2 Active & Interactive Audiences in Participatory Culture

This book is premised upon the belief that audiences today are more than just consumers; everyday media users are active, creative and productive in some capacity no matter what. It takes for granted the assumption that “media-audience interactions are multifaceted and increasingly complex, especially since the emergence of networked digital media”^[1]. But before we explore various “genres” of participatory culture later in the book, we have to define participatory culture first. To do that, we also have to define participation and clarify how that is different from other forms of media activity. Viewed one way, “all audiences are ‘active’, in the sense that they engage with rather than absorb what media offer. How much this intrudes into the materiality of life, however, differs.”^[2] We have come a long way from the primary belief that audiences are passive in our responses to media; the stimuli-response model has largely been abandoned, long before the advent of digital media. Clearly, we are witness to “active audiences” but not all such behaviour ought to be termed “participatory.” We also need to distinguish audiences and their participatory culture(s) from audiences for (and on) participatory media. Interactive media platforms that invite participation are not synonymous with participatory culture (though they are often confused with it). This can be confusing, especially if we state that we are all members of contemporary participatory culture. Whether we are audiences, fans, or users of it (or all three), we participate in it. So let’s begin fleshing out the concept of participatory culture by clarifying what we mean by “participation.”

To be clear, participatory culture is an ever-shifting culture with different points of engagement constantly emerging in the digital spaces with which we engage. In this context, participation is necessarily ambiguous.^[3] Social media platforms invite audiences to partake of their “culture” but this is not truly participatory in the sense that critical communication research posits. It is impossible to ignore that “audience participation is not often exempt from the control or involvement of media and entertainment industries, whether they own the intellectual property (IP), the platforms employed to create and circulate the content, or both.”^[4] Acknowledging this push and pull that comes with all audience activity, within the discourse of participatory culture, participation is a prescriptive concept. It “is about being part of shared social practices, not just engaging with an online platform or piece of content. Looked at this way, participation doesn’t just mean being active, it is also about being part of a shared practice and culture.”^[5] Participation carries with it the vague association of citizens, rather than just consumers.

Jenkins elaborates on the contrast between participation and interactivity, clarifying how the latter refers to the properties of technologies such as open-ended design that allow users some agency as they navigate or use the technology. Some games feature a more interactive narrative than others, for example. “Participation, on the other hand, refers to properties of the culture, where groups collectively and individually make devisions that have an impact on their shared experiences. We participate in something; we interact with something.”^[6]

So while participation transcends the self, very simply, it means “being involved in doing something and taking part in something with others.”^[7] Nico Carpentier further elaborates how audience activity consists of interaction and participa­tion and distinguishes between them. The former refers to “the ‘traditional’ processes of signi­fication and interpretation that are triggered by media consumption,” while the latter can be distinguished into two different types: participation ‘in’ and ‘through’ the media. Participation ‘through’ the media covers the “opportunities for mediated participation in public debate and for self-representation in the variety of public spaces that characterize the social.” Meanwhile, participation ‘in’ the media “deals with the participation of non-professionals in the produc­tion of media output and in media decision-making.”^[8] By this logic, everyone who is an audience for (or a user of) media interacts with it, but participation through the media takes involvement to another level, and participation in the media is reserved for the privileged few.^[9] Thus, we see that even though audience agency and interactivity are often understood as interchangeable with participation, they can mean quite distinct things.

Ok – so we know that participation sets a high bar for audience activity and has normative associations of helping to build better connections or even a better world on some level. So what does it mean to focus on the culture of participation and to speak of participatory culture? In general, “participatory culture describes the phenomenon of media producers and consumers interacting with each other in new ways, whereby the latter are also producers and contributors to media cultures”^[10]. This also could sound like a generic description of fans. And indeed, participatory culture is often confused with fandom. Fandom, from its earliest days is participatory insofar as fans’ alternative interpretations and cultural productivity typically exploded too-simplistic stereotypes of audiences as mere consumers.

