Participatory Media Research Articles

8Media Theory

AbstractMost countries experienced an extended period of lockdown during 2021 due to the rapid increase in the number of Covid-19 cases and the comparatively slow process of developing and distributing effective vaccines. It is therefore no surprise that the pandemic was often mentioned in the introductions to books on media theory, although these projects were clearly conceived and written long before the pandemic began, and many of them were directly responding to the social crisis that preceded our current one—namely, the rapid rise in participation in social media and the accompanying rise in online extremism, which had devastating political consequences in the US and around the world. While these books were released after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol and the end of Donald Trump’s term as president, many of them were attempting to examine how media technologies had contributed to the rise of authoritarianism and the decline of democratic values during his administration, and they often addressed similar concerns, such as the oppressive structures of digital media platforms, the potential threat that they pose to democracy, and how they might be used for political activism. The following review is divided into three sections that focus on each of these concerns: 1. Digital Media and Neoliberal Capitalism discusses how digital media introduced new forms of labour that were inherently linked to neoliberal capitalism; 2. Digital Media and Disinformation discusses the potential causes of and solutions to the problem of online disinformation; and 3. Digital Media and Political Change discusses the potential benefits and limitations of using digital media to promote positive political change, followed by 4. Conclusion. These books thus provide an insightful analysis of our current social, political, and economic situation, and they offer a wide range of suggestions on how our media technologies could be reconfigured in order to facilitate a more promising future.

Introduction: Death, dying and participatory media + open section

Sciendo provides publishing services and solutions to academic and professional organizations and individual authors. We publish journals, books, conference proceedings and a variety of other publications.

SUFISM AND VIRTUAL PIETY: A Narration of the Millennial Murshid in North Sumatra

The millennial murshid comprises young t ariqah leaders, who are well-versed in the latest information technology. Sufism identity has changed under the millennial murshid due to the development of information technology and their participation in social media which tries to revive the doctrine and ritual in the changing global reality. This condition has fostered Sufistic activism in a new direction from a “quiet road” to a “public road” in cyberspace. This article has explored the intersection between Sufism and social media based on the narration of the millennial murshid of Tariqa Naqshabandiyya-Khalidiya Serambi Babussalam. The findings illustrate that the phenomenon of virtual Sufism that has emerged from the intersection between Sufism and social media has given birth to a new expression of piety called as virtual piety. It is a simplification of piety from the original form of Sufistic tradition that emphasizes symbolic-esoteric aspects and is likely as opposed to individual piety. Additionally, the millennial murshid has successfully used social media, particularly Facebook, to reach out to the online community and gain followers.

The role of pediatricians in social media: digital identity. Good practice recommendations.

The digital revolution resulting from the emergence of the Web 2.0 and the arrival of social media have changed how human beings communicate, and the physicianpatient relationship is not an exception to this new environment. The origin of a digital identity is critical for our participation in social media as social communicators, but digital professionalism should be framed within good practice recommendations with well-defined legal and ethical outlines. The objective of this article is to provide tools for the adequate use of social media and digital presence, taking the protection of personal image and disseminated information into consideration.

KIMA: Voice: The human voice as embodied presence

Through and post-COVID, disembodied technological interactions were experienced at an unprecedented, often involuntary level in households across the world, with the human voice often providing a link between geographically disconnected individuals, resulting in a decrease in perceived social connectedness. Recent research suggests that effects of social isolation and sensory deprivation can be mitigated through participatory media arts experiences (; , ). Over the last ten years, the art collective Analema Group has explored the pivotal role of the human voice as means for social connectedness through their artwork KIMA (Tate, National Gallery, Barbican). The current development of KIMA: Voice seeks to challenge experiences of embodiment in remote environments. This article and artwork presentation will present a new development KIMA: Voice designed to provide new forms of embodied experiences across a distance. The publication will be supported by a demonstration and exhibition of the artwork

Un verano difícil en la historia del Partido Nacional uruguayo (1931)

This article investigates a temporary limited period, the summer of 1931, but with great significance to the Uruguayan National Party, since it would define its rupture and field of action during the next three decades. The active media participation in the nationalist debate of its most popular leader, Luis Alberto de Herrera, constitutes one of the main points of analysis. Herrera had been the defeated candidate in the last three presidential campaigns (1922, 1926 and 1930) and was constituted for part of the leadership as the symbol of party failure. On the contrary, he cautiously showed that the adherence of most of the party mass insisted on him as a «guide». During those months, nationalism witnessed a tense division that surprised itself and its adversaries, so in this work, a meticulous reconstruction of the discussions is carried out that allows to understand why the wounds of that internal battle, product of the unexpected electoral defeat of November 1930, would be very difficult to heal.

