Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation; The ICA 2007 San Francisco Conference Theme Book; edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen - In an era when (especially new) media are celebrated for their participatory potential, questions about the nature and intensity of these participatory processes seem to be superfluous. But raising these questions pushes us into a critical mode towards the changes that have lead to the present-day media landscape. This volume’s authors aim to activate this critical mode and reflect on the participatory nature of contemporary media organizations and products.

In order to stand even a remote chance to realize this objective, and to critically unravel the societal role of participation, we need to acknowledge that participation is a complex and contested notion, covering a wide variety of meanings and practices that are converging into a hybrid of technologies, genres, and formats. At the same time, prudence is required, as many of the empowering and transformative opportunities cover-up a multitude of restrictions that deal with muting voices, appropriations, techniques of surveillance, inequalities, and exclusions. This volume thus provides its readership with a set of analyses that reconcile the appreciation for the analog and digital empowerment and emancipation with the critical analysis of their boundaries.

In the book’s preface, Sonia Livingstone, ICA President 2007-8, says: “This volume showcases some of the best work analysing the conditions, the complexities and the significance of contemporary forms of technologically-mediated communication and participation for ordinary members of public and for society more widely. It asserts that critique is needed more than ever, as norms of authority, trust, authenticity and legitimacy evolve. Only with a critical lens can we hope to recognise both the diversification of political expression, the exuberant irreverence of youth and the quieter flowering of digital storytelling among hitherto marginalised voices as well as the anti-democratic responses of repressive governments and the legal, regulatory or economic barriers that restrict the potential of the contemporary communication environment. Since, in addressing such questions, the very standpoints from which we as researchers draw our strength are also challenged in the context of globalisation, all this adds up to an agenda that, I believe, will stimulate the field of media and communication for the decade ahead. This volume sets the scene most ably, and I look forward to the debate as it unfolds.”

Contents:

* Preface - Sonia Livingstone
* Introduction: Blurring Participations and Convergences - Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen

Part I: Critiques

* Media and the Problem of Voice - Nick Couldry
* Corporate Appropriation of Participatory Culture - Mark Deuze
* Alienation in the Information Economy: Toward a Marxist Critique of Consumer Surveillance - Josh Lauer

Part II: Images/Sounds/Texts

* Blogs and News Processes: Net Neutrality and Digital Inequality - Gaye Tuchman and Stephen Ostertag
* Inviting Comment: Public Creation of Content in Early Spanish American Newspapers - Juanita Darling
* What Does it Take for a Newspaper to be Latina/o? A Participatory Definition of Ethnic Media - Isabel Awad
* Youth-Produced Radio and its Impacts: From Personal Empowerment to Political Action - Robert Huesca
* Wireless for the Poor: No Strings Attached? A Framework for Wireless Initiatives Connecting Rural Areas - Seungyoon Lee and Arul Chib
* Mapping Publics and Issues of The War Tapes: Claims and Connections Online - Katja Wittke and Patricia Aufderheide
* Shared Internet Videos about New Orleans Reconstruction: Examining an Emerging Genre of Citizen Journalism - Deborah Clark Vance
* Afterword: The People Formerly Known as the Audience - Jay Rosen