—watch videos: Jenk­ins, “What is Par­tic­i­pa­tory Cul­ture?” (1:37)
&
Overview (22:00) bot­tom of page

 

optional read­ing: Jenk­ins: “Why Par­tic­i­pa­tory Cul­ture Is Not Web 2.0: Some Basic Distinctions”

 

Henry Jenk­ins et al write in Con­fronting the Chal­lenges of Par­tic­i­pa­tory Cul­ture (2009)

For the moment, let’s define par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­ture as one with

1. rel­a­tively low bar­ri­ers to artis­tic expres­sion and civic engagement,

2. strong sup­port for cre­at­ing and shar­ing cre­ations with others,

3. some type of infor­mal men­tor­ship whereby what is known by the most expe­ri­enced is passed along to novices,

4. mem­bers who believe that their con­tri­bu­tions mat­ter, and

5. mem­bers who 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 is emerg­ing as the cul­ture absorbs and responds to the explo­sion of new media tech­nolo­gies that make it pos­si­ble for aver­age con­sumers to archive, anno­tate, appro­pri­ate, and recir­cu­late media con­tent in pow­er­ful new ways.”  (Con­fronting the Chal­lenges p.8)

Wikipedia entry

 

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Con­fronting the Chal­lenges: 

“Our goals should be to encour­age youths to develop the skills, knowl­edge, eth­i­cal frame­works, and self-confidence needed to be full par­tic­i­pants in con­tem­po­rary cul­ture.  Many young peo­ple are already part of this process through

Affil­i­a­tions  Mem­ber­ships, for­mal and infor­mal, in online com­mu­ni­ties cen­tered around var­i­ous forms of media, such as Friend­ster, Face­book, MySpace, mes­sage boards, metagam­ing, or game clans.

Expres­sions  Pro­duc­ing new cre­ative forms, such as dig­i­tal sam­pling, skin­ning and mod­ding, fan videos, fan fic­tion, zines, or mash-ups.

Col­lab­o­ra­tive problem-solving  Work­ing together in teams—formal and informal—to com­plete tasks and develop new knowl­edge, such as through Wikipedia, alter­na­tive real­ity gam­ing, or spoiling.

Cir­cu­la­tions  Shap­ing the flow of media, such as pod­cast­ing or blogging.”

Affin­ity Spaces

“Many have argued that these new par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­tures rep­re­sent ideal learn­ing envi­ron­ments. James Gee calls such infor­mal learn­ing cul­tures ‘affin­ity spaces’, and explores why peo­ple learn more, par­tic­i­pate more actively, and engage more deeply with pop­u­lar cul­ture than they do with the con­tents of their textbooks.”

 

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Net­worked Cul­ture: Social Activ­ity + Media Forms

 

*con­sider shift(s) from “con­sumer” (pas­sive) to “spreader” (active) — to “pro­ducer” (cre­ative)?
(bet­ter terms for these roles?)

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Geof­frey Carter and Sarah Arroyo Encul­tur­a­tion 2010:

 

Four “Series” (clus­ter types) of schol­ar­ship “inves­ti­gat­ing new cul­tural prac­tices and infra­struc­tures appear­ing as a result of the preva­lence of the Tube and the par­tic­i­pa­tory com­mu­ni­ties it makes possible”:

Archive. Infra­struc­ture. Pro­duc­tion. Performance.

 

“Accord­ing to Henry Jenk­ins, the rise of dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy is chal­leng­ing our tra­di­tional notions of cre­ation, cura­tion, and com­mu­nity. YouTube, for exam­ple, is more than just an archive of indi­vid­ual home movies; it is also a medium that mobi­lizes a diverse range of video pro­duc­tion meth­ods that oper­ate along­side a diverse range of cul­tural resources.”
—orig­i­nal jour­nal issue CFP (read for ideas)

 

also see: “Nine Propo­si­tions Towards a Cul­tural The­ory of YouTube” By Henry Jenk­ins (May 28, 2007)

 

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Aaron Del­wiche and Jen­nifer Jacobs Hen­der­son, The Par­tic­i­pa­tory Cul­tures Hand­book (2012):

 

“we would now sug­gest there are three pri­mary kinds of par­tic­i­pa­tory cultures: 

                            con­sen­sus cul­tures, cre­ative cul­tures, and dis­cus­sion cul­tures.”   —quoted in interview

 

1. The most tra­di­tion­ally “pro­duc­tive” par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­tures are often con­sen­sus cul­tures, or agreement-based.  They fre­quently reside in the realm of “work” where there is a goal or out­come to be met.  Some­thing must be com­pleted or solved or fixed.  These could eas­ily be sub­di­vided into expert cul­tures where peo­ple with spe­cial­ized knowl­edge join together to lever­age the power of col­lec­tive intel­li­gence and demo­c­ra­tic cul­tures where “aver­age cit­i­zens” do the same thing.

 

2. “Cre­ative cul­tures are those in which par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to cre­ate, share, and com­ment all within a safe and sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment.  Remix cul­tures live in this space, as do art and writ­ing cul­tures.  The cre­ative por­tion of fan cul­tures reside here – the fan fic­tion and fan-art sub-sites, for exam­ple.  In these spaces, par­tic­i­pants are pas­sion­ate about their cre­ativ­ity and the top­ics that spur those pas­sions.  They are often lif­ers, who join a cul­ture and stick with it”

 

3. Dis­cus­sion cul­tures are ones where a topic rather than an out­come is at the heart of par­tic­i­pa­tion.  Sports fan­doms, news sites, and food blogs all fall within the realm of dis­cus­sion cul­tures.  Here, we often see more dis­agree­ment than sup­port with par­tic­i­pants engag­ing in some­times heated, often real-time, exchanges on top­ics of per­sonal and pro­fes­sional inter­est.  Par­tic­i­pants in dis­cus­sion cul­tures are not always long-time res­i­dents; they often roam from site to site as they chase the topic.

 

** check out the chap­ters of The Par­tic­i­pa­tory Cul­tures Hand­book  for exam­ples 
           (to get bet­ter idea of using the cat­e­gories, espe­cially Cre­ative Cultures)

—like­wise, ToC of DIY Media: Cre­at­ing, Shar­ing and Learn­ing with New Tech­nolo­gies (2010)

 

 I have always felt uncom­fort­able with the phrase, “Do It Your­self,” to label the prac­tices described in this book. “Do It Your­self” is too easy to assim­i­late back into some vague and com­fort­able notion of “per­sonal expres­sion” or “indi­vid­ual voice” that Amer­i­cans can assim­i­late into long-standing beliefs in “rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism” and “self-reliance.” Yet, what may be rad­i­cal about the DIY ethos is that learn­ing relies on these mutual sup­port net­works, cre­ativ­ity is under­stood as a trait of com­mu­ni­ties, and expres­sion occurs through col­lab­o­ra­tion. Given these cir­cum­stances, phrases like “Do It Our­selves” or “Do It Together” bet­ter cap­ture col­lec­tive enter­prises within net­worked publics. This is why I am drawn towards con­cepts such as “par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­ture,” (Jenk­ins et a, 2009) “Affin­ity Spaces,” (Gee, 2007) “Gen­res of Par­tic­i­pa­tion,” (Ito et al, 2009) “net­worked publics,” (Var­nelis, 2008) “Col­lec­tive Intel­li­gence,” (Levy, 1999) or “Com­mu­ni­ties of Prac­tice,” (Lave and Wenger, 1991). 
—Jenk­ins,  ”…not Web 2.0″ blog post (2009)