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Media and Participation
To Irena
for her brave struggle
Media and Participation
A site of ideological-democratic struggle
Nico Carpentier
intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2011 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: Macmillan
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-407-0
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 9
Chapter 1: Defining Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview 13
1. Democratic theory and participation 15
2. Beyond democratic theory 39
3. Audience participation and communication (rights) 64
Chapter 2: Keyword – Power 137
1. A conceptual introduction 139
2. Case 1: Management in the north Belgian audience discussion
programme
Jan Publiek
148
3. Case 2:
Barometer
and the post-political 161
Chapter 3: Keyword – Identity 173
1. A conceptual introduction 175
2. Case 1: The construction of ordinary people in
Jan Publiek
185
3. Case 2:
Temptation Island
– reality TV and minimalist participation 195
Chapter 4: Keyword – Organization 213
1. A conceptual introduction 215
2. Case 1: BBC’s
Video Nation
230
3. Case 2:
RadioSwap
247
Media and Participation
6
Chapter 5: Keyword – Technology 265
1. A conceptual introduction 267
2. Case:
Kinoautomat – One man and his house
. The lack of uptake
of participatory technology 276
Chapter 6: Keyword – Quality 309
1. A conceptual introduction 311
2. Case 1:
16plus
,
Barometer
and the rejection of participatory
products 324
3. Case 2: Alternative and community media constructions of
quality: Negotiated quality 337
Chapter 7: A Short Conclusion 349
References 361
Acknowledgements
Parts of the chapters in this book were previously published as articles and book
chapters, and reappear here in revised form.
In chapter 1, the discussion on the Soviet theory of the press was published in
an article entitled ‘Reading back beyond the “post” prex. e politics of the signier
“post-socialism”, and its opportunities for the enrichment of participatory media theory’,
in Mediální studia, 1/2010: 7–30.
e theoretical discussion on power was published as the introduction of the
book chapter ‘Policy’s hubris. Power, fantasy and the limits of (global) media policy
interventions’ in Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy (eds.) e Handbook on Global Media
and Communication Policy, by Blackwell, p. 113–128. e Jan Publiek case study in
chapter 2 was published as ‘Managing audience participation’ in the European Journal of
Communication, 16 (2): 209–232. e Barometer case study in chapter 2 was published
as ‘Post-democracy, hegemony and invisible power. e Reality TV media professional
as ‘primum movens immobile”’ in Soe Van Bauwel and Nico Carpentier (eds.) Trans-
reality Television. e Transgression of Reality, Genre, Politics and Audience in Reality TV,
by Lexington Books, p. 105–124.
e theoretical discussion on the everyday and the ordinary, combined with the case
study on Jan Publiek in chapter 3 was co-authored with Wim Hannot, and published
as ‘To be a common hero. e uneasy balance between the ordinary and ordinariness
in the subject position of mediated ordinary people in the talk show Jan Publiek’, in
the International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12 (6): 597–616. e second case study in
chapter 3, on Temptation Island, was published as ‘Putting your relationship to the test.
Constructions of delity, seduction and participation in Temptation Island’ in the Social
Journalism International Review, 2: 321–345.
e Video Nation case study in chapter 4 was published as ‘BBC’s Video Nation as a
participatory media practice. Signifying everyday life, cultural diversity and participation
in an on-line community’ in the International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6 (4): 425–447.
Part of the second case study on RadioSwap was published as a chapter in Understanding
Alternative Media, authored by Olga Bailey, Bart Cammaerts and myself, and as an
article entitled ‘e on-line community media database RadioSwap as a translocal tool
Media and Participation
8
to broaden the communicative rhizome’ in Observatorio (OBS*), http://www.obercom.
pt/ojs/index.php/obs.
e theoretical discussion in chapter 6, and the case study on alternative and
community media constructions of quality was published as ‘Developing democratic
and negotiated quality. Re-articulating discourses of quality through democratic and
participatory media practices’ in Communication Management Quarterly, 13 (4): 5–41.
e case study on 16plus and Barometer was published as ‘Produsers’ on participatory
websites. Ordinary young people and the politics of banality, in Peter Dahlgren and
Tobias Olsson (eds.) Young Citizens, ICTs and Democracy, p. 51–68.
I thank the relevant publishers and colleagues for permission to reprint.
Introduction1
In November 1941 the Nazis transformed the garrison town of eresienstadt (or
Terezín in what is now the Czech Republic) into a concentration camp that became
‘home’ to more than 50,000 Jewish people who were forced to live in extremely
harsh conditions, while they awaited deportation to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
ere were many children in the eresienstadt camp, oen segregated from the adults
in children’s homes. e group of young boys who were housed in Barracks L417 (or
Home One) started, in secret, to produce a newspaper, Vedem (which translates as ‘We
lead’), which was a remarkable collection of essays, reviews, stories, drawings and poetry,
written by the 13-, 14- and 15-year-old boys in Home One2.
Vedem’s rst and only editor-in-chief was Petr Ginz (1928–1944), who took on the role
aged 14. Vedem was produced weekly, from December 1942 to July 1944. e 800 pages
of Vedem, 1–190 typewritten, the rest handwritten, survived the war and are now housed
in the Memorial of Terezin. e 100 or so occupants of Home One were less fortunate;
only een boys survived the war. Vedem’s editor-in-chief, Petr Ginz, was murdered in
Auschwitz in 1944 (Křížková et al., 1995).
One of the boys, Walter Roth, delivered the following address, which was (quite soon
aer) published in Vedem:
e banner has been raised. Home Number One has its own ag, the symbol of its
future work and its future communal life. e Home has its own government. Why did
we set it up? Because we no longer want to be an accidental group of boys, passively
succumbing to the fate meted out to us. We want to create an active, mature society
and through work and discipline transform our fate into a joyful, proud reality. ey
have unjustly uprooted us from the soil that nurtured us, from the work, the joys,
and the culture from which our young lives should have drawn strength. ey have
only one aim in mind – to destroy us, not only physically but mentally and morally as
well. Will they succeed? Never! Robbed of the sources of our culture, we shall create
new ones. Separated from all that gave us pleasure, we shall build a new and joyously
triumphant life! Cut o from a well-ordered society, we shall create a new life together,
based on organization, voluntary discipline and mutual trust. Torn from our people
Media and Participation
10
by this terrible evil, we shall not allow our hearts to be hardened by hatred and anger,
but today and forever, our highest aim shall be love for our fellow men, and contempt
for racial, religious and nationalist strife. (Roth, in Křížková et al., 1995: 36)
Vedem remains a beautiful and at the same time horric symbol of the human capacity to
endure hardships without surrendering humanity. Vedem demonstrates the importance
of communication to articulate this same humanity: To speak, to write and to publish is
to enjoy, to resist, to live and to be human. Vedem uniquely symbolizes human capacity
and need to communicate. It demonstrates the importance – to all of us – of the media as
a tool and structure to organize this communication, and our capacity to produce these
media ourselves, even in the face of the most dicult circumstances.
is book explores media and participation in much less horrendous circumstances,
but against the backdrop of the vigour that the editors of Vedem displayed in order to
democratize their communication in a place where democracy had ceased to exist. In
the contemporary era, participation still sometimes meets with resistance, contempt or
indierence, but it is no longer punished by persecution, at least not in most western
democracies, and not most of the time. is is not to imply that participation is an easy
concept, either theoretically or empirically. Its ideological role in the democratic-political
realm renders it a oating signier, which tends to complicate matters.
e rst part of this book attempts to grasp the concept of participation and its role
within the mediascape through a detailed discussion of the articulations of participation
in the theoretical-academic debates in ve societal elds: democracy, spatial planning,
development, arts and museums, and communication. is detailed analysis, which is
in its structure inspired by Foucault’s archeo-genealogy, highlights the complexity and
contingency of the signier participation, by showing the wide variety of – sometimes
contradictory and sometimes mutually reinforcing – meanings that have been attributed
to the concept of participation in these dierent elds in the second half of the twentieth
and rst years of the twenty-rst century. My broad theoretical and empirical approach
is to ground media participation within its twentieth-century intellectual history but
without reducing it to a linear-historical narration, and to contextualize it by linking
it to a series of similar debates – oen forgotten in analyses of media participation –
in other societal elds. In order to achieve this objective, I use the strategy of ‘thick’
theoretical description, in which a high level of theoretical detail is provided in order to
show the uidity, contingency and diversity but also the rigidity and xity of the signier
participation.
e ultimate impossibility of xing the signier participation is explained by its intimate
connection with the political, the ideological and the democratic. Participation is seen as
a political-ideological concept that is intrinsically linked to power. is becomes obvious
in the discussion of democratic theory, where participation is in permanent tension with
the concept of representation. And when we move beyond the eld of institutionalized
politics into the realm of the political, we again see how participation captures the power
Introduction
11
relations within a variety of societal spheres. What this book shows is that the political
nature of participation manifests itself in the struggles to minimize or to maximize the
equal power positions of the actors involved in the decision-making processes that are
omnipresent in all societal spheres.
In the second part of the book I use ve keywords to deepen these debates on
participation. It is no accident that, for the reasons mentioned above, the rst keyword
addressed in this second part is power. I then discuss four structuring elements that
play enabling or disabling roles within participatory processes: identity, technology,
organization and quality. e chapters in part two of this book that deal with these
structuring elements allow me to re-emphasize – but from a dierent angle, and through
its interactions with these other concepts – the complexity of the notion of participation.
All ve keywords are notions that have been approached in many dierent ways, and
for that reason each of the ve chapters in part two of the book starts with a theoretical-
conceptual discussion that combines discursive and materialist approaches3 and that
articulates and links these concepts to participation.
ese theoretical discussions – combined with the instruments developed in the
rst part of this book – are used to develop a series of case studies within a variety
of media spheres. e audience discussion programme Jan Publiek and the access TV
programme Barometer are used to show the workings of power within the mainstream
(public) television sphere, focusing especially on the role of the media professional. In
chapter 3 on identity, a reception analysis of Jan Publiek combined with an analysis of the
reality TV programme Temptation Island and the online debates it triggered shows the
importance of the identities and subject positions that circulate within the media sphere.
ese subject positions, oen embedded already in the media texts and the production
process, structure the reception of the ordinary participants and their interventions.
Chapter 4 discusses the importance of organizational structures as key locations where
participatory practices are embedded. e BBC’s Video Nation project illustrates the
capacity of mainstream broadcasters to organize more maximalist forms of participation,
while the RadioSwap case shows the limits of the participatory ambitions of alternative
and community radio stations. Chapter 5 looks at another of the structuring elements,
technology, through the Czechoslovak Kinoautomat case study. e greater detail of
this discussion of Kinoautomat due to the need to document this exceptional 1960s lm
project allows me to analyse the role of technology in participatory projects. Finally, in
chapter 6 the importance of the concept of quality as a discursive tool that impacts on
the acceptance or rejection of participatory media content is illustrated by the reception
analysis of two subcases (16plus and Barometer). e second case study in this chapter,
on the negotiations over quality in Swiss and Austrian community radio stations, shows
that this discourse on quality is not completely rigid, and that these media organizations
managed to include the quality denition in their participatory praxis.
rough all these theoretical elaborations and empirical case studies, participation
reveals itself as a valuable entry point to the ongoing democratic revolution, which
Media and Participation
12
requires continuous protection from regression, and continuous stimuli to deepen it. e
protection and further democratization of our democracies is the best possible tribute
to the hope and creativity of the Vedem boys, and the many others who have struggled
to get their voices heard.
Notes
1. ere are many other people to thank, and their names can be found in the many notes that
follow this one.
e theoretical work and the case study research was made possible by several grants,
from the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen (FWO grant G.0490.06N), the
Cultural Policy Research Centre Steunpunt Re-Creatief Vlaanderen, the Belgian Federal Public
Planning Service – Science Policy, the Estonian Science Fund (Grant No. 8006) and the COST
Action ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’ (Action IS0906). I am grateful to
these funding agencies for their support, and to the colleagues that worked with me on these
projects, especially Matthew Hibberd, Leo Van Audenhove and Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt.
Many of the ideas that feature in this book have been discussed in the Mediated Participations
course I taught in the Master’s Degree Programme in Media and Global Communication at the
University of Helsinki. Here, I want to thank all my students and colleagues.
I also want to thank Cynthia Little and all Intellect sta for their work.
2. e boys did almost all of the writing themselves, but they were assisted and motivated by a
number of adults, most notably Valtr Eisinger.
3. is also entails a very modest attempt to bridge the Cultural Studies and Political Economy
traditions.
Chapter 1
Defining Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
The concept of participation features in a surprising variety of frameworks, which
have been transformed through an almost innite number of materializations.
is rst chapter analyses the articulation of participation in ve theoretical
frameworks, without focusing too much (yet) on their actual materialization in
participatory practices; however, I do not lose sight of the basic fact that theorizations
are oen grounded in reections on specic and actual materializations. e ve elds
I scrutinize are democracy, spatial planning, development, arts and museums, and
communication, all of which are rich in what they have to oer on participation. is
chapter juxtaposes the dierent elds, with a series of discourse-theoretical techniques1
working in the background, to provide a detailed and interdisciplinary mapping of the
ways that participation has been articulated in and across these elds. Together, these
ve elds are evidence of the social need for participation and the desire of people to
exert control over their everyday lives, but also of the dicult relations people have with
the ways that their participation is organized, structured and (thus) limited.
1. Democratic theory and participation
1.1 An introduction
Democracy, because of its concern with the inclusion of the people within political
decision-making processes, is one of the key sites of the articulation of the concept of
participation. e centrality of people’s participation is described in Held’s (1996: 1)
denition of democracy as “a form of government in which, in contradiction to
monarchies and aristocracies, the people rule. Democracy entails a political community
in which there is some form of political equality among the people”. Held’s work provides
an immediate and excellent overview of the complexity of the notion of democracy.
In his Models of Democracy, Held (1996: 3) initiates the debate by referring to Lively’s
(1975: 30) list of ways to organize this form of political equality in practice. Lively
distinguishes seven variations: (1) all should govern; (2) all should be involved in crucial
decision-making; (3) rulers should be accountable to the ruled; (4) rulers should be
accountable to the representatives of the ruled; (5) rulers should be chosen by the ruled;
(6) rulers should be chosen by the representatives of the ruled and (7) rulers should act
Media and Participation
16
in the interest of the ruled. is list rst highlights the strong emphasis in democratic
theory on the dierence between rulers and ruled, with the important consequence that
the concept of participation is articulated exclusively in relation to the ruled, ignoring
the rulers. e list can also be seen as an initial indication that democracy is not a stable
concept with a xed signication, but encompasses a multitude of meanings.
e meaning of the concept of democracy is complicated by three elements: the
variety of democratic manifestations and variants; the distinction between formal
democracy and democratic cultures and practices; and the distinction between the
narrow-political system (‘politics’) and the broad-political dimensions of the social (the
‘political’). One of the crucial dimensions structuring the dierent democratic models is
the minimalist versus maximalist dimension, which underlies a number of key positions
in the articulation of democracy.
One of these key positions is the always-present balance between representation
and participation, which, for instance, provides structuring support for Held’s (1996)
typology of democratic models. As Held describes it, “Within the history of the clash
of positions lies the struggle to determine whether democracy will mean some kind of
popular power (a form of life in which citizens are engaged in self-government and self-
regulation) or an aid to decision-making (a means to legitimate the decisions of those
voted into power)” (Held, 1996: 3 – emphasis in original). e notion of representation
refers here to political representation, Vertretung, or speaking-for, in contrast to the
other main meaning of representation, Darstellung, or standing-for (Spivak, 1990: 108).2
Political representation is grounded in the formal delegation of power, where specic
actors are authorized on behalf of others “to sign on his behalf, to act on his behalf, to
speak on his behalf ” and where these actors receive “the power of a proxy” (Bourdieu,
1991: 203). Obviously, one of the basic democratic instruments for the formal delegation
of power is elections, where, through the organization of a popular vote, political actors
are legitimized to gain (at least partial) control over well-dened parts of the state’s
resources and decision-making structures. is control is not total, but structured
through institutional, legal (oen constitutional) and cultural logics.
On the other side of the democratic balance is the notion of political participation,
which refers to the involvement of the citizenry within (institutionalized) politics. As
Marshall (1992: 10–11) explains in his discussion of political citizen rights, this not only
includes the right to elect, but also the right to stand for election: “By the political element
[of citizenship] I mean the right to participate in the exercise of political power, as a
member of a body invested with political power or as an elector of such a body”. Again,
these forms of political participation are not total, but structured through institutional,
legal and cultural logics (see Dahlgren, 2009). One important example is the limits
imposed by the concept of citizenship itself, which is not only a democracy-facilitating
concept, but also has an exclusionary component.
Dierent democratic models (of democratic theory and practice) attribute dierent
balances between these concepts of representation and participation. When the political is
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
17
dened, following Schumpeter (1976), for instance, as the privilege of specic competing
elites, thus reducing the political role of the citizenry to participation in the election
process, the balance shis towards representation and the delegation of power. is is
what we can consider the rst characteristic of the minimalist version of democratic
participation. In this model, the societal decision-making remains centralized and
participation remains limited (in space and time). In contrast, in other democratic
models (e.g., participatory or radical democracy – see below), participation plays a more
substantial and continuous role and does not remain restricted to the ‘mere’ election
of representatives. ese democratic models with more decentralized societal decision-
making and a stronger role of participation (in relation to representation) are considered
here to be maximalist forms of democratic participation.
Figure 1: e minimalist versus maximalist dimension.
Minimalist democratic participation Maximalist democratic participation
Focusing on representation and delegation
of power
Participation limited to elite selection
Focusing on macro-participation
Narrow denition of politics as
institutionalized politics
Unidirectional participation
Focusing on a homogeneous popular will
Balancing representation and participation
Attempting to maximize participation
Combining macro- and micro-participation
Broad denition of the political as a dimension of
the social
Multidirectional participation
Focusing on heterogeneity
Figure 1 shows that the archetypical minimalist–maximalist dimension is characterized
not only by the balance between representation and participation, but on the distinction
that omas (1994) makes between micro- and macro-participation. While macro-
participation relates to participation in the entire polis, country or political imagined
community, micro-participation refers to the spheres of school, family, workplace,
church and community. More minimalist models tend to focus more exclusively on
macro-participation, since the political role of citizens is limited to the election of
political representatives at the macro-level. A classic denition of political participation
by Verba and Nie (1987: 2) states that political participation is “those activities by private
citizens that are more or less directly aimed at inuencing the selection of governmental
personnel and/or the actions they take”, which situates political participation within the
eld of macro-participation (see also Milbrath, 1965; Milbrath and Goel, 1977). Brady
(1997: 737) uses a slightly broader denition of political participation as “any activity
of ordinary [3] citizens with the aim of inuencing the political outcomes”, but on the
next page adds that these participatory eorts are “directed at some government policy
or activity” (Brady, 1997: 738). More traditional public sphere models tend also to focus
Media and Participation
18
on macro-communicative processes, in the establishment of ‘the’ public opinion. is
is a viewpoint echoed in Habermas’s (1974: 49) old denition of the public sphere: “By
the ‘public sphere’ we mean rst of all a realm of our social life in which something
approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens”. In
contrast, models of maximalist democratic participation tend to combine (attention for)
the dierent spheres of the social, without ignoring participatory practices within the
eld of institutionalized politics, at a variety of levels, including local politics, interest
group politics and activist politics. But these strong (er) forms of citizen involvement are
not restricted to institutionalized politics; participatory practices can also be embedded
within the structures of everyday life (which can be located in civil society, businesses or
families). For instance, in e Transformation of Intimacy, Giddens formulates a warm
plea for the “radical democratisation of the personal” (Giddens, 1992: 182) on the basis
of the argument that a symmetry exists between “the democratising of personal life and
democratic possibilities in the global political order at the most extensive level” (Giddens,
1992: 195–196). Pateman (1970) also emphasizes the role of (macro-participation in)
representative democracies, but combines this with attention for participatory processes
in other societal spheres, such as the workplace:
Apart from its importance as an educative device, participation in the workplace
– a political system – can be regarded as political participation in its own right.
us industry and other spheres provide alternative areas where the individual can
participate in decision making in matters of which he [or she] has rst hand, everyday
experience. (Pateman, 1970: 35)
A third characteristic of the minimalist–maximalist dimension, which tries to capture
the process of broadening the locus of participation (and which is closely related to the
role played by micro- and macro-participation), is based on the distinction between
politics and the political. Here, minimalist democratic participation is focused more
on institutionalized politics, which renders it mono-sited. In contrast, maximalist
democratic participation is embedded in the political, which makes it multi-sited. Moue,
for instance, describes the distinction between politics and the political as follows:
By ‘the political,’ I refer to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in human
relations, antagonism that can take many forms and emerge in dierent types of social
relations. ‘Politics’ on the other side, indicates the ensemble of practices, discourses
and institutions that seek to establish a certain order and organize human coexistence
in conditions that are always potentially conictual because they are aected by the
dimension of ‘the political’. (Moue, 2000: 101, see also Moue, 2005: 8)
In other words, according to Moue (1997: 3), the political “cannot be restricted to
a certain type of institution, or envisaged as constituting a specic sphere or level of
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
19
society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every human society and
that determines our very ontological condition”. e phrasing of Moue’s distinction
confusingly diverges from a series of (structurally similar) arguments that maintain the
word politics, while broadening its meaning (see, in this context, for instance Beck’s
(1997) concept of sub-politics, Giddens’s (1991) concept of life politics and cultural
studies’ use of the politics concept (see e.g. Hall, 1997a: 257)). Despite these dierences
we nd in these intellectual projects the tendency to broaden the concept of politics (and
the political) beyond the connements of institutionalized politics. is, in turn, allows
me to further characterize minimalist democratic participation as mainly concerned
with the eld of (institutionalized) politics, while maximalist democratic participation
relates to the political.
e debate over the locus of participation and decision-making brings us to the
fourth characteristic of the minimalist–maximalist dimension, namely the dierence
between unidirectional versus multidirectional participation. In minimalist forms
of democratic participation, participation is aimed at one specic eld – that of
institutionalized politics. But in the less extreme versions of minimalist democratic
participation, which include participatory practices in other elds of the social,
the unidirectional objective of participation is also to inuence institutionalized
politics. One already-mentioned example is Verba and Nie’s (1987: 2) denition,
where participatory practices are aimed at “inuencing the selection of governmental
personnel and/or the actions they take”. Similarly, a number of theoretical models
that deal with the public sphere and public opinion, a societal eld which is still
structurally dierent from institutionalized politics, tend to focus on the capacity of
the public sphere(s) and public opinion(s) to impact on institutionalized politics. For
instance, Burke (discussed in Splichal, 2001: 22–23) emphasizes the importance of
public opinion, and the need for government to be ruled by public opinion. Slightly
more recent communication models, such as the agenda-setting model, focus very
strongly on the relationships between public (and media) agendas and the agenda of
institutionalized politics (McCombs and Shaw, 1972).
