Social Media & Participatory Culture

What is Participatory Culture? When it comes to social media participatory culture is when the user is acting as an contributor. With other users on the platform they share a connection with one another. These users do not just act as consumers of the app.

When it comes to myself and social media I participate because I have the urgency to learn. I believe that there is a lot that can be learned when you use social media especially when you follow specific accounts. During this past year being in this pandemic I feel like I was sort of forced to learn this way. Of course I used social media prior to the pandemic but when the pandemic happened that became my primary source of learning. I began to interact a lot more with my social media following and friends. I believe I did this because I wasn’t able to interact in person, so this was my only way. Over the past year I began to cook a lot more at home, so I would take the time to share what I cooked that day.

When reading chapter 4 of the book this week it touched on the 2011 South-East Queensland floods crisis. It stated that “Facebook and Twitter played an important role in crisis communication (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013).” This is interesting because I sure a lot people did the same during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic because I know I did. I got majority of my updates from social media, considering I do not watch the news. Social media is the only reason I stayed in the loop during this past year.

Also after taking a look at the Ted Talk Henry Jenkins gives me a great understanding of Participatory Culture. The key ideas that he gave were great, and based on them I got the understand that it is deep collaboration. On social platforms people are involved in collaborations with other where they show passion. They show the passion to share ideas and to learn ideas. I think that Henry Jenkins has a great understanding of participatory culture, and explained it very well.