I Can Make You a (net)Celebrity Overnight: Fan Production & Participatory Culture in Online Reality Shows

Alice E. MarwickDept of Culture & CommunicationNovember 10, 2006

What is Participatory Culture?

Patterns of media consumption have been profoundly altered by a succession of new media technologies, which enable average citizens to participate in the archiving, annotation, appropriation, transformation and recirculation of media content. Participatory culture refers to the new style of consumerism that emerges in this environment… Media consumers want to become media producers, while media producers want to maintain their traditional dominance over media content.

Source: Jenkins 2003

What is Participatory Culture?

New cultural forms and products– Blogs– “User-contributed

content”– Mashups– Fan films, fic– Mods

New ways of interacting with traditional media products– Discussion– Collaboration– Influence over

media producers

Fandom

Media Effects: Fans are dupes, slavish consumers of media content. Fandom as pathologyFrankfurt school

Cultural studies: Fans are resistive, progressive, activistJenkins, Fiske

Fan production

Production is not only possible, but typical

Source: John Fiske : The Cultural Economy of Fandom

Fandom

• McGuigan (1992): Must interrogate relationship between fans and consumer culture

• Murray (2004): Must analyze the political economy of fandom – Role of corporation– Relationships between fans /

producers

Sites of StudyOnline Reality Contests

Global Media Formats

Source: YouTube

These videos were removed b/c they made the file size too large for my FTP server to handle.

They were examples of the “Idol” franchise in different countries to show how widespread and resonant these media formats have become.

Global Media Formats

• We talk about these formats in terms of profitability, franchises, decreased risk

• They also become shared resources, narratives, cultural stories

• Frameworks for creativity

Source: Magder 2004

Google Idol

WebcamMusic Video

Site also includes short films, original songs, corporate-sponsored contests

Categories: Pop, Rock, Original, Kids, Producers

Source: http://www.googleidol.com

LiveJournal’s Next Top Model

Source: Top Model franchise

Source: http://communities.livejournal.com/ljstopmodel

What do these texts show us?

• Creative!• Participatory culture > fandom• New type of hybrid media form• Wide, diverse audience• Low barrier to entry

What is Television?

• Images in circulation• Infrastructure of broadcast &

transmission• A material object

Sources: Dienst 1994; Levin Russo 2006

Limitations

• Participation is limited• No political advocacy• Interplay with commercial products

– Copyright– Big New Media– Fan Labor– Defines “people” as “consumers”

• Lack of media legitimacy • Reproduction of dominant media

narratives

Who are Audiences?

• Active, interpretive communities of practice (Radway, Mankekar)

• Taking into account realities of economic production (Dornfeld, Sotamaa)

• Discard old consumer/producer binary (McKee)

Questions?