Maximalist democratic participation tends to see participatory processes as
multidirectional, without privileging the relationship of the sites of participation with
institutionalized politics. Although the connections with institutionalized politics
are not severed, the broad denition of the political, combined with the inclusion of
micro-participation in maximalist democratic participation, allows for the validation
of participatory practices within the eld in which they take place, and through their
interconnection with other elds. For instance, participation within the eld of museums
(as defended by some of the proponents of new museology – see e.g. van Mensch
(2005) on the third shi of museology) is considered relevant in itself, as it provides
visitors and stakeholders with opportunities to inuence these symbolic environments.
Moreover, the interconnectedness of the participatory practices is deemed important for
strengthening a participatory culture within the social. From this perspective, then, the
Media and Participation
20
participation of museum stakeholders is considered relevant since it contributes (as all
participatory practices in specic societal elds) to the democratization of democracy
(Giddens, 2002: 93).
Another characteristic of the minimalist–maximalist dimension is the attributed
homogeneity or heterogeneity of the actors involved in the decision-making processes.
Especially in cases where these decision-making processes are aimed at reaching decisions
and establishing outcomes (which does not always apply), there is an attempt to reach
communality and collectivity through a procedure that allows for negotiation among a
diversity of positions. An obvious example is election procedures, which aim to achieve
a specic outcome (selecting a limited number of political representatives) through a
specic procedure (based on ‘universal’ surage), which allows for negotiation between
the diversity of individual preferences. e negotiation procedure always carries a specic
cost, which, in the case of for elections, for instance, might be the extremely limited
impact of the individual’s action on the election outcome (Aldrich, 1993). Nevertheless,
the procedure allows the diversity of positions to be translated into a decision that (oen)
is accepted as legitimate. But this translation remains a tension, which may be resolvable.
One strategy is to homogenize the actor(s) involved in the decision-making process. e
concepts that provide discursive support for this homogenization strategy are ‘popular
will’ and ‘public opinion’ (especially when public opinion is behaviouralistically dened
“as opinion expressed by the public” – see Splichal (2001: 41) for a discussion and critique).
In these cases, the participatory procedures are seen to be resulting in the expression of a
collective and homogeneous public will (‘the people have spoken’). In other cases, specic
actors (such as the mainstream media) are seen as legitimate channels for the expression
of ‘the’ public opinion, or the people’s vanguard, again homogenizing the diversity of
positions. ese processes of homogenization and hegemonization are strengthened by
the ignorance about the positions and voices of the minorities (in number or substance)
who took another position. Another (related) strategy consists of recognizing the existence
of diversity beforehand, but the procedure is seen as suspending or halting the existence
of diversity. is type of strategy could be used aer a majority vote, but the Habermasian
Diskurs4 – where the “forceless force of the better argument” (Habermas, 1999: 450) rules
– is also based on a logic where diversity ends aer the procedure. In addition, the strategy
of the compromise suspends diversity, albeit to a lesser degree, as dierent positions are
articulated and remain visible as part of the outcome. But in the case of a compromise,
the outcome continues to suspend diversity because positions become integrated into the
outcome of the negotiation. A third strategy to deal with the tension between position
diversity and outcome singularity denes the procedure itself as an intervention that only
temporally xes a singularity, which is considered as always particular and contestable.
Here, an outcome is still achieved, but the opportunity to reconsider and to rebalance
the dierent positions is enshrined in the decision itself. One other variation here is so-
called non-decisions, where the position diversity makes decision-making impossible or
undesirable. Arguably, the more minimalist forms of democratic participation tend to
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
21
focus on the strategies of homogenization, because of the large-scale decision-making
processes (or in other words, the focus on macro-participation), and their signicance
in generating legitimacy for institutionalized politics, the state and the nation (which is
related to the unidirectional focus of minimalist democratic participation). In contrast,
maximalist democratic participation is characterized more by heterogeneity, which is
triggered by the diversity of decision-making loci in the political eld, generated through
the combination of micro- and macro-participation, and the multidirectional nature of
participatory practices.
e discussion about homogeneity and heterogeneity is also informed by the distinction
between the consensus and conict-oriented approaches of the political, although here the
link between minimalism and maximalism is less straightforward. For that reason, it remains
important to take into account both the consensus- and the conict-oriented approaches.
e rationale for this can be found in the radical contingency of the social that leads to an
oscillation between stability and conict. A mere focus on stability and consensus would
foreclose the openness of the social and would imply an almost Hegelian belief in the end
of history. An exclusive focus on conict would be unable to account for the stabilization
of the political and its sedimentation into the social. In conict-oriented approaches, the
socio-political is seen as being dominated by manifest and latent conicts, possibly within
the context of hegemonic projects. e confrontation between dierent societal groups
leads to (heated) debates and claims of victory. Although even these approaches still need
to be based on a total (hegemonic) consensus regarding basic democratic values, within
the boundaries of this core consensus, a complete lack of consensus on any other theme
is perfectly possible and acceptable. In such a pluralist democracy, decision-making takes
place on the basis of political struggle and debate. As Moue (1994: 109) writes, “e prime
task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions, nor to relegate them to the private
sphere in order to render rational consensus possible, but to mobilize these passions, and
give them a democratic outlet”. Following Moue, it remains important to emphasize that
the concrete interpretation and articulation of core democratic values are embedded in
political struggles. In the second case, consensus is seen as the main societal organizing
principle, focusing on the presence and achievement of societal harmony and unity. Here,
processes of deliberation and dialogue support a harmonious polis and (if necessary) aim
to stabilize disruptions to this harmony. Consensus-oriented models of democracy largely
built upon the notion of societal dialogue and deliberation, where collective decision-
making takes place based on rational arguments, “with the participation of all who will
be aected by the decision or by their representatives. […] it includes decision making
by means of arguments oered by and to participants who are committed to the values
of rationality and impartiality” (Elster, 1998: 8). As Glasser and Cra (1998: 213) rightly
remark, this does not necessarily mean that everybody is given the oor, but it does mean
that “everything worth saying gets said”.
Figure 2 provide an overview of the eld of participation in democratic theory. e
minimalist and maximalist dimensions constitute one axis of the model; the consensus-
Media and Participation
22
and conict-oriented approaches are the second axis. e grey area indicates that the
role of the concept of participation is limited here. At the same time, Figure 2 depicts the
consensus- and conict-oriented approaches allowing for high levels of participation,
which has analytical consequences, since our attention is directed also towards models
that thematize participation, enabling for a more extensive discussion of the concept of
participation.
Figure 2: Field of participation in democratic theory.
Source: Adapted from Carpentier and Cammaerts (2006).
1.2 Legitimization of participation in democratic theory. Protective and
developmental arguments
In contemporary discussions on participation, its importance is oen taken for granted,
and its legitimizations are rarely discussed. Participatory theory, too, has a tendency to
isolate the concept of participation, and to ignore the conditions allowing the possibility
of its relevance, appreciation and signicance. e oen (implicit) assumption is
that participation is necessarily benecial: If it is enabled, all those involved will also
appreciate it, and can only gain from it. (Part of) this assumption is problematic
because it de-contextualizes participatory practices, and disconnects them from a very
necessary articulation with democratic values such as equality, empowerment, justice
and peace. is de-contextualization leads also to the belief that the societal appreciation
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
23
and impact of participatory practices will not be aected by the political-ideological,
communicative-cultural and communicative-structural context.
Returning to the genesis of participation and democracy in general allows the
concept of participation to be rooted rmly in its political context, opening up a series
of arguments that legitimize the importance of participation. Again, we can turn to
Held’s (1996: 45) work as a starting point, and to his discussion of republicanism in
which he distinguishes between the protective and developmental traditions. Both
traditions contain core arguments that ground the importance of participation within
democracy and the social. Held (1996) argues that the protective arguments take us back
to the Roman historians, materialized in the work of Machiavelli, and later in that of
Montesquieu and Madison. Here, the main legitimization for participation is based on
its role in protecting citizens from the consequences of strong (or even extreme) power
imbalances, where rulers retain almost full control over the lives of these citizens. By
decreasing the power imbalances through the logic of participation, the opportunities
for rulers to abuse their governmental powers are restricted. Support for this type of
argument can be found in critical analyses of leadership that result in an emphasis on
structural distrust towards rulers. A famous summary of this argument can be found in
a letter written in 1887 by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, the rst Baron Acton,
to Bishop Mandell Creighton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men”.
An extended version of this argument can be found in Machiavelli’s theorizing
about a (proto-) democratic model of mixed government, combining components
of monarchy, aristocracy and (ancient) democracy. e need to combine these three
models is grounded in Machiavelli’s argument that all three models tend towards
degeneration into, respectively, tyranny, oligarchy and ‘ochlocracy’ (or mob rule).
Political participation (in the formulation of law) thus became grounded in the avoidance
of tyranny, a situation where a ruler “assumes extraordinary authority and introduces
laws disruptive of civic equality” (Machiavelli, 1984: 393 (III, 3)). Machiavelli explicitly
contrasted civil freedom with tyranny, in which the tyrant’s whim becomes law and
violence is applied unnecessarily. Machiavelli (1984: 177 (I, 26)) considers the methods
that tyrants are bound to use to protect their position to be “exceedingly cruel” and
“repugnant to any community, not only to a Christian one, but to any composed of men.
It behoves, therefore, every man to shun them, and to prefer rather to live as a private
citizen than as a king with such ruination of men to his score”. One way to limit the
dangers posed by the existence of a tyrant is through the participation of citizens. Strauss
(1978: 278) summarizes this argument as follows: “Political society fulls its function
through political power, and political power is apt to threaten the very security for the
sake of which it was established. To avoid this danger, the majority must have a share,
commensurate with its capacity, in public power”.
e unpleasantly long history of dictatorships and tyrannies shows that, from
the perspective also of political praxis, the protective argument for participation is
Media and Participation
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supported. In Violence and Democracy, Keane (2004: 2) points rst to Nazi atrocities,
using the example of the 1939–1941 euthanasia programme5 to show that the Nazi
regime was obsessed with “unifying the body politic through the controlling, cleansing
and healing eects of violence, which was oen understood through ‘medical’ and
‘surgical’ metaphors”. But Keane immediately draws attention to the violence wrought
by democratic states:
It might even be said that a distinctive quality of democratic institutions is their subtle
eorts to draw a veil over their own use of violence. ere are also plenty recorded cases
where democratic governments hurl violence against some of their own populations.
Such violence is called law and order, the protection of public interest, or the defence
of decency against ‘thugs’ and ‘criminals,’ or ‘counter-terrorism’. (Keane, 2004: 2)
One should indeed take care not to de-contextualize participation and fetishize its
protective capacity, since political praxis shows also that numerous democratic systems
have failed to protect their citizens (and even more ‘their’ non-citizens) from abusive state
power, either their own, or originating from some other actors. One of the instruments
used to legitimize the use of violence in democratic states is the state of exception, a
concept that Agamben (2005) sees as the increase of state power in supposed times of
crisis, where the rights of individuals can be reduced or even completely suspended.
Agamben argues that the state of exception is used frequently in modernity, and not
only to legitimize state violence. It should be considered a form of state violence in itself,
because during the state of exception, specic types of knowledge and specic voices are
privileged, while other types of knowledge and many other voices are discredited and
become muted. For Agamben, this oppressive dichotomy is itself a form of violence,
exercised (in some cases) by democratic states. One of the examples he discusses is US
President George W. Bush’s military order, issued on 13 November 2001. Agamben
(2005: 3) writes the following about this:
What is new about President Bush’s order is that it radically erases any legal status
of the individual, thus producing a legally unnameable and unclassiable being. Not
only do the Taliban captured in Afghanistan not enjoy the status of POW’s as dened
by the Geneva Convention, they do not even have the status of people charged with a
crime according to American laws.
e developmental tradition allows for another set of legitimizations of the concept
of participation. Major voices exemplifying this type of argument are Rousseau and
Wollstonecra, and later Marx and Engels, but Held (1996: 45) also points to the
philosophers of the ancient Greek democracy, and to the work of Marsillius of Padua.
In the developmental strand, two types of argument are used. First, democracy
and participation matter because of their intrinsic values: Participation allows the
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
25
performance of democracy, which is deemed an important component of the social
in itself. rough participatory processes, the existing civil reservoirs (for instance of
knowledge and praxis) are used and become articulated as respected. Because of the
multitude of these voices, a greater diversity is taken into account, which is (together
with the increased levels of self-control) deemed to result in more societal happiness
and is seen as a better guarantee of good decision-making. Second, democracy and
participation matter because of their educational component. Performing democracy
through participation generates learning processes that strengthen civic identities.
Similarly, empowerment is seen as a pedagogical instrument to generate better citizens,
and increase societal happiness.
In Rousseau’s work, the notions of the state of nature and the social contract serve as
tools to describe how humanity has been characterized by freedom and equality, even
when humans came to the realization that they had to develop forms of cooperation in
order to subsist. By attributing core democratic values to the ‘original’ state of nature,
Rousseau naturalized these values and legitimized his preference for a social conguration
based on a high degree of popular participation (within small-scale political entities).
is type of self-rule is based on the principle that sovereignty originated from the
people and cannot be alienated from them:
Sovereignty cannot be represented, for the same reason that it cannot be alienated;
its essence is the general will, and will cannot be represented […] us the people’s
deputies are not, and could not be, its representatives; they are merely its agents; and
they cannot decide anything nally. Any law, which the people has not ratied in
person, is void. (Rousseau, 1968: 141)
Participation thus becomes the exercise of the inalienable and indivisible rights of citizens,
which results in the generation of societal happiness and respect for the position of all
citizens. As Pateman (1970: 23) argues, the logic of self-rule will result in only accepting
policies that equally share benets and burdens: “[T]he participatory process ensures
that political equality is made eective in the decision-making assembly”. But Pateman
also emphasizes the educational component of the argument, claiming that the central
role of participation in Rousseau’s theory is an educational one. She refers to Plamenatz
(1963: 440), who wrote that: “[Rousseau] turns our minds […] to considering how the
social order aects the structure of human personality”, and continues by saying that
Rousseau’s democratic model aims to develop individual and responsible political action
through the participatory process, where “the individual learns that the word ‘each’ must
be applied to himself […] he learns to be a public as well as a private citizen” (Pateman,
1970: 25).
Again, the developmental capacity of participation should be contextualized: It is
not a deus ex machina that can redress all societal problems and guarantee continuous
social well being. If we follow Moue’s (2005) argument that the social is inherently
Media and Participation
26
conictive, we see also that participation will never be able to deal with all (sometimes
contradictory) societal demands (and certainly not simultaneously). Moreover, keeping
Spivak’s (1988), Norval’s (2007) and Couldry’s (2010) work in mind, not all societal
voices can and will be heard, or respected. Rousseau’s strong belief in the respectful
position of a majority towards dierent minorities (see Held, 1996: 61-62) from this
perspective might be slightly optimistic, and based on the homogenization of ‘the people’.
Without any correctives, this could lead to a tyrannical system, as argued, for instance,
by Berlin (1969). And the educational component might turn out to be dysfunctional,
since democratic learning can easily slip into counter-democratic pathways or end up
in political apathy. Rousseau (1968: 140) in part recognizes the problem of apathy, but
relegates responsibility to the government when he writes that:
In a well-regulated nation every man hastens to the assemblies: under a bad
government no one wants to take a step to get to them, because no one feels the
least interest in what is done there, since it is predictable that the general will will
not be dominant, and, in short, because domestic concerns absorb all the individual’s
attention. Good laws lead men to make better ones; bad laws lead to worse. As soon
as someone says of the business of the state – ‘What does it matter to me?’ – then the
state must be reckoned lost.
Much later, DeLuca (1995: 11) agreed that one of the faces of political apathy is triggered
by “forces, structures, institutions, or elite manipulation over which one has little or no
control”, but added a second ‘face’ to this picture. Political disinterest (or apathy) might
also be based on the free and informed choice of citizens not to become involved, or
on the choice not to become informed. is brings us to the right of citizens not to
participate, which permanently frustrates the developmental capacity of participation.
1.3 Maximalist versions of participation in democratic theory
Although the eld of democratic theory is extensive, and characterized by an almost
unsettling degree of diversity, I want to focus in this part of the chapter on the
democratic models that share a strong(er) commitment to what earlier was described
as maximalist democratic participation. It nevertheless remains important to stress that
also this cluster of democratic models is characterized by a high level of diversity, which
is even further enhanced by their partial translations into contemporary democratic
practice. is implies that participatory maximalism has been – and still is – articulated
in many dierent ways. Another implication of this diversity is that in this section only
a selection of the models is discussed, a decision that inevitably leads to the exclusion of
some other, still relevant, models (such as Giddens’s (1998: 113–117) model of dialogical
democracy6). e models I discuss are Marxism, anarchism, the New Le models of
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
27
participatory democracy, deliberative democracy and radical democracy, which I deem
to be the most representative models showing the workings of the more maximalist
participatory articulations.
1.3.1 e old Le: Marxist perspectives on participation
Marxist theory takes a strong emancipatory position that is embedded in a critique of
the bourgeois domination of society. It is through the Hegelian logics of thesis, antithesis
and synthesis that Marx develops the societal model of communism that is based on a
high degree of participation. In order to esh out Marx’s position on participation within
this communist model, it is thus necessary rst to reconstruct the constitutive outside of
communism: the bourgeois capitalist society.
is bourgeois capitalist society is characterized by a base-superstructure model, in
which Marx attributes a privileged position to the social relations of production (which
sediments the power position of the bourgeoisie). ese social relations of production
are seen as the core of society, which implies that they also determine the political and
ideological environment. is in turn means that in the Marxist model, the state is seen
to serve specic elitist class interests. Although Marx sometimes attributed considerable
independence to the state (see Held, 1996: 131–135), in a number of more polemical texts,
the state is seen as the direct instrument of the bourgeoisie. An example is the Communist
Manifesto (Marx and Engels, 2002: 221): “e executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common aairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. But whether capital
directly controls government, or whether this inuence is more indirect and a dominant
class dominates society without being part of government, is not very signicant for my
argument here. What is important is that in Marx’ view of the bourgeois capitalist society, the
political-ideological environment serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, which minimizes
participation and makes societal equality (and more maximalist forms of participation)
impossible, even when bourgeois capitalist society becomes more democratized.
But Marx foresaw a structural change, through a series of class conicts and
revolutionary struggles, fed by logics internal to capitalism, establishing a communist
society. Despite its inevitability, Marx did not envisage this change as being immediate: He
distinguished two stages in the development of communism. In the rst and transitional
stage (later referred to as socialism by Lenin), most productive property would become
collectively owned, but some class dierences would persist, because society would “still
[be] stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges” (Marx,
1994: 315). In practice this meant that the worker (in this transitional phase) would
receive “[t]he same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, […]
back in another”. Not until the second phase would society have completely transcended
capitalism, and would “the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of
labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour [have …]
Media and Participation
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vanished” (Marx, 1994: 321). And, “Only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right
be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs!” (Marx, 1994: 321). Although Marx was reluctant
to describe the communist utopia in detail, he and Engels, in e German Ideology,
provide the following description:
in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each
can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another
tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, sh in the aernoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticise aer dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, sherman,
herdsman or critic. (Marx and Engels, 1970: 53)
e vagueness of this description applies also to its political-ideological dimension,
although Marx’s perspectives on the state, the revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat and the end of politics oer valuable insights on the Marxist position on
participation. Marx and Engels saw the bourgeois state as a supporting structure of
capitalism, which made mere transformation impossible; aer all, as Engels describes,
“the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and
indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil
inherited by the proletariat aer its victorious struggle for class supremacy” (Engels,
1993: 22). And, “in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this
working class must […] do away with all the old repressive machinery previously
used against it itself” (Engels, 1993: 22). In the transition to communism, the state
would continue to exist in order to guarantee the inclusion of the economy into the
political, the abolition of private property, the centralization of credit, communication
and transport, and the protection of society against the remnants of the bourgeoisie
(see Marx and Engels, 2002: 243–244). At the same time, though, the state needed to
be democratized in this transitional phase through what Marx calls the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat.7
Engels, and arguably Marx also, found an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat
in the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx (1993: 60) described it as follows: “It was essentially
a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing class against
the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the
economic emancipation of labor”. Engels was even clearer writing in 1891, twenty years
aer the Paris Commune, “Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this
dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. at was the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat” (Engels, 1993: 22). e Commune was formed by municipal councillors,
chosen by universal surage in the various wards of the town, responsible and
revocable at short terms. e majority of its members were naturally working men,
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
29
or acknowledged representatives of the working class. e Commune was to be a
working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. (Marx,
1993: 57)
Other ocials, such as the police and the judiciary, also had “to be elective, responsible,
and revocable” (Marx, 1993: 58). Moreover, Marx expressed his explicit appreciation
that in the Paris Commune “From the members of the Commune downwards, the public
service had to be done at workmen’s wages” (Marx, 1993: 57 – emphasis in original).
