Book Review: History of Participatory Media: Politics and Publics, 1750–2000

Abstract

History of Participatory Media: Politics and Publics, 1750-2000. Anders Ekstrom, Solveig Julich, Frans Lundgren, and Per Wisselgren, eds. New York: Routledge, 2010. 192 pp. $125.00 hbk.This unusual edited collection may be a stronger contributor to our understanding of concepts of public participation than of media or of what media scholarship, perhaps too simplistically, tends to regard as media. The editors critique mainstream media history's neglect of a media although most of chapters correspond with periods in which mainstream media were well established. A frontal effort to outline media prehistories would likely cover a much broader range of phenomena.The volume is strongly influenced by Swedish affiliations of most, if not all, of its contributors. Several chapters deal with exhibitions or use of exhibitions by missionaries. The collection is a valuable historical resource for interrogation of concepts of audience activity and passivity, and of well-intended, engineered participatory strategies or codes of conduct, sometimes amounting to experiments, that vary according to sociotechnical arrangements that facilitate them.The editors-all of whom teach at Swedish universities-provide predictable references to Habermasian theory in their introduction, but relevance of Habermas to succeeding chapters is slight to nonexistent. Actual references to Habermas are sparse. Habermas was principally concerned with mainstream media inasmuch as he was concerned with media at all, and he argued that industrialization of media reduced their capacity as authentically participatory, communicative forums. Patrik Lundell's chapter here on Swedish newspapers in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seems, if anything, to reinforce that view. I doubt that Habermasian scholars would find public sphere theory significantly challenged by this volume, although they might be persuaded by editors' argument that dualism of empowermentversus- incorporation models of relationship between media and publics is better substituted by a complementary view.Among chapters on traditional media is Lundell's, which notes not just extent of participation in early Swedish press but also idea of participation as a civic duty. He traces a trend from truth-seeking conversation within pages of local monopoly papers to competitive debate between newspapers, or rather between newspaper editors. In his chapter, coeditor Per Wisselgren examines reality television as an interaction among reality, participation, and social experiment. Acknowledging an extensive prehistory, he refers to Peter Weir's film The Truman Show, which presciently captured tendencies toward the changing relationships between private and public, surveillance and visuality, authenticity and performativity . . . [and] social experiment, while questioning whether media participation can be meaningfully equated with political citizenship. One of Sweden's first reality TV shows, Expedition Robinson, helped introduce a conscious hybridization of genres and changed relationship among producers, viewers, and participants. For viewers, watching was about reflecting on and learning about self, more than it was about regarding objectified people. The series' value as experiment lay in its combination of popular culture, social science, and naturalized social surveillance.In his chapter, Bodil Axelsson examines and contrasts two websites, homepage of Swedish Museum of National Antiquities and online discussion forum Historical Worlds. …