Investigating the Mediating Role of Identity Crisis and Family Cohesion in Determining the Relationship between Social Networks Participation with Body Image Issues Among Students

Aim: The aim of present study was to investigate the mediating role of identity crisis and family cohesion in determining the relationship between participation in social media and body image concerns among students. Methods: The present study was a descriptive correlational study. The statistical population consisted of all public middle school students studying in the city of Rasht in the academic year of 2019-20. Participants were selected using multi-stage cluster random sampling method. To collect data from four questionnaires, Social Network Sites Engagement Scale (Boland1399), Identity Crisis (Ahmadi, 1997), Family Cohesion (Samani, 2002) and Body Image Concern Questionnaire (Littleton et al., 2005) were used. These questionnaires were provided to students online and 674 people responded to them. Finally, 497 questionnaires were examined and analyzed statistically, using path analysis method. Findings: The results showed that social network engagement has a direct effect on body image concern (β=-0.41, P<0.001), family cohesion (β=-0.25, P <0.001), and identity crisis (Β=-0.16, P<0.001). Identity crisis directly and significantly predicts body image concerns (β=-0.13, P<0.001). Family cohesion directly and significantly predicts body image concerns (β=-0.17, P<0.001). In addition,that engagement in social networks mediated by identity crisis has an indirect impact on body image anxiety (β=0.06, P<0.001). However, the indirect effect of the mediating variable of family cohesion on social network engagement and body image concerns is not statistically significant. Conclusion: Therefore, improving the amount and manner of adolescents' use of social networks, teaching media literacy to adolescents and holding training sessions to facilitate the transition from puberty and prevent identity crisis is important to reduce dissatisfaction with body image and promote adolescent mental health.

Complexity in Postmigrant Narratives of I-Docs

What epistemological potential do participatory organized web documentaries offer in comparison to 'conventional' documentaries? Does a closer analysis reveal differences between different participatory approaches? And what role does the construction of complexity play in terms of emancipatory effects? These are the initial questions of my contribution which deals with an epistemology of participatory web documentaries in relation to the construction of complex knowledge worlds. It starts with a theoretical deconstruction of different notions of participation and their application in web documentaries. In doing so, the constructed frames of reference and narratives, the functioning of the developed self-designs as well as the negotiation processes of design are also examined with respect to their epistemological potential. Still, the concept of participation calls for differentiation and clarification in general and its use in individual cases; all too often the term "participation" has been used vaguely and turned into an umbrella term under which medial interactivity and participation, social and political participation, and cultural perception and recognition are conflated. It is precisely the equation of media participation with social and political participation that seems problematic here. From the perspective of a critique of dividuation inspired by Gilles Deleuze and presented for example by Michaela Ott, participation seems to make sense only if it critically reflects the passivization imposed by digital communication and the entanglement of individuals in a complex network of social, cultural, and technological references – hence also normalized, stereotypical patterns of perception and cognition. Ultimately, this requires an examination of antagonistic, polyphonic, multi-perspectival and multi-media, thus also media self-reflexive forms of expression on different levels, which must be negotiated in their interplay. In short, such enganglements require an examination of the medial construction of relational forms of complexity, which is the prerequisite for participation to have an emancipatory effect at all. The paper will fathom this theoretical context by an analysis of paradigmatically selected participatory web documentaries, examining different forms of complexity with regard to their epistemological and emancipatory potential. Thus, I will argue for a methodological shift of perspective that leads from an analysis of works to an analysis of their processuality. This – in the end, makes it necessary to recognize that it is also a question of how the various notions of participation – ranging from strategies of voice-giving realized in web-documentaries to dimensions of engaged listening – can contribute in their own respect to the development of polyphonic, multifaceted perspectives and make doing documentary a medium for negotiating positions and a means for self-empowerment of the stakeholders involved in these processes.