In e Civil War in France, Marx expands on the blueprint provided by the Paris
Commune and develops it to extend to the national level. is national Commune model
was based on a council structure8 and delegation to higher decision-making levels:
e rural communes of every district were to administer their common aairs by an
assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again
to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time
revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents.
(Marx, 1993: 58 – emphasis in original)
is pyramid structure of the model of direct (or delegative) democracy (Held,
1996: 145–146) allows for (and requires) high levels of participation, through the
selection of and subsequent actions of delegates.
Marx’s emphasis on participation can be found in a number of texts. A year aer
the Paris Commune, Marx (1988) wrote in his Notes on the ‘American split’, “Political
Equality means the personal participation of each in the preparation, administration,
and execution of the laws by which all are governed”. And in his 1843 critique of Hegel,
Marx (1977: 118) stated that, “e drive of civil society to transform itself into political
society, or to make political society into the actual society, shows itself as the drive for the
most fully possible universal participation in legislative power”.
Once the transitional phase had passed and full communism had been realized,
there would have been the birth of a new (wo)man who cherished communality and
cooperation. Here, participation is articulated as multidirectional and the sites of
decision-making become ultra-heterogeneous (to the degree that decision-making is
articulated as (almost) non-existent). For Marx, communist society is constructed on the
basis of a new conception of the self, which is highly altruistic and non-conictual: For
instance, labour is performed to please the others, and not out of a sense of duty. As
Ollman (1979: 73) formulates it, “We can approximate what takes place here if we view
each person as loving all others such that he or she get pleasure from the pleasure they
derive from his or her eorts”. Love for the other plays a structuring role; as Ollman
(1979: 73) comments, “Marx is universalizing this emotion, much enriched, to the point
where each person is able to feel it for everyone whom his/her actions aect, which in
communism is the whole of society”.
Media and Participation
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Under communism, the state was expected to wither away. Removal of the source of
conict, namely class dierence, would allow for consensual decision-making and self-
government. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels describe how communism
implied the end of politics (in the narrow sense):
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all
production has been concentrated in the hands of associated individuals, the public
power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the
organized power of one class for oppressing another. (Marx and Engels, 2002: 244 –
translation modied based on Ollman (1979: 96))
In this utopian situation, the need for repressive state apparatuses would also have
disappeared, rendering unnecessary the army and the police, for instance. Love of all for
all would mean crime would be highly exceptional and should it occur the perpetrator
would be devoured by feelings of guilt. Only a series of basic coordination, purely
administrative tasks would require elected coordinators. is “labour of supervision and
management” (Marx, 1992: 507) could be compared to the role of the conductor of an
orchestra, as Marx (1992: 507) writes in Capital:
in all labour where many individuals co-operate, the interconnection and unity of the
process is necessarily represented in a governing will, and in functions that concern
not the detailed work but rather the work place and its activity as a whole, as with the
conductor of an orchestra. is is productive labour that has to be performed in any
combined mode of production.
Even then, the role of the ‘conductor’ was not considered to be crucial, as Ollman
(1979: 82) explains: “Marx, however, prefers to play down the role of coordinating
authority in the new society, emphasizing instead the power which comes through direct
cooperation”. rough the logics of cooperation, participation would become maximized
in the egalitarian communist society. is implied the disappearance of the principle of
power delegation, as participation was organized through everyday life. Obviously, this
required a radical shi in the identity of the citizen:
we can say that the citizen of the future is someone who is interested in and skillful
in carrying out a variety of tasks, who is highly and consistently cooperative, who
conceives of all objects in terms of ‘ours,’ who shares with others a masterful control
over the forces of nature, who regulates his/her activities without the help of externally
imposed rules, and who is indistinguishable from other persons when viewed from the
perspective of existing social division. She (he) is, in short, a brilliant, highly rational
and socialized, humane and successful creator. (Ollman, 1979: 89)
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
31
1.3.2 A forgotten component of the old Le: Anarchist theory and participation
Frequently ignored in debates on maximalist versions of participatory democracy is the
legacy of anarchist theory (cf. May, 1994). Arguably, this neglect does justice to neither
anarchist nor democratic theory. Anarchism’s emphasis on decentralization and local
autonomy led to a strong emphasis on participation within what Godwin (1971) called
‘parishes’ or voluntary federations. Representation (or power delegation) is still acceptable
in this societal model, but in a downsized version, without any binding capacities.
e most dominant feature of anarchist theory is distrust of government, which is
seen as a threat to individuals’ and communities’ autonomy and freedom. Given the
primacy attributed to individual freedom, the constraints and coercions generated by the
machineries of government are rejected. Proudhon’s (1989: 294) famous quote illustrates
the articulation of government as threatening and disciplining.
To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven,
numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued,
censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor
the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction,
noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed,
authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under
pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under
contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed,
mystied, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the rst word of complaint, to be
repressed, ned, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked,
imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacriced, sold, betrayed; and, to
crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. at is government; that is its
justice; that is its morality. (Caps in original)
Although oen intimately connected, the rejection of government (or better, of being
governed) does not necessarily imply the total rejection of the state. Crowder (1991: 64),
for instance, claims that anarchist theory accepts the state, as long as it does not govern, but
performs only purely administrative functions. May (1994: 47) captures this dierence
by pointing out that anarchist theory consists of the rejection of representation, and that
“the state is the object of critique because it is the ultimate form of political representation,
not because it is founding for it”.
is distrust of government and rejection of (political) representation are fed by a
discourse of anti-authoritarism, which resists the establishment of societal hierarchies
and systems of domination and privilege (Bookchin, 1996: 29). Illustrative of this
is Bakunin’s (1970: 31) statement, “It is the characteristic of privilege and of every
privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men”. e problematization of
privilege concerns not only the political sphere, but also the economic realm, where
Media and Participation
32
classic anarchist theory was “critical of private property to the extent that it was a
source of hierarchy and privilege” (Jennings, 1999: 136). But this does not imply that
private property is totally rejected: Even Proudhon’s famous dictum – property is
the – relates only to situations where the power balance is disturbed through so-
called windfall earnings in the form of interest on loans and income from rents, which
move structurally beyond legitimate ownership of what is needed in everyday life.
In contrast to domination, privilege and struggle, anarchist theory legitimizes itself
by (oen implicitly) reverting to what May (1994: 65) calls a “humanist naturalism”,
foregrounding harmony, solidarity and a belief in a “benign human essence” (May,
1994: 63). A case in point is Kropotkin’s (1902) engagement with Darwinism in Mutual
Aid, where he tries ‘scientically’ to establish an evolutionary model that is built on
survival of the altruistic, not survival of the ttest.
In anarchist theory, these discourses of anti-authoritarism and solidarity are combined
with a rejection of (political) representation, which leads to the third feature of anarchist
theory: a strong emphasis on maximalist participation and decentralization as principles
of decision-making. As Jennings (1999: 138) formulates it, there is a “generalised
preference for decentralisation, autonomy and mass participation in the decision-making
process”. rough the free and equal participation of all in a variety of societal spheres,
government as such becomes unnecessary, and an equal power balance in these decision-
making processes can be achieved, which, in turn, maximize individual autonomy within
a context of societal heterogeneity. Similarly, within the economic realm, the principle of
capitalist struggle is replaced by a decentralized gi economy.
e fourth and last feature of anarchist theory is the voluntary association as an
organizational principle, as a site of self-organization and participation. Anarchist theory
attempts do not lapse into individualism and atomism, but strive for a balance between
the individual and the community. e privileged organizational structure to achieve
this balance has had many dierent names in the course of anarchism’s intellectual
history: Proudhon’s natural group, Kropotkin’s voluntary association, Godwin’s parishes,
Bookchin’s anity groups, etc. Despite some dierences, these small-scale structures
are seen as tools – again to protect individual freedom and autonomy; as Kropotkin
(1972: 145) formulates it, “And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands
of human groupings which form themselves freely […] and attain results innitely
superior to those achieved under government tutelage”. e scale of these organizational
structures is suciently large to approximate civil society, as mentioned, for instance,
by Kropotkin (1902) when he refers in Mutual Aid to the “countless societies, clubs,
and alliances, for the enjoyment of life, for study and research, for education”. More
contemporary authors – such as Graeber (2004: 40) – have broadened the scope ever
further in describing anarchist forms of organization that “would involve an endless
variety of communities, associations, networks, projects, on every conceivable scale,
overlapping and intersecting in any way we could imagine, and possibly many that we
can’t. Some would be quite local, others global”.
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
33
1.3.3 New Le theories on participation
e New Le conceptualizations of participatory democracy – developed by Pateman
(1970, 1985) and Macpherson (1966, 1973, 1977) and later by Mansbridge (1980) and
Barber (1984) – focus on the combination of the principles and practices of direct
and representative democracy. e problems of coordination in large-scale industrial
societies bring the latter to accept representation (and power delegation) as a necessary
tool at the level of national decision-making. For instance, Pateman (1970: 109) writes:
In an electorate of, say, thirty ve million, the role of the individual must consist
almost entirely of choosing representatives; even when he could cast a vote in a
referendum his inuence over the outcome would be innitesimally small. Unless the
size of national political units were drastically reduced then that piece of reality is not
open to change.
At the same time Pateman (1970: 1) critiques authors such as Schumpeter (1976), for
attributing “the most minimal role” to participation, and for basing their arguments on a
fear that the implementation of more developed forms of participation might jeopardize
society’s stability. Macpherson (1980: 29) also points to the role the discourse of stability
plays in legitimizing minimalist versions of participation: “We are le with the conclusion
that the possibility of a genuinely participatory democracy emerging in Western liberal-
democratic states varies inversely with their electorates’ acceptance of system-stability as
the overriding value […]”. is situation creates a dilemma: On the one hand, the large
size of political entities and the fear of instability restrict the possibilities for high levels
of participation, and on the other hand, there is Pateman’s and Macpherson’s strongly
expressed belief that there is a need to increase these levels of societal participation. is
induces Pateman and Macpherson to introduce a broad-political and multidirectional
approach to participation and to look at what Pateman (1970: 110) calls “alternative
areas”, in order to maximize participation:
e existence of representative institutions at national level is not sucient for
democracy; for maximum participation by all the people at that level socialisation,
or ‘social training,’ for democracy must take place in other spheres in order that
the necessary individual attitudes and psychological qualities can be developed.
is development takes place through the process of participation itself. (Pateman,
1970: 42)
It is only through participation in these ‘alternative areas’ of the political that a citizen
can “hope to have any real control over the course of his life or the development of the
environment in which he lives” (Pateman, 1970: 110). is expansion of participation
into these ‘alternative areas’ is deemed a necessity, since “for a democratic polity to exist
Media and Participation
34
it is necessary for a participatory society to exist, i.e. a society where all political systems
have been democratized […]” (Pateman, 1970: 43). For Pateman, this also implies a
broadening of the concept of politics: When discussing participation in the industry,
she explicitly denes this realm of the social as “political systems in their own right”
(Pateman, 1970: 43).
In Participation and Democratic eory, Pateman (1970) focuses on participation in
one specic ‘alternative area’: industry. Building on Cole’s (1920, 1951) work on industrial
democracy, workers’ self-management and the cooperative movement, Pateman
(1970: 43) claims that “[t]he most important area is industry”. She legitimizes this choice
rst by pointing to the importance of work for everyday life: “most individuals spend a
great deal of their lifetime at work and the business of the workplace provides an education
in the management of collective aairs that is dicult to parallel elsewhere” (Pateman,
1970: 43). She nds additional arguments in the political nature of the sphere of the
industry, and the importance of economic equality. At the end of the book (Pateman,
1970: 110), she refers very briey to ‘alternative areas’, such as the (higher) education
system, (public) housing and the family.9
Macpherson’s (1977) work takes a dierent angle: He remains committed to the
pyramidal structure of delegate democracy. He describes the (rst) model of participatory
democracy, which he develops in e Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, as follows:
One would start with direct democracy at the neighbourhood or factory level –
actual face-to-face discussion and decision by consensus or majority, and election
of delegates who would make up a council at the next more inclusive level, say a city
borough or ward or a township. […] So it would go up to the top level, which would
be a national council for matters of national concern, and local and regional councils
for matters of less than national concern. (Macpherson’s, 1977: 108)
At the same time, Macpherson (1980: 28) acknowledges that “[t]he prospects of a
participatory pluralist system […] appear rather slight” and investigates how some of
the principles of participatory democracy can be reconciled with (and supported by)
a competitive party system. Macpherson is suggesting the reorganization of the party
system on less hierarchical principles, which would increase organizational democracy
within political parties, rendering them “genuinely participatory parties [that] could
operate through a parliamentary or congressional structure” (Macpherson, 1977: 114).
Again, this brings us to forms of participation that are situated more at the level of micro-
(or meso-) participation and then combined with forms of representative democracy at
national level.
An important achievement of these multilevel approaches to participation is that the
overwhelming problems of implementing participation on a large scale can be bracketed
by focusing on the meso- and micro-level. is allowed Pateman, for example, not only
to broaden the span of politics beyond institutionalized politics, but also to develop
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
35
denitions of participation that stress the decision-making focus and processual nature
of participation, combined with an emphasis on inuence and power. e two denitions
of participation that Pateman introduces take account of the dierence between inuence
and power through reference to ‘partial’ and ‘full participation’. Partial participation is
dened by Pateman as “a process in which two or more parties inuence each other in the
making of decisions but the nal power to decide rests with one party only” (Pateman,
1970: 70), while full participation is seen as “a process where each individual member
of a decision-making body has equal power to determine the outcome of decisions”
(Pateman, 1970: 71).
1.3.4 Deliberative democracy
e model of deliberative democracy also tries to (re)balance the participatory and
representative aspects of democracy, but, here, the participatory moment is located in
communication, as deliberative democracy refers to “decision making by discussion among
free and equal citizens” (Elster, 1998: 1 – emphasis added). Elster (1998: 8) points to the
two main characteristics of this model: Its democratic nature is ensured because of its focus
on “collective decision making with the participation of all who will be aected by the
decision or their representatives”, and its deliberative nature lies in the focus on “decision
making by means of arguments oered by and to participants who are committed to values
or rationality and impartiality” (emphasis in original).
Habermas’s work is one of the main sources of inspiration for the model of deliberative
democracy.10 His older work on communicative rationality and the public sphere plays a
key role in grounding deliberation in the inter-subjective structures of communication,
where the “speakers’ orientation toward mutual understanding entails a commitment to
certain presuppositions rooted in the idea of unconstrained argumentation or discourse”
(Flynn, 2004: 436). ese presuppositions are structured by the ideal speech situation,
where everybody with the competence to act and speak is allowed to participate, everyone
can introduce and/or question any assertion, and express her or his attitudes, desires and
needs, and no coercion is used during the process (Habermas, 1990: 86). Later, Habermas
described these presuppositions as follows: “e conditions for entering a rational
discourse require participants to assume an undogmatic attitude, to treat all relevant
norms and traditions hypothetically, to be open to objections, to be honest and to yield
to the forceless force of the better argument, to learn from others and to view from their
perspectives” (Habermas, 1999: 449–450). In Habermas’s work, the public sphere is (one
of) the crucial sites11 where these deliberations take place, although (in his older work) he
problematizes the public sphere’s deliberative capacities because of its colonization by the
systems of economy and state.12 is implies, in Kellner’s (2000: 264) words, that “[a]s the
public sphere declined, citizens became consumers, dedicating themselves more to passive
consumption and private concerns than to issues of the common good and democratic
Media and Participation
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participation”. In this conguration, democratization implies the “shiing of forces” and the
erection of “a democratic dam against the colonizing encroachment of system imperatives
on areas of the lifeworld” (Habermas, 1992: 444 – emphasis in original).
In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas (1996) further develops his model of deliberative
democracy (and its relationship to law). e deliberative model is contrasted to liberal
and republican models, based on its crucial characteristics of the extension of the scope
of politics beyond the aggregation of self-interest, and the emphasis on negotiating and
bargaining that transcend the republican notion of a shared ethical-political dialogue. As
Habermas (1996: 298) writes, “According to discourse theory, the success of deliberative
politics depends not on a collectively acting citizenry but on the institutionalization of the
corresponding procedures and conditions of communication, as well as on the interplay
of institutionalized deliberative processes with informally developed public opinions”.
In the Habermasian model of deliberative democracy, participation is multidirectional
because of the strong emphasis on the procedural-deliberative, and on the role that
institutions play in the transformation of public opinion into communicative power. In
his two-track model of deliberative politics, the public sphere becomes a ‘warning system
with sensors that, though unspecied, are sensitive throughout society’ (Habermas,
1996: 359) and that can problematize issues, while deliberative procedures in the formal
decision-making sphere focus on cooperative solutions to (these) societal problems,
without aiming for ethical consensus.13 is does not imply that the earlier emphasis
on participation (through the public sphere) disappears. For instance, in the following
description of the deliberative model, participation features prominently:
e deliberative paradigm oers as its main empirical point of reference a democratic
process, which is supposed to generate legitimacy through a procedure of opinion and
will formation that grants (a) publicity and transparency for the deliberative process,
(b) inclusion and equal opportunity for participation, and (c) a justied presumption
for reasonable outcomes (mainly in view of the impact of arguments on rational
changes in preference). (Habermas, 2006: 413)
1.3.5 Radical democracy and post-Marxism
Laclau and Moue (1985), aiming to de-essentialize Althusser’s and Gramsci’s work (and
thus also the work of Marx and Engels),14 developed a post-Marxist democratic model.
eir work parallels the work on the deliberative model, but was developed dierently
because it was inspired by a post-structuralist agenda. ey considered their democratic
project to be radically pluralist because of its embeddedness in a social ontology, which
emphasized that “subject positions cannot be led back to a positive and unitary founding
principle” (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 167). is implies also that the radical pluralist
democracy advocated by Laclau and Moue was not radical in the sense of identifying
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
37
‘the true and pure democratic model’: “Its radical character implies, on the contrary,
that we can save democracy only by taking into account its radical impossibility” (Žižek,
1989: 6). For this reason, Moue (1997: 8) refers to radical pluralist democracy as a
democracy that will always be ‘to come’.
In spite of this, the pluralism advocated by Laclau and Moue aims to realize specic
and clearly demarcated objectives. First it aims for the “generalization of the equivalential-
egalitarian logic” (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 167). Laclau and Moue (1985: 190) continue
to situate themselves within the “classic ideal of socialism”, and plead for a “polyphony
of voices” in which the dierent (radically) democratic political struggles – such as
antiracism, anti-sexism and anti-capitalism – are all allotted an equally important role
(Moue, 1997: 18). In other words, Laclau and Moue want to “broaden the domain of the
exercise of democratic rights beyond the limited traditional eld of ‘citizenship’”, claiming
that the distinctions between public/private and civil society/political society are “only the
result of a certain type of hegemonic articulation” (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 185). Again,
we can identify a call to extend the political into the realm of the economy, where the
importance of the “anti-capitalist struggle” (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 185) is emphasized.
But through Laclau and Moue’s (1985: 176) emphasis on the plurality and heterogeneity of
the social, the broad denition of the political and “the extension of the eld of democracy
to the whole of civil society and the state”, also the notion of participation moves to the
foreground. Although the concept of participation is used only rarely, its importance
becomes clear in Laclau and Moue’s critique on the “anti-democratic oensive” (Laclau
and Moue, 1985: 171) in neo-conservative discourses. ese neo-conservative discourses
are seen as the antipode of their radical democratic model because they want to “redene
the notion of democracy itself in such a way as to restrict its eld of application and limit
political participation to an even narrower area” (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 173). Laclau
and Moue (1985: 173) continue by stating that these discourses would “serve to legitimize
a regime in which political participation might be virtually non-existent”.
e increased level of (political) participation that radical pluralist democracy has
to oer is still delineated by the need to “agree on the liberal-democratic rules of the
game”, although this is not taken to mean that “the precise interpretation of the rules
of the game” would be given once and for all (Torng, 1999: 261; Moue, 1995: 502).
In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Moue (1985: 176) state explicitly that
the contemporary liberal-democratic ideology should not be renounced, but rather
reworked in the direction of a radical and plural democracy, which generates sucient
openness for a plurality of forms and variations of democracy, which correspond to the
multiplicity of subject positions active in the social. It is at this level also – combined
with their dealing with “a very dierent theoretical problematic” – that Laclau and
Moue (1985: 194) explicitly distinguish their position from the work of Macpherson
and Pateman, who they see as defending a too specic and too well-aligned democratic
model. But Laclau and Moue (1985: 194) add that they “nevertheless share [with them]
many important concerns”.
