Participatory culture, in relation to convergence, is basically the involvement of consumers with media content, which essentially means that it is a big part of convergence. Consumers’ involvement can take place during the production process or with the end product. An important point here is the concept of participation which is more open-minded and media consumers have more control than media producers. Despite consumers being passive in earlier times, participatory culture has been around for quite some time. Studies in the 1980s and 1990s failed to highlight the fact that audiences were active and critically aware of what is being fed to them. As Jenkins identified, people, in particular fans of a certain subject – Star Wars, Star Trek, games, etc. – have been early adapters to new media technologies and are active fans too. Fans are essentially what consumer participation is all about. Take for example Star Wars. The fan base of the series is massive and right from its first appearance in the late 1970s fans have been remaking the films in their own garages, with their own equipment, and based on their own terms. This can be termed as grassroots creativity.
Consider that for a moment and then shift your thoughts to a more contemporary setting. In today’s world, advanced technologies are vast and affordable. Modern technology does two things, which are vital to the idea of participation: it provides consumers with easy access to media content and it enables consumers to alter, remake, remix and create new media content. John Blossom (2009) came up with the concept of Content Nation in light modern technologies enabling everyone to produce their own content. Wikis, weblogs, and social sites are platforms (tools), which enable such activity of production and Blossom foresees a shift in our work and future as well as the way we live our lives due to such a practice. In recent years, we’ve seen the impact of participatory culture in many incidents and events, some good and some bad and most of the time involves the media producers. Media companies have been in wars with many amateur, independent producers mostly in regards to ownership squabbles and breach of copyright policies. The music and film/television industries are probably the parties who suffer most from consumers’ participation. People with their own technologies are capable of ripping media content from a CD and redistributing that content to other consumers through the Internet, who in turn can redistributed them again or use it to recreate new content. This breaches all sorts of copyright laws and ownership issues, which can be brought to court. Napster is a music distributing and downloading software that was sued and dismantled by music companies, which saw their revenues spiral downwards.
Of course, not all industries despise them. The games industry in particular has been very receptive to the idea of user-generated content. They have managed to establish a good relationship with consumers and also use user-generated content to their benefit by integrating it into games. The success is immense as both parties are delighted as they achieve their own goals. Furthermore, there have been a lot more effort in promoting the concept of participation as media producers are aware that consumers are capable of determining what product works or doesn’t work. They realize that consumers want to participate in the production process and that they have the means to do. The admiration of media producers on consumers is evident. George Lucas, director of the Star Wars series, have always welcomed fan films and remixes of his content. Furthermore, he actively communicates with them and praises them for their creativity even with limited resources.
In a nutshell, participation means that producers and consumers are almost the same and as Jenkins defines it, there’s no division between both parties in convergence culture. That would mean consumers can be and are producers too. What consumers produce is what we call user-generated content. User-generated content is the result of consumers actively participating and creating new media content and the activity of participation and the end product are something media producers do not particularly like.
FROM PACMAN TO POOL 