Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/5633

Title

Participatory cultural production and the DIY internet: from theory to practice and back again

Author(s)

Sharp, Darren

Abstract

The free and open source software movements have inspired a new mode of participatory cultural production. The early hacker communities elaborated a sophisticated socio-technical system of network-enabled collaboration culminating in the GNU-Linux operating system. More recently, a range of do-it-yourself (DIY) media technologies have given any user with internet access the ability to become a producer in a variety of social fields. This has spawned an entirely new understanding of authorship and content production in film (machinima), games (player-producers), journalism (blogs), radio (podcasting) and knowledge production (Wikipedia). A number of social science epistemologies embrace 'practice' as a representational category to explain the relationship between structure and agency, such as Giddens' (1984) and Bourdieu's (1977) theories of structuration. Missing from most of these accounts is any engagement in practice-based research to construct knowledge about their domains. It will be shown that action research provides an important empirical method capable of extending the field of knowledge about user-led innovation. Action research provides a practice-based method to explore how social shaping occurs in the development of participatory cultural production systems.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Life and Social Sciences

Source

Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, Vol. 118 (2006), p. 16-24

Publication year

2006

Keyword(s)

Internet;  Wide area networks;  Computer networks;  Internet users;  Action research;  Do-it-yourself work;  Participant observation;  Social sciences;  Field work;  Internet research

Publisher

University of Queensland

ISSN

1329-878X

Publisher URL

http://emsah.uq.edu.au/mia/

Copyright

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Peer reviewed