Media and Participation
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In recent years, Moue (and Laclau) have been propagating an agonistic model of
democracy, as opposed to a deliberative model (Moue, 2000, 2005). e agonistic
model of democracy, which is based explicitly on the ‘older’ model of radical pluralism
(Moue, 2000: 99), contains a more sophisticated elaboration of Laclau and Moue’s
normative democratic-political thought. Echoing Connolly (1991, 1993), and also
Lyotard (1984), the agonistic model of democracy builds on the distinction between
antagonism (between enemies), and agonism (between adversaries). While the existence
of an adversary is considered legitimate and the adversary’s right to defend his or her ideas
is not questioned, enemies are (to be) excluded from the political community (Moue,
1997: 4). e aim of democratic politics then becomes “to transform an ‘antagonism’
into ‘agonism’” (Moue, 1999a: 755), to “tame” or “sublimate” (Moue, 2005: 20–21)
antagonisms, without eliminating passion from the political realm or relegating it to
the outskirts of the private. Seen this way, “far from jeopardizing democracy, agonistic
confrontation is in fact its very condition of existence” (Moue, 1999a: 756). While
the concept of participation does not feature prominently in the agonistic model
of democracy, it remains (rather silently) present through the pluralist nature of the
agonistic model and its basis in the broad denition of the political.
Although Moue (2005) has ercely critiqued Hardt and Negri’s (2000, 2005) work,
there are some important similarities between Laclau and Moue’s work and Hardt
and Negri’s autonomist approach15 that are relevant here. Apart from the shared critical
nature of their projects, they both focus on dierence and diversity. In developing the
democratic potential of the multitude, Hardt and Negri (2005: 355) write, “is new
science of the multitude based on the common […] does not imply any unication of
the multitude or any subordination of dierences. e multitude is composed of radical
dierences, singularities, that can never be synthesized in an identity”. Hardt and Negri
(2005: 349) see the multitude as “a diuse set of singularities that produce a common
life; it is a kind of social esh that organizes itself into a new social body”. is collective
social subject, explicitly articulated as a (broadly dened) class concept (Hardt and Negri,
2005: 103), appears in the “cooperative and communicative networks of social labour”
(Hardt and Negri, 2005: 349) and uses (amongst other strategies) the carnivalesque
and biopolitical strategies of the alter-globalization movement, weapons that are said
to be “constructing democracy and defeating the armies of Empire” (Hardt and Negri,
2005: 347). Participation thus becomes a key concept (although again not oen explicitly
used) as it captures the ongoing collaborations within these social networks. Moreover,
Hardt and Negri’s use of the concept of multitude implies a very strong attack on the
idea of sovereignty: “e project of democracy must today challenge all existing forms of
sovereignty as a precondition of establishing democracy” (Hardt and Negri, 2005: 353).
ese egalitarian logics, based on the combination of self-organization and the utmost
respect for disobedience, incorporate the promise of full participation: “When the
multitude is nally able to rule itself, democracy becomes possible” (Hardt and Negri,
2005: 340).
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
39
2. Beyond democratic theory
In late (or post) modern societies, the frontiers of institutionalized politics have also
become permeable. Discussions within the eld of democratic theory indicate that
it would be dicult to conne the political to the realm of institutionalized politics.
Democratic theory has (sometimes) incorporated such transformations, but these
theoretical expansions did not develop in a void. ey grew out of a diversity of political
practices that originated from actors that oen were (strictly speaking) situated outside
the realm of institutionalized politics. Whether they are called interest groups, old/new
social movements, civil society or activists, these actors broadened the scope of the
political and made participation more heterogeneous and multidirectional.
In some cases these political practices were still aimed at impacting directly on
institutionalized politics, but in other cases their political objectives diverged from the
‘traditional’ and were aimed at cultural change. In many cases, several objectives and
‘targets’ were developed in conjunction. For instance, the feminist movement aimed for
the re-articulation of gender relations, within a diversity of societal spheres, combining
identity politics (see e.g. Harris, 2001) with (successful) attempts to aect legal
frameworks. Not only do we witness a broadening of the set of actors involved in political
activities, but also an expansion of the spheres that are considered political. One example
here is the feminist slogan “the personal is political” (Hanisch, 1970), which claimed the
political nature of social spheres such as the body and the family. Kate Millett (1970),
for instance, coined the term sexual politics, extending the notion of the political into
the sphere of the private. In her chapter on the eory of Sexual Politics, she introduces
her sociological approach with the simple sentence “Patriarchy’s chief institution is the
family” (Millett, 1970: 33). A few pages on she notes that “e chief contribution of the
family in patriarchy is the socialisation of the young (largely through the example and
admonition of their parents) into patriarchal ideology’s prescribed attitudes toward the
categories of role, temperament, and status” (Millett, 1970: 33).
In these feminist projects we see (a plea for) the political (to) move further into the
social. We can apply a similar logic within democratic theory, since a considerable number
of authors who tend towards the more maximalist versions of democratic participation
have sought (and found) solutions to the scale problem in large democracies by reverting
to civil society, the economy and the family as sites of political practice. Here, Moue’s
(2000: 101) concept of the political, as the “dimension of antagonism that is inherent in
human relations”, can be used to argue that the political touches upon our entire world,
and cannot be conned to institutionalized politics. Here, also, the dierence Moue
makes between the political and the social is helpful because she locates this dierence
in the sedimented nature of practices. To use her words:
e political is linked to the acts of hegemonic institution. It is in this sense that one
has to dierentiate the social from the political. e social is the realm of sedimented
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practices, that is, practices that conceal the originary acts of their contingent political
institution and which are taken for granted, as if they were self-grounded. Sedimented
social practices are a constitutive part of any possible society; not all social bonds are
put into question at the same time. (Moue, 2005: 17)
At the same time hegemony and the taken-for-grantedness it brings is never total or
unchallengeable. Sedimented practices can always be questioned, problematized and
made political again. is is what democratic and social movement theorists, together
with political activists, have attempted to do in a variety of societal elds: to disrupt the
taken-for-grantedness of a specic social ordering and to show its political nature.
ese logics do not apply only to the realms oen discussed in democratic theory
(such as the economy); they apply also to the cultural/symbolic realm, which has been
implicated in the broadening of the political. In other words, the representational is also
political. e concept of the politics of representation (see e.g. Hall, 1997a: 257) can
be used to refer to the ideological logics in representational processes and outcomes.
Dominant and/or hegemonic societal orders feed into these representational processes
and outcomes, and at the same time are legitimized and normalized by their presence
(or in some cases by meaningful absences). Organizations such as museums, publishers
and broadcasters – to mention but a few – act as discursive machinery that produces
these representations, but at the same time they are organizational environments with
specic politics, economies and cultures where, for instance, the politics of the expert or
the professional create power relations that impact on the organization itself, but also on
the ‘outside’ world.
is all-encompassing process of the broadening of the political, where all social
realities become (at least potentially) contestable and politicized, means also that the
notions of democracy and participation can no longer remain conned to the eld of
institutionalized politics. All social spheres are the potential objects of claims towards
democratization and increased participation, although these claims (and the struggles
provoked) do not lead necessarily to their realization, and the resistance in some societal
realms turns out to be more substantial than in others. Claims for the democratization
of these societal realms (beyond institutionalized politics) are based on a multitude of
arguments that can be sketched within the above-mentioned protective/developmental
framework. An argumentation based on the protective component starts from the
broadening of the political, which implies also that there is no longer one power centre
in society, but a diversity of power centres. As a diversity of societal structures and
institutions can strongly impact on people’s everyday lives, and power imbalances can
occur everywhere, there is a need to protect citizen’s rights in this diversity of spheres. e
developmental argumentation is based on the ideas that the performance of democracy
matters in all societal spheres, and that the use of and respect for existing societal
reservoirs empowers citizens, generates social integration and happiness, and potentially
improves the social quality of decision-making in institutions. At the educational level,
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
41
the participation and empowerment of citizens is claimed to create better citizens, also
because these participatory activities at micro-level allow for democratic learning, which
then can support macro-participation.
e claims for democratization and increased participation (beyond institutionalized
politics and its extensions) have strong resonances in a number of social realms. In
this part of the chapter, I discuss three of these areas (spatial planning, museums and
the arts, and development), and show how the discussions on participation are played
out. In the next part, I move to the realm of communication and media, to map the
articulation of participation in this area. e ‘thick’ theoretical description will highlight
the dierences and similarities of these articulations of participation, since the internal
context of these social realms generates dierent elds of discursivity, which (sometimes
strongly) aect the meanings attributed to the concept of participation. Simultaneously,
the articulations of participation are not conned to these social realms, but are part
of a broad societal and cultural conguration, which provides a more general cultural-
ideological context to what can be said and thought about (the intensity) of participation,
and what degree of participation is considered desirable (or not). Without wanting to
suggest the existence of clearly demarcated eras (or even epistèmes) of participation, it
nevertheless will become clear that the temporal dimension plays an important role in
the articulation of participation.
2.1 Spatial planning and participation
e eld of spatial planning is still closely related, of course, to politics, but at the same
time it is a eld where participation is widely accepted (albeit in varying degrees of
intensity16) and has become embedded in the legal frameworks of several countries. For
instance, Querrien (2005: 106) points to the long history of public participation and
urbanization in France, but also to recent initiatives, such as the French Urban Solidarity
and Renewal Act passed on 13 December 2000, requiring that approval be sought from
residents for any work planned in their neighbourhood. In 2002, participation was made
obligatory for regeneration projects throughout France. Describing the situation in the
UK, Richardson and Connelly (2005: 77–78) write that “[t]own and country planning in
Britain, for example, is one of the few areas where policy and practical decisions aecting
people’s quality of life have long been subject to formal public involvement in varying
forms”. e Town and Country Planning Act introduced statutory public participation
in planning in the UK in 1968 (Cullingworth and Nadin, 2002: 360).
Of course, spatial planning has not always emphasized public participation explicitly. e
so-called pioneers of planning, Howard and Geddes (see Hall, 1992; Lane, 2005: 287), with
their respective focuses on the garden-city and on structured forms of regional planning,
based their ideas on blueprint planning that privileged the planner. As Hall (1992: 61)
formulates it, “eir vision seems to have been that of the planner as the omniscient ruler,
Media and Participation
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who should create new settlement forms […] without interference or question”. Or in
Lane’s (2005: 289) words, “At its heart, blueprint planning assumes science to be all seeing
and the planner omnipotent”. Blueprint planning was criticized for its (impossible) reliance
on predictability, certainty and control, which led to over-simplications of social reality,
and to diculties in dealing with decentralized political systems and reconciling the
omnipresent tensions between dierent positions. Although the importance of blueprint
planning decreased in the 1960s, its legacy – with a focus on homogeneity of the political
will and an apolitical ethic – would not totally disappear (Kiernan, 1983), and would delay
the integration of participatory principles (Lane, 2005: 289).
In the 1960s, planning theory evolved towards a synoptic model, which emphasizes the
need to specify goals and targets, evaluate means and ends, analyse the environment, and
consider dierent policy options. is re-articulation of planning theory also enabled
the integration of participation, through the logics of consultation. As Lane (2005: 292)
puts it, the two most important developments regarding participation in this period were
“(1) the institutionalisation of a limited role for public comment in planning and (2) the
inclusion of actors from outside the formal policy-making arena in the incremental mode
of planning”. is also aects the privileged position of the planner, which according to
Hall (1983: 44) led to the disappearance of the “benign, omniscient scientist-planner”.
But even within this synoptic model, participation remained limited because the political
will was still homogenized (Faludi, 1973), and “public participation was constrained to
providing a commentary on the goals of planning” (Lane, 2005: 290). Also a number
of variations within the synoptic model, such as the applications of Lindblom’s (1959)
incrementalism and Etzioni’s (1967) mixed-scanning approach in planning theory, still
le limited room for participation. Incrementalism – based on Lindblom’s 1959 article
e Science of ‘Muddling rough’ – does create spaces for (informal) interventions from
outside the political (planning) eld. Mixed scanning (combining a wide scan and a
zoom (Etzioni, 1986: 8)) motivated planners to make more explicit strategic choices
rst, and then turn to incrementalism, a method that increased the range of possible
alternatives.
Nevertheless, there were calls for more radical and maximalist forms of participation.
A necessary step towards participation becoming integrated into spatial planning was the
recognition that planning was a political activity and the rejection of its articulation as
a neutral-technical decision. Taylor (1998: 83) points to the work of (mostly American)
planning theorists such as Norton Long (1959), to articulate the political nature of
planning. Long (1959: 168) is quoted as saying, “Plans are policies and policies, in a
democracy at any rate, spell politics. e question is not whether planning will reect
politics but whose politics it will reect”. Davido (1965) also questions the technocrat
perspective embedded in planning, and equates planners with advocates, who serve the
interest of specic client groups at the expense of other groups (especially disadvantaged
and minority groups (Kurzman, 2000)). In contrast, Davido (1965: 279) pleads for
pluralism, where (city) planners “represent and plead the plans of many interest groups”,
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
43
a recommendation that is based on “the need to establish an eective urban democracy,
one in which citizens may be able to play an active role in the process of deciding public
policy”. He then continues to emphasize the importance of choices to “remain in the
area of public view and participation” (Davido, 1965: 279). In the UK, the Skengton
Committee on Public Participation in Planning (1969 – quoted in Taylor, 1998: 87),
established by the UK minister responsible for planning, also highlights participation,
dening it as “the act of sharing in the formulation of policies and proposals”. e report
(quoted in Taylor, 1998: 87) continues:
Clearly, the giving of information by the local planning authority and of an opportunity
to comment on that information is a major part in the process of participation, but it is
not the whole story. Participation involves doing as well as talking and there will be full
participation only when the public are able to take an active part throughout the plan-
making process. ere are limitations to this concept. One is that the responsibility
for preparing a plan is, and must remain, that of the local planning authority. Another
is that the completion of plans – the setting into statutory form of proposals and
decisions – is a task demanding of the highest standards of professional skill, and
must be undertaken by the professional sta of the local planning authority.
As Taylor (1998: 88) points out, the Skengton report contains a series of proposals
to translate participatory intentions into practice, such as ‘community forums’ to liaise
with local authorities, and the appointment of ‘community development ocers’ for
community outreach. At the same time, participation is oen translated as consultation,
and planning authorities use “prepare, reveal and defend” – and in some cases even
“attack and respond” – strategies (Rydin, 1999: 188, 193; Cullingworth and Nadin,
2002: 360). is situation led to a seminal critique by Arnstein, who in 1969 published
A Ladder of Citizen Participation in which she links participation explicitly to power,
saying “that citizen participation is a categorical term for citizen power” (Arnstein,
1969: 216). She continues:
It is the redistribution of power that enables the have-not citizens, presently excluded
from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future. It
is the strategy by which the have-nots join in determining how information is shared,
goals and policies are set, tax resources are allocated, programs are operated, and
benets like contracts and patronage are parceled out. (Arnstein, 1969: 216)
Arnstein develops a categorization of participation (the ‘ladder’ – see Figure 3), in which
she distinguishes three main categories (citizen power, tokenism, non-participation)
and eight levels. e category of non-participation consists of two levels: manipulation
and therapy. Here the objective is “not to enable people to participate in planning or
conducting programs, but to enable power holders to ‘educate’ or ‘cure’ the participants”
Media and Participation
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(Arnstein, 1969: 217). Arnstein discusses a series of examples aimed at illustrating
manipulative and therapeutic practices where – for instance in cases of so-called Citizen
Advisory Committees – “it was the ocials who educated, persuaded, and advised
the citizens, not the reverse” (Arnstein, 1969: 218). In depicting the ‘classic misuse of
consultation’, she describes the role of a Community Action Agency Director, Spitz, at a
community meeting held to consult citizens about a proposed Model Cities17 grant:
Spitz told the 300 residents that this huge meeting was an example of ‘participation
in planning.’ To prove this, since there was a lot of dissatisfaction in the audience, he
called for a ‘vote’ on each component of the proposal. e vote took this form: ‘Can I
see the hands of all those in favor of a health clinic? All those opposed?’ It was a little
like asking who favors motherhood. (Arnstein, 1969: 220)
Tokenism has three levels, informing, consultation and placation. Arnstein denes
informing as forms of one-way communication, which although important, still allow
people little opportunity to inuence decisions. Consultation is based on the invitation
to people to communicate their opinions, but this level is “still a sham since it oers
no assurance that citizen concerns and ideas will be taken into account” (Arnstein,
1969: 219). Placation is seen as a higher level of tokenism in which have-nots are entitled
to advice, but power holders still have the right to decide. Arnstein’s example of the
Figure 3: Arnstein’s ladder of participation. Source: Arnstein (1969: 217).
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
45
placation strategy is “place a few hand-picked ‘worthy’ poor on boards of Community
Action Agencies or on public bodies like the board of education, police commission, or
housing authority” (Arnstein, 1969: 220). e risk that they are “outvoted and outfoxed”
(Arnstein, 1969: 220) remains substantial.
e last (maximalist) category is citizen power, which has three levels: partnership,
delegated power and citizen control. In the case of partnership, the responsibilities
of citizens and power holders are shared through “joint policy boards, planning
committees and mechanisms for resolving impasses” (Arnstein, 1969: 221). Arnstein
uses the example of a Model Cities grant application in Philadelphia, where ocials
attempted to obtain endorsement from community leaders without their having seen the
application. Following protest from the community leaders, which led to more review
time, at the next meeting, the community leaders confronted the city ocials with
“a substitute citizen participation section that changed the ground rules from a weak
citizens’ advisory role to a strong shared power agreement” (Arnstein, 1969: 222). e
changes to the application were accepted with – according to Arnstein (1969: 222) – the
following consequences:
Consequently, the proposed policy-making committee of the Philadelphia CDA [City
Demonstration Agency] was revamped to give ve out of eleven seats to the residents’
organization, which is called the Area Wide Council (AWC). e AWC obtained
a subcontract from the CDA for more than $20,000 per month, which it used to
maintain the neighbourhood organization, to pay citizen leaders $7 per meeting for
their planning services, and to pay the salaries of a sta of community organizers,
planners, and other technicians. AWC has the power to initiate plans of its own, to
engage in joint planning with CDA committees, and to review plans initiated by city
agencies. It has a veto power in that no plans may be submitted by the CDA to the
city council until they have been reviewed, and any dierences of opinion have been
successfully negotiated with the AWC.
In the case of delegated power, citizens achieve dominance in decision-making authority
for a particular plan or programme. In an example based on New Haven (Connecticut),
Arnstein (1969: 222) describes that “residents of the Hill neighbourhood have created a
corporation that has been delegated the power to prepare the entire Model Cities plan”.
e majority of the grant went to the neighbourhood corporation, enabling it to hire
its own planning sta and consultants, and have a majority in the City Demonstration
Agency. Finally, citizen control increases the power position of citizens, although
Arnstein warns against faith in a situation of full control. e model that Arnstein refers
to is when there is no intermediary between the neighbourhood corporation and the
funding source. Arnstein (1969: 223) cites the following example:
Media and Participation
46
Approximately $1 million ($595,751 for the second year) was awarded to the Southwest
Alabama Farmers’ Cooperative Association (SWAFCA) in Selma, Alabama, for a
ten-county marketing cooperative for food and livestock. Despite local attempts to
intimidate the coop (which included the use of force to stop trucks on the way to
market) rst year membership grew to 1,150 farmers who earned $52,000 on the sale
of their new crops. e elected coop board is composed of two poor black farmers
from each of the ten economically depressed counties.
In the 1970s, these more maximalist versions of participation became more dominant
in planning and architecture theory. For example, De Carlo’s (2005: 13) work, originally
published in 1970, includes the famous statement “architecture is too important to be le
to architects”. De Carlo (2005: 13) calls for a metamorphosis in architects’ and planners’
practice, with the result that “all barriers between builders and users must be abolished,
so that building and using become two dierent parts of the same planning process”.
is means that the “intrinsic aggressiveness of architecture and the forced passivity of
the user must dissolve in a condition of creative and decisional equivalence” (De Carlo,
2005: 13). In his model of transactive planning, Friedmann (1973) emphasizes mutual
learning through interpersonal dialogue, which positions participation as integral to the
planning process. Lane (2005: 293) describes this model as follows: “e professional
planner became a conduit for information dissemination and feedback and the public
were encouraged to actively engage in policy and planning processes. A new era for
public participation had begun”. Pacione (2001: 325) refers to the notion of popular
planning, which implies
planning by local communities in their own neighbourhoods. It involves the
formulation of planning proposals and their implementation by local community
organizations, and rests on close collaboration between the community and the local
planning authority that agrees to adopt the popular plan as ocial policy.
Pacione (2001: 325–327) also describes in detail the impact of popular planning, in a
redevelopment project in the Coin Street area of Waterloo in Central London, at the
end of the 1970s. Aer several years of inquiries, protests and demonstrations, and
legal actions, the commercial developers sold the land to the Labour-controlled Greater
London Council, which eventually cleared the way for the implementation of the
popular plan for the area. At the same time, Pacione (2001: 127) points to the failure
of communities to take control, for instance in the London Docklands area, where
the support of a “sympathetic local authority was missing”. Also the earlier model
of advocacy planning (see Davido, 1965) continued to play a role. A decade later,
Mazziotti (1974), in particular, developed advocacy planning further, but even before this
elaboration it remained an important component18 of what Pacione (2001) labelled the
eld of progressive planning policies. For instance, many aspects of advocacy planning
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
47
(including a section on the responsibilities of the client) can be found in the Guidelines
for the Social Responsibility of the Planner, which was adopted in 1972 by the Board of
Governors of the American Institute of Planners (AIP) (Kurzman, 2000).
As Smith (2005) remarks, the triumph of neo-liberalism since the 1980s has impacted
strongly on planning processes, including the role of the planner and the importance
attached to participation. Smith (2005: 48) contends that planners became “bureaucratic
administrators expected to follow procedures in an ecient and consistent manner”. is
new form of professionalism was characterized by a “capacity to combine understanding
of the aspirations and expectations of dierent stakeholders with innovation in the
design and delivery of services in a exible manner” (Smith, 2005: 48). Also, the
willingness to invest in cities, for instance, decreased; Pacione (2001: 173) mentions
a 59 per cent reduction in federal spending on US cities between 1980 and 1992.
