Critical Perspectives on Social Media
Participatory culture is, according to Jenkins: “A culture in which fans and other consumers are invited to actively participate in the creation and circulation of new content.”(Fuchs, 2014, p.54). This thus means that, according to Jenkins, consumers of social media are simultaneously encouraged to become producers of content which gives them more agency in media production. He exemplifies this dual role of users often by fan culture since they consume existing media text but furthermore write alternative plots to series or create content related art. This participatory culture model is often contrasted with the mass media model which is typical for television since there is only one sender and numerous receivers (Fuchs, 2014,p.53). Jenkins stresses, next to great support for producing and sharing creations, that in participatory culture there is little obstruction to creative expressions and civic engagement and a general feeling by users that their creations matter (p.54).
However, Fuchs is not as utopian about participatory culture as Jenkins is. He asserts that Jenkins reduces participation to a cultural notion and ignores the broader notion of participatory democracy which focuses on political, economic and cultural dimensions. Fuchs (2014) states that due to Jenkins’ focus on participatory culture he ignores issues about “the ownership of platforms, collective decision-making profit, class and the distribution of material benefits” (p.55).
One of Fuchs’ criticisms is that Jenkins fails to mention ownership but solely focuses on collaborating and sharing in participatory cultures. However, in reality both the users and the employers at internet corporations, such as Facebook, do not participate in the economic decisions of these companies and are excluded from it. According to Fuchs this leads to a reduced version of media participation since an actual participatory media democracy must be an ownership democracy. This is the case since participation itself means that “ humans have the right and reality to be part of the decisions and to govern and control the structures that affect them” (p.57).
Fuchs (2014) furthermore criticizes the fact that Jenkins ignores the negative aspects of online communities because he idealizes online fan culture but does not include that participatory culture can also be used to facilitate, for instance, a fascist community since Jenkins only picks examples that portray progressive fan cultures (p.60).
Another criticism that was mentioned was that Jenkins argues that participatory cultures aids cultural diversity, but he fails to notice that not everyone has the same strength of voice since large media companies can buy their visibility.
Finally, Fuchs (2014) mentions that Jenkins fails to include contemporary political economy in his idea of participatory culture since he forgets topics as ownership of social media corporations and that their users are being exploited in order to obtain capital (p.63). The latter is namely argued in the digital labour debate that social media corporations capitalize on their consumers social desire since they do not get any money for their creations from which the corporation benefits. Jenkins, contrarily, states that this free labour may be “meaningful and rewarding” and thus argues that it is alright that users are being exploited if they gain social benefits.
Fuchs’ criticism is in line with the earlier criticism by van Dijck and Nieborg (2009). In their article they critically reflect on Web 2.0 business manifestos and explain their similarities with academic cultural theory books focusing, just as Fuchs, on Jenkins to examine the discourse of participatory culture. Van Dijck and Nieborg (2009) explain that, just as Jenkins, Web 2.0 business manifestos such as ‘We-Think’ and Wikinomics focus on the value creation which shifts from company-centric production to active co-creation by users and introduce new hybrid terms such as produsage for this new active role of users (p.863).
Just as Fuchs, the authors have various critical remarks on this utopian perspective on participatory culture. They, for instance, state that the business manifestos, as well as Jenkins, always portray users as creators which all have extraordinary abilities regarding contributory agility. However, van Dijck and Nieborg (2009) point out that only 13 percent of the users are creating content.
Furthermore do they mention, just as Fuchs, that these manifestos, as well as Jenkins, forget the political economic aspects of online communities. Van Dijck and Nieborg also focus on the digital labour debate and criticise the manifestos for justifying free labour since the manifestos describe the co-creating communities as “groups of self-selecting individuals who choose to be working on communal projects” (p.864).
The authors are furthermore in line with Fuchs criticism since they critic the fact that both the manifestos as well as Jenkins neglect the technical details of how sites such as Facebook and Google make their profit. Their hailed co-creation namely does not give the users any power regarding the means of production. Their content is simply being used to be sold to advertisers since the users’ datastream tells a lot about their preferences. Companies as Facebook thus make profit on the social behaviour of users clicking on their sites and their creativity is simply a means for the corporation’s information capitalism.
References:
Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media: a critical introduction. London: Sage.
Van Dijck, J., & Nieborg, D. (2009). Wikinomics and its Discontents: A Critical Analysis of Web 2.0 Business Manifestos. New Media & Society, 11(5), 855-874.