Participatory Spaces

Libraries are possibility spaces for participation ... but librarians are needed to actualize them

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Introduction

See also Civic media | Information technology topics | Social media landscape

The notion of participation has its roots in the 1960s in the rise of citizen participation seen in civil rights demonstrations, and the value placed on participating in the democratic process. Television as a centralized broadcast medium, especially in its public broadcasting form, was seen as symptomatic of a command-and-control division of democracy into elites where, on the one side (the powerful side), you had the cultural producers who controlled content and on the other a large, uninvolved and passive audience of television viewers who were literally fed content for mass consumption. In recent years, television has made a transition to newer forms of audience participation and reality programming through shows such as Canadian Idol and America's Got Talent. However, audience participation in 2012 also places the viewer in very specific roles - e.g. as watchful citizen, as police informant - and creates new forms and spaces of participation (and surveillance).

Audiences practices should not be a starting point for research into participatory spaces. Audiences are shaped by any of the spaces in which they act whether they are online in Facebook or Twitter or within less open media environments such as radio and television. The notion of space institutionalizes the power relationships that exist between actors in a given media context. Space enables or prevents interaction between these players or actors. In new media, for example, the approach taken in 2012 where there is freewheeling participation, makes it possible to examine audience practices and how they eventually become normative, conventionalized even. YouTube, for example, combines conventions from television with conventions from oral cultures, and focuses on ratings not by providing direct content editing facilities but digital spaces for feedback, interactions and conversation.

Participation's connection to learning

Since all learning – especially learning aided by information technologies – is both a product and a symptom of temporally-specific socio-cultural contexts. Therefore, it's important to consider the functions and features of participatory spaces within the framework of 21st century participatory cultures. According to Henry Jenkins, a participatory culture is one with relatively low barriers to expression, and where one can find social support for creating and sharing ideas with others. The members of a participatory culture believe that each contribution matters, and feel a collective sense of mentorship and social connection with others - even if (or especially if) they have not met in person. These particular features of participatory cultures affect, to a great extent, the type of learning that can best flourish within it.

Gee clarifies our understanding of participatory cultures further by introducing the notion of affinity spaces. He differentiates affinity spaces from previous frameworks of participation such as communities of practice by shifting focus from membership to interaction. While “community” is associated with affiliations and a deeper sense of belonging, affinity spaces are understood as the interconnected activities and interests of a collective. Gee reclaims the idea of “space” in terms of interactivity. In that sense, thinking about “space” indicates a certain passivity on the part of the participants reminiscent of the introduction of television. This seems to emphasize the circumstances of association rather than the actions or motivations of the participants. This seems to pose some danger because “spaces” can be inherently more passive than active (think of libraries). Thinking about learning spaces in more active ways is a significant step in realizing their true pedagogical and social potential.

Affinity spaces are collaborative

In affinity spaces, there is no designated apprentice or master. Gee lists the following characteristics of an affinity space:

• A common endeavor (interests, goals or practices)
• People with varying levels of experience and skill share the same space
• Ways of entering the space can also generate content
• Content is organized and transformed by the users
• Intensive and extensive knowledge is encouraged
• Individual and distributed knowledge is encouraged
• Dispersed knowledge (not in the space) is highlighted
• Tacit knowledge is modeled and articulated
• Many forms and routes to participation
• Many routes to status
• Leadership is porous and leaders are resources