Online Participatory Culture Research Articles

The silent public: reconsidering online participation and public concern in a context of Chinese podcast community

Debates about the online public sphere have long centered on the visibility of collective expression and movement. However, the thriving growth of digital technology has increasingly complicated the online participatory culture, sparking numerous controversies concerning user ecology and fostering new forms of public connectivity. We observed members of Chinese podcast communities who listened to knowledge-oriented podcasts, in which “attentive listening” is crucial for online engagement, and thus developed the concept of the “silent public.” The participants perceived podcasts as an effective means of acquiring specialized knowledge and engaging with public affairs, cultivating a podcast reading culture prominently characterized by collective online listening. Podcast users shared consistent identities, collectively defined the cultural boundaries of their communities, and proactively engaged with broader public platforms. The presence of the silent public prompted us to consider an evolving public sphere constantly constructed by digital civic practices. This encouraged us to examine how individuals craft diverse digital identities within specific social structures and reshape the relationships between themselves and the public world.

Critical literacies in algorithmic cultures

AbstractA shift in primacy from online participatory cultures to algorithmic cultures invites new questions about literacies in digital contexts. This article contributes to the conceptualisation of literacies in algorithmic cultures through sociomaterial and affect theories. It develops a sociomaterial perspective that proposes felt, observable moments of user–algorithmic co‐productions of culture as a needed unit of analysis for researching contemporary, critical digital literacies. It then employs this unit as a starting point for analysing the interplay of feeling, critical reflection and algorithm agency across one young adult's self‐described literacy practice of ‘working algorithms’ across social media platforms. Analysis illustrates how critical literacies in algorithmic cultures are driven by processes of human–machine feeling–thinking that cannot be reduced to rational critiques of ideologies, platform capitalism or other forms of power alone. It describes how Malaya became more attuned over time to the affects of working with platform algorithms to craft her community, her sense of self and her sense of well‐being. This sensitivity to feeling moved and feeling the capacity to move machines through the use of her literacies highlights how the facilitation of affect is a crucial point of analysis in understanding contemporary digital literacies.

The development of online participatory cultures: from baseball analytics to covid conspiracy

ABSTRACT This paper explores online participatory culture from the early 1990s to the present, highlighting three trends that exemplify its development and eventual co-option by corporate and political movements. In the 1990s, a participatory culture around baseball analytics emerged online, characterized by a challenge to traditional notions of knowledge in the sport. By the 2000s, online participatory cultures began populating social media platforms that were searching for new ways to increase user engagement. One such culture, the self-tracking fitness movement, focused on individual self-improvement via quantifying the body’s activity, while promoting a relocation of expert knowledge to the online technology and fitness platforms that housed the movement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, notions of expert knowledge and individualized approaches to the body, aspects of the first two trends, were manipulated by far-right rhetoric and transformed by mis- and disinformation disseminated on the now-ubiquitous social media platforms. The study concludes by analyzing philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s condemnation of COVID-19 public health mandates, exploring how the theories underlying both baseball analytics and self-tracking were used to valorize individualistic health freedom over collective well-being.

CONFRONTING AND DEMYSTIFYING HARMFUL PARTICIPATORY CULTURES

This year’s AoIR gathering calls us to consider how "new colonizing forces” are “re-fashioning the world in their own image,” and how we might resist such persistent narratives of destructive domination. Our panel examines various modes of online participatory culture and community building through three different frameworks: undetected semiotic affiliation on YouTube, the participatory religious storytelling of QAnon, and the neoliberal self-colonization of MLMs. Our collective aim is to expose existing colonial structures in online spaces (as well as their offline roots) and break them down in order to offer something new. We offer three interdisciplinary approaches that weave together a story about the desire for community and connection. Persistent narratives of individualism compete with the desire for welcoming spaces and shared values, but a long history of colonized internet threatens to reinforce linguistic and narrative hegemony within these online communities. These papers dive deep into the complex problem of finding kinship through destructive worldviews and alternative histories. Unless we find sustainable ways of recognizing and dispelling these pockets of fringe communities, they will inevitably continue to grow and draw in more participants. In a climate of rising individualism and distrust in institutions, communal spaces will continue to be a place of important contestation. People will inevitably gravitate toward (online) communities, but there is a growing concern about what sorts of communities gain the most traction and participants. This panel asks: How can we create more robust safeguards, more compelling stories, and less profit-driven modes of existing in community?

