Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics

by Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, Danah Boyd

In the last two decades, both the conception and the practice of participatory culture have been transformed by the new affordances enabled by digital, networked, and mobile technologies. This exciting new book explores that transformation by bringing together three leading figures in conversation. Jenkins, Ito and Boyd examine the ways in which our personal and professional lives are shaped by experiences interacting with and around emerging media.

Stressing the social and cultural contexts of participation, the authors describe the process of diversification and mainstreaming that has transformed participatory culture. They advocate a move beyond individualized personal expression and argue for an ethos of “doing it together” in addition to “doing it yourself.”

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era will interest students and scholars of digital media and their impact on society and will engage readers in a broader dialogue and conversation about their own participatory practices in this digital age.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Sociology, Academic, Cultural

214 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 2015

Reviews

[Diz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is presented in a discussion format. Three scholars from different generations talk about various facets of participatory culture. There are some interesting ideas presented. In particular, I like that the authors put an emphasis on the connections between people as a key factor in participatory culture rather than on technology. In fact, they stress that participatory culture existed in fan culture before the advent of the Internet.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a briskly paced and compulsively readable discussion between the three authors, edited into an edifying and wide-ranging reflection on ways of approaching, understanding, and responding to participatory culture. I found the sections on commercial culture and activism the most rewarding, and while the format yields less actual debate than I had hoped for (Ito, boyd, and Jenkins mostly seem to agree with each other), the dialogic form makes a comfortable fit for the topics under discussion.

[Rona Akbari · Rating 4 out of 5]

theory you can actually understand and it's *literally* written conversationally v nice

a lot of what was covered wasn't entirely revelatory to me because I experienced / am experiencing it first-person (finding empowerment in digital fandoms when you're estranged from certain communities, working around 'red tape', online activism)

putting them into concepts like 'connected learning' and 'participatory culture' ... this was new and interesting and makes me think differently about opportunities to expand learning and build community

I really like this part: "Aren’t we fundamentally social beings who thrive when our communities and people we care about and connect with thrive as well? How can we possibly succeed as individuals without contributing to shared culture and goals? Doesn’t systemic reform require collective commitment?"

and also: "neoliberalism is very much bound up with the notion of every person for themselves but if we go back to fan culture, it's about collective ownership of stories, about sharing economies, about forming collective identities"

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books for me are often conversations as a means of informing. They are a bit one-sided, but for me they work in this manner. But, for me they can also trigger things I've heard before, or conversations I have been a part of, or remind me of things I have known and do know presented in a purer state (not interwoven with other truths or realities or placed tightly beside them).

Participatory Culture took me straight back to conversations and deep dives to the mid-2000s. Resurfacing those mindsets, conversations, and discoveries have been difficult. They were difficult to resurface in conversation not because they were wrong or out of date, but many people dealing with the same domain took more popular and easy paths to understanding, which only truly frame partial actual understandings. Participatory Culture gives the honest good solidly founded framings and perspectives.

Participatory Culture is like sitting down to the middle of my favorite conversations, as I have had conversations with two of the authors and covered some of this ground. But, the whole of the book resurfaces the authors past writings and discussions a fresh, but also weave them into a current light. The underlying foundations still stand solid five, ten, and fifteen years after having been fortunate to have been able to have some of these conversations live.

[Katrina Sark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapter 1 – Defining Participatory Culture

Introduction by Henry Jenkins

p.1 – Does participation become exploitation when it takes place on commercial platforms where others are making money off our participation and where we often do not even own the culture we are producing?

p.3 – By 2005, I saw us entering an era when the public, at least in the developed world, would have access to much greater communicative capacity than ever before, where a growing number of institutions were embracing more participatory practices, and where the skills and knowledge to participate meaningfully were unevenly distributed. I examined a range of different sites of participatory culture in order to identify the ways they were supporting peer to peer mentorship and were encouraging and scaffolding participants as they refined their skills and developed greater confidence in their own voices. The white paper Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture (Jenkins et. Al. 2007), written for MacArthur Digital Media and Learning initiative, was addressed to educators and adopted a definition of participatory culture that places strong emphasis on its pedagogical potentials:

p.4 – “A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).

