According to Jenkins’ article “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century,” Jenkins notes a few key aspects that comprise participatory Culture. Page 7 states that these 5 components define participatory culture:
- Low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
- Strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
- Some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
- Members believe their contributions matter
- Members feel some degree of social connection with one another.
To me, my mind goes directly to the new social media craze: TikTok. I’m not a Tik Tok user myself, but the app has over 100,000,000 downloads. TikTok hammers home all aspects of participatory culture listed above. There aren’t many barriers restricting what can be posted. Tik Tok includes features that allow consumers to like, comment, share, and save creator’s videos. These features all contribute to users want and desire to post on Tik Tok because the consumers value their posts and can express those feelings through interactions with the video. Creators double as both a creators and consumers. Before people begin posting, they view different videos to get an idea of how they may want to express their videos…informal mentorship. As stated previously, liking, sharing, saving, and commenting all lead to a feeling of belongingness and that the post is valued. Along thiose same lines, the creator feels a degree of social connect with other users by how others interact with their video.
Another quote from the same article resonated with me. Just beneath the 5 main componenets of participatory culture, the author states, “Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute when ready and that is what they contribute will be appropriately valued.” Participatory culture is just that…participatory. Users don’t necessarily HAVE to post to feel they are a part of the community.
I know for myself and I’m sure a handful of others, I’m not one who posts all that often, but I still feel a part of the community. For me and my personality, I don’t feel the need to share and/or post constantly on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Further, the social rejection can feel embarrassing if your post isn’t viewed in the same light as your peers. It is easy to fall into the trap of comparing amounts of likes and beating yourself up wondering why followers didn’t post. Social rejection or negative comments on social media can be backbreaking for some users, which is why they choose not to post.
To me, I think the most important aspect of participatory culture should be building others up, not tearing them down. I believe there are many unique users who want to post, but fear the rejection and negative stereotype of being “a blogger” or “influencers.” Building up the confidence to view your posts and creations as unique and valued by the community is a tough hurdle to overcome, especially those lacking the confidence to do it. It’s not easy to put yourself and your creations out there for others to see can, comment on, and form opinions about.
The Scratch community is a vast participatory culture looking at creating animations, short films, games, and more. Throughout this week’s research, I looked up different tutorials on how to get started on Youtube and found a lot of neat videos teaching me how to create on Scratch. This action of mine would fall under the informal mentorship, and I’m appreciative of those who take the time to create videos helping novices such as myself.
I’ve introduced my students to Scratch as a means to express themselves artistically. Since I work at a charter school and we’re virtual, I have some more flexibility with the things I do with my students. We also have a portion of the day called “I&E” which stands for Intervention and Enrichment. The students in my group fall under the “Enrichment” umbrella, and we’re experimenting with Scratch. I’m trying to expose my students to an abundance of Web 2.0 technologies. I often take the ideas from the readings in this class and integrate them into my class immediately. I’m trying to build digitally literate students who understand the capabilities of their laptop. My goal is for my students to view computers in a different light at the end of school than at the beginning of school.
One of my students immediately got to work on Scratch and had a ton of trial and error scenarios. Her body language through the computer screen spoke volumes about her engagement in Scratch, and I could see her gears turning trying to problem solve which is exactly what I was hoping for. I asked her to share, but she said she didn’t want to. With these Scratch projects, I hope to build a culture of positivity and building others up rather than criticizing their work. These skills can then be transferred to different medias where students will feel comfortable and confident posting their artwork as opposed to fearful of negative comments.