Participatory media
Encyclopedia
Participatory media include (but are not limited to) community media
, blogs, wiki
s, RSS
, tagging
and social bookmarking
, music-photo-video sharing, mashups
, podcast
s, participatory video
projects and videoblogs. These distinctly different media share three common, interrelated characteristics:
Full-fledged participatory news sites include NowPublic
, OhmyNews
, DigitalJournal.com
and GroundReport
.
With participatory media, the boundaries between audiences and creators become blurred and often invisible. In the words of David Sifry, the founder of Technorati
, a search engine for blogs, one-to-many “lectures” (ie, from media companies to their audiences) are transformed into “conversations” among “the people formerly known as the audience”. This changes the tone of public discussions. The mainstream media, says David Weinberger
, a blogger, author and fellow at Harvard University
's Berkman Centre, “don't get how subversive it is to take institutions and turn them into conversations”. That is because institutions are closed, assume a hierarchy and have trouble admitting fallibility, he says, whereas conversations are open-ended, assume equality and eagerly concede fallibility.
Some proposed that journalism can be more “participatory” because the World Wide Web has evolved from “read-only” to “read-write”. In other words, in the past only a small proportion of people had the means (in terms of time, money, and skills) to create content that could reach large audiences. Now the gap between the resources and skills needed to consume online content versus the means necessary to produce it have narrowed significantly to the point that nearly anyone with a web-connected device can create media. As Dan Gillmor
, founder of the Center for Citizen Media declared in his 2004 book We the Media
, journalism is evolving from a lecture into a conversation. He also points out that new interactive forms of media have blurred the distinction between producers of news and their audience. In fact, some view the term “audience” to be obsolete in the new world of interactive participatory media. New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen
refers to them as “the people formerly known as the audience.” In “We Media”, a treatise on participatory journalism, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis suggest that the “audience” should be re-named “participants”.
Some even proposed that "all mass media should be abandoned", extending upon one of the four main arguments given by Jerry Mander
in his case against television: Corporate domination of television used to mould humans for a commercial environment, and all mass media involve centralised power. Blogger Robin Good wrote, "With participatory media instead of mass media, governments and corporations would be far less able to control information and maintain their legitimacy... To bring about true participatory media (and society), it is also necessary to bring about participatory alternatives to present economic and political structures... In order for withdrawal from using the mass media to become more popular, participatory media must become more attractive: cheaper, more accessible, more fun, more relevant. In such an atmosphere, nonviolent action campaigns against the mass media and in support of participatory media become more feasible."
Although 'participatory media' has been viewed uncritically by many writers, others, such as Daniel Palmer, have argued that media participation must also "be understood in relation to defining characteristics of contemporary capitalism – namely its user-focused, customised and individuated orientation."
Community media
Community media is any form of media that is created and controlled by a community, either a geographic community or a community of identity or interest. Community media is separate from commercial media, state run media, or public broadcasting. The fundamental premise is to engage those groups...
, blogs, wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s, RSS
RSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
, tagging
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
and social bookmarking
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
, music-photo-video sharing, mashups
Mashup (music)
A mashup or bootleg is a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another...
, podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
s, participatory video
Participatory video
Participatory video is a form of participatory media in which a group or community creates their own film. The idea behind this is that making a video is easy and accessible, and is a great way of bringing people together to explore issues, voice concerns or simply to be creative and tell stories...
projects and videoblogs. These distinctly different media share three common, interrelated characteristics:
- Many-to-manyMany-to-manyMany-to-many is a term that describes a communication paradigm and an associated media form. It is the third of three major Internet computing paradigms...
mediaMedia (communication)In communications, media are the storage and transmission channels or tools used to store and deliver information or data...
now make it possible for every person connected to the network to broadcast and receive textWritten languageA written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
, imageImageAn image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
s, audioSoundSound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
, videoVideoVideo is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
, software, dataDataThe term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
, discussions, transactionsTransaction processingIn computer science, transaction processing is information processing that is divided into individual, indivisible operations, called transactions. Each transaction must succeed or fail as a complete unit; it cannot remain in an intermediate state...
, computations, tagsTag (metadata)In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
, or linksHyperlinkIn computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
to and from every other person. The asymmetry between broadcaster and audience that was dictated by the structure of pre-digital technologies dictated has changed radically. This is a technical-structural characteristic.
- Participatory media are social mediaSocial mediaThe term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
whose value and power derives from the active participation of many peopleMemeA meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
. This is a psychological and social characteristic. One example is StumbleUponStumbleUponStumbleUpon is a discovery engine that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.Toolbar versions exist for...
.
- Social networks, when amplified by information and communication networks, enable broader, faster, and lower cost coordination of activities. This is an economic and political characteristic.
Full-fledged participatory news sites include NowPublic
NowPublic
NowPublic is a user-generated social news website. The company is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and was founded by Michael Tippett, Leonard Brody and Michael E. Meyers in 2005. On Sept. 2, 2009 the company was acquired by Clarity Digital Group, LLC, wholly owned by The Anschutz...
, OhmyNews
OhmyNews
OhmyNews is a South Korean online newspaper website with the motto "Every Citizen is a Reporter". It was founded by Oh Yeon Ho on February 22, 2000....