But just because fandom often expresses participatory culture does not mean that participatory culture is limited to fandom. Jenkins, who popularly coined the phrase “participatory culture” to refer to fans, updated his use of the term in 2006 to refer to communities that function as sites of informal learning:

A participatory culture is characterized by low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement; strong support for creating and sharing creations with others; some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices; members who believe that their contributions matter; and members who feel some degree of social connection with one another.^[11]

As he has had more conversations with likeminded others, Jenkins has continued to tweak the terminology. In 2019, he clarified further:

“Participatory culture refers to a culture in which large numbers of people from all walks of life have the capacity to produce and share media with each other, often responding critically to the products of mass media, and often circulating what they create fluidly across a range of different niche publics“^[12]

Within this definition, we see the emphasis upon “publics” rather than audiences. This can get confusing even though it need not be. As Jenkins notes, digitally networked audiences (and fan communities) are doing what audiences have always done: “assessing and interpreting pre‐existing media representations or advocating for alternatives.”^[13] But through networked media, this engagement is not just with media texts (and producers), but with each other. And this engagement takes place in public. One can determine basic distinctions between audiences and publics: While both are united for a particular purpose or around a common goal, “audiences come together not to do something but to experience something. … The type of experience most frequently sought by audiences, then, is an entertainment experience.”^[14]

On the other hand, the public is understood to be a political concept. People join a public not to feel good but to typically try to bring about some action or change in the world. To participate in the public involves citizenship, not just consumerism^[15] (the produser vs. prosumer parallel seems fitting). Participatory culture is not a private phenomenon. This engagement tends to take place through diffused media more than just mass media^[16] and thus we tend to see not just different audiences gathering around different texts, but different publics too. Just as there is no simple mass public to correspond with mass media anymore, there is no unified public sphere. A liberal democratic concept, it was assumed that everybody has equal access to the public sphere, participating in the shared public opinion of the time through gathering in public places and deliberating through rational discourse with the goal of achieving consensus. But many believe that a media-saturated culture threatens the dream of a properly functioning public sphere. Captivating mass media captured audience attention to the extent that some argued we were amusing ourselves to death.

Some academics, in fact, replaced the normative concept of the public sphere with the notion of the public screen (an environment that places a premium on images over words, emotions over rationality, speed over reflection, distraction over deliberation, slogans over arguments, the glance over the gaze, appearance over truth, the present over the past)^[17] or a concept perhaps even more suited to the social media scene, wild public networks (WPN). “If we reconceptualize the public sphere as WPN, we witness people arguing using not rational debate, but largely affective pleas in the form of GIFs, images, and impassioned responses^[18].” Clearly, in our current era of digital media, publics forming out of audiences’ participation through networked media endlessly proliferate. And while it might not be reassuring, the distinction between publics and audiences is forever muddy. Consider the following: One can start out as a fan of something because you were an audience for it. But then, become a member of a public, motivated by some common concern held by the fandom. Fandom studies love to talk about this sort of thing because it makes it seem so democratic and powerful and progressive. The point is, you’re not just acting as an audience at that point. Plus, you can have participatory culture without strictly-defined audience membership. Take, for instance, the 2023 example of  “the beach towel revolt”.^[19] This was a situation in which Greek citizens used media to organize on an issue of public concern, but they’re not a (media-based) audience beyond simply tuning into a Facebook group for information about when and where to protest. Finally, you can be a member of a movie-based-public having never been an audience-member for the film, because you’re still able to participate in a discourse (a “cultural production”) about the film. the Barbie phenomenon of 2023 was a great example as it generated large scale debates about gender, politics, and representation in general. Ironically, one’s strong opinions about the film might not come from having seen the film but by being exposed to other people sharing their similar opinions about it. So, you’re still an audience for something (diffused discourse spreading over ‘wild’ (untamed) public networks as people share affect-fuelled memes, gifs, etc.)! And now, because of that audience activity, you’re a member of the anti-Barbie public.

To be clear, there is no one public sphere anymore, but certain smash hits and mega texts transcend fandoms and become the subject matter of wider media-talk and public discussion. A lot of the time, however, publics might organize and still be niche-publics, focused on the common but narrow interests of a group. So the “public sphere” is really a series of overlapping smaller publics (focusing their pro- and anti- energy on different phenomena), all of which are formed out of people who are audiences for some thing or other!^[20] Along with the democratization impulse implied by participatory culture comes a decentralizing tendency as we examine fan-audiences that have also become decentralized.^[21] No matter what, though, participatory culture is not an elite undertaking. Participatory culture carries with it the kernel of emancipatory thinking, exploring opportunities for knowledge production by grassroots communities who, frustrated by top-down hierarchies, exploit digital tools to express bottom-up forms of power. This can take many forms. Henry Jenkins sees “taking selfies (or participating in online forums, regardless of the topics) as ‘ordinary’ forms of participatory culture.” Emphasizing that it need not be limited to subcultures, he suggests that “it would certainly include more routine practices like taking selfies, though to be participatory these activities have to involve meaningful connections to some larger community (even if only the cohort of classmates at the local school).^[22] So, I might suggest that giving more information to Netflix’s algorithm via a thumbs up after having enjoyed some of its programming does not count as (meaningful) participation whereas giving a thumbs up to a friend after viewing their content in one’s news feed does. Even such minor interaction is minimally participatory, though, compared to more obvious forms of interaction where one’s activity has the power to bring about substantive change.