Between Moleitau and Byeongmat: Participatory Culture on YouTube and Stephen Chow’s Comedic Stardom in South Korea

Stephen Chow is one of the most successful comedians in East Asian cinema history, but his long-standing stardom outside of the Chinese-speaking markets remains understudied. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, Stephen Chow has established a solid fanbase in South Korea with his signature moleitau comedies, and his popularity in the country endures till nowadays. This article specifically investigates how Stephen Chow’s cultural relevance sustains and evolves in South Korea in the digital age. It studies the case of B-rated Review, a popular YouTube channel that produces amateur videos (vids) about his films made in the 1990s. The analysis reveals how South Korean YouTube users collaboratively make sense of Chow in relations to the local humour style byeongmat and hence, reconstruct the meanings and memories of him to address their social realities and identities. The article demonstrates that vidding as an online participatory culture has enabled Stephen Chow’s comedic stardom to travel across time, as well as cultural boundaries in the region.

Where We Go One, We Go All: QAnon, Networked Individualism, and the Dark Side of Participatory (Fan) Culture

Abstract Participation in online spaces has afforded new fan cultures (Baym, Burnett 2009; Jenkins 2018) and enabled new communities of networked individuals (Rainie, Wellman 2012; Burgess, Jones 2020). Online participation also generates participatory cultures, which allow audiences unprecedented opportunity to connect with each other and with the media they share. However, it has also generated some decidedly anti-social and anti-democratic movements, such as QAnon (Amarasingam, Argentino 2020). In this commentary, we argue that QAnon can be thought of as a participatory fan culture gone awry. Using QAnon’s entry into mainstream culture in 2020 as a case study, we explore the darker implications of online participatory culture, including misinformation, conspiratorial- thinking, and an undermining of shared realities. Lastly, we propose that these issues are made more explicit and difficult to attend to in a media sphere characterized by dominant neo-liberal corporate control of participatory media, and digital dualism.

Viral Affirmation as Pressure to Perform: Exploring the Role of Affect in Participatory Culture

AbstractAs society becomes increasingly globalized and networked, online participatory cultures provide youth with experiences to foster dispositions and skills required to engage in virtual spaces. This 5‐year longitudinal case study explores the role of affect in the composition practices of an adolescent girl in Scratch, an online programming community. The author applies affect theory to examine why a successful member in a participatory culture would suddenly leave the space where she found success. Findings from this study inform understanding of the role of affect in participatory cultures, including a perceived need to perform. The author provides considerations for literacy educators to foster skills and dispositions necessary for students to engage in sustainable literacy practices in participatory cultures.

Amateur Content Creation as Compositional Practice: Viral Videos and Internet Memes in Online Participatory Culture

Amateur Content Creation as Compositional Practice: Viral Videos and Internet Memes in Online Participatory Culture. Barnaby Goodman , Goldsmiths, University of London

Social media literacy in L2 environments: navigating anonymous user-generated content

Online participatory cultures (e.g. social media) present a number of opportunities and challenges for language learners. Learners can collaborate with like-minded peers in online affinity spaces or get crowd-sourced information from the locals of a target culture, but they also run the risk of getting lost in the overwhelming amount of noise and disruption in these ‘wild’ environments. This proliferation of user-generated content requires new forms of information literacy, so that everyone has equal access and ability to participate in modern social environments. English language learners (ELLs) may require extra training in using English-based social media effectively, but to date little research has examined this area. This study investigated the characteristics and trends of ELLs' use of social media, how language abilities and previous social media experience affect ELLs' perceptions of anonymous user-generated content in an online discussion website (Reddit), and the strategies learners use to overcome the challenges they encounter in these online environments. The results indicate the importance of adding a sociocultural pragmatics component into the framework of social media literacy and were used to inform recommendations for future social media training programs.

