and speculation, while others create ‘new’ material outside of the confines of the original content. Fans expand on the original story, putting the characters falling in love within the series through different adventures and sexualities. These communities are composed of audiences and readers from around the world, at different ages, with different backgrounds, coming together to develop theories and possibilities about current TV shows, books and films, or expand and continue the stories of TV shows, books, and movies that have come to a close.
Technology
As technology continues to enable new avenues for communication, collaboration, and circulation of ideas, it has also given rise to new 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 which consumers create new material has also grown. Extensive knowledge of computer programming is no longer necessary to create content on the internet. Media sharing over the Internet acts as a platform to invite users to participate and create communities that share similar interests through duplicated sources, original content, and re-purposed material.Social media
People no longer blindly absorb and consume what large media corporations distribute. Today there are a great deal of people who are consumers who also produce their own content. The reason participatory culture is a high interest topic is due to the fact that there are just so many different social media platforms to participate in and contribute to. These happen to be some of the leaders in the social media industry, and are the reason people are able to have such an advantage to participate in media creation. Today, millions of people across the world have the ability to post, quote, film, or create whatever they want. With the aid of these platforms, the ability to reach a global audience has never been easier.TikTok and Participatory Culture
Scholars have increasingly identified TikTok as a prominent example of participatory culture in contemporary digital environments. TikTok’s short-form video format encourages users to actively engage in cultural production through imitation, remixing, and collaborative trend formation rather than passive consumption.Research on TikTok emphasizes how participatory practices such as sound reuse, trend adaptation, and performative repetition enable communities to collectively shape meaning and cultural norms. Digital humanities scholars further note that these participatory dynamics allow platforms like TikTok to function as bottom-up archives of everyday cultural expression, while also raising concerns about platform governance and algorithmic mediation.
Social media and politics
Social media have become a huge factor in politics and civics in not just elections, but gaining funds, spreading information, getting legislation and petition support, and other political activities. Social media make it easier for the public to make an impact and participate in politics. A study that showed the connection between Facebook messages among friends and how these messages have influenced political expression, voting, and information seeking in the 2012 United States presidential election. Social media mobilizes people easily and effectively, and does the same for the circulation of information. These can accomplish political goals such as gaining support for legislation, but social media can also greatly influence elections. The impact social media can have on elections was shown in the 2016 United States presidential election, hundreds of fake news stories about candidates were shared on Facebook tens of millions of times. Some people do not recognize fake news and vote based on false information.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, and Facebook 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 a web browser. The need for additional software is eliminated. These websites also serve to create online communities for the production of content. These communities and their web services have been labelled as part of Web 2.0.The relationship between Web 2.0 tools and participatory culture is more than just material, however. As the mindsets and skillsets of participatory practices have been increasingly taken up, people are increasingly likely to exploit new tools and technology in 2.0 ways. One example is the use of cellphone technology to engage "smart mobs" for political change worldwide. 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. Notable examples include the so-called "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, the overthrow of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, and regular political protests worldwide