And that idea of power is key. The Netflix thumbs-up has the power to maybe alter your own individual habits. The thumbs-up on someone’s personal update has the power to influence them and their day (even if it’s just by providing a momentary dopamine bump). The power to alter people’s thinking or behaviour is huge, and the power to change the way platforms alter people’s thinking or behaviour is even more radical. All of these are ways of participating in the system of media and cultural power even if not all of these moves have the same power. It’s easy to get lost in an argument about what constitutes “real” participation (is it authentic or fake…). The point is that participation is relational.

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Participatory culture clearly has a long-prehistory before we get to the “internet age.” As Lauer notes, “Participation is fundamental to all human communities. It is a prerequisite for enfranchisement in social, political, and economic life”^[23]. But it is also clear that it also seems both more widespread and more obvious (and maybe even more significant because of its popularity and pervasiveness), because of the technological platforms available to audiences today. While the World Wide Web in 1991 invited people to interact with the Internet in a new way, the era of Web 2.0 brought about a ‘cornucopia of participation’ with blogs, wikis, social media, etc.^[24] The Web 2.0 environment “made multidirectional, audience-generated communication a reality, giving citizens the opportunity to join the party as producers rather than merely consumers”^[25]

Web 2.0 is not all hopes and dreams; it also carries with it nightmarish scenarios. Alongside the ‘democratization’ of potential cultural and media production and the diversification of social groups able to participate in that production, Web 2.0 “has proven equally effective in helping far-right and racist communities disseminate their ideas, recruit new members, and even ‘legitimise’ themselves through various online associations”^[26] Participatory culture is not just the byproduct of Web 2.0 and platforms such as social media. It is, however, another (updated and improved) label for what Jenkins referred to as ‘convergence culture.’  So often we get focused on the technical convergence of media platforms but there is also a “cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content”^[27]. Participatory culture more accurately invokes the activity of what’s happening and what people are doing as media and audiences and cultures alike all converge. It is neither necessarily good or bad but something that depends on how it is deployed by audiences.

And who are these players? Participatory culture depends upon audiences who are more than just users; the prime agent of participatory culture is the “produser,” a hybrid actor combining the qualities of producer and user of media texts. Fundamental to this shift in identity is a move beyond mere consumption. The produser is meant to be an evolutionary step beyond the prosumer, Contrary to produsers, prosumers constitute the type of audience who have the element of interactivity at their fingertips but who tend to find themselves caught in a feedback loop with the producers and fellow fans of the texts they consume. Like produsers, prosumers traffic in ‘informational goods,’ but mostly in pursuit of gratifying their (often entertainment-based) needs or as an escapist activity. Produsers, I would argue, are those audiences that we tend to think operate with a supposed higher-minded purpose, using media for something other than entertainment and fun. The key is in the dually active name (production + user). The passive consumer aspect of the audience is mitigated through a frequent association of their audience activity with civic (i.e. public) engagement. Thus, more often than not, the distinction between prosumer and produser boils down to the latter’s tendency to act as citizens rather than just consumers. Their audience activity is typically directed towards something (or some social goal) that is inspired by, but moves beyond, the original text.

Of course, just as participatory culture is a democratic ideal, so too is vision of the produser; not all audiences are civic and political actors, motivated by their consumption of media to go beyond it and use it for a greater good. And we have to question “whether online produsage really is the model of audience practice for most people”^[28] Many, it seems, just want to consume. Take, for instance, the suggestion that only one in a hundred people will be active online content producers, with 10 ‘interacting’ by commenting, and the remaining 89 simply viewing.^[29] While devoted fans actively engaging with media by producing new material to be shared with fellow fans certainly rises to the level of produser, many audiences don’t engage with media in this fashion. As for the more ‘active’ of audiences, while it may be too reductive, one could argue that prosumers “interact” while produsers “participate,” if we keep in mind that participation is always tinged with the aura of civic and political activism, guided by some sense of communal spirit rather than just individual fulfillment.