Popular practices for online musicking and performance: Developing creative dispositions for music education and the internet

Musicians’ drive to be productive on the internet led to the development of practices that can inform popular music education. Expanding the concept of popular music education to include online participatory culture practices provides inspiration for musicking online relevant not only in times of uncertainty (like during mandated quarantines experienced during the COVID outbreak in 2020), but also during times of prosperity when practices can be explored in classrooms and during leisure time. In this article, the author discusses three dispositions towards online musicking: DIY-disposition (do-it-yourself), DIWO-disposition (do-it-with-others) and DIFO-disposition (do-it-for-others). The development of these dispositions leads to online and musical literacies that help develop the skills needed for online musicking and performance. This text offers a creation theory about approaching online musicking that can be applied to new technologies and media as online platforms appear and fade on the internet.

Testing the Waters

This study presents an innovative approach to developing interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) by training students to engage in online participatory cultures and analyzing their participation through the lens of communities of practice. Participants were university-level English language learners studying in the United States who were trained on the basic layout and practices of a social news and discussion site (Reddit), then assigned weekly postings within forums based on their individual interests. Social media engagement metrics (upvotes and responses) were used to measure and observe the quantity and quality of online interaction, and post-task questionnaires and follow-up interviews investigated learner perceptions about the language and cyberpragmatics in the online communities they encountered. Quantitative results show that participants struggled to achieve high levels of interaction with other users, but qualitative results indicate a wide range of potential benefits for ILP exploration and development. The findings and implications of this study contribute towards best practices in developing strategies for ILP in online spaces and cyberpragmatic awareness among language learners, enabling them to reach higher levels of participation in online communities.

Recursos educacionais abertos e educação aberta na sociedade em rede

We live a new social paradigm named network society, where information circulates intensely through networks mediated by technology. The lifestyles made possible by this new social organization also determine access to knowledge and the reconfiguration of relational processes, which brings us to great challenges, but also opportunities to learn and better evolve responding to our personal or professional needs. Thus, it empowers us in access to knowledge and integrates us into an online participatory culture. In this context, it is essential to consider new paths for learning, diferente and innovatives that respond to the needs of individuals along their lives. We assume, then, the purpose of this essay to reflect on Open Educational Resources and Open Education in the context of new lifestyles, that is, in today's network society, exploring how new needs to learn intersect the social dynamics made possible by online life.

Cecil the Lion's Networked Image

Through a study of Cecil the Lion, this article considers the role that digital eco-photography plays in our networked media ecology. As images related to his death were disseminated online, Cecil the Lion became an active artefact of environmentalist mass self-communication. On this occasion, online participatory culture harnessed and renewed the genre of eco-photography for purposes of debate and community building, thus providing new outlets for expressing and promoting moral outrage and censure.

Shipping Disability/Fanfiction: Disrupting Narratives of Fanfiction as Inclusive

In this essay I will first give a definition of what fanfiction is within the wider online environment of online participatory cultures, as well examine whether inclusiveness holds up as a defining characteristic when disability is taken into consideration. I then examine how the development of fanfiction as a creative practice and of fanfiction-specific genres, have contributed to the queering of fanfiction spaces and practices Finally I argue that subversion and transgression are not best suited to conceptualize fanfiction, and that instead disruption can generate more apt interrogations. Specifically, disruption allows for us to explore fanfiction as both disrupting heteronormative narratives, gendered and fan behaviour expectations, and as disrupting the notion of the fan as a somehow homogenous construction. This affords disability the possibility of being disruptive in turn.

Adolescents' Agentic Work on Developing Personal Pedagogies on Social Media

AbstractWhile current research points out that young people are developing emerging culture of learning in informal spaces, less is known about such digital literacy practices in the Asian contexts where the notion of literacy tends to refer to school literacy. Research on young people's online participatory culture continues to suggest that social media offer affinity spaces where extensive knowledge is acquired, constructed and produced outside of schools. In this paper, we use two case studies on social media as illustrative examples to understand how adolescents shape their learning online. We aim to contribute to the ongoing dialectics on social media and learning by examining how adolescents exhibit agency online. We argue that social media such as Facebook offer high learner agency environments for adolescents to participate in self‐initiated enterprise and allow them to develop personal trajectories for learning. The case studies presented in this paper suggested that the adolescents' pursuit of their passions on online affinity spaces gave rise to intellectual friendships and the development of personal pedagogies.

