CHAPTER 4 What constitutes what Constitutes Meaningful Participation?

                In almost every industry there are producers and consumers except the media.  In media it is hard to determine who is a producer and who is a consumer.  Our book makes an important point how can there be listeners if everyone is talking.  To make things even more confusing we are a part of a convergence cultural: in this culture old and new media collide.  There are still people who just watch and listen to media that are produced by others but they do so differently if as consumers they realize that they can participate in the discussion.  Does this make them consumers or are they consumer/producers?  The truth is that there are so many more virtual reality web sites, inner active web site, social media, and blogs that many of us have become creators, producers, and consumers all at the same time.  As soon as there is a new type of site introduced it is quickly followed by variation of that site and finally the variation will evolve into something innovative that will start the process all over again.  The technology of the web and the roles we play are changing so rapidly that we can’t keep up.
            An example of the ever changing web is Web 2.0. The term Web 2.0 was coined in 1999 to describe web sites that use technology beyond the plain one dimensional page of earlier web sites.  Although Web 2.0 suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to the web and how it technically operates, but rather to the overall changes in the ways software developers and users of the  web use the internet.  Prior to the internet, communication pretty easy to identify and describe.  This is not the case now.  There are so many different faces of communication for example: if you are on a virtual reality site like Second Life and you become involved in many of the Second Life communities are you still communicating even though you are communicating through an avatar?  Should it matter that you are communicating as someone else or are you at the core you even though your voice is that of an avatar.  These are new challenges that the field of communication has to sort through in order to get the answer.

                        There are so many new terms that we need to understand and utilize.  For example, what does peripheral participation mean and is it any different than lurking.  In the past we considered the 90% of the population who were not creating as lurkers.  Now there are so many levels of participation on sites that it seems more realistic to map the type of participation instead of dividing the participants into groups of lurkers and participants. Just as in face to face communication many people learn by observing (lurking) from the fringes.  It is from these fringes that they learn how to participate; hence the term peripheral participation denotes that the person is learning how to participate though observation which is not inactive behavior at all.  There is scaffolding which are levels of participation.

            There is also resistance vs. participation.  Since the web is fastly growing as the place to advertise there are people who see the web as primarily the media for displaying their products. These consumers can be described as displaying resistance or participation.  Politics can also be described as resistance vs. participation.  We know that we are resistant to a dominant power.  Instead, we wish to participate in our own governing.  The same goes for marketing we are not crazy about corporations marketing at us instead we would like to participate in the marketing.

            Audiences are produced through measurement and observation while publics direct attention onto messages that they like.  The difference of these terms may be distinguished between”fans” who are people who have a relationship between media groups and fandoms who are parts of larger and more diverse media groups.
           Participation vs. Collaboration is also represents people attempting a place to find a place for themselves between occupying a position of resistance and actively complying with a dominant power.  Many feel that they need to evaluate carefully both of these positions.  Active participation may not be ethically or morally what the average individual feels he or she can endorse.  Collaboration suggests that the action is more underhanded and sneaky.

            There are also concerns around Web 2.0 regarding hearing vs. listening.  Listening intimates that the person not only reads or hears what the author is saying but he or she actually listens to comprehend the authors intent.  Hearing is actually hearing the words but not looking for the meaning that wood promote actual communication.  The hearer would be nonactive while the listener would certainly be active.

            The web and all of its various components has changed our lives forever.  It continues to change our lives and our ways of communicating with each other.  As we continue to evolve in our endeavor to communicate efficiently and personally we also evolve in our ability to label what communication is and how we describe it.