Nevertheless, the (very end of the) 1980s saw a rise in the communicative approach to
planning (e.g. Forester, 1989; Healey, 1992), which again reserved an important role for
participation. e communicative approach can be seen as a migration of the notion of
deliberation into the eld of planning, which is seen as an interactive and interpretative
process. Healey (2003: 241 – emphasis in original) considers one of the key issues of
the communicative approach to distinguish between discourses on planning matters
that “reinforce existing relations of power and conventional understandings of issues”
and those that “have the potential to transform those relations, in ways which are more
relevant to the way we live now, and which have the capacity to open up the public realm
to ‘inclusionary argumentation’”. In his book e Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging
Participatory Planning Processes, Forester (1999: 3) describes how the planner, in his
or her intermediary position between neighbourhood and corporate representatives,
and between elected ocials and (other) civil servants, does more than just shuttling
back and forth: “ey work to try to encourage practical public deliberation – public
listening, learning and beginning to act on innovative agreements too – as they move
project and policy proposals forward to viable implementation or decisive rejection (the
‘no-build’ option).” is also generates an important role for participation, as planning
is intrinsically linked to communication, argumentation, debate and engagement in
discourse (Lane, 2005: 296). In the 1990s and 2000s, this emphasis on participation
was strengthened by a focus on the possibilities of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs) to support participatory processes. is includes the use of virtual
environments/realities to model plans (Howard and Gaborit, 2007; Lim, et al., 2009)
and more ‘traditional’ uses of e-participation (Åström and Granberg, 2007). Kunzmann’s
(1997: 28) description of what he calls the communicative city provides a broader
perspective on the role attributed to ICTs in relation to participation:
New information and communication technologies could and should be used more
skillfully to meet local and regional information needs, and to supply regional
residents with the kind of civic information they require to live comfortably in an
Media and Participation
48
active community. Both access to information and opportunities to use various
communication technologies are required to initiate and maintain critical discussions
on the future of a city region, to create local identity and civic pride, and to enhance
participation in and commitment to urban development.
ese more recent evolutions conrm that Alfasi’s (2003: 185) words are still very
applicable to the eld of spatial planning: “Public participation is an idea that has been
around for a long time, as long as modern urban planning. Yet it refuses to exhaust itself
or become jaded”.
2.2 Development and participation
e participation debate within development has been more heated than in the case
of the spatial planning eld because it is rmly embedded in the problematic power
relations between North and South. Not surprisingly, critical authors have not only
discussed the general lack of structural equality between North and South from both a
historical-colonial and a present-day postcolonial perspective, they have also attacked
the replication of this structural imbalance in development theory and practice. ese
imbalances are both situated at the macro-level: As Cowen and Shenton (1996) argue,
there is a wide range of ‘trustees’ that are directing the development process, ranging
from states, to multilateral agencies to non-governmental organizations. is implies
that (the critique on) the imbalanced power relations can also be found at the micro-/
local level where development professionals interact with to-be-developed citizens from
the South. us, the introduction of (and the emphasis on) the notion of participation
can be seen as a strategy to counter the reduced agency of developing countries and their
populations, and to increase the focus on their empowerment. At the same time, these
articulations of participation are very much inuenced by the interventionist nature of
development theory and practice, which leads to the presence of a multi-layered concept
of participation that, on the one hand is seen as the means (a tool for better project
outcomes), and on the other as the ends (as enhancing societal equity, empowerment
and social justice) (Oakley, 1991; Nelson and Wright, 1995; Cleaver, 2001).
Servaes (1999) provides a general starting point in his discussion of the modernization
and dependency approaches to development.19 In the modernization paradigm,
development is (oen) articulated within a modernist model of linear progress, in which
western democracies (and especially their economies) are the examples to be imitated.
Development is dened as an evolution from the traditional to the modern, as illustrated
by Rostow’s (1953) take-o model, which distinguishes ve stages that developing
societies have to go through: traditional society, pre-take-o stage, take-o, the road to
maturity and the mass consumption society. In addition to stage theories like Rostow’s,
Tehranian (1977: 22) mentions index theories, dierentiation theories and diusion
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
49
theories, which respectively focus on economic change (measured by specic indices),
political and social dierences, and the diusion of specic ideas, attitudes or practices
as stimuli for development. is paradigm does not exclude the notion of participation,
but it assumes a minimalist form because it is focused on the creation of elites within the
colonial framework and, later, on the political participation of citizens in homogeneous
communities (Hickey and Mohan, 2004: 6).
e second model Servaes (1999: 31–35) distinguishes is the dependency model,
which originated as a critique of the modernist paradigm. is critique was (at least
partially) organized at the international level, by the so-called Non-aligned Movement.
Latin American scholars, such as Prebisch and Singer, in particular, but also scholars
from the western Marxist tradition (such as Baran, Frank and Sweezy), played a crucial
role in the attempt to rearticulate development. Although the dependency model is
characterized by paradigmatic diversity, its main argument is that development and
underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin, and that the developed ‘imperialistic’
centre is responsible for the underdevelopment in the dependent periphery. Although
economic characteristics are still seen as the main explanatory factors, the power of the
centre is seen to be based on an always-specic combination of economic, political,
military and cultural factors. For dependency theorists, the solution to this problem
can be found in the detachment of the developing countries’ economies from the world
market, and their increased self-reliance. As Sweezy argues, this solution has to have a
revolutionary nature:
for the vast majority of the peoples of the periphery, dependent development yields
not a better life and a brighter future but intensied exploitation and greater misery.
e way forward for them is therefore through a revolutionary break with the entire
capitalist system […] (Sweezy, 1981: 80, quoted in Servaes, 1999: 34)
As Grosfuegel (2000: 357) argues, the Dependistas not only tackled the modernization
paradigm, they also critiqued the orthodox Marxist positioning of the Latin American
communist parties that had forged strategic alliances with the Latin American
bourgeoisies. Inspired by the Cuban revolution, the Dependistas considered their
‘national’ bourgeoisies to be reactionary forces, which blocked the road to socialism.
us, “[t]he Cuban revolution became the myth of socialist national development”
(Grosfuegel, 2000: 361). At the same time, the Dependistas continued to be locked into
a Marxist-structuralist perspective, which led to a strong focus on the economy and the
nation state, and to the underestimation of culture and ideology, but which also kept
them rmly locked into the communist utopia as a sense-making tool.
Dependency theory exerted a strong inuence on several other authors who placed a
more explicit emphasis on the notions of participation and empowerment. Apart from
the authors working in the eld of liberation theology (see Gibellini, 1987), particularly
Freire and Fals-Borda (see Mato, 2004) were prominent in what Hickey and Mohan
Media and Participation
50
(2004) call the eld of emancipatory participation. Fals-Borda is strongly associated with
the development approach called Participatory Action Research (PAR), which relies on
an empathic researcher to enable communities to dene their own research questions, to
lead the research and to develop their own solutions for change (Mertens, 2008: 182 – see
Fals-Borda and Rahman, 1991; Kindon et al., 2007). Fals-Borda (1998: 161) emphasizes
the radical-political nature of participation as “always radically conceived as a struggle
against political and economic exclusion from exercising control over public resources”.
Freire’s work focuses on the topics of the educational process and the struggle against
illiteracy. Freire’s (1992) Pedagogy of the Hope initially is opposed to the traditional
educational system, which is seen as paternalistic and non-participative in considering
knowledge as something to be passed on as a readymade package instead of through
a dialogic meeting between subjects. Freire contends that people passively accept this
content and rarely question the validity of the knowledge (omas, 1994: 51). He situates
his claim in the context of the ‘culture of silence’ in Latin America, which implies that
“the ruling class has such superior power that the repressed end up seeing themselves
as the oppressors do, namely as inferior. […] e most important consequence of the
culture of silence is the assuming of an apathic attitude by the repressed. In the culture of
silence no development can be realized” (Servaes and Lie, 1996: 29 – my translation). In
his alternative pedagogy, Freire emphasizes the importance of both action and reection,
combined in the term conscientization. Conscientization still requires input from a tutor,
so that arousing critical awareness is related to development and to the political struggle
against injustice. At the same time, conscientization means that tutor and apprentice
together are involved in the (re)search for (of) knowledge: “Authentic participation
would then enable the subjects involved in this dialogic encounter to unveil reality
for themselves” (omas, 1994: 51). Participation in this context is seen as being the
reduction in the power imbalances. is is situated at two levels: the educational situation
(the relations between tutor, apprentice and knowledge), and the social, political and
economic situation (the relations between oppressor and repressed).
In 1975, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation published its report What Now? Another
Development, the second phrase in the title indicating the ambition to develop another
type of development grounded in a focus on the people’s basic needs (such as eradication
of poverty), self-reliance, ecological sensitivity, sustainability and participation (Servaes,
1999: 78–79; Potter et al., 2008: 114). is report considers previous approaches to
development as reductionist and top-down, and more supportive of transnational
capital than development and poverty reduction. It elaborates another development
characterized by a diversity of approaches. Mefalopulos (2008: 51) mentions the
multiplicity approach (Servaes, 1983, 1999), the empowerment approach (Friedmann,
1992) and the autonomous development approach (Carmen, 1996). As Potter et al.
(2008: 117) point out, they all have one crucial characteristic in common: “ey share
the characteristic of arguing that development and change should not be concentrated at
each higher level of the social and settlement systems, but should focus on the needs of
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
51
lower echelons of these respective orders”. Participation then becomes crucial to involve
these lower echelons; when discussing the characteristics of another development,
Servaes (1999: 79) explicitly lists participatory democracy, which is (within another
development) seen as “the true form of democracy. It is not merely government of the
people and for the people but also, and more fundamentally, ‘by the people’ at all levels
of society”.
ese debates on alternative forms of development and participation were translated
into models for development practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s, giving rise to
what has become known as the eld of participation in development. Here, the emphasis
shied from the broader levels of participation in developing societies to participation in
the setting of development projects, where it is aimed at empowering people, capturing the
indigenous knowledge and ensuring the sustainability and eciency of the interventions
(Hickey and Mohan, 2004: 7). One of the most inuential models was (and is) Participatory
Rural Appraisal (PRA), developed mainly by Chambers (1983, 1994, 1997a, 1997b,
2002 – see also Mukherjee, 1993; Narayanasamy, 2009). Mukherjee (1993: 21) denes
PRA as “a methodology for interacting with villagers, understanding them and learning
from them”. In PRA, participation is preconditioned by the willingness of villagers to
explain their perceptions and problems to development workers, but also by the capacity
of development workers to evoke the villagers’ participation (Mukherjee, 1993: 35). As
Chambers (1997b: 1747) summarized it, “e challenge is how to give voice to those
who are le out and to make their reality count”. In order to facilitate the communication
of local community knowledge, a wide variety of tools has been developed, such as
“participatory mapping and modeling, transect walks, matrix scoring, well-being grouping
and ranking, seasonal calendars, institutional diagramming, trend and chance analysis,
and analytical diagramming, all undertaken by local people” (Chambers, 1994: 1253 –
see also Mayoux and Chambers, 2005: 277, for a brief overview). ese tools emphasize
visual representation, in an attempt to construct what Robinson-Pant (1996) called a
new literacy, which moves away from more traditional forms of literacy: “Participation
(in PRA activities) does not depend on literacy but it does rely on representing ideas
or quantities through symbols” (Wright and Nelson, 1995: 56). Although PRA makes
strong claims about a reversal of power relations, evident in Chambers’ (1994: 1266)
statement that “PRA has stressed abdication of power and passing much of the initiative
and control to local people, using the metaphor (and sometimes reality) of ‘handing over
the stick’ (or chalk, or pen)”, these claims are based on the equation of participation with
(shared) learning, which leads to the black boxing of a series of other power processes.
For instance, Pottier (1997: 223) points to the risk of de-contextualizing power: “e
harder PRA practitioners try to reduce social distances between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ the more
important it is not to assume that social distances would not exist locally”. Rahnema
(1997: 167) goes a step further, and describes PRA as “the new participatory myth acting
more like a Trojan horse which may end up by substituting a subtle kind of teleguided
and masterly organized participation of the old types of intransitive or culturally dened
Media and Participation
52
participation, proper to vernacular societies”. is explains Leurs’s (1996: 71) call, for
instance, for more intensied forms of participation: “Further reversals of power (control
over funding, decision making, analysis etc) are urgently required”.
Despite the problems, in the 1990s the notion of participation became more and more
mainstreamed in development theory, although some authors (such as Woost, 1997: 231)
trace the beginnings of this process back to the 1970s, for example, to McNamara’s farewell
speech as President of the World Bank in 1973. Francis (2001: 72) quotes yet another
World Bank presidential speech, this time on the occasion of Wolfensohn’s 1998 address
to the Board of Governors, where he said, “Participation matters – not only as a means
of improving development eectiveness, as we know from our recent studies – but as the
key to long-term sustainability and leverage”. Not long before this speech was delivered,
the World Bank (1996) had published e World Bank Participation Sourcebook, which
contains the following denition of participation: “Participation is a process through
which stakeholders inuence and share control over development initiatives and the
decisions and resources which aect them” (World Bank, 1996: xi). In addition to an
explicit emphasis on inuence and control, in this document the World Bank introduces
the distinction between participation on the one hand, and consultation and listening
on the other. In an earlier publication (World Bank, 1995), the World Bank had outlined
a four-level approach to participation: information sharing, consultation, collaboration
and empowerment. In the 1996 Sourcebook, consultation is positioned dierently, namely
as a prerequisite for participation:
Instead, we recognize consultation and listening as essential prerequisites for participation,
because, no matter how good the sponsors and designers are at consultation and
listening, what is still missing is learning on the part of the people in the local system. A
person who is being ‘listened to’ or ‘consulted with’ does not learn nearly as much as the
person doing the listening and consulting. (World Bank, 1996: 4 – emphasis in original)
e Sourcebook articulates the participatory approach as a break with the past. is
is partially achieved by distinguishing this approach from what is called the ‘external
expert stance’, where “the project sponsors and designers place themselves outside
the local system” (World Bank, 1996: 4). Although the Sourcebook does not discredit
the ‘external expert stance’, it uses a confessional repertoire to discuss the problems
related to this stance: “Admittedly, in the past, sponsors and designers may not have
always listened to all the people or consulted poor and disadvantaged members of
society […]” (World Bank, 1996: 4). Also the participatory stance (with its focus on
learning) is legitimized by problematizing the past in the World Bank’s (1996: 4) claim
that listening to and learning from stakeholders will allow them to “gain insights into
the reasons why the behaviour change dimensions of Bank-nanced projects have
run into so many problems”. e Sourcebook provides a series of examples of how this
learning has improved the developmental process. One example is the following: “e
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
53
Chad Education Task Manager for example points out that he had never thought about
parent education as an important means of improving child education until the parents
themselves proposed it” (World Bank, 1996: 5 – emphasis removed). ese case studies
use a series of methods characterized by a strong focus on stakeholder participation. e
methodology section of the Sourcebook groups them under the headings of Collaborative
decision-making: Workshop-based methods (Appreciation-Inuence-Control (AIC),
Objectives-Oriented Project Planning (ZOPP) and TeamUp); Collaborative decision-
making: Community-based methods (Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and SARAR);
Methods for stakeholder consultation (Beneciary Assessment (BA) and Systematic
Client Consultation (SCC)); and Methods for social analysis (Social Assessment (SA)
and Gender Analysis (GA)) (World Bank, 1996: 181 ).20
e mainstreaming of participation and the participation in development approach
received harsh criticism. A collection of these critiques is provided in the reader
Participation: e new tyranny?, edited by Cooke and Kothari (2001a). In the introduction
to this book, the editors claim to want to move beyond the “identication of technocratic
limitations of, and adjustments to, the methodology [of participatory development]” and
aim their critiques at “the politics of the discourse” (Cooke and Kothari, 2001b: 7). On
a rst level, the authors critique what they see as the hegemonization of participatory
approaches in development, where participation risks becoming a grand narrative
(Kothari, 2001) and a means to its own end, at the expense of other techniques that might
be more appropriate in specic circumstances. As the editors put it, “Have participatory
methods driven out others which have advantages that participation cannot provide?”
(Cooke and Kothari, 2001b: 7). However, on a second level, the authors of this edited
collection raise a number of conceptual issues. ey critique how in participation in
development approaches the concept community is articulated as homogeneous, static
and harmonious (see also Guijt and Shah, 1998; Mohan, 2001; Williams, 2004). Similarly,
the role of the key concepts of learning and local knowledge is deconstructed since
knowledge cannot be considered stable and original. To use Mosse’s (2001: 32) words,
the “assumption that learning and ‘local knowledge’ denes, and redenes, the relation
between local communities and development institutions needs to be reversed. It is oen
the case that the ‘local knowledge’ and ‘village plans’ produced through participatory
planning are themselves shaped by pre-existing relationships”. Also the construction
of a North–South dichotomy, where both components become homogenized and a
Manichean world-view is used, is deemed problematic (Henkel and Stirrat, 2001).
e argument underlying many of these critiques is based on the complexity of
power, and they exploit Foucault’s micro-analytics of power (see below) as their
theoretical foundation. Kothari (2001), for instance, points to the close connection
between the production and representation of knowledge and power. is allows her
to problematize the isolation of local knowledge from the processes that generate it, in
both the interaction between development workers and local people, and the interaction
within the community itself. ese power processes can work against the disempowered
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who are to be empowered, in disciplining them through a series of participatory rituals,
which simultaneously legitimize the rituals and their organizers (Ferguson, 1994). In
Kothari’s (2001: 143) words:
those people who have the greatest reason to challenge and confront power relations
and structures are brought, or even bought, through the promise of development
assistance, into the development process in ways that disempower them to challenge
the prevailing hierarchies and inequalities in society.
Kothari (2001) then draws on a Gomanian framework to argue that within communities
a front-stage/back-stage logic might result in compliance with expectations. e
celebration of community also results in the neglect of local power dynamics. As
Cleaver (2001: 45) puts it, “More realistically, we may see the community as the site of
both solidarity and conict, shiing alliances, power and social structures”. At the same
time, care should be taken not to abort the component of resistance in the Foucauldian
framework. Disempowered people who are confronted with participatory development
initiatives (or rituals) can still turn these initiatives to their advantage. Kothari (2001: 150)
writes that they “can also have enough power to carve out spaces of control with respect
to the (re)presentation of their day-to-day lives […]”. Although the power dynamics
in participation in development can lead to the de-politicization of development, these
power processes also allow for its re-politicization (Williams, 2004: 94).
Despite the sometimes assertive tone of debates on participation in development and
its implementation, for instance, by the World Bank, there is a common concern over
participation. For example, Cooke and Kothari (2001b: 13) write in their introduction
that they would not like to be labelled “anti-participation”. rough critiques of the
mainstreaming of participation, these authors conrm its importance, although its
practical realization is sometimes deemed problematic. e main model for this
problematization is grounded in a critique against the reductionism that is embedded
within the mainstream articulation of participation, which reduces the maximalist
nature of participation. Participation is seen as “domesticated away from its radical roots”
(Cleaver, 1999: 608), because of its disconnection from a (radical) political process and
because of its armation (instead of balancing out) of power imbalances.
In an attempt to redress this situation, a number of authors have pleaded for a
stronger emphasis on the notion of citizenship in relation to development, scaling up
the participatory processes from the level of the development project cycle and imputing
them into the realm of politics. Ironically, their contributions are aimed at the weak
connection between participation and institutionalized politics, which is crucial even
in minimalist approaches to participation. e broadening of the span of participation
has resulted in a disconnection with institutionalized politics, which has reduced the
multidirectional character of participation (although in a slightly unusual way). In order
to discuss this migration of participation from the social (back) into the political sphere,
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
55
Gaventa (2004) uses the term participatory citizenship. For Gaventa (2004: 29), this
migration implies also that participation becomes articulated as a right: “the right to
participate […] is a prior right, necessary for making other rights real”. is argument
is taken further in Hickey and Mitlin’s (2009) anthology, Rights-based Approaches to
Development. A number of the contributors to this anthology retain intact the link
between this rights-based approach and the concept of participation, exemplied by
Gledhill’s (2009: 31) words, “e rights-based approach clearly resonates with the global
discourses of ‘participation,’ ‘empowerment,’ and ‘social inclusion’ that pervaded the eld
of ‘development’ from the late 1990s onwards”.
2.3 e arts, museums and participation
In the world of the arts, participation has been thematized and practiced in many
variations,21 although what is termed participatory art can hardly be considered a
canonized art movement (any longer). Obviously, the artist has a strong power position
in the creation of the artwork, but as Groys (2008: 20) remarks, this power position has
been incomplete since art became secularized: “No modern artist would expect anyone
to kneel before his work in prayer, expect practical assistance from it, or use it to avert
danger”. Secularized art is dependent for its appreciation on the art worlds (including
the art market in its many dierent guises), which generates nancial value, and on what
Groys calls ‘public taste’, which cannot be equated with nancial value. As Duchamp
(1959: 77) wrote, “In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooops that
he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his
declarations take a social value and that, nally, posterity includes him in the primers
of Artist History”. Nevertheless, artists obviously remain crucial actors in the creative-
artistic process, which unavoidably results in a more passive position for the audiences
of artworks. ese audiences stroll (quietly) through museums and galleries, and (even
more quietly) attend performances and screenings. is distance allows them to pass
their judgements from a position that is external to the artwork.
