4

TECH2002 Studies in Digital TechnologyTaking Parts: Web 2.0 and Participatory Media Culture

Andrew Clay

What do people do within Flickr?• ‘People are finding all these different ways to

interact with each other through photography’ (Stuart Butterfield, in Koman (2005))

squared circle group

6, 023 members

75, 458 photos

http://www.flickr.com/groups/circle/

Squared circle

‘Taking parts’• ‘Taking parts’ – assuming roles• What roles are we invited by the media to fulfil?• What do we do with media as part of social life?• Do we do different things with the new social

media of Web 2.0?• What are we producing when we actively

consume the online media that is freely provided for us?

Participate

• To take part• To share something• To involve oneself• To have a hand in• To be involved with others• New Media?• From audience to user (user-generated content,

online games, virtual worlds, social networks, mobile phones)

Sociability• Interaction• Relating to others in

circumstances of technologically mediated communication

• Broadcasting – sociability is performed for distant viewers and listeners for the purpose of relaxation and company (Scannell, 1996)

• Telephone and internet – being sociable is produced by the communication of the participants

Media technology and sociability

• Where television provides one possible form of interaction, the Web provides that form along with several other forms of communication including voice and text. The Web has integrated the technology of telecommunications networks, the patterns of computing, the forms of newspapers, radio, film and television into a multimedia network. Moreover, the networked Web’s other clear separation from older media networks is its changeability. The continuous online nature of the Web makes it fit into the definition of new media. It is a much more transformable entity than the older media that have a quality of static

products/objects associated with their content. Older media tend to produce the distinct commodity; while new media networks such as the Web present a service of a continuously updating commodity. (Burnett and Marshall, 2003, pp.40-41).

Sociability

‘collaboratively filtered music’

We produce ourselves

• ‘We might say that not only are prior media the content of the Internet, but so too is the human user who, unlike the consumer of other mass media, creates content online with almost every use’.

(Levinson, 1999, p.39)

Participatory Media Cultures

• ‘A more participatory media culture has always been one of the great promises of new media...The scope for new media to be more participatory arose from its apparent structural differences from the forms of mass communication that had been predominant media models in 20th-century societies’ (Flew 2008, p.106)

DIY Media Production

• Online communication media disrupt the traditional organization of mass communication media

• Online communication media have the potential to allow more people than ever before to produce, share and distribute media

Henry Jenkins on Participatory Media• Jenkins sees the emergence of participatory

social media as a development of fan culture where audiences are active consumers

• As media converges on the internet, Jenkins sees cultural media activity being encouraged to become participatory

• ‘Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other consumers. The promises of this new media environment raise expectations of a freer flow of ideas and content. Inspired by those ideals, consumers are fighting for the right to participate more fully in their culture’ (Jenkins 2006, p.18).

media/theory (Moores, 2005)• structuration, routines, traditions, dailiness, seriality, scheduling,

ordinariness, hourliness, lifetime, eventfulness• globalisation, stretching, medium, shrinking, unevenness, network, flow,

empires, permeability, virtuality• typology, mix, intimacy, grief, pathologisation, sociability,

conversationalisation, face, friendliness, doubling• connotation, multiaccentuality, decoding, export, acts, context,

technologies, tastes, fallacy, authentication

• trust, inattention, reflexivity, risk, labour, performativity, MUDding, community, diasporas, dwellings

Community

• Group identity, collective identity• Similarity – commonalities• Difference – boundaries (not necessarily

physical – imagined, symbolic belonging)• Traditional community – based on place or

being like-minded

Howard Rheingold, DMU’s IOCT Visiting Professor

http://www.rheingold.com

Virtual communities• ‘Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge

from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace’. (Rheingold, 1993, p.5).