Promotion of Internet Users' Aggressive Participation via the Mediators of Flow Experience and Identification.

Social media users have increased rapidly in recent years; however, most are “silent users” who rarely share information online. To maintain social media companies’ stable operation and development, this research explored the effects of flow experience and identity formation on users’ intrinsic motivation to facilitate aggressive, spontaneous, and habitual participation in virtual communities. A total of 487 valid questionnaires were collected and underwent regression analysis. The results revealed that all three intrinsic motivations had a significant impact on social media participation, with social interaction exerting the strongest influence. Flow experience and identification had significant, partial mediating effects on the relationship between motivation and participation. Several suggestions were provided based on the results to help social media enterprises increase user participation. It is hoped that this research could facilitate in transforming users into habitual participants to keep the operations of the virtual community stable and enduring.

Drug Quality Co-regulation Supervision Strategy Considering Collusion Behavior With New Media Participation.

The efficiency and level of drug quality supervision are highly related to the distorted or true reporting of new media, and the collusion or non-collusion of third-party testing agencies. Therefore, based on the co-regulation information platform, considering the strategic choices of local government, drug enterprises, third-party testing agencies and new media, this article constructs a four-party evolutionary game model of co-regulation supervision. The stable equilibrium points of each participant's strategic choices are solved. The stability of the strategic combination is analyzed by Lyapunov's first method, and Matlab 2020b is used for simulation analysis to verify the influence of each decision variable on different players' strategic choices. The results show that, firstly, new media's true reporting can make up for the lack of supervision of drug enterprises by local government, and the greater the impact of new media reporting, the more active drug enterprises will be to produce high-quality drugs. Secondly, non-collusion of third-party testing agencies can improve the self-discipline ability of drug enterprises, encourage new media to report truthfully, and play the role of co-regulation supervision. Furthermore, the greater the probability of new media's true reporting, the more local government tend to be stricter, and the probability of strict supervision is positively related to the central government's accountability. Finally, increasing penalty for producing low-quality drugs and collusion will help standardize the behavior of drug enterprises and third-party testing agencies. This article enriches and expands the theoretical basis of the drug quality co-regulation supervision and proposes corresponding countermeasures and suggestions.

Empowerment and Well-Being Through Participatory Action Research and Accessible Gaming: A Case Study With Adults With Intellectual Disability

Although the potential of games to foster learning, representation, empowerment, well-being, and social inclusion is already documented, some groups seem to remain underrepresented. In the field of disability, this potential is still immersed in a set of barriers and hindrances, arising from the lack of accessibility of this medium and the lack of representation of voices in research and development processes. This problem seems to be exponentiated in the field of Intellectual Disability (ID). The present study describes insights from a case study developed with 14 institutionalized adults with severe ID, with two complementary aims: (a) explore the effectiveness of a PAR gaming approach in the empowerment and well-being of adults with ID living in an institutional setting; and (b) explore the feasibility of promoting accessibility in games through PAR. The proposed intervention included the development of games by higher education students for these individuals, with their active participation in all phases – conceptual definition, game design, game development, and playtesting. A total of 38 playtesting sessions and 162 gaming sessions were conducted, where systematic observation grids were filled, and pre and post-process assessments were conducted, targeting variables related to empowerment and well-being. The obtained results sustain this type of action-research design as a feasible strategy to empower people with ID and foster their well-being, through games as a form of expression and not only therapy. It also reflects on accessibility improvement through the presence of underrepresented groups (people with ID particularly) in the media creation processes that can,per se, be considered a form of empowerment. These insights also open a discussion about a potential paradigm shift toward a social model of accessibility aligned with the current views on the field of disability studies. Future studies should replicate this methodology with larger samples and in a context not aligned with the pandemic isolation. Furthermore, PAR must also be explored from a more general perspective, as a strategy to promote accessibility and participation in other media and cultural products as a whole.

Between Empowerment and Gentrification: A Case Study of Community-Based Tourist Program in Suichang County, China

The phenomenon of hollow villages is a long-lasting obstacle to China’s rural development. With this background, this study examines a for-profit community-based tourist program operated at a rural hollow village in Zhejiang, China and explores how this program facilitates meaningful transformations in the community. The theoretical concept of empowerment was introduced to critically understand and analyse the community transformations, and the data was collected through program-related or village-related media content, participant observation, and focus group interviews. Our findings reveal that varied types of empowerment had been gained by the residents via the program, which has strongly demonstrated the positive and meaningful transformations in the community. Lastly, gentrification, a type of community transformation, was a positive change from the program managerial staff’s view, but it could lead to uncertainties and problems of the economic and political disempowerment to the residents in the long term.

Social media usage and academic achievement of higher secondary students

The COVID-19 lockdown has led to an increase in the usage of mobile phones and social media among adolescents. As adolescents utilise mobile phones and social media for educational and pleasure purposes, they grow increasingly attached. As a result, it's critical to dig deep into the relationship between teenage social media usage and academic success. The goal of this study was to design a social media usage scale (SMUS) for adolescents and utilise it to measure social media participation among higher secondary school students. Academic success can therefore be related to social media use. Researchers created and standardised a social media usage scale to gauge the prevalence of social media use amongst higher secondary school pupils. For the purpose of evaluation, SMUS implimented with 1068 students in Kerala's higher secondary schools. The majority of students, according to the findings of the survey, utilise social media. Social media use is not affected by location or gender, though. The findings show that there is a slight positive correlation between social media use and academic success.

Application Analysis of Emotional Learning Model Based on Improved Text in Campus Review and Student Public Opinion Management

In an era of rapid mobile Internet development, students are increasingly expressing their views on specific events through campus comments. In the Web 2.0 era, the concept of public media participation is widely used by students, and it is important to effectively analyze online campus public opinion comments and present the findings in a rationalized form for the management of campus public opinion. In the new era of education governance modernization, the level of public opinion management in universities has become a key indicator to improve the standard of education management in higher education institutions; therefore, this paper focuses on proposing an innovative deep learning-based research method for topic management of university public opinion. Firstly, through the improved LDA module with sentiment discrimination learning capability, the sentiment of the main arguments in the campus commentary is extracted, and then the statistical sentiment intensity of the in-depth learning module is used to analyze the sentiment intensity of the thematic arguments of different events in time series, so as to achieve the long-term tracking of the trend of the sentiment intensity of the whole event.

The Pacific Community Filmmaking Consortium: producing pacific community-based films by Pacific filmmakers

ABSTRACT This case study will discuss the impact pathways associated with a practice-led impact and engagement project based in the Pacific through the establishment of The Pacific Community Filmmaking Consortium. The project aims to support community-based and participatory media production as a creative and credible approach to influencing policy and communities in relation to gender inequality and gender-based violence in the region. The project commissioned and produced a slate of eight films, Film4Gender, by Pacific filmmakers on the theme of gender-based violence, gender inequality and Pacific responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. The project aims to give visibility to and build capacity amongst a network of Pacific community-based filmmakers and organisations whose work with communities addresses gender inequality in vernacular terms, with local participation and frames of reference. Supporting their work opens up alternative routes to understanding and influencing gender inequality in the Pacific. The Consortium’s approach to practice aims to foreground the potential impact of processes of production and distribution of Pacific-made films on individuals, institutions and communities. Drawing on interviews with the filmmakers, this paper demonstrates how some of the project’s first-year impact pathways reflect broader concerns of sustainability of practice and development in the region.

A Medium Is Born: Participatory Media and the Rise of Clubhouse in Russia and Ukraine During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract Clubhouse is a social network allowing only real-time oral communication. While its 2020 worldwide launch went largely unnoticed in Eastern Europe, it took countries such as Ukraine and Russia by storm in February 2021. Users were enticed by the platform’s exclusivity (invitation only and limited to IOS users), unusual format, and compatibility with post-covid social life. For some time, Clubhouse was the dominant theme of discussions on other social media, mainstream news media organizations started launching daily talk shows in the app, and early adopters engaged in a plethora of participatory activities ranging from propagandist broadcasts to 24/7 rooms where bots would recite Russian classical poetry, from fervently seeking ways to monetise their participation to creating the somewhat unexpected genre of audial fakes. In this article we intend to analyse the turbulent arrival of the new app in Russia and Ukraine from the perspectives of media ecology and media archaeology. Focusing on the app’s mediality and remediation, the social media discourse about it and particular content in some of the notable rooms, we highlight the conjunction of social environment, the already existing and novel technological affordances, as well as users’ perceptions and expectations in the emergence of a new niche in the ecology of participatory media. Based on this, we will also try to outline some possible scenarios for the new platform in Eastern Europe’s dense mediascapes. We argue that the prompt rise of Clubhouse’s popularity was not thanks to its special authenticity, as some suggest, but rather because of the normalization of group long-distance conversations (e.g., via Zoom), coupled with the intentional monomedia poverty of affordances and clearly delimited boundary between the roles of broadcasters and listeners, which was perceived as liberating in a produsage-saturated environment. This actually limits the participatory media potential of content creators and influencers, increasing their power and reviving monological models of communication that suggest a passive audience.

The Social Mediatization of Lifestyle Sport: Continuity and Novelty in the Online Skate Subculture

Based on mediatization theory, this article tracks how skateboarders experience and negotiate the entry of social media into their subculture. Building on existing scholarship, I show how social media and digital devices retain existing values within the culture while simultaneously introducing new challenges. To illustrate the phenomena of continuity and novelty in the online skate subculture, I analyze two case studies pertaining to YouTube. The first is a textual analysis of a typical skate video. Released on YouTube in 2020, the BE FREE video exhibits neoliberal, apolitical, masculine, and individualist values that go back decades in skate culture. The second case involves one of the most popular hubs of online skateboarding today: The Berrics YouTube channel, which claims 1.3 million subscribers and over 4,500 individual videos. I show how The Berrics maintains a one-dimensional positivity through its posts and interactions with fans, and I argue that it is still experimenting with the handling of negative feedback that participatory media allow. I also provide a brief history of skateboard media to properly contextualize these case studies.

Reuse and Appropriation: Remediating Digital Museum Collections and Digital Tools for a Participatory Culture in Transition

Abstract Museums have always used different media to communicate, widen perspectives and bring new knowledge, but in the era of digital media, their various offerings are increasingly part of the media ecosystem. Our research interventions explored the possibility of reusing existing digitised material in a participatory setting. The aim was to explore the object-centred audience participatory method in digital settings. We held a series of digital and in-person workshops that invited the participants to “imagine” narratives about the provenance of the museum’s objects and journeys to Sweden in a playful and creative exploration. We could observe how the virtual workshop setting supported focused discussions, and allowed zooming, drawing and remixing of digital photographs to facilitate conversation. The workshop participants on-site worked with the museum objects on display to remediate them through photos, drawings, clay modelling, and writing down thoughts and questions about the objects on discussion postcards. The participants’ contributions were included in the virtual collection database (Carlotta), under the same collection as the other museum objects, making the remediation process circular. We argue that object-centred methods enable audience participation in digital media ecosystems both in museums and with other media makers. The audience’s expectations and experiences from using other media bring them to the digital museum platforms with a willingness to explore, remix and integrate.

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.

“On My Head About It”: College Aspirations, Social Media Participation, and Community Cultural Wealth

Given the widespread use of social media among adolescents, online interactions that facilitate high school students’ college knowledge acquisition could have a transformative impact on college access patterns, especially for underrepresented students. Our study uses interview data collected from Black high school students in Detroit ( N = 24) to examine their experiences and perceptions as they prepare for the transition to post-secondary education. In contrast to traditional social capital perspectives that tend to dominate social media scholarship, we instead employ a Community Cultural Wealth framework to reveal how students access distinctive forms of cultural resources via online and offline interactions. Our findings suggest students used social media to access cultural wealth as they (1) developed post-secondary educational aspirations, (2) planned to navigate the post-secondary admissions process, (3) resisted stereotypes about youth from Detroit, and (4) engaged in platform-switching to cultivate their college information networks online.