But in a number of cases art oers reections on the always-problematic relationship
between the artist, the artwork and its audience. In the case of participatory art, these
reections are translated into revisions of the traditional passive position of the audience
in which the audience is implicated in the artwork. For instance, Popper (1975: 11) wrote
that “e artist has taken it upon himself [and herself] new functions which are more like
those of an intermediary than a creator […]”. Later, Dezeuze (2010b: 222) described the
objectives of what she called do-it-yourself art, as follows:
Do-it-yourself artists […] tried to maintain a dialectic movement between reality and
utopia by combining both within the space of the transitional space. In this sense,
do-it-yourself artworks as transitional phenomena are conceived not only as material
Media and Participation
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enactments of a possible transition towards the disappearance of art and artists: they
were also seen to embody a wider transition towards a new, freer, non-alienated, society.
Despite these radical objectives, the strong position of the artist as the creator of the
artwork continued to impact on the degree of participation that is allowed for. In many
cases, audience members are interacting with an already produced work of art, and are
given guidelines on how to perform, to generate or complete the artwork, or how to
act in ways that then are incorporated into the artwork. In addition, one should not be
blind to how much the position of the artist is strengthened by audience participation,
as Groys (2008: 21) points out:
When the viewer is involved in artistic practice, every piece of critique he utters is self-
criticism. e decision on the part of the artist to relinquish his exclusive authorship
would seem to primarily empower the viewer. is sacrice ultimately benets the
artist, however, for it frees him from the power that the cold eye of the uninvolved
viewer exerts over the resulting artwork.
An important starting point for these reections on participatory art is Richard Wagner’s
essay e Art-work of the Future; in a plea for the Gesamtkunstwerk (or the total artwork)
Wagner accuses the arts of egoism, partially because of their split into varieties of genres,
and disconnection from the people who are seen as the source of all creativity: “e
Art-work is the living presentation of Religion; – but religions spring not from the
artist’s brain; their only origin is from the Folk [das Volk]” (Wagner, 2004: 18). In this
essay, Wagner calls on his fellow artists to return the arts to the people in producing the
artworks of the future:
But to you I turn, – in the same sense as the Folk, albeit of necessity in your own
mode of utterance, – to you, ye prudent men and intellectual, to oer you, with all
the People’s open-heartedness, the redemption from your egoistic incantations in the
limpid spring of Nature, in the loving arm-caresses of the Folk – there where I found
it; where it became for me my art-instructor; where, aer many a battle between the
hope within and the blank despair without, I won a dauntless faith in the assurance of
the Future. (Wagner, 2004: 11)
Wagner’s total artwork attempts to recongure the position of the arts for the people,
supported by the argument that “e richest procreative force lies therefore in the utmost
multiplicity” (Wagner, 2004: 9). However, as Groys (2008: 23-24) remarks, Wagner’s
attempt to establish an artistic fellowship with the people and to undermine the author’s
power is ambivalent since the author remains in control of the stage, and the codes of
Wagnerian operas are almost impenetrable.
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Twentieth-century art movements, such as Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism, used
provocation and scandal to reduce audience passivity by transforming the audience
member into a “hostile participant, provoked, attacked and beaten by authors and actors”
(Melzer, 1976: 43). Lev-Aladgem and Jackson (2004) describe how Dada artists used
strategies such as putting glue on seats, selling the same entrance ticket to several people
and pinching (female) visitors. At the end of the 1930s, Antonin Artaud developed the
eatre of Cruelty, which used similar strategies to decrease the distance between actors
and audience, by confronting them with extreme sounds, light and gestures.
In the 1960s, a series of arts movements focused strongly on the concept of participation
and maximalist articulations. In addition to the community arts movement22 (see Binns,
1991), following Bishop (2006: 15), we can identify three other movements: Situationism
in France, Happening in the United States and Neo-concretism in Brazil. In France,
Situationist International, one of whose main protagonists was Guy Debord, emphasized
the connection between art and (radical) politics, and critiqued the impact of capitalism
on everyday life, leading, for instance, to pseudo-communication and a lack of
participation.
REVOLUTION IS NOT ‘showing’ life to people, but bringing them to life. A
revolutionary organization must always remember that its aim is not getting its
adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak
for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of
participation. e cinematic spectacle is one of the forms of pseudo-communication
(developed, in lieu of other possibilities, by the present class technology) in which this
aim is radically unfeasible. (Debord, 2003: 216 – caps and emphasis in original)
In the so-called situations (or “collective environments, ensembles of impressions
determining the quality of a moment” (Debord, 2006: 98)) from which Situationist
International derived its name, more intense life experience became possible. A situation
is “made to be lived by its constructors. e role of the ‘public’, if not passive at least a
walk-on, must ever diminish, while the share of those who cannot be called actors but, in
a new meaning of the term, ‘livers’ [viveurs], will increase” (Debord, 2006: 98).
Happening, which rst developed in the United States, “aimed to manipulate creatively
the relationship between the presented materials, performers and spectators. […]
Spectators became ‘participants’ who by carrying on simple ‘tasks’ and ‘activities’ aided
in the creation of metaphors” (Lev-Aladgem and Jackson, 2004: 209). Allan Kaprow
(1996), who is credited with having staged the rst happening (Zimbardo, 2008a: 102),
published a series of guidelines for happenings, which emphasized that the line between
art and life should be kept uid, the sources (of the happening) should originate from
outside the arts, the happening should take place in widely spaced locales, time should
be discontinuous and variable, the happening should be performed only once, and –
most importantly in this context – “audiences should be eliminated entirely” (Kaprow,
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1996: 713). Kaprow (1996: 713) explains that “A Happening [that is] only an emphatic
response on the part of a seated audience is not a Happening but stage theatre”, but he
also resists the idea of unprepared ‘participants’ being submitted to the abuse of the
artists:
[…] on the human plane, to assemble people unprepared for an event and say that
they are ‘participating’ if apples are thrown at them or they are herded about is to ask
very little of the whole notion of participation. Most of the time the response of such
an audience is half-hearted or even reluctant, and sometimes the reaction is vicious
and therefore destructive to the work […]. (Kaprow, 1996: 713)
Kaprow (1996: 714) prefers respectful events with participants who are willing and
committed; at the same time professional talent is not a requirement of participants: “e
best participants have been persons not normally engaged in art or performance, but who
are moved to take part in an activity that is at once meaningful to them in its ideas yet
natural in its methods”. Kaprow also nuances the idea that happenings necessarily have
to have active audiences: Participants might not always know that they are part of the
happening – Kaprow mentions the example of a butcher who sells meat to a customer-
performer. Also, a happening can be staged just for (some of) the audience to watch it.
A number of artists have used the medium of the happening, for instance, those
aliated with Warhol’s Factory, or the Fluxus group, but these groups also used other
formats to facilitate audience participation. For Water Yam and Fluxkit, George Brecht
produced collaborative toolkits providing instructions on the actions of participants, but
also the creation of objects (Frieling, 2008a: 41). Nam June Paik’s Participation TV allows
the visitor to produce voice-generated television images, what Zimbardo (2008b) calls
“unpredictable explosions of lines”, and Yoko Ono staged the Cut Piece performance,
where audience members were invited onstage to cut o pieces of her clothes until she
was nearly naked. Some audience members were extremely keen to get a piece, and as
Pellico (2008a: 108) mentions, “[t]ensions arose during these performances, and there
were moments of potential aggression”. In contrast to the Fluxus group’s work, Andy
Warhol’s participatory art was aimed more at enlisting others “to work towards the mass
production of Warhol images” (Frieling, 2008b: 90). For instance, the Do It Yourself
series, produced around 1962, invited audience members to nish paintings based on
the painting-by-numbers hobby kits.
Although Joseph Beuys collaborated with Fluxus, and is sometimes described as
post-Fluxus (Zimbardo, 2008c: 130), his work is distinct, and is still very relevant to the
debate on participatory art. Crucial to Beuys’s work is his concept of the social plastic
(also translated as social sculpture), which allows him to address social issues through
artistic strategies. Beuys resists the ‘traditional’ formalistic and aesthetic denitions of
art, and aims to dismantle society in order to build “a social organism as a work of art”
(Beuys, 2006: 125 – emphasis removed). During a lecture (telecast through satellite to
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
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more than 25 countries) given at the Documenta 6 exhibition, Beuys said, “such a notion
of art would no longer refer exclusively to the specialists within the modern art world but
extend to the whole work of humanity” (Beuys, quoted in Zimbardo, 2008c: 130). Beuys’s
strategy is to try to convince each citizen to give form to life, at both the individual
and the collective level. As Saper (2001: 23) remarks, this brings Beuys to combine an
“extreme individualism” with a “collective internationalism” and provoked his most
frequently quoted statement that “Every human being is an artist”:
is most modern art discipline – Social Sculpture/Social Architecture – will only
reach fruition when every living person becomes a creator, a sculptor, or architect of
the social organism. Only then would the insistence on participation of the action art
of Fluxus and Happening be fullled; only then would democracy be fully realized.
[…] EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the
freedom that he experiences at rst hand – learns to determine the other positions in
the TOTAL ARTWORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. (Beuys, 2006: 125 –
caps in original)
One example of this is the 7000 Oaks project, which involved Beuys (and later his
son) planting a total of 7000 trees in the German city of Kassel, which is home to the
Documenta exhibitions. e project was initiated in 1982 at Documenta 7, and Beuys
and many volunteers intervened in the urban space of Kassel by planting trees, each
accompanied by a basalt stone. e project, with its biological, artistic, cultural, ecological
and pedagogical components, was wound up in 1987, a year aer Beuys’s death, at
Documenta 8 (see Beuys et al. 2006). Although Beuys’s charisma and his position as an
artistic celebrity (Frieling, 2008a: 44) oen complicated the participatory process in his
own artworks, (some of) his work did allow for stronger forms of audience participation.
One example is the 100-day installation at Documenta 5 (in 1972) called the Bureau
for Direct Democracy. Beuys installed an information oce at Documenta, where he
discussed the possibilities of direct democracy through the use of referenda (Beuys and
Schwarze, 2006).
Finally, the neo-concretist movement, (co-)founded by the South Americans Lygia Clark
and Hélio Oiticica, emphasized the need for participants to manipulate the artwork as a
way of understanding it (through their senses). e Neo-concrete Manifesto from 1959 calls
for a focus on more intuitive approaches to art and on natural subject matters, rather than
formulaic representational styles and reduction of art to objects (Congdon and Hallmark,
2002: 67). Clark’s Bichos series used geometric metal constructions, which visitors were
invited to pick up, play with and/or stand on (Congdon and Hallmark, 2002: 67); her
Dialogues series aimed at creating dialogues between audience members, for instance,
by binding their hands together with a Möbius strip (Pellico, 2008b: 104). As Congdon
and Hallmark (2002: 68) describe, the bodily senses played a key role in the participatory
process: “She was concerned with activating participants’ bodily senses along with their
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responses to those experiences”. Oiticica was evenly interested in the bodily senses; in
his Whitechapel experiment he “asked people to take o their shoes before entering large
boxes lled with sand and straw or cabinlike structures with mattresses and blankets”
(Pellico, 2008c: 107). Not surprisingly, dance became one of Oiticica’s media: He organized
disruptive events with participants from Samba schools dressed in capes called Parangolés
(see Braga, 2003). For Oiticica (2006: 106), the Parangolé “demands participation through
dance”, allowing for a “transformation of the ‘total act of the self’”. ese transformations
are seen as characteristic of what Oiticica (2006: 108) calls ‘environmental art’:
[…] being and indeed requiring the collaboration of various artists with diering
ideas, solely concentrated on this general idea of a ‘total participatory creation’ – to
which would be added works created through the anonymous participation of the
spectators, who actually would be better described as ‘participants’.
Frieling (2008a: 43) comments in a rather positive fashion on the work of the neo-
concretist movement, writing that the organization of “communal gatherings and
discourses […] pre-gured the idea of an open system that is constructed by participants-
what we might call ‘true’ participation today”. He goes on to point to the adaptability of
these open systems: “Such a system can incorporate pre-given rules and also establish
new ones collaboratively”.
In addition to these three movements, an emphasis on audience participation was
developing in the world of theatre. Again, this evolution was not new; in his 1924 essay
eatre, Circus, Variety, László Moholy-Nagy (2001: 25) had called for a new position
for the audience: “It is time to produce a kind of stage activity which will no longer
permit the masses to be silent spectators, which will not only excite them inwardly but
will let them take hold and participate-actually allow them to fuse with the action on
the stage at the peak of cathartic ecstasy”. Also, Bertholt Brecht (see Steinweg, 1995) had
experimented with reducing the separation between audience and actor in his Lehrstücke
project (which he abandoned, but which was revived by the Brazilian director Augusto
Boal’s eatre of the Oppressed, working with ‘spect-actors’ (Boal, 1979)). In the 1960s and
1970s in particular, more structural changes in theatre theory led to the re-articulation
of theatre as a text-based art, to an open, playful and social event (Lev-Aladgem and
Jackson, 2004: 207). In so-called alternative and third theatre, audience participation
implied “taking part in the play: dancing, playing a scene with the performers, engaging
fellow spectators in conversation as part of the play, removing or exchanging clothing,
or any of the many other kinds of physical involvement possible” (Schechner, 1971: 73).
An example here is the work of the Italian director Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret,
where a barter system was introduced and the audience, instead of paying to see the
performance, was invited to perform themselves in return: “A play is exchanged for
songs and dances, a display of acrobatics for a demonstration of training exercises, a
poem for a monologue, etc.” (Watson, 1993: 22).
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Aer the heydays of participatory art in the 1960s and 1970s, it gradually became
less popular, which led Frieling (2008a: 45) to describe the 1980s as “a decade that
avoided exploration of participatory social concepts”. However, this does not imply
that participatory art disappeared completely, as evidenced by Beuys’s work. Manovich
(2001: 57) also points out that the rst interactive computer installations appeared in the
1980s. Previous to this, the fascination of the arts with media technology had provided
a major stimulus to audience participation, exemplied by Herbert Schumacher’s
(Zimbardo, 2008d) Documenta der Leute (People’s Documenta) at the Documenta 5
(1972). Schumacher’s group used portable video equipment to interview passers-by and
to replay these interviews in a van parked outside the exhibition centre. A slightly later
example was Jochen Gerz’ (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, 2004)
1980 video installation Purple Cross for Absent Now, where he is shown in close-up on
two video monitors, with a rubber rope around his neck. Visitors could see only Gerz
and the end of the rope, and were invited to test the ‘liveness’ of the situation by pulling
the rope to tighten the noose.
e digital revolution revived the popularity of participation in the 1990s in what
Dezeuze (2010a: 4) calls the “second wave of do-it-yourself practices”. In this period,
interactive art became a more popular concept to describe these practices (see Dinkla,
1996). ere were also several signicant changes related to the articulation of audience
participation in this period, based on changes to the structure of the societal context. As
Bourriaud (2006: 163) remarked in 1998, the “social utopias and revolutionary hopes
[have] given way to day-to-day micro-utopias and mimetic strategies”. In the 1990s, the
emphasis was on interactive art that focused on “the experience of the user as an act of
communication, on the social space of the interface, and on the dynamics of interaction”
(Penny, 1995: 58). One of the key concepts of the era, Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics,
emphasizes human relations and context as a starting point, where “[t]he status of the
viewer alternates between that of a passive consumer, and that of a witness, an associate,
a client, a guest, a co-producer and a protagonist” (Bourriaud, 2006: 168). Bourriaud
(2006: 162) points explicitly to the responsibility of the artist (“for the symbolic models
he is showing”) and shies away from the concept of participation: He refers instead to
interaction and communication:
eir works bring into play modes of social exchange, interaction with the viewer
inside the aesthetic experience he or she is oered, and processes of communication
in their concrete dimensions as tools that can to be used to bring together individuals
and human groups. (Bourriaud, 2006: 165)
Of course, participatory (or interactive) art in the 1990s and the twenty-rst century is not
exclusively new (or digital) media art. In 1997, the Interactive Arts Jury (1997/1998: 107)
of the Ars Electronica festival (a leading annual media arts festival) wrote that the ‘usual’
terms used to evaluate interactive art were no longer adequate due to the ination of the
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concept of interactivity. Moving away from a denition that lined interaction to the digital
– the ‘usual’ terms – they stated that in interactive artworks the interaction “takes place
between people, between people and machines, and between machines themselves”. One
of the many examples of the complexity of twenty-rst-century interactive art is Markus
Kison’s Touched echo23 (which was ‘exhibited’ at the Brühlsche Terrrasse in Dresden from
2007 to 2009, and also at Ars Electronica in 2008). e artwork consists of a small display
that invites the visitor to lean his or her elbows on the railing (of the Brühlsche Terrrasse
or its substitute at Ars Electronica) and to cover his or her ears. is allows sound to be
transferred via the metal of the railings into the person’s body and the visitor hears the
sounds of heavy planes and explosions, reminiscent of the bombing raid of 13 February
1945 that destroyed the city of Dresden. Other interactive art is characterized by the
absence of technology. For instance, in what Bhabha (1998) called conversational art,
and Finkelpearl (2000) referred to as dialogue-based public art, artists organize human
interaction. Kester (2004: 1–3; 2005: 77), for instance, refers to the work of the Austrian
arts collective, Wochenklausur, which in 1994 brought together politicians, journalists,
sex workers and activists from the city of Zurich to discuss drug policy. e discussions
resulted in the establishment of a pension in Zurich, to provide a safe haven for drug-
addicted sex workers.
e 1990s did not witness only a rediscovery of participatory/interactive art; institutions
of display and conservation – the museums – became implicated in debates on participation,
and a series of museum theorists began to advocate a new museology or new museum theory.
One of the foundational texts was Vergo’s (1989a) reader, appropriately entitled e New
Museology, in which he and a number of authors advocated a reconguration of the ways we
look at the museum. In his introduction, Vergo (1989b: 3) refers to dissatisfaction with the
‘old’ museology, which was too much focused on museum methods, and was not reexive
enough about its purposes and identities. In the same introduction, Vergo distances himself
from any claim to ultimate novelty and exclusivity,24 or mono-perspectivism. Within this
diverse collection of articles, a number of authors rethink (or plead for a rethink of) the
museum’s relation to the visitor, and the power imbalances that characterize that relationship.
For instance, Merriman (1989: 167–168) – drawing heavily on Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of
distinction – concludes that “[…] the action of museums in contemporary culture is to divide
society into those who have the ‘competence’ to perceive museum visiting as a worthwhile
leisure opportunity, and those who do not”. Wright (1989: 148) takes a similar position: “e
present ction in museums – that every visitor is equally motivated, equipped, and enabled
‘to experience art directly’ – should be abandoned. It is patronising, humiliating in practice,
and inaccurate”. Also, the political nature of the museum and its functioning as a discursive
machinery is thematized. Greenhalgh’s (1989: 96) chapter on international exhibitions in
particular describes how these exhibitions “recognized the socio-political climate of their
time and they responded to it”.
In later publications on new museology/new museum theory, the emphasis on
representation, politics and power is deepened, and combined with a more explicit
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63
agenda for social and cultural change. Critiques of the elitism, exclusionary practices
and mono-vocality of museums (Ross, 2004) form the basis of a museum reform project
that aims at “the transformation of the museum from a site of worship and awe to one of
discourse and critical reection that is committed to examining unsettling histories with
sensitivity to all parties” (Marstine, 2006: 5). In addition, the focus on the inclusion of
the museums’ communities is continued in Marstine’s (2006: 5) plea for a museum that
“is transparent in its decision-making and willing to share power”. rough this strong
emphasis on inclusion and power, the notion of audience participation is reintroduced
into the debate, for instance through a recognition that visitors and communities have
cultural expertise, as Halpin (1997: 56) writes:
the new or critical museology about which I am speaking might be a useful museology
in service to a community, instead of the state and the élite. A museology practised
by named, committed and creative professionals who know that people other than
themselves are also cultural experts.
Anthologies such as Cultural Diversity. Developing Museum Audiences in Britain (Hooper-
Greenwill, 1997), Museums, Society, Inequality (Sandell, 2002), and Changes in Museum
Practice. New Media, Refugees and Participation (Skartveit and Goodnow, 2010) focus on
the importance of inclusionary practices combined with a series of examples. One such
example is Hemming’s (1997) chapter in Cultural Diversity, which is (rather tellingly)
entitled Audience Participation: Working with Local People at the Gerye Museum.
Hemming discusses the exhibition ‘Chinese Homes: Chinese traditions in English homes’,
which ran for three months in the Gerye museum in Hackney (London), combined with
educational courses, organized by the museum, for dierent groups of people within the
community. ere was collaboration with a Chinese Community Centre: Members of the
Chinese community were involved in the construction of the ‘Chinese Homes’ exhibition
through group discussions on content (and access to preparatory meetings) combined with
oral history approaches. In his non-celebratory process evaluation, Hemming’s (1997: 176)
chapter points to the problems related to language, resources and time, but also emphasizes
the importance of audience participation:
Involving the community in making decisions does take time, but also the will to
make it happen. However, if the museum had tried to impose its own narrative on the
exhibition without the consultation process, the results would have been disastrous.
e chances are that the exhibition would have alienated the Chinese community and
been a rather shallow attempt to portray their culture.
However, within sociology, audience participation in cultural institutions is also
approached from a totally dierent perspective. Oen25 building on a quantitative
sociological approach, and closely related to Bourdieu’s work on distinction, art or
Media and Participation
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cultural participation is dened and analysed as individual art (or cultural) exposure,
attendance or access, in some cases complemented by individual art (or cultural)
creation. As Vander Stichle and Laermans (2006: 48) describe it, “In principle, cultural
participation behaviour encompasses both public and private receptive practices, as
well as active and interactive forms of cultural participation”. rough this emphasis
on the individual’s cultural participation, and his or her cultural capital (DiMaggio and
Mukhtar, 1996) and potential omnivorous behaviour (Peterson and Kern, 1996; Vander
Stichle and Laermans, 2006) embedded within taste democracy (van Eijck and Knulst,
2005), the focus of this type of research moves away from the institutional context of
cultural participation, and the micro-politics of cultural institutions, but maintains its
attention to the importance of inclusion.