• Like-minded people form virtual communities regardless of where they are located in the physical world

• Togetherness beyond face-to-face contact

•Virtual communities are‘interpersonal social networks, most of them based on weak ties, highly diversified and specialized…They transcend distance…Cyberlinks provide the opportunity of social links for people who, otherwise, will live more limited social lives, because their ties are increasingly spatially dispersed’

(Castells, 2000, p.389)

From virtual communities to online social networks?• Virtual community

– a community (group) that communicates or interacts online

• Online social network– online social structures where people are

interconnected using network tools and software, possibly forming groups or communities

Community

• The notion of community has been re-conceptualized not in terms of the physical proximity of participants, but with regard to social networks. It has been recognized that relationships of a communal nature have long existed beyond the limits of immediate locality

Network

• ‘A network is a connection between at least three elements, points or units. (A connection between two elements is called a relation). This is the most abstract definition possible. It can be used for physical networks, social networks and media networks’. (Van Dijk, 1999, p.28)

• A set of interconnected nodes

Network society

• ‘The unique element of the network society is that there is an increased traffic and trade beyond goods into the movement of information itself. The Web both services these flows and is one of the key representations of the network society’ (Burnett and Marshall, 2003, p.35).

Castells on ‘network society’• Manuel Castells• sociologist, popularised the term ‘network society’ in the late

1990s.• ‘When Castells uses the notion of the network society, he is

implying something that envelops areas beyond even the nation state to express something truly global in its reach and impact’ (Burnett and Marshall, 2003, p.41)

• ‘space of flows’• The ‘local’ becomes portable and is no longer attached to specific

places or settings, but develops unevenly around hubs and nodes of real places

• ‘timeless time’• Time becomes more flexible, and capable of being processed for

those with access to the technology

Network society• ‘networked individualism’• Individuals build networks offline and online based

on their interests, values, affinities, and projects• This is enhanced by new technologies• Networks become more dominant forms of

‘individualized interaction’• Like virtual communities, social networks are just

extensions of offline life – there is not a discrete virtual existence

Online social networks?• ‘A social network service focuses on the building and

verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software’

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service)

Collective intelligence

• ‘Consumption has become a collective process…None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills’ (Jenkins 2006 p.4).

Collaborate

• To work together• Joint effort• Co-operation• Achievement of common goals• Media• (social tools such as wikis, social networks,

virtual worlds, online games, mobile phones)

Participatory culture• ‘the work—and play—spectators perform in the

new media system. The term, participatory culture, contrasts with older notions of passive media spectatorship. Rather than talking about media producers and consumers as occupying separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands’ (Jenkins 2006 p.3)

Web 2.0 and Visual Culture?

• Facebook photos• Media sharing – Flickr and

YouTube• Slideshow sites such as

Slideshare• Massively Multiplayer Online

Games (MMOGs)• Multimedia publishing• Virtual worlds such as Second

Life• Blogging – photoblogs and

video blogs

Digital Visual Media Culture

• The digitization of lens-based media such as video and photography, and the development of videogames, in combination with computerization and online communication media has greatly extended the ability to participate in visual media culture.

Active consumption or media production?• Mass communication – professional

organization creates a separation between creators and receivers of media, between producers and consumers

• Mass communication allows active consumption such as the activities of fan culture or the copying, sharing, and playlisting of recorded music

Active consumption or media production?• So what about the social media of Web 2.0?• Are the users of social media active consumers

or media producers or both?• Participatory media culture allows people to

interact, to form groups and be connected in networks as both consumers of tools and services provided by others and producers of media for other users

• Leisure becomes a form of (pleasurable) work?

BibliographyBurnett, R. and Marshall, P. D. (2003) Web Theory: An Introduction, London and New

York, Routledge.Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society (2nd Edition), Oxford, Blackwell.

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture, New York and London, New York University Press.

Lister, M. et al. (2003) New Media: A Critical Introduction, London and New York, Routledge.

Levinson, P. (1999) Digital McLuhan, London, Routledge.

Scanell, P. (1996) Radio, Television and Modern Life, Oxford, Blackwell.

Tomlinson, J (1999) Globalisation and Culture, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.