p.11 – There’s been a tendency in some high-tech circles to act as if participatory culture originated with YouTube or social networking with Facebook. Instead, we need to place these practices in a larger historical context.

p.11-12 – Though the term is often ascribed to me, I avoid the phrase “participatory media.” I do not think technologies are participatory; cultures are. Technologies may be interactive in their design; they may facilitate many-to-many communications; they may be accessible and adaptable to multiple kinds of users; and they may encode certain values through their terms of use and through their interfaces. But ultimately, those technologies get embraced and deployed by people who are operating in cultural contexts that may be more of less participatory. I do not think of platforms like Facebook or YouTube as participatory cultures. Rather, they are tools participatory communities sometimes use as means of maintaining social contact or sharing their cultural use as means of maintaining social contact or sharing their cultural productions with each other.

p.14 – In Spreadable Media (Jenkins, Ford, and Green 2013), we make the argument that, today, an emphasis on participation has displaced this focus on resistance.
My understanding of the term “resistance” come from the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies (Hall and Jefferson 1993). It goes back to their original work on subcultures and appropriation. They were writing about the punk movement and the manner in which it appropriated and remixed symbols belonging to the dominant culture, often in ways that signaled their opposition to core institutions and values of their parents’ generation.

p.15 – Over time, the term “resistance” came to refer to symbolic gestures that questioned or challenged the values of the status quo. So, we might talk about feminist or queer appropriations of materials from mass media that encouraged the questioning of patriarchy or allowed for the expression of alternative sexual politics. These forms of resistance might be oppositional in the ways that media is produced and distributed, participating in an alternative economy which rejected the profit motive or refused to accept constraints on its use of intellectual property. These groups could be oppositional in the sense that they encouraged alternative social structures based on equality, diversify, and reciprocity or a refusal to make money off other community members. They could be oppositional in terms of the symbols used, the meanings their work evoked, or the ways their media practices pushed against censorship norms and taboos of the culture. Historically, subcultures defined their identities in opposition to their parent cultures.

p.16 – danah: My usage of the term “resistance” is rooted in this exact history, including more modern work that builds off this trajectory such as analyses of goth subcultures and queer counter publics.

Mimi: I also see “resistance” as a relational term that is predicated on there being a perceived or structural kind of dominance. In the case of subcultures that are defined in opposition to mainstream culture.

p.18 – YouTube is part of a whole ecology of openly networked platforms supporting the spread of amateur and non-commercial media production and sharing communities.

p.23 – Part of what I love about participatory culture is that it shifts the locus of control and destabilizes systems of power, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling in inherently democratizing. New sources of power, status, and control emerge and introduce new forms of inequality. This is a serious source of concern for those who have seen their positions of power undermined, particularly when they see problematic dynamics bubble up.

Chapter 2 – Youth Culture, Your Practices

Introduction by danah boyd

p.41 – While digital and mobile technologies have created more autonomous zones, they’ve also ensured that the social lives of youth are more visible to parents than ever before.
Through social media, people have the ability to see – and interact with – people who are radically different than them. This means that youth can be exposed to new ideas and new people, not just in the abstract but through direct interaction.

p.55 – Sharing and connecting – Would this dismissal of “oversharing” have applied to the consciousness-raising process of the 1960s, when women were talking together outside of the family for the first time about domestic violence, reproductive rights, sexual dissatisfaction, or their desires for greater economic independence from their husbands? These processes of sharing are fundamental to the feminist mantra “the personal is political” and were foundational for the political movements of that era. Something similar could be said about disclosures about the impact of racism on the black community that came out in the churches, beauty parlors, barber shops, and other “hush harbors.” Or we might talk about “coming out of the closet” as a longstanding tactic in the LGBT community, one which sought to call attention to sexual repression and discrimination in their lives. We deny that same level of political agency when young people are involved in strategic disclosures through social media. We don’t assume, when they’re talking about their parents, their teachers, and adult institutions that are imposed on them, that there’s an emerging political discourse there.