Certainly not every media audience member is a produser and not every fan partakes of participatory culture. Nonetheless, one can say that life today takes place within a contemporary “participatory condition“^[30]. This condition is rooted in the expectation that 21st-century individuals not only can participate in digital life, but that they must. Without our digital devices we are disconnected from much of what counts as daily life. Through our cell phones, for instance, we find information about things, navigate to places, check in via text when we arrive, tell our friends our whereabouts, take pics and circulate them via social media, archiving and curating our daily existence (and creating a data trail all along as we do so, tracking our sleep, our exercise, our purchases, our web searches). We are soaking in participation.^[31]

All of our networked interactions (with others, with corporations, and with data itself) are the building-blocks of our personal and social identity, weaving us into the social order. Thus, “participation through digital media has ceased to be a matter of personal choice; rather, it is essential to fully exist in contemporary society” ^[32]. Still, it must be noted that even taking for granted this participatory condition, participatory culture is a promise more than a concrete reality. It is a “democratic ideal—a vision or promise that in practice is rife with tensions and contradictions”^[33].

One of the reasons that participatory culture is more vision than universal practice is the reality that most interaction online is mediated by corporations with a primary motivation of maximizing profits rather than human and social potential. The rhetoric of creating community (or opportunities for users to connect with others) is often an excuse to capture eyeballs; the more that people can be encouraged to be users of specific platforms, whether they are merely consuming information or interacting with fellow users, the more value they have.^[34] Companies like Meta (formerly the Facebook company) market themselves with people-powered rhetoric^[35], but we must not ignore that this rhetoric is “commercially motivated; it is not intended to build civic solidarities but to drive sales.”^[36]

Participatory media are promisory media. They imply the promise of true participation through the veneer of interaction, all the while seeking to maximize consumption. Jenkins states, “I do not think technologies are participatory; cultures are. … I do not think of platforms like Facebook or YouTube as participatory cultures. Rather, they are [the] tools participatory communities sometimes has as means of maintaining social contact or sharing their cultural productions with each other.”^[37] Participatory media may hinge upon their interactivity, but it’s not the media that matters as much as how people engage with those media^[38]

We must also acknowledge the presence of “participatory fatigue” in participatory media. Colin Porlezza introduced this term to refer to the unrealized potential of participatory culture. Sometimes this can be seen when platforms turn off or limit user comments “due to participation inequality or challenging phenomena such as trolls, incivility, or hate-speech”^[39].

To conclude this chapter, I want to look ahead to the next one. Why do we focus on fans when there are so many different forms of audiences that might illuminate the texture of participatory culture? One, fans have always been at the vanguard of active audiences, taking content that inspired them, re-making it as their own, and recirculating it amongst themselves, even long before digital media made it much easier to do so. Two, fans, in the early era of Web 2.0, were the most outstanding of active audiences talking back to producers and producing their own unauthorized works and thus the exemplars of early digital participatory culture. Three, the explosion of participatory media available to fans has meant a concomitant explosion in the variety of ways that fan-audiences participate in contemporary media culture. Four, we are not seeing  just a greater quantity of fan expressions, but a greater quality too; fans love and hate alike. They can mobilize around adoration, but also snark and more toxic behaviours too. We ought to take seriously the panoply of fan experiences. Five, fans’ exhibition of “affective intensities” might be a model for the “participatory intensities” of audiences overall. Six, because fans exhibit audience activity or intensity that is greater than “regular” non-participating or non-participatory audiences, it is easier to see that activity and to study it. Seven, it is not just academics who focus on fans; as their subcultural activity becomes more mainstream, they are also of increasing value to businesses. Fans aren’t just consuming individuals, they’re also market opportunities. Admittedly, audiences act in many ways, not always rising to the level of fans who are typically viewed as the most committed, most fervent, and often most political of audiences. Jenkins admits this: “While fandom may constitute a public, fandom may also constitute a “mob”^[49]. Many, it may be said, “suffer” from a “participatory condition”; it does not necessitate either good or bad behavior in our contemporary media environment. If anything, it demonstrates that participatory culture is (or ought to be) democratic. As Ito notes, “while there is a clear history of [participatory culture] being associated with more nerdy content communities, I don’t see any reason why the term needs to be restricted to them.”^[50] So, let us explore what it means to be a fan in contemporary participatory culture in the next chapter, and then cast an even wider net as we move further.