, DigitalJournal.com
DigitalJournal.com
DigitalJournal.com is an international news network where thousands of citizen reporters contribute from 140 countries around the world....
and GroundReport
GroundReport
GroundReport is a global news platform that enables anyone to submit original news and opinion for publication to an international audience. With a mission to 'democratize the media,' GroundReport's contributors report from the scene of world events to add local, firsthand insight to international...
.
With participatory media, the boundaries between audiences and creators become blurred and often invisible. In the words of David Sifry, the founder of Technorati
Technorati
Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. By June 2008, Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media...
, a search engine for blogs, one-to-many “lectures” (ie, from media companies to their audiences) are transformed into “conversations” among “the people formerly known as the audience”. This changes the tone of public discussions. The mainstream media, says David Weinberger
David Weinberger
David Weinberger is an American technologist, professional speaker, and commentator, probably best known as co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto David Weinberger (born 1950 in New York) is an American technologist, professional speaker, and commentator, probably best known as co-author of the...
, a blogger, author and fellow at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's Berkman Centre, “don't get how subversive it is to take institutions and turn them into conversations”. That is because institutions are closed, assume a hierarchy and have trouble admitting fallibility, he says, whereas conversations are open-ended, assume equality and eagerly concede fallibility.
Some proposed that journalism can be more “participatory” because the World Wide Web has evolved from “read-only” to “read-write”. In other words, in the past only a small proportion of people had the means (in terms of time, money, and skills) to create content that could reach large audiences. Now the gap between the resources and skills needed to consume online content versus the means necessary to produce it have narrowed significantly to the point that nearly anyone with a web-connected device can create media. As Dan Gillmor
Dan Gillmor
Dan Gillmor is a noted American technology writer and columnist. He is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard...
, founder of the Center for Citizen Media declared in his 2004 book We the Media
We the Media
We the Media is a book written by Dan Gillmor, published in 2004 by O'Reilly . It is also available for free online, under a Creative Commons license....
, journalism is evolving from a lecture into a conversation. He also points out that new interactive forms of media have blurred the distinction between producers of news and their audience. In fact, some view the term “audience” to be obsolete in the new world of interactive participatory media. New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen
Jay Rosen
Jay Rosen is a media critic, a writer, and a professor of journalism at New York University.Rosen has been on the journalism faculty at New York University since 1986; from 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department.He has been one of the earliest advocates and supporters of citizen...
refers to them as “the people formerly known as the audience.” In “We Media”, a treatise on participatory journalism, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis suggest that the “audience” should be re-named “participants”.
Some even proposed that "all mass media should be abandoned", extending upon one of the four main arguments given by Jerry Mander
Jerry Mander
Jerold Irwin "Jerry" Mander is an American activist and author, best known for his 1977 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television...
in his case against television: Corporate domination of television used to mould humans for a commercial environment, and all mass media involve centralised power. Blogger Robin Good wrote, "With participatory media instead of mass media, governments and corporations would be far less able to control information and maintain their legitimacy... To bring about true participatory media (and society), it is also necessary to bring about participatory alternatives to present economic and political structures... In order for withdrawal from using the mass media to become more popular, participatory media must become more attractive: cheaper, more accessible, more fun, more relevant. In such an atmosphere, nonviolent action campaigns against the mass media and in support of participatory media become more feasible."
Although 'participatory media' has been viewed uncritically by many writers, others, such as Daniel Palmer, have argued that media participation must also "be understood in relation to defining characteristics of contemporary capitalism – namely its user-focused, customised and individuated orientation."
Etymology
- The phrase Participatory Media was first used publicly by Greg Ruggiero and later popularized by blog researcher Rebecca Blood and others, such as Furukawa. In April 2006, journalist and media researcher Jim McClellan used the phrase Personal Participatory Media, which may distinguish between objective social media (scientific, corporate, pure information) and subjective/personal social media (value-laden, opinion, religious).
External links
- The SocialTechnographic Ladder: A graphic tool developed by Forrester to indicate the six levels of participation among social media users.
- Participatory Media Literacy: A site developed by media theorist Howard Rheingold on the pedagogical implications and uses of participatory media.
- Intro to Online Participatory Media: Zones of Emergency - Networks, Tactics, Breakdown: A public course taught by Amber Frid-Jimenez and Dan Van Roekel at MIT.
- Networked Cultures and Participatory Media: Media City: A course taught by Amber Frid-Jimenez at MIT.
- Participatory Media/Collective Action, Class taught by Xiao QiangXiao QiangXiao Qiang is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bi-lingual China news website, and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley...
and Howard RheingoldHoward Rheingold-See also:* Collective intelligence* Information society* The WELL* Virtual community-External links:***** at TED conference** a 48MB Quicktime movie, hosted by the Internet Archive...
, School of Information, University of California at Berkeley. - Webpublishing in Open Participatory Environments: a 6-week workshop given by Barbara Dieu, Patricia Glogowski, Graham Stanley, Nick Noakes and Scott Lockman for the Electronic Village Online 2007 Session.
- Social Media in ELT: a 6-week workshop given by Barbara Dieu, Rudolf Ammann, Illya Arnet_Clark, Patricia Glogowski, Jennifer Verschoor for the Electronic Village Online 2008 Session.
- Translation and Participatory Media: Experiences from Global Voices article by Chris Salzberg.
- Inclusion Through Media: First hand accounts and critical analysis of work across the Inclusion Through Media prgramme edited by Tony Dowmunt, Mark Dunford and Nicole van Hemert.