‘Sharing my stories’: genealogists and participatory heritage

ABSTRACTThe vision of an online participatory culture involving communities contributing information and engaging with digitized collections via the social Web has been challenged by the reality of low response rates to many digital cultural heritage projects. This study examines factors that encourage or discourage genealogists, a group generally motivated to share and exchange information, to contribute to DCH projects. The aim is to determine how they prefer to share information and knowledge and investigate if genealogists from indigenous communities have different preferences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six members of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists. The interview data were used to inform the design of an online survey questionnaire, which was distributed to other members of NZSG. The findings showed that respondents were willing to share information and were motivated to establish reciprocal relationships fundamental to building online communities. Lack of knowledge about cultural heritage databases and concerns over ownership, control and the reuse of information however, were identified as factors that discouraged sharing, especially for researchers of Māori genealogy. The survey findings suggest that cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) need to nurture relationships and earn the trust of the community from which information is being solicited. Effective consultation and communication and having clear policies in place about use and reuse of information shared could facilitate these. Further research into encouraging the exchange of information between CHIs and the indigenous communities is particularly important as many remain conflicted between their desire to share and to protect their family history and knowledge.

The Role of Affect in Adolescents’ Online Literacies: Participatory Pressures in BookTube Culture

AbstractOutside of compulsory schooling, adolescents become more responsible for maintaining their reading lives together, which is consequential for educators wishing to foster student identities as lifelong readers, writers, and digital designers. The authors describe the role of affect in a youth‐driven, online participatory culture, BookTube, in which participants are largely young adults just beyond compulsory school age. Analysis draws on poststructural conceptions of affect as distinct from emotion to develop the concept of participatory pressures. Participatory pressures complicate understandings of youth‐generated online cultures, showing specifically how BookTube's aesthetic norms create and maintain feelings of pressure about what style and content count. At the same time, participatory pressures contribute to BookTubers’ development of individual styles that attract viewers, such as using humor in playfulness and social critique. Implications consider how literacy educators may better prepare youths for affective experiences of maintaining shared reading lives in online participatory cultures.

Blurring the Boundaries Between School and Community: Implementing Connected Learning Principles in English Classrooms

AbstractIn participatory cultures, the lines between producers and consumers of text are blurred, and communities emerge that are based on shared interest and peer support. Although literacy scholarship has mostly focused on youth engagement and literacy practices within online participatory cultures, scholars in the learning sciences investigate these ideas through connected learning. This article explores bringing connected learning principles into English classrooms and examines how one high school, partnering with the National Writing Project, redesigned their senior English course and senior capstone project around connected learning. The authors highlight its design and share students’ experiences with the project to illustrate the possibilities and tensions around designing for such a project in school settings.

Collaborative Construction of Digital Cultural Heritage: A Synthesis of Research on Online Sociability Determinants

The purpose of this scoping study is to answer the research question: What does the literature tell us about online sociability that could inform how participation in collaborative construction of digital cultural heritage (DCH) can be supported, motivated and sustained? A scoping review was conducted with the aim of building on the recent advances in research on online sociability and participatory culture. An extensive literature survey was undertaken across various disciplinary fields to gain a broad snapshot of the factors that have been found and suggested as having an influence on online sociability in collaborative projects. Relevant literature were analysed and weaved together to map a pathway with motifs that could be useful as a guide for projects working towards collaborative construction of DCH.

The politics of mapping platforms: participatory radiation mapping after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster

The release of the Google Maps API in 2005 spurred a trend of mapping mashups, adding cartography to online participatory culture. This article will present how the affordances of these ‘platforms’ give shape to the online participation of concerned citizens willing to access information during an environmental crisis. Based on the analysis of the radiation mashups created after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, this article will highlight two types of online participation. First, participation as data extraction, where concerned actors either monitored data using Geiger counters or extracted and republished data from official websites. Second, participation as data aggregation, where maps were used to display and compare radiation measurements from official or crowdsourced venues. The conclusion will highlight the necessity to study how online platforms assign a place and temporality to online participation.