Participation, Participatory Culture and Curation

TECH2002 Social Media ProductionWeek 8

Niall ByrneSean Farnsworth

Participatory Cultures

According to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all young people have created media content.

In the same study, it was found that roughly one- third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced. In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures.

Differentiating between distraction and opportunity

Distraction OpportunityConsuming Content Contributing

OpportunityDistraction

One important skill in media literacy is the ability to differentiate between a distraction and an opportunity. Such as, consuming content on a website, or responding with your own contribution.

This skill is vital in navigating the internet, in figuring out what areas of the web deserve your attention, and which will hold you back.

This skill is used on the fly, in split second decisions, without the user realising it.

Curation

Curation is typically the taking care of cultural collections by specialist content creators.

Curation is short for “we’re all each other’s filter”

Describes ‘the way populations of web participants can act as information finders and evaluators for each other, creating through their choices collections of links that others can use” (Rheingold 2012)

Curation is a form of participation that is open to anyone who might not want to blog, tweet or update their status but instead are happy to bookmark, tag, or like other people digital creations. Judgment, taste, depth and breadth of knowledge can be an asset, a public good, and a commodity” (Rheingold 2012)

Curation is useful, as it is the most basic form of content control. A large selection of people can vote one way or another, and decide on what content they find is relevant.

Curation

An example of user curation in action is the website reddit.com

Users vote other user’s submissions up and down, giving ‘Karma Points’.

This means the content at the top of the page, and that has the most votes, is what a large group of people have decided is entertaining/funny/relevant.

Bibliography

http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

https://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy/