What is Participatory Culture

A culture based upon creating in a collaborative environment (Jenkins, 2006).

A culture that affords individuals dual roles as members and active contributors through opportunities to exercise creative agency.

A culture in which private individuals do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers, that enables people to work collaboratively.

A culture where consumers turn into prosumers that actively participate in creating and spreading new content.

A culture where spaces or processes give peoplethe means to take part and contribute.

Term developed by Henry Jenkins to describe contemporary cultures where members of a society do not only consume media content but also create and distribute it.

A culture that challenges the consumer culture, wherein individuals do not act merely consumer but also participate in cultural commodities as contributors or “prosumers.”

The culture which encourages networked community sharing of information and artistic expression on a global scale.

Participatory culture is a broad-based term that subsumes a wide array of activities that users perform in the digital age. Henry Jenkins has contributed a lot to the popularity as well as for the uptake of participatory culture as a theoretical framework. Some of the activities users perform frequently such as Do IT Yourself mashing up of music to create identities, crowd sourcing, blogging, fan cultures, community organizing exemplify participatory cultures. Jenkins defines participatory culture as one which allows free expression of artistic talent and civic engagement sharing one’s creations with others. In the process, everyone becomes a produser (producer and user). Users also establish social connection with others by sharing their creations. Participatory cultures are productive, creative and collaborative. For more, read The Participatory Culture Handbook edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Handerson and also Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century by Henry Jenkins.

A community characterized by creative expression and civic engagement.

This is a strategy that involves the people. This permits freedom of expression and participation.

Collaboration with others and sharing of Web-based resources to create new content and construct knowledge.

The new forms of cultural production in which consumers can add contents, re-elaborate them and actively contribute to the mainstream media industry.

A culture in which individuals are engaged with media instead of simply being passive consumers of information.

A culture in which artistic expression and civic engagement are valued, oriented towards creating and sharing one’s creations.

A new type of culture occurred when the media consumers have become active with the new media and started to have a voice in the production and distribution of the content.

A culture of creativity, sharing, and knowledge building. Participatory culture typically utilizes online technologies as a means of creating new knowledge among individuals who share common interests or goals (Jenkins, 2008).

A concept developed by Jenkins (2006) based on his own research of fandom communities; characteristic of a participatory cultures are low barriers for engagement, strong social connections among members, a belief in collective effort, and informal mentoring among members. The impetus and opportunity to become part of a participatory culture grew dramatically with the spread of the Internet; however, participatory culture is distinct from Web 2.0 culture in that a participatory culture is not reliant on computers but only a community of like-minded enthusiasts drawn to a particular topic.

Participatory culture can be characterized as including low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, support for creating and sharing one’s intellectual property with others, a belief that one’s contributions matter, and a sense of social connection to others in the culture.

Cultures or affinity spaces characterized by informal learning structures such as low barriers to participation, fluid mentorship, and experimentation.

A culture that challenges the consumer culture, wherein individuals do not act merely consumers but also participate in cultural commodities as contributors or producers, that enables people to work collaboratively. It is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. The potential of participatory culture for civic engagement and creative expression has been well investigated by media scholar Henry Jenkins.

A group or groups who engage in dialogue regarding a genre of media.

It is “a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to novices. In a participatory culture, members also believe their contributions matter and feel some degree of social connection with one another”. In particular, the following skills underlies the participative culture: Affiliation, Expression, Collaborative problem solving, Circulation. New skills follow: Play, Performance, Simulation, Appropriation, Multitasking, Distributed cognition, Collective intelligence, Judgment, Transmedia navigation, Networking, Negotiation” ( Jenkins, 2009 ).

Participatory culture can be characterized as including low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, support for creating and sharing one’s intellectual property with others, a belief that one’s contributions matter, and a sense of social connection to others in the culture.

A culture in which every user has the potential to create and modify content. Its advent is connected with the development of digital technologies.