p.56 – Part of what makes disclosure risky in the digital era consists of the ways in which participants lose control of what happens to the disclosed information once it enters into digital circulation. Information moves from “safe spaces” where feminist consciousness-raising occurs and almost immediately enters the view of people who may be much more hostile.
One thing to keep in mind is that the tactics of disclosure can also be valuable tactics of enclosure. Years ago, I remember Angelina Jolie being interviewed on TV about her relationship with Billy Bob Thornton. The journalist was commenting on her tendency to share way too much about her life. Jolie smirked back at the journalist and said something like, “You know, the more I share, the less you ask about what’s really private.” This is a sentiment I’ve heard over and over again from bloggers and others who are quite public online. Sometimes, the more you share, the more you get to maintain true privacy.

p.57 – Now that Facebook has become multi-generational, I see young people being much more deliberate about how they craft their identities there. Of the they build alternative identities on sites like Tumblr or on Twitter as a way of creating firewalls of visibility.

Chapter 3 – Gaps and Genres in Participation

Introduction by Mimi Ito

p.67 – The Digital Divide and the Participation Gap – Throughout the 1990s, the digital divide kept getting discussed as a matter of access to technology. The solution seemed clear, if not easy to achieve: wire the classroom and libraries and most Americans would have access to networked computing. The latest figures suggest that something like 95 percent of American youth have some access to digital technologies (2012). The remaining 5 percent are left out because of deeply intractable problems, such as Native Americans living on some rural reservation that have never gotten telephone lines. Here, there are deep infrastructural problems (not to mention systemic problems) blocking access.
However successful Americans have been at increasing access to the technologies, we have not made as much ground in providing equal opportunities for participation in the kinds of communities and practices being discussed here. In this regard, there are still many being left behind for many different reasons, so there is need to move beyond talking primarily about access to technology and talk much more about access to skills, experiences, and mentorship.

p.72 – Many of us would argue that youth who have grown up under conditions of structural oppression and racism tend to have a more sophisticated political awareness than those who have not.

p.80 – The formal educational system can’t fundamentally address equity in an era of contracting opportunity, because the focus is on assessment and sorting kids into existing opportunities. Traditional educational achievement is about managing the competition for existing resources and opportunity.

Chapter 4 – Learning and Literacy

p.95 – A participatory learning environment is one that respect and values the contributions of each participant, whether teacher, student, or someone from the outside community. It’s one where members have some degree of control over their own learning process and some input into collective decision-making.
The more authoritative a classroom structure becomes, the less students feel that their own voice and their own choices matter, the less free they are to pursue their own passions and interests, and the less likely the curriculum is to reflect the realities of their lives beyond the schoolroom. A participatory classroom, on the other hand, would be one where students help to shape the curriculum, define the norms of what constitutes appropriate conduct, and feel free to share what they know with others in their own community. For those who are used to a teacher-controlled classroom, this shift towards power-sharing can be frightening.

p.97 – Howard Rheingold, in Net Smart (2012), claims that network literacy is a fundamental part of being able to manage our lives and our knowledge today in a competent manner. By that, he means both the most technical notion of how a network works and the ability to understand and meet the norms of a networked community – how to put information into circulation.
Rather, we should think about literacy as involving the capacity to engage with networked publics, to share what you write, and to receive feedback from some kind of larger community. In that sense, we were trying to move literacy from the capacity to produce and consume information to the capacity to participate in some larger social system. This expanded conception of literacy brings new kinds of ethical expectations – a greater sense of accountability for the information we produce and share with others given the impact of our communication practices on the people around us.

p.98 – Information Overload – The average digitally connected person has more access to more information today than ever before in history. It’s not remotely possible for anyone to consume all of what is available. According to YouTube statistics page, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to the site each minute. Today’s media-rich ecosystem isn’t just full of highly edited content produced by professionals or experts; everyday people produce it, sometimes for a public audience and sometimes just for their friends. People are swimming in a wide array of different types of information. Sorting out what to consume is not an easy task. This prompts a sense of “information overload.”

