How user participation transforms cultural production

What has been called ‘participatory culture’ is actually a complex discourse consisting of the following factors:

• a rhetoric that advocates social progress through technological advancement
• a cultural critique demanding the reconfiguration of power relations
• the qualities of related technologies, and
• how these qualities are used for design and user appropriation
• the socio-political dynamics related to using the technologies

This book examines the constitutional aspects of contemporary media practice as they unfold and provides an analysis of participatory culture. In tracing the many aspects involved in the construction of current media practice, this research will identify and analyse the constituents of a participatory culture, thus providing a comprehensive understanding of the complex relations involved in the development of online cultural production. This research will also analyse the constituents of contemporary media practice, framed as a participatory culture, by exploring the relationship between material aspects of technology and the social use, the unfolding debates and the dissent that exists with respect to the use and implementation of new media practices. In order to address the question for the various constituents of a participatory culture as a whole, the following sub-themes is treated in five individual chapters:

1. Participation as the promise of new media
2. New practices of participation and how to analyse them
3. How technological design affects user participation in digital culture
4. How users appropriate software-based products, develop new media practices and innovate design
5. How new media practices and user participation transform markets and business models in the cultural industries

In the conclusion, questions are raised as to how contemporary media practice can be integrated into socio-political regulation, and whether it will be possible to connect it to a participatory democracy.

mtschaefer | bastard culture! how user participation transforms cultural production

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