Participatory Culture.

Participatory culture is the idea of how you can have an active engagement into a particular culture of your choice. These cultures, in particular online gaming have low barriers of entry and allow anyone access as long as you have the correct software and hardware. The whole online gaming concept leads to participatory culture. Within online gaming there are many options of interaction for example forums. These lead back to the idea of participatory culture because when you comment on a particular topic or ask a question, you are participating in this online culture and you become a member of this online community.

However participatory culture has not only come into existence since the internet has come about in the past their used to be fanzines, I’ve never heard of these because I’m too young. Fanzines are a blend of fan and magazine are non-professional pieces of work, which allows people fans to take part in the particular culture.

Other ideas relating participatory culture is that of the idea of mentorship were you get something from the thing you are participating in. Also you get a sense of feeling apart of a community when you give out information that someone finds useful.

Participatory culture relates to the 5^th trait explained by Henry Jenkins in his New Media Landscape work. The 5^th trait was networked he explains that “media technologies are interconnected so that messages flow easily from one place to another and from one person to another.” This trait allows people of today to take part in participatory culture it is a major aspect into how online gaming works and can be used due to the millions of people participating in numerous things their has to be a large network.

So what culture do I participate in? Well I used to take part in online gaming via my PS3 only playing FIFA 11 but I say used to because my Playstation is currently broke so I don’t take part in any online gaming and to be honest its not good you feel like you are missing out because of all the new updates accessible via the gaming network. It was only last week that I posted my first ever video on Youtube but that was due to it being my campaign video. I know I wouldn’t do this out of choice, as it’s not my thing. I

Participate in the sense that I do view videos that I am a fan of or interested in but I have never left a comment on a video but sometimes read the comments of others, which I know everybody does even though some people wont admit it.