Chapter 5 – Commercial Culture

p.146-7 – When I think of the work that I do in engaging with industry, I think about it as policy intervention. In the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, there’s a long tradition of cultural and media studies people who are involved in policy discussion, trying to shape the cultural agendas of their government. They often make a set of choices to work with governments they disagree with. They’re not going to get everything they want, but participating in the process and putting pressure on those systems to enable things they care about is part of what it means to be a cultural scholar in those countries. In the United States, cultural policy, for the most part, is not set by government – education policy may be an important exception here. But US cultural policy, I would argue, is set by corporations. Where digital media are concerned, policy often ends up being part of the terms of service. To change that, you actually have to engage the companies. You can’t “speak truth to power” if you’re not speaking with those in power.

Chapter 6 – Democracy, Civic Engagement, and Activism

p.168 – There’s no doubt that specific experiences often trigger engagement that can lead to becoming an empowered activist, but people don’t simply wake up one day empowered. Activism is cultivated.

p.177 – It’s also important to keep in mind that, while people use technology to challenge power structures, networked technologies are complicating how power is negotiated. In Communication Power, Manuel Castells (2011) argues that power resides in those who can control the social, technical, political, economic, and information networks that are central to contemporary society. He sees technological innovation as productive and disruptive but not necessarily as the game changer that tech utopians might envision.

Chapter 7 – Reimagining Participatory Culture

p.186 – Our understanding of participatory culture should not be static. Rather, we should see it as an evolving concept that always gets read in relation to existing practices and norms. With each step towards a more participatory culture, we are also raising the stakes and upping the standards by which we evaluate our actual practices. What we might describe as a “participatory turn” is partially in response to decades-long debates about cultural and political participation and partially about rising expectation concerning the affordances of new media. Each shift in our material reality allows us to imagine new possibilities for change. We know that, historically, revolutions occur not when conditions are at their worst but, rather, when conditions are improving and when newly enfranchised groups start to develop a shared vision of what a better society might look like. The same may be the case with participatory culture. A rhetoric of participation raises expectations and often forms the basis of more active resistance to constraints that might have seemed acceptable under other circumstances.

[Travis Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the individuals authors make some wonderful ideas known, they are doing lip service to one another more than pushing their respective ideas forward. You would do better to just take the extra time to read the stand alone texts rather than this over simplification of their ideas.

[Nicole forttes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un libro interesante, pero sólo me sirvió el capítulo que habla sobre democracia, civismo y activismo. Es una referencia a las multitudes inteligentes de Rheingold (mi libro de cabecera) pero con una reflexión de una década posterior.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was incredibly boring. I only skimmed through each chapter, using quotes about the topic of participatory culture when necessary for class assignments.

[Cassey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting conversation between boyd, Ito and Jenkins.

[camila gonzalez simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer a Henry Jenkins siempre es un placer. Para pensar y repensar.

[rosana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it for my dissertation, it was good for what I needed.

[micah · Rating 2 out of 5]

THEY HAVING A MID OFF

[Dominik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conversational and accessible, almost as if the reader were on a couch overhearing a trialogue between close friends who care deeply about both the Internet and about society, especially for those left behind by cultural or economic progression. Much food for thought here, particularly for those readers who have been steeped in the Internet growing up and for whom the structural biases inherent in the technology are almost invisible.

Or, to put it another way:

Imagine if the Internet felt like a foreign land to you.

What would that be like? How would that change how you use it... how you participate in online culture?

This book addresses that, because the Internet _does_ feel like a foreign country to many, many people, and, well, if it's truly meant to be the network for everyone, that shouldn't be the case.

[Ellenup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessante cambio di paradigma

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many things to mull over after reading the book. Asks a lot of really good, insightful questions, ones that doesn't necessarily have answers but are worth thinking about. Another thing I appreciated this was the optimistic tone of the whole book. A lot of books exploring the anthropological side of technology are all doom and gloom and this book, refreshingly, was not. It is, however, very careful to enumerate that while participatory culture is good and growing, it's still not accessible to everyone.

[Mills College Library]

004.67808 J524 2016