3. Audience participation and communication (rights)
Participation has played a key role in a variety of approaches within the eld of
communication and media studies. e starting point in this debate is audience theory
because the notion of audience activity can be used to open up debates on participation
in and through the media. is choice implies that I do not subscribe to the idea that the
signier audience is outdated and should be abandoned – a point of view that McQuail
seems to have adopted, at least in certain of his writings, for instance when he says that
there is no doubt that the audience concept is in many ways outdated and its
traditional role in communication theory, models, and research has been called in
to question. We can (and largely do) go on behaving as if the audience still exists ‘out
there’ somewhere, but we may be largely deceiving ourselves. (McQuail, 1997: 142)
e discussion in this chapter on the basic dimensions of audience theory (including
the interaction/participation dimension) will illustrate some of the complexities of
the debate on the active audience and will allow me to migrate the maximalist and
minimalist model of democratic participation into the media sphere. In a second
part I revisit the more maximalist political-democratic models in order to show how
(maximalist) participation has been translated into the media sphere and how this
aects its meanings. e rst cluster deals with Marxist, anarchist and Soviet theory;
the second cluster focuses on deliberative democracy and public sphere theory. A third
cluster revisits the discussions on development and participation, and how (through the
UNESCO, New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) and World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) debates) they again have aected the media
sphere. In the last part, I zoom in even closer, looking at three specic types of media
praxis and the way participation has been articulated within the contexts of community
and alternative media, television talk shows and reality TV, and new media.
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
65
3.1 Audience articulations and participation
ere are many approaches to structuring how the concept of audience is theorized, and
a “totalizing account [is] a logical impossibility” (Jenkins, 1999). e starting point of the
analysis in this chapter is the identication of the two major dimensions that are labelled
active/passive and micro/macro, based on Littlejohn’s (1996: 310) eories of Human
Communication, in which he writes that:
disputes on the nature of the audience seem to involve two related dialectics. e rst
is a tension between the idea that the audience is a mass public versus the idea that it
is a small community. e second is the tension between the idea that the audience is
passive versus the belief that it is active.
ese two dialectics (or dimensions) are the starting point of the theoretical reection
that follows, which also will argue that each dimension needs to be transcended. In the
rst part of this discussion, the reduction of the active/passive dimension to processes
of signication is transcended by combining this dimension with elements from the
participation/interaction dimension. e micro/macro dimension is expanded by
introducing the community/society dimension, and within the micro/macro dimension,
a meso-level is (re-)introduced.
3.1.1 e active/passive dimension in the articulation of audience
e rst dimension structuring the audience concept – the active/passive dimension – is
strongly linked to the debates on structure and agency. Allor (1988: 217) refers to it as
follows: “e eld continues to oscillate […] between the voluntarism of a conception of
the full human subject as agent of meaning making and the determinism of a conception
of the individual as the object of socialization processes”. is connection inuences
audience theory, since there is oen a clear preference for one of the sides in the binary
opposition (to refer to one of the core principles of Derrida’s deconstruction). In other
words, we should avoid “the trap that being active is always best for the audience” (Höijer,
1999: 191).
e passive model of the actor has a long history, and is very present in one of the most
persistent communication models in the history of communication studies: Shannon
and Weaver’s (1949) sender-message-receiver model (see Nightingale, 1996: 6). Later
versions and variants – such as DeFleur’s model (1966) – add a feedback loop, but these
additions do not alter the fundamental position of the receiver as the ‘end point’ in the
communication process. e research tradition that connects most closely with this
approach is media eects research, which is inspired mainly by the concern for and/
or fear of the disadvantageous eects that the media might have on the receiver(s) –
Media and Participation
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usually articulated as potential victims (Webster and Phalen, 1997: 128) – in a number
of specic elds.26 In contrast, the assumption of the human subject as an active carrier
of meaning is echoed in the development of Eco’s (1968) aberrant decoding theory on
the one hand, and Hall’s 1973 encoding/decoding model (published in 1980) and the
concept of the active audience (Fiske, 1987) that emanated from this model, on the
other. Fiske emphasizes the social and negotiated aspects of meaning, in which meaning
is interpreted as unstable (and always susceptible to reinterpretation) and contested;
witness Fiske’s (1987: 14) denition of ‘text’: “a text is the site of struggles for meaning that
reproduce the conicts of interest between the producers and consumers of the cultural
commodity”. In addition, uses and gratications theory of (among others) Katz et al.
(1974) and deduced models, for example, Palmgreen and Rayburn’s (1985) expectancy-
value theory and Renckstorf et al.’s (1996) social action model, all rely to a large degree on
the concept of the active audience (Livingstone, 1998: 238). e importance of the uses
and gratications theory lies not only in this emphasis on the active audience member,
whose selectivity originates from utilitarist considerations (to “seek information that
will support their beliefs and practices and avoid information that challenges them”
(Katz, 1968: 795)); of at least equal importance – from an analytical point of view – is the
complete reversal of the sender-message-receiver model (Nightingale, 1996: 8).
3.1.2 e participation/interaction dimension in the articulation of audience
e ‘traditional’ active/passive dimension discussed above oen takes an idealist position
by emphasizing the active role of the individual viewer in the processes of signication.
is position risks reducing social activity to such processes of signication, excluding
other – more materialist – forms of human practice. In other words, the active dimension
hides another dimension, termed here the participation/interaction dimension (Figure 4).
e interaction component of audience activity refers to the processes of signication
and interpretation triggered by media consumption. Obviously, polysemic readings of
media texts are an integrative part of this component. But also work on identity, where
audiences engage with the media texts oered to them, is included in the interaction
component of audience activity. is is in the ritual, expressive or mediating quasi-
interactive aspects of media (see respectively Carey, 1975; McQuail, 1994; ompson,
1995), where the symbolic–signicatory linkage between media and audience is
emphasized. In his seminal article A Cultural Approach to Communication, Carey
(1975: 6) distinguishes between the transmission and ritual view of communication,
which in the latter communication is “linked to terms such as sharing, participation,
association, fellowship and the possession of a common faith”. Building on Dewey’s
(1927) work, Carey articulates communication in relation to the maintenance of society,
through the generation of a common culture. In discussing Carey’s work, McQuail
(1994: 51) calls this model expressive, since it is “celebratory, consummatory (an end
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
67
in itself) and decorative rather than utilitarian”. Although using more linear models to
theorize the media–society relationship, media eects research studies the impact of the
exposure of individuals to media content, or in other words, the eects of the interaction
between audiences and media content. Finally, ompson (1995: 82) discusses three
types of interaction: face-to-face interaction, mediated interaction and mediated quasi-
interaction. While mediated interaction (such as letter-writing or phone conversations)
implies the use of a technical medium to transmit information to another individual
located in a spatially and/or temporally distinct context, mediated quasi-interaction is
produced for “an indenite range of potential recipients” and is “predominantly one-
way” (ompson, 1995: 84). Despite its monological nature, mediated quasi-interaction
is still seen as interaction, because it “creates a certain kind of social situation in which
individuals are linked together in a process of communication and social exchange”
(ompson, 1995: 84).
e participatory component of audience activity refers to two interrelated forms of
participation, which can be termed participation in the media and through the media,
similar to the way that Wasko and Mosco (1992: 7) distinguish between democratization
in and through the media. Participation through the media deals with the opportunities
for mediated participation in public debate and for self-representation in the variety
of public spaces that characterize the social. e media sphere serves as a location
where citizens can voice their opinions and experiences and interact with other
voices. Obviously, the structures and cultures of the media sphere itself (and its many
components), and the ideological-democratic environment, have a strong impact on
the intensity of the participation. In more maximalist versions, the consensus-oriented
models of democracy (and participation) emphasize the importance of dialogue and
deliberation and focus on collective decision-making based on rational arguments à
Figure 4: e two dimensions of audience activity
Passive
Media and Participation
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la Habermas in a public sphere. Other authors (e.g. Fraser, 1990) stress more conict-
oriented approaches and point to the unavoidability of political dierences and struggles,
seeing the media as crucial sites for struggles over hegemony (Kellner, 1992: 57). What
these maximalist versions have in common is rst that they (implicitly or explicitly) use
a broadly dened notion of the political, where the media sphere becomes incorporated
into the political. Second, they articulate multiple sites of societal decision-making,
where dialogue, deliberation, debate and struggle play a role within the media sphere
itself, and aect the sphere of institutionalized politics, and many other societal spheres.
is renders participation multidirectional, as the exercise of communication rights is
seen not only to facilitate participation in institutionalized politics, but also as aiming to
democratize a variety of other societal spheres, including the sphere of the media. More
minimalist versions, captured, for example, in such concepts as informed citizenry (see
Schudson (1998) for a critique) and the marketplace of ideas (see, e.g. the libertarian
normative media theory (Siebert et al., 1956)), still accept the political nature of the
media sphere, but simultaneously articulate it as a support system for institutionalized
politics, which allows for opinion formation on matters related to this sphere and
facilitates the functioning of representative democracies.
Participation in the media deals with participation in the production of media output
(content-related participation) and in media organizational decision-making (structural
participation). ese forms of media participation allow citizens to be active in one
of the many (micro-)spheres relevant to daily life, and to put into practice their right
to communicate. Although mainstream media have attempted to organize audience
participation (Livingstone and Lunt, 1994; McNair et al., 2003), community and
alternative media in particular have proven more successful at organizing more intense
forms of participation in the media (Girard, 1992; Downing et al., 2001; Rodriguez, 2001;
Bailey et al., 2007). e theories and practices of community and alternative media will
be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, but it is important to stress that these
types of media organizations have strong links to the concept of participation, at the
levels of both self-representation and self-management, which positions them close to
the logics of direct, delegative and participatory democracy.
In many cases, especially in mainstream media, media production is restricted to a
specic group of people, who here are termed media professionals, who are characterized
by specic forms of expertise and skills, institutional embeddedness and autonomy, and
the deployment of management and power strategies to achieve specic objectives. In
some cases, we can add a commitment to public service and the possession of an ethical
framework. In these mainstream media contexts, where the participation of media
professionals in the process of media production is guaranteed,27 the focus is shied
towards the participation of non-professionals in the professional system. is opening
up of the media system can take more minimalist forms, but also more maximalist forms,
since media professionals are oen in positions to decide about the degree of power to
be delegated and the intensity of participation that is allowed (for). To structure these
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
69
options, we return to the debate on political participation (see Figure 1), and rework
the minimalist and maximalist participatory dimension into an archetypical model of
minimalist and maximalist media participation (see Figure 5). In minimal forms, media
professionals retain strong control over process and outcome, restricting participation to
access and interaction, to the degree that one wonders whether the concept of participation
is still appropriate (see below). Participation remains unidirectional, articulated as a
contribution to the public sphere but oen mainly serving the needs and interests of
the mainstream media system itself, instrumentalizing and incorporating the activities
of participating non-professionals. is media-centred logic leads to a homogenization
of the audience and a disconnection of their participatory activities from other societal
elds and from the broad denition of the political, resulting in the articulation of
media participation as non-political. In the maximalist forms, (professional) control
and (popular) participation become more balanced, and attempts are made to maximize
participation. Here we see the acknowledgement of audience diversity and heterogeneity,
and of the political nature of media participation. e maximalist articulation allows
for a recognition of the potential of media participation for macro-participation and its
multidirectional nature.
Figure 5: e minimalism versus maximalism dimension in the media sphere.
Minimalist media participation Maximalist media participation
Focusing on control by media professionals
Participation limited to access and interaction
Focusing on macro-participation through
(micro-participation in) media channels
Media as non-political
Unidirectional participation
Focusing on a homogeneous audience
Balancing control and participation
Attempting to maximize participation
Combining micro- and macro-participation
Broad denition of the political as a
dimension of the social
Multidirectional participation
Focusing on heterogeneity
As already indicated, we need to be careful not use too broad a denition of participation
that incorporates all types of social practices. Here, Pateman’s (1970: 70–71) denition
of participation, which refers to inuence or (even) equal power relations in decision-
making processes, is useful to avoid the signier participation being over-stretched. is
implies that participation cannot be equated with ‘mere’ access to or interaction with
media organizations (see below), as Jenkins and others do, for instance. One example of
this conation28 can be found in Convergence Culture where Jenkins (2006: 305) denes
participation as referring “to the social and cultural interactions that occur around
media”. Access and interaction do matter for participatory processes in the media – they
are actually its conditions of possibility – but they are also very distinct from participation
because of their less explicit emphasis on power dynamics and decision-making.
Media and Participation
70
If we combine the discussions on the two dimensions of audience activity (participation
in media production and interaction with media content) with the distinction between
participation through the media and participation in the media, we can dene three
major components, which are rendered visible in Figure 6.29 ese components are
participation in media production, participation in society through the media, and
interaction with media content. e rst component, participation in media production,
is supported by three elements: access to, interaction with and participation in media
organizations (or communities) (see chapter 4).
3.1.3 e micro/macro dimension in the articulation of audience
e second core dimension selected as an analytical starting point is the micro/
macro dimension. is dimension is widespread: In most denitions of audience,
the audience is referred to as an aggregate of individuals (the micro-dimension) or
as a collective (the macro-dimension). Littlejohn (1996: 311) summarizes the two
positions as follows: “In contrast to mass society thinking is the position that the
audience cannot be characterized as an amorphous mass, that it consists of numerous
highly dierentiated communities, each with its own values, ideas and interests”.
Other examples of similar references to the micro/macro dimension exist. Radway
(1988: 359) refers to the concept of audience as “a collective label for the consumers of
electronically mediated messages” and Ang (1991: 33) denes an audience – following
Harré (1981) – as a “taxonomic collective”: “an entity of serialized, in principle unrelated
Figure 6: Participatory dimensions of audience activity.
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
71
individuals who form a group solely because each member has a characteristic – in
our case, spectatorship – that is like that of each other member”. Moores (1996: 2)
speaks of “several groups divided by their reception of dierent media and genres, or
by social and cultural positioning” and Dayan (2005: 46) refers to “Audiences of this
sort [namely spectators][that] are observational aggregates”.
As the denitions above indicate, audiences can be charted using a variety of
approaches to ‘the many’ as basis. In the micro-approach, individuals are the building
blocks of the audience, while the macro-approach stresses collective aspects: “on the one
hand [relating] to complete groups or social categories (a class, a community, a political
public, etc.) and on the other to overlapping subsets of individuals within the total media
audience which express this or that requirement from mass communication” (McQuail,
1994: 288–289). Examples of audience articulations that are situated in the micro-
dimension can be found in the uses and gratications theory and in related models. As
Dayan (2005: 46) remarks, spectatorship has similar aggregative dimension: “ey are
spectators added to other spectators – spectators in the plural”. Also Livingstone and
Lunt’s typology (1996: 18–19 – see also Livingstone, 2005: 31) – the television audience
as an aggregate of alienated viewers, consumer-viewers or citizen-viewers – can be
located within this micro-view of audience. At the other (macro-)end of this scale, a
series of articulations are signicant: audience as mass, audience as market (segment)
and audience as public30. In all three cases, the emphasis on the collective risks the
audience becoming articulated as a living entity, “a huge, living subject” (Ang, 1991: 61).
3.1.4 Communities and organizations
Both the micro- and macro-approaches conceal a multitude of audience articulations
that all relate to the collective, but in very dierent ways. To extend this diversity of
articulations, this text uses Tönnies’ old Gemeinscha/Gesellscha dimension,31 in which
‘society’ is characterized, according to Martin-Barbero (1993: 29), by “an absence of
identifying group relations”. Next to a number of audience articulations that construct
the collective by the mere use of the media (which implies the absence of identifying
group relations), a number of audience articulations are included that do imply (some
type of) group identity. ese articulations are discussed in the following part of this
book, where a further distinction is made between articulations of the audience as
community and the organized audience.
A number of the audience articulations discussed above already contain (sometimes
weak) references to the audience as community. In the political and economic domains,
audiences are constructed as political communities (or publics) and markets (or brand
communities) at the macro-level, or as citizens and consumers at the micro-level. For
instance, in Livingstone and Lunt’s (1996) typology (part of the) audience is dened as an
aggregate of citizens, which results in the creation of a linkage between what they call the
Media and Participation
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citizen-viewer and the political community. In this part of the book the focus is placed on
audience articulations that favour the community aspect. At the micro-level this relates to
the articulation of audiences as social, virtual and interpretative communities. e so-called
ethnographic turn (Livingstone, 1998: 239) has led especially to increased attention to the
interaction in small-scale communities, such as the family, the peer group, the classroom,
the work environment and the neighbourhood. Examples of this are present in the work of
Morley (1986) and Walkerdine (1986) in connection with the social processes within the
family related respectively to television and video. A similar emphasis on family (as a moral
economy) can be found in the domestication approach (Silverstone, 1991; Silverstone
and Hirsch, 1992). Analysis of the use of ICTs in everyday life shows that communities
are formed not just in geographically dened spaces, but also in cyberspace – as virtual
communities (Rheingold, 1993). ird, more culturist approaches emphasize the existence
of communities of meaning (Cohen, 1989), meaning-making audiences (Dayan, 2005)
and interpretative communities (Radway, 1988; Lindlof, 1988). Within these audience
articulations the common frame of interpretation – sometimes combined with socio-
demographic characteristics – is emphasized.
At the macro-level, articulations of community are more complex; they can be
categorized into three groups: class, gender, age or ethnicity; ordinary people; and
taste cultures/subcultures. In talking about television, Ang (1991) suggests the phrase
“cultural positioning and identications”, to describe the situation-transcending factors
that people carry with them and actualize in concrete situations, such as “those along
the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, generation, and so on, as well as cultural ideologies
as to the meaning of television as a social and aesthetic phenomenon” (Ang, 1991: 184).
e articulation of audiences as ordinary people (negatively articulated with the elite or
the power bloc – see below) also partly links to this articulation referring to a common
popular culture (Hall, 1981), or to “alliances of social interests formed strategically or
tactically to advance the interests of those who form them” (Fiske, 1993: 10). Finally, the
concept of taste culture can be used to articulate the audience as community. rough
the incorporation of taste culture in his typology, McQuail refers not just to Gans’s
(1967: 553) denition – in which a ‘taste culture’ is seen as a collective of individuals
grouped on the basis of their preference for a certain content, which also comprises
media content – but also to the work of Lewis (1992) on music and subculture identities.
ese analyses lead to the articulation of audience on the basis of subculture identities in
relationship to a dominant culture.
3.1.5 e meso-level within the micro/macro dimension
e micro/macro dimension can be expanded not only by the community/society
dimension. In dening this micro/macro dimension as a scale, space is also created for
a meso-level. is rather rare, but for that reason important, articulation leads to the
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
73
denition of audience as organized. A rst version of this articulation of audience is oered
by McQuail (1994: 307), when he refers in his typology to the audience articulations
of the already-existing social group and the fan club or group, and categorizes both as
‘active social groups’. A more elaborate analysis of fan culture can be found in Jenkins’s
(1992, 2006) work, which connects fandom with the concept of the organized audience
as represented by the existence of fan clubs, fanzines and congresses. More important in
this context is the work of Reyes Matta, which has led to the development of an alternative
model of communication based on active social participation (Reyes Matta, 1981, 1986).
e point of departure here is the right to communicate, which is endowed explicitly on
(1) the entire society, (2) individuals and (3) groups. ese actors construct the social
organization of the communication processes (on the international, national and the
local levels), within which the media function. e messages that originate from these
media will eventually reach the organized audience, dened by Reyes Matta as follows:
e entirety of the receivers should neither be perceived as individuals, nor as an
amorphous, quantitative mass, but rather as social groups or institutions that are
linked in an organizational or structural way with the society at large, such as labor
unions, cultural groups, political parties, or new social movements. (Reyes Matta
(1981) quoted by Servaes, 1989: 59)
3.2 Deploying democratic-political maximalist models
One of the previous sections of this chapter referred to a number of maximalist models
that operate within the eld of democratic theory. ese frameworks have been signicant
in providing theoretical support for the media participation debate and, in turn, have
generated specic approaches to media participation, ranging from Marxist critiques
on audience (participation) commodication, to Habermasian reections on the public
sphere, to anarchism-inspired approaches to alternative media. In addition, debates on
participation in other elds (than democratic theory) have spilled over into the media
participation debate, as illustrated by the prime example of participatory communication
and development (closely connected to the debates on a New World Information and
Communication Order).
3.2.1 Marxist and anarchist media studies, and the media participation debate
Marxist theory (in its broad sense) directly or indirectly has contributed to media studies
in a wide variety of ways. Wayne’s (2003) Marxism and Media Studies is a good example
of a direct application of the Marxist toolbox, but Marxist theory has also played a key
role through its integration into the political economy of communication and cultural
Media and Participation
74
media studies. Mosco (1996: 25) denes the political economy of communication as “the
study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute
the production, distribution, and consumption of resources,” and analyses processes
of commodication, spatialization and structuration. e basic argument here is that
the communication industry follows the more general capitalist logics, as the following
quote from Mattelart (1979: 36) exemplies:
e manner in which the communication apparatus functions, which determines the
elaboration and exchange of messages, corresponds to the general mechanisms of
production and exchange conditioning all human activity in capitalist society.
More specically, one of the main concerns is related to the colonization of public spaces,
where the (growing) domination of corporate power in the communication industry
is deemed problematic for media production, distribution, content and reception.
