This document contains 9 questions about concepts from Marc Bousquet's work on participatory culture and digital media, including: how YouTube has become a hybrid media space; the differences between Jenkins' participatory culture and Murray's participatory affordance; whether intellectual property owners can both use and strictly regulate amateur user contributions; the shift from stickiness to spreadability among content creators; the software needed to enable spreadability; concerns about new technologies restricting cellphone use at concerts; other examples of participatory cultures beyond the social good; conflicts between gift economies of sharing and monetizing user activity on platforms; and whether using platforms constitutes a social skill that can leave some people behind.

1. Marc Bousquet // Jenkins, Nine Propositions
Media Studies 208, Emory University
Digital Media and
Culture

2. o How are YouTube and other platforms becoming “hybrid
media space,” and what are the consequences?

3. o Does Jenkins’ account of “participatory culture” differ from
Murray’s “participatory affordance of digital media”?

4. o Do you think intellectual property owners can have it both
ways, using the labor of amateur curators, reviewers,
remixers, and republishers when it’s good for them, and also
enforce some of the most restrictive IP regulation in history?

5. o Do you agree with Jenkins’ view of a shift in emphasis,
among content creators, toward spreadability rather than
stickiness?
o What sort of software engineering is required to enable
spreadability?

6. o What concerns might citizen journalists have about new
Apple technology that shuts down cellphone functions at
concerts?
o We like to think of participatory cultures as a social good.
The Klan, with its invented traditions, ritual, costumes and
so on, is a powerful counterexample. Can you think of
others?
o What is the conflict between a “gift economy” built on
sharing and the “commodity relations” in monetizing user
activity? To what extent have we resolved that conflict?
Should we do more?
o Is the use of platforms a “social skill”? Who gets left behind
in developing these skills?