ABSTRACT

Participatory media are media where the audience – or the “people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen 2006) – take an active role in media production, analysis, and dissemination processes. In this era of Web 2.0, distinguished by its user control and participation, online user-generated content has exploded, with sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Tumblr, and Instagram creating a user demand, even expectation, for hands-on participation in the media production and decision-making processes (→ Digital Culture, III/28). These social media (→ III/41) platforms are now alongside traditional media in the public sphere, giving rise to more horizontal forms of communications in which ordinary citizens can create and share information, collaborate, organize, and mobilize, opening new possibilities for cultural production, empowerment, and civic and political participation (→ II/41; Citizenship, II/27). Castells (2009) referred to online social media sites, blogs, p2p sharing, and other participatory aspects of the Internet as “mass self communication” that can “make possible unlimited diversity and autonomous production of most of the communication flows that construct meaning in the public mind” (71) (→ Media Flows, III/35).