Social Media & Participatory Culture
Social media has continued to gain popularity and users every single day for years. One thing that people really enjoy and love about social media and the way that it works is its participatory culture. Social media is considered a very participatory culture due to all of the content on these medias are produced and created or shared by the users. There is a lots of different people contributing to the various types of content that people see on their social media accounts. According to the article titled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century the authors of the article describe a participatory culture as “ 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” (Jenkins). https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/jenkins_white_paper.pdf
I believe that my own participation within these areas of social media would be very similar to many 21 year old college students. I personally find that social media is my most participated form of media and other areas. I tend to participate in social media on a daily basis. I usually am not creating or producing the actual content that I participate in, however, I often share things with friends or retweet or repost things on my various accounts. I would say that the social medias that I participate and create content the most are Snapchat and Instagram. This is because these are pictures and videos of myself or my friends and what we are doing as well as things I think are funny. I think that one of the reasons people enjoy these participatory cultures on social media is because it is a place they can post what they want and talk about things without being judged or without being very knowledgeable. A lot of it is opinion based or just showing people whatever you want to show them.
I think that one reason that people participate in social media so often is because they are able to show people what they are passionate about as well as express themselves. Jenkins said something in his TED talk that I thought was a very good point. He pretty much said that people are able to use social media and show what they want and show what they are good about no matter what their skills or age or professional status is. I found this to be very accurate. For my own participation levels I found that my participation and everyone elses went up a lot throughout the pandemic. This is because there was much less to do besides stay inside and do things from home. Social media is a great place to get involved with many things that are going around the world, country or even your own state or city. There were many movements that became very popular and gained a lot of attention through social media over the recent years. This past year especially. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCLKa0XRlw
The last great thing about this participatory culture we are all so fond of through social media is the ability of finding connections and groups with people who are into or involved in the same things as you. The networks/movements/initiatives available through medias is unmatched. I have gotten involved with many different movements through my time on social media. I will often post things that I am interested or passionate about to create awareness to things that I think is important. As much as a small thing this really is I feel like it is one of the best ways I can personally get involved. These types of issues would be about climate change or other serious issues in our world and country. Even if it is something small everything can help in its own way.
