Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st Century

• Henry Jenkins
• New Media Literacies, MIT

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17 June 2008According to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life project, more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one-third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced. In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures. A participatory culture is
a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one?s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social con-
nection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). Forms of participatory culture include:

Affiliations - memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards, metagaming, game clans, or MySpace).

Expressions - producing new creative forms,such as digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups).

Collaborative Problem-solving - working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative
reality gaming, spoiling).

Circulations - Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging).

A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitude toward intellectual property, the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship. Access to this participatory culture functions as a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeed and which will be left behind as they enter school and the workplace.