Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: Ch 1

CHAPTER 1

The book starts with some strong questions about participation, exploitation, commerce, and culture. It becomes clear quickly that the chapter is written with all three authors individually participating in the content generation of the text. It proceeds as a conversation might, each referring to the other. They spend a while discussing Jenkins's coined term "participatory culture." The example about the samba schools is particularly relevant. It seems Jenkins is the senior guy here, as Ito read his works as a grad student and boyd had him as a professor in grad school.

I agree with Jenkins that digital cultures are not necessarily "oppositional or resistant."

Even with very open, participatory cultures with low barriers to entry, people find ways for maintaining status and distinction.

Human nature, no?

boyd brings up the question of whether technology really offers participation for everyone, and then she decides it doesn't, and talks about agency, skills, connections, and status, among other traits. Henry agrees that while there are still obstacles, we are shifting towards more participation. danah says:

New sources of power, status, and control emerge and introduce new forms of inequality.

This was my point when we discussed the Jim Gray case in class. It's a matter of access. A student replied saying in sum that it's human nature to stick together, so the programmers stuck together to help their own. When that kind of thing happens by race or by class, hmmm, not so easy to accept anymore, is it? But when it's a group of computer programmers and scientists? New forms of inequality emerge. Some may call it human nature and others may call it crowdsourcing; boyd and I see possible problems that cannot be overlooked. I'm not suggesting that any of it should be stopped or regulated. Just saying it should be noticed and acknowledged.

I'd argue that participatory culture enables -- if not empowers -- disturbing practices alongside positive ones. I believe in participatory culture because of its potential, and I don't want to see negative outcomes or fears being used to justify centralized control or censorship -- but nor do I want the hopeful vision to gloss over or otherwise ignore the darker side of things.

boyd opens the discussion of individualism and addresses a question I used to use in classroom discussion at Essex. Because of both changes in technology and individual smart devices, are we able now to see, read, and listen to only things that support our own worldview? boyd responds to my question:

I want to believe that networks result in healthier communities, but I also think that they promote a form of egocentrism.

Andrew Sullivan warns in his essay "We Have Retreated into the iWorld" that society is actually becoming less connected and  more egocentric because we can choose at all times what to pay attention to. And that people will usually pay attention to what already interests them, what doesn't challenge them. He says, "Americans are beginning to narrow their lives."

You get your news from your favorite blogs, the ones that won't challenge your view of the world. You tune in to a satellite radio service that also aims directly at a small market -- for new age fanatics, liberal talk, or Christian rock. Television is all cable. Culture is all subculture....Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves--where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished.

boyd feels that most technology platforms are about enabling individual expression, and can then be used for collective action. Ito argues that opposing the individual and the collective is a Western idea, and Jenkins ends the chapter by advocating for a more participatory culture even though there is still much we "do not understand very well about dealing with the diversity of a networked culture."