Social media

As every big thing, social media is being analyzed under a microscope in some research fields. There are articles, books, debate on the topic and as with everything new and interesting, opinions fall all the time. An interesting dispute, if you let me call it that way, is the one which appears when it comes to the term participatory culture and what is it connection to social media. The person who introduces this concept, or at least made it popular, was Henry Jenkins, and in this post we are going to take a look at what exactly is this phenomenon and why some researchers do not entirely agree with him.

Firstly, what is participatory culture? The way Fuchs (2014) explains it is “participatory culture us a term that is often used for designing the involvement of users, audiences, consumers and fans in the creation of culture and content”. Basically, it is a process in which the individuals do not solely act as receivers of something, in this case consumers, but also participate in the act of decision making. This model is often opposed to the mass media and broadcasting model and has 5 characteristics: low barriers to expression; support for creating and sharing; some type of mentorship; belief from the members that their contribution matters, and members who feel some degree of social connection (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel Clinton and Robison, 2009). Additionally, it should be noted that participatory culture comes as a concept from participatory democracy, which basically is the democracy in its finest form: a political situation in which the people are those who have the responsibility of making the decisions. Participatory as a term comes from politics, and thus, it will be unfair not to address this here, which is also one of the first critics of Fuchs: the fact that the connection between those two concepts often is not made clear. By ignoring the aspects from participatory democracy, Jenkins also ignores the important question of ownership, and pays attention only to the agent of decision making.

Continuing with these critics addressed by Fuchs, he argues that the statement by Jenkins that the participatory culture is relative, just because he reckons that we will never be able to live in a society where every single person can fully participate, does not have theoretical grounds. This is the case because “participation is a universal political demand, not a relative category” (Fuchs, 2014). Because of this discrepancies, I get the impression that Fuchs is not entirely happy with the choice of words of his colleague Jenkins.  The third problem, which appears in the text, again connected to the political meaning of the word is the fact that in Jenkins’s explanations, the Internet does not play an important part. However, from the opinion of Fuchs we can see that he thinks that more attention should be paid to the implications of participatory culture to the Internet.

Another interesting comment is the fact that Jenkins idealizes the internet communities, which he calls fans. On the one hand side, he gives them more importance and influence than actually they have. According to the research of Findahl (2012) only 1% of the Swedish population – rather advanced in technological aspects society – writes blog posts on a daily basis. On the other hand, he does not address anywhere the problems fan media can have, such as different negative effects, which those can cause. In a way, Jenkins only talks and restricts his views to the forums/fan websites, which he finds interesting.

An interesting perspective is also provided by Van Dijck and Nieborg (2009) in their research “Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos”. In a sense, they support Jenkins’s view that the internet culture takes the consumers as decision makers as well, in a way almost exploiting them to share their message. At the same time the two authors try to remain objective, addressing at the same time some of the problems, which Fuchs talks about 5 years later. For instance, one of his arguments is regarding the corporations which basically are the ones which make the most profit out of the Internet shareable content. Additionally, the address the problem of how different websites, such as Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, as well as Snapchat.

Moreover, the talk about the fan websites, which was a big critique of Fuchs’s. Yes, they do agree that people generate content which is really spreadable, but they also acknowledge the fact that only 13% of the users actually create the content which is shared among the others.

As you can see for yourself, there is a lot of contradiction when it comes to social media and it values. Nevertheless, I do not think that this is something bad: the bigger the discussion, the more truths and opinions are going to be heard, thus leading to even more contradictions. Some may call it vicious cycle; I will call it virtuous cycle.

 

References:

Fuchs, C. (2014) Social Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage. (chapter 3)

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R. Weigel, M., Clinton, K., and Robison, A.J. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

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.

 

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