Key Concepts in Wesch

Participatory Culture

• User filtering (everyday people influence what gets noticed…youtube rating, digg, reddit)

• User Organization / Folksonomy (everyday people “tag” and organize content)

• User-Generated Content (media composed by “amateurs”—usually for free)

• Remix (sampling and recombining existing popular texts to make a new text)

Cultural Tensions on YouTube

• Individual vs. Community• Anonymity vs. Self-Disclosure• Private vs. Public• Commercialization vs. Authenticity

Networked Individualism

Mobile technologies emphasize person-toperson connections beyond the bounds of localplaces (Wellman)

Context Collapse“The problem is not lack of context. It is context collapse: an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording. The images, actions, and words captured by the lens at any moment can be transported to anywhere on the planet and preserved (the performer must assume) for all time. The little glass lens becomes the gateway to a blackhole sucking allof time and space – virtually all possible contexts – in upon itself.” (Wesch http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=183)