Participation in the media becomes blocked by the communication industry’s market
logics and focus on professional employment, but participation through the media is
also hampered by the media’s circulation of dominant ideologies that continue to serve
the interests of the dominant class (Wayne, 2003: 175), which reduces representational
diversity. In cultural media studies, we nd similar concerns, elaborated more
through a mixture of (post)structuralist and (post)Marxist theory. Here, the focus is
on the hegemonizing capacities of media, and the (potential) diversity of audience
interpretations. An early example appears in Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and
Law and Order (Hall et al., 1978), where Hall and his colleagues research the moral panics
caused by the appearance of a ‘new’ form of criminality (mugging), and the way that it
supported a dominant societal (repressive) order. Other authors in the eld of cultural
media studies, such as McRobbie (1991) and Gilroy (1987), focus more on problematic
(stereotypical) representations of gender and ethnicity.
Apart from producing a series of harsh critiques on the functioning of the
communication industries, both projects have attempted to counter the domination of
capitalist media structures and cultures, and to increase the participation of ‘the’ people,
albeit in dierent ways. Despite these dierences, both projects aim to redress the
structural imbalance between the (mainstream) media systems and the representations
they generate on the one hand, and the communicative needs and opportunities for
audiences and publics on the other. is implies also that the bourgeoisie vs. proletariat
opposition is translated into a more uid and post-Marxist (media) elite (or power bloc)
versus the people opposition (Hall, 1981; Fiske, 1993).
In the case of the political economy approach, the emancipatory agenda was built on
the need for structural reform (which could be evolutionary or revolutionary, in some
cases resulting in a plea to seize the means of (media) production). In a soened-down
version, through the mediation of western social-democratic ideologies,32 we can nd
traces of these logics in the public broadcasting services (PBS), which combine public
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
75
ownership with a cultural-pedagogic logic within a remit to strengthen civil society
and democracy and create social cohesion (Brants and De Bens, 2000: 16–17). Picard
describes the identity of the public within PBS as follows: “[Public service] media
are viewed as instruments of the people, public utilities through which the people’s
aspirations, ideas, praise and criticism of the state and society may be disseminated”.
ere is also attention to the possible cross-fertilization between PBS and alternative
media organizations (see below), which would allow the latter structurally to bypass the
mainstream media. In 1980, Mattelart and Piemme (1983: 413) wrote,
A new denition for the idea of public service must be found, one which integrates
both old and new technologies, as well as the national and local context. e basis of
this new denition should be the relation to active groups, whether or not they are
institutional.
e resistance (of these active groups) to the professionalized media is seen as one of
the reasons for the origin and existence of the community media movement in which an
anti-elitist discourse is to be considered crucial (McQuail, 1994: 131; Girard, 1992).
Also from an anarchist theory perspective, there have been some substantial
contributions to the media and participation debates owing to the fact that the focus of
anarchist theory is not always on the state as such. Obviously, the state is oen (one of)
the main focal point(s) of anarchist theory, but as May (1994: 60) remarks, there is an
ambivalence in anarchist theory about whether it is state and government that should be
seen as the only sites of the exercise of power. As mentioned above, the economic realm
is quite oen involved since critiques of the equality-distorting role of capitalism are
easily reconciled with criticisms of political decision-making structures. A number of
authors have pleaded for the incorporation of more societal spheres, claiming that there
is “no nal struggle, only a series of partisan struggles on a variety of fronts” (Ward,
1973: 26). Post-structuralist anarchist theory, in particular, has enabled a more complex
analytics of power in a variety of societal spheres. is allows us to focus on:
a politics that is more local and diuse than the large-scale politics that is better suited
to grand narratives. It struggles not only on the economic or state levels, but on the
epistemological, psychological, linguistic, sexual, religious, psychoanalytic, ethical,
informational (etc.) levels as well. It struggles on these levels not because multiple
struggles will create a society without the centralization of power, but because power
is not centralized, because across the surface of those levels are the sites at which
power arises. (May, 1994: 94–95)
rough this broadening of the scope, combined with the very necessary de-
essentialization of anarchist theory, the media sphere has become one of the many
possible sites of analysis. Support for this repositioning of anarchist theory and the
Media and Participation
76
development of post-anarchist theory can be found rst in the importance generally
attributed to the contemporary (mainstream) media sphere, its symbolic power and the
perceived potential of the media as new governing bodies that (re)produce hegemonies,
which renders them necessary targets for anarchist critiques. On a more positive
note: e potential of these media spheres to stimulate a more participatory culture and
to enhance a semiotic democracy legitimizes attention from an anarchist perspective.
e more Chomskian strands of anarchist theory have incorporated the vitriolic
critiques of the mainstream media system, although even alternative media come in for
some criticism, as Bradford’s (1996: 263) analysis of pirate radio suggests. Apart from
more traditional problems with the remnants of essentialism, these analyses of the media
are oen characterized by a rather fundamental distrust of technology, which is seen to
reinforce “class and hierarchical rule by adding powerful instrumentalities of control and
destruction to institutional forces of domination” (Bookchin, 1996: 26). Some authors
manage to incorporate anarchist theory in a more balanced way, with participation
and self-management featuring prominently. Downing et al. (2001: 67 ), in their book
entitled Radical Media, distinguish two models for the organization of radical media: the
Leninist model and the self-management model. Downing et al. (2001: 69) explicitly
relate the latter – where “neither party, nor labor union, nor church, nor state, nor owner
is in charge, but where the newspaper or radio stations runs itself ” – to what they call a
“socialist anarchist angle of vision”. Although Downing et al. mainly point to the problems
that emanate from this ‘angle of vision’ (see below), their theoretical reections and case
study analyses clearly link self-managed media to the anarchist tradition. Another author
that should be mentioned here is Hakim Bey – the pseudonym used by Peter Lamborn
Wilson – who, in his essay Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) (1985), reects on the
upsurge (and disappearance) of temporary anarchist freespaces. He distinguishes in this
essay between the net and the web: He sees the net as the “totality of all information and
communication transfer” (Bey, 1985: 106) whilst the web is considered a counter-net
that is situated within the net. Media technology plays an important (although not all-
determining) role in the web:
e present forms of the unocial Web are, one must suppose, still rather
primitive: the marginal zine network, the BBS networks, pirated soware, hacking,
phone-phreaking, some inuence in print and radio, almost none in the other big
media […]. (Bey, 1985: 107)
It is interesting that both Downing et al. and Bey exploit the island metaphor, but in
dierent ways. Downing et al. (2001: 72) critique anarchist theory for being satised
with creating “little islands of pregurative politics with no empirical attention to how
these might ever be expanded into the rest of society”. Bey, in contrast, celebrates (the
temporality of) the islands in the net, replacing the permanent revolution by the temporal
uprising, legitimized by the argument that “our own particular historical situation is not
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
77
propitious for such a vast undertaking” and that a “head-on collision with the terminal
State, the megacorporate information State and the empire of Spectacle and Simulation”
will only result in “futile martyrdom” (Bey, 1985: 98).
3.2.2 e Soviet theory of the press, and the concept of narodnost
Inspired by and simultaneously a structural reworking of Marxist theory, the Soviet
theory of the press has been discredited by its translation into totalitarian practice within
the USSR and the Central and Eastern European countries, and by the many critiques
launched against it, including those from Western European and US ideologists,
exemplied by the Four eories of the Press (Siebert et al., 1956). Of course, we should
be careful not to align ourselves with totalitarian practices. One way to deal with this
is to bracket the praxis, and to focus on the theoretical concepts, which can (at least
potentially) be articulated within a democratic discourse.
is type of project is not new. In Žižek’s (2002: 11) re-reading of Lenin in Revolution
at the Gates, he argues that the relevance of this project lies in Lenin’s “fundamental
experience” of “being thrown into a catastrophic new constellation in which the old co-
ordinates proved useless”. Žižek shies away from a nostalgic re-enactment of revolutionary
glory and a pragmatic readjustment of the old Marxist-Leninist projects, but wants to
repeat the “Leninist gesture of reinventing the revolutionary project in the conditions of
imperialism and colonialism” (Žižek, 2002: 11). Žižek realizes the dangers of this move: His
introduction starts with the following sentence: “e rst public reaction to the idea of
reactualising Lenin is, of course, an outburst of sarcastic laughter” (Žižek, 2002: 4).
Keeping in mind these risks, a similar (re-)analysis of the Soviet theory of the press
can still be organized. Hopkins’s (1970) overview (which is similar to McNair’s (1991: 18)
overview) of the Soviet press theory’s basic principles is a helpful starting point.
(1) Party orientation (partiinost), which may be interpreted as conscious acceptance
that the press is a politically partisan institution, and it therefore expresses party
philosophy and goals; (2) high level of ideology (vysokaya ideinost), which suggests
that the mass media should be spiritually reinforced with the ideology of Marxism-
Leninism; (3) truthfulness (pravdinost), an obligation to transmit information
truthfully; (4) popular orientation (narodnost), which reminds the Soviet press of its
responsibilities toward the masses, and simultaneously of the people’s access to the
publicly owned press; (5) mass character (massovost), which not only maintains that
the Soviet press serves the masses, but functions among them; and (6) criticism and
self-criticism (kritika and samokritika), which calls upon the press to criticize failures
and faults of the Communist Party, the government, and their agencies, as well as to
criticize its own performance. (Hopkins, 1970: 34)
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Although each of these principles merits in-depth debate, the vanguard idea of the party
organization principle is one that (1) produces a strong presence and privileging of a
specic ideological framework, (2) in turn mediates the principle of truthfulness and (3)
makes these three principles dicult to use within a democratic framework. On the other
hand, notions of criticism and self-criticism, and especially the concept of narodnost
(and massovost) remain important in the debates on participatory communication. If we
zoom in on narodnost, we can see that this concept – which Hopkins (1970) translates
as popular orientation, and McNair (1991) translates as accessibility – serves a number
of purposes. First, it articulates media organizations and their media professionals as
representatives and also part of ‘the’ people. At least theoretically, narodnost disarticulates
the elitist element from the media professionals’ identity and compensates by making
them representative or part of ‘the’ people, working with them in partnership. Second, the
concept structures the content, since narodnost also implies a strong focus on the lived
experience of ‘the’ people. is brings Inkeles (1956: 140, quoted in McNair, 1991: 26)
to the conclusion that in the 1940s “not events but social processes are treated as news
and regarded as being newsworthy […] Events are regarded as being news in so far that
they can meaningfully be related to the process of socialist construction”. An example in
Lenin (1972: 339) from the 1918 Pravda contains a similar argument:
We do very little to educate the people by living, concrete examples and models taken
from all spheres of life, although that is the chief task of the press during the transition
from capitalism to communism. We give little attention to that aspect of everyday life
inside the factories, in the villages and in the regiments where, more than anywhere
else, the new is being built, where attention, publicity, public criticism, condemnation
of what is bad and appeals to learn from the good are needed most. Less political
ballyhoo. Fewer highbrow discussions. Closer to life. More attention to the way in
which the workers and peasants are actually building the new in their everyday work,
and more verication so as to ascertain the extent to which the new is communistic.
is does not imply that the content should be populist or vulgarized, as Lenin (1972: 344)
argues in his esis on Production Propaganda:
is newspaper, devoted to matters of production, should be a popular one, in the
sense of being understood by millions of readers, without falling into vulgarisation.
is paper should not descend to the level of the uncultivated reader, but should
work steadily – and by vary gradual degrees – to promote his development. […] Top
priority should be given to a single economic plan, to the labour front, production
propaganda, the training of workers and peasants in the work of administration, to
seeing that Soviet laws and measures established by Soviet institutions are given due
eect, and to an extensive and properly organised exchange of opinions with the rank-
and-le reader.
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is brings us to the third component of narodnost, which is the accessibility of the
audiences to the press. e above-mentioned ‘exchange of opinions’ system involving
readers’ letters has been used extensively: McNair (1991: 25) refers to Alfyorov, who
claimed that the Soviet media received 60–70 million letters each year. is was combined
with the worker-peasant correspondence system endorsed by the 8th party congress in
March 1919, and structured through Rabselkor (the Movement of Worker and Peasant
Correspondents). Although, again, in practice, worker-peasant correspondents were
objects of surveillance and discipline (Gorham (1996) calls them “Tongue-tied writers”
– see also Kenez, 1985: 233–234), the concept was aimed at providing media access to
non-professional writers. By providing media access, narodnost also contributed to the
media’s watchdog role, exposing the dysfunctions of the state and economic apparatuses
(Štastná, 1985: 293), the fourth component of narodnost.
e extracts from Lenin (1972) also exemplify the diculties involved in discussing
the Soviet theory of the press from a democratic perspective. Narodnost served the
Soviet’s ideological, educational, propagandist objectives by showing the achievements
of communism in the realm of everyday life, evidenced by Lenin’s (1972: 339) call
for “more verication so as to ascertain the extent to which the new is communistic”.
rough its focus on the everyday and the economic context, the totalitarian political
system was able to disappear from sight, and position itself beyond public scrutiny. is
move is symbolized with Lenin’s (1972: 339) plea for “Less political ballyhoo”. Obviously,
the mediation of naradnost through the concept of pravdinost also renders its meaning
specic, since truth is a Marxist-Leninist truth, and this framework obviously impacted
on what could be said in public.
When discussing participation we should not forget narodnost. Contemporary
debate on media and participation (in the East and the West) can be deepened by its
conceptual richness. First, narodnost opens up the concept of the watchdog to non-
professionals (and can thus for instance be used to theoretically capture WikiLeaks’
activities). is concept is frequently (discursively) restricted to the professional
identity in other frameworks. Second, and especially when narodnost is combined with
massovost, the large-scale nature of participation is highlighted. Here, popular access
to the mainstream media becomes less incidental and secondary (as is oen the case
in contemporary mainstream media), and is transformed to become a core principle
of these media organizations. ird, narodnost provides dierent and important (from
a participatory perspective) articulations of audience, since the audience is seen as
embedded within everyday life. Even more importantly, we see an articulation of the
audience (through the Rabselkor system) as organized. is rather rare perspective
on audience – see Reyes Matta’s (1986) work discussed above – stresses that audience
members are neither isolated individuals (an articulation found in the mainstream
media model) nor organized within the media itself (as articulated in the alternative
media model, for instance), but are part of civil society and enter into media worlds as
rhizomatically connected individuals. e narodnost concept thus provides us with the
Media and Participation
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possibility to rework the more minimalist forms of participation oen found within
mainstream media. Moreover, through its emphasis on an audience that organizes
itself outside the media organizations, an unusual perspective on media participation
in democratic societies is opened up.
3.2.3 Deliberation and the public sphere
Communication plays a key role in the deliberative democratic model, and in Habermas’s
model of the public sphere, described in Habermas’s (1996: 360) denition of the public
sphere as “a network for communicating information and points of view”. It is no
surprise that these models33 play a prominent role in theorizing the connection between
participation and communication. First, participation in the public sphere is seen as
an important component, since it relates to the basic assumptions that characterize the
communicative action that takes place within the public sphere, and where “participants
enter into interpersonal relationships by taking positions on mutual speech-act oers
and assuming illocutionary obligations” (Habermas, 1996: 361). But, in Habermas’s two-
track model of deliberative politics, there is also a strong emphasis on the connection
of the public sphere to realities external to it, and on participation through the public
sphere. Aer all, as Habermas (1996: 359 – emphasis in original) put it, “e capacity of
the public sphere to solve problems on its own is limited”.
If we go back to an earlier (already mentioned) denition of the public sphere
introduced in Habermas (1974: 49) (“By the ‘public sphere’ we mean rst of all a realm
of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access
is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every
conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body”), we see again
the emphasis on conversation and communication. However, we should not forget that
Habermas’s (1991) older work on the public sphere – e Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere, rst published in German in 1962 – is a historical-sociological account
of the emergence, transformation and disintegration of the bourgeois public sphere.
is much-critiqued component of Habermas’s work (see e.g. Bottomore, 2002) tries to
ground his theoretical and critical reections in the historical realities of the eighteenth
century,34 where a sphere “between civil society and the state” came into being, in which
“critical public discussion of matters of general interest was institutionally guaranteed”
(McCarthy, 1991: xi). In its struggle with the absolutist state, the bourgeoisie “replaced
a public sphere in which the ruler’s power was merely represented before the people”,
with a sphere “in which state authority was publically monitored through informed
and critical discourse by the people” (McCarthy, 1991: xi – emphasis in original). In the
late capitalism of the twentieth century, this bourgeois public sphere was to disintegrate
through the manipulation of public opinion by the mass media, the articulation of social
needs by large organizations, and the management of politics (Pusey, 1987: 90).
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
81
Pusey (1987: 90) comments on the irony involved in locating participation in rational
debate and the creation of consensus, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an
era characterized by the most brutish forms of industrial capitalism, which le many
lower-class (and other) people voiceless. Fraser (1990: 60), in her article Rethinking the
Public Sphere, makes a similar point: “Now, there is a remarkable irony here, one that
Habermas’s account of the rise of the public sphere fails fully to appreciate. A discourse
of publicity touting accessibility, rationality, and the suspension of status hierarchies is
itself deployed as a strategy of distinction”. Fraser focuses on the unequal participation
of women and members of the lower classes in the public sphere: “But this network of
clubs and associations – philanthropic, civic, professional, and cultural – was anything
but accessible to everyone. On the contrary, it was the arena, the training ground and
eventually the power base of a stratum of bourgeois men who were coming to see
themselves as a ‘universal class’ and preparing to assert their tness to govern” (Fraser,
1990: 60). Also, Garnham (1992: 359–360) produces a list of critiques, according
to which Habermas (1) ignores the existence of a “plebeian public sphere alongside
and in opposition to the bourgeois public sphere”; (2) “idealizes the bourgeois public
sphere”; (3) de-emphasizes gender relations and relations of production “by excluding
the household and the economy from the public sphere”; (4) creates a rationalist model
of public discourse that “leaves him unable to theorize a pluralist public sphere”; (5)
relies too much on Adorno’s model of the cultural industry, which leads to an over-
emphasizing of media power; (6) neglects “all […] other forms of communicative action
not directed towards consensus”; and (7) “neglects both the rhetorical and playful aspects
of communicative action”. Hartley (1996: 181) condenses in one eloquent sentence his
analysis of the postmodern public sphere and its processes of democratainment:
e critical pessimism of twentieth-century social theorists who lament the passing of
an informed, rational public sphere and the rise of popular entertainment media has
simultaneously overplayed the achievement and social extent of the Enlightenment
public sphere, and also proved to be an impediment to understanding the role that
the popular media do play in producing and distributing knowledge, visualizing and
teaching public issues in the midst of private consumption, writing the truths of our
time on the bodies of those image-saturated ‘telebrities’ whose cultural function is
to embody, circulate, dramatize and teach certain public virtues within a suburban
cultural context.
But these critiques, which in part were embraced by Habermas (1992, 1996), focus
more on the nature of the public sphere than on its actual existence. Later, Habermas
(1996: 360–362) more exclusively emphasizes the formal-procedural nature of the
public sphere (instead of conating it with its historical origins), while maintaining a
focus on communicative rationality and consensus in which the public sphere is seen
as a social space generated through communicative action. Even the (broad) diusion
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of information and points of view (for instance, via broadcasting media) is not the
most important component, although “only the broad circulation of comprehensible,
attention-grabbing messages arouse a suciently inclusive participation. But the rules
of a shared practice of communication are of greater signicance for structuring public
opinion” (Habermas, 1996: 362 – emphasis in original). He goes on to say that the success
of public communication is not intrinsically determined by the requirement of inclusion
(which is seen as being more of an empirical matter), and defends a normative position
that emphasizes the importance of the “formal criteria governing how a qualied public
opinion comes about”. For instance, “[t]he structures of a power-ridden, oppressed
public sphere exclude fruitful and clarifying discussions” (Habermas, 1996: 362).
In sum, positioned as part of the two-track model of deliberative politics, the public
sphere for Habermas remains a crucial site of participation and communication, which
simultaneously “relieves the public of the burden of decision making; the postponed
decisions are reserved for the institutionalized political process” (Habermas, 1996: 362
– emphasis removed).
A number of alternative public sphere models have been developed as a response to
Habermas. Although they continue to keep the public sphere concept (more or less)
intact, they are relevant here because they encompass key articulations of participation.
One model is Hauser’s (1998) rhetorical public sphere, where the focus is more on specic
issues, which aligns with Habermas’s (1996: 360 – emphasis removed) position that
streams of communication become ltered and synthesized “into bundles of topically
specialized public opinions”. In critiquing the homogeneity of Habermas’s bourgeois
public sphere, Fraser (1990: 67) suggests the existence of “parallel discursive arenas
where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses”.
One example of these counterpublics is the
feminist subaltern counterpublic, with its variegated array of journals, bookstores,
publishing companies, lm and video distribution networks, lecture series, research
centers, academic programs, conferences, conventions, festivals, and local meeting
places. In this public sphere, feminist women have invented new terms for describing
social reality, including ‘sexism,’ ‘the double shi,’ ‘sexual harassment,’ and ‘marital,
date, and acquaintance rape.’ Armed with such language, we have recast our needs and
identities, thereby reducing, although not eliminating, the extent of our disadvantage
in ocial public spheres. (Fraser, 1990: 67)
At the same time – and as Conway and Singh (2009: 63) remark – Fraser’s approach
to the identity of the public sphere is closely related to Habermas’s, illustrated by her
denition of the public sphere as “a theatre in modern societies in which political
participation is enacted through the medium of talk. It is the space in which citizens
deliberate about their common aairs, hence, an institutionalized arena of discursive
interaction” (Fraser, 1997: 70). More recently, Fraser (2007) focused on the transnational
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
83
character of public spheres, transgressing the boundaries of nations and states. In so
doing, she is still aiming to protect the ideological-critical and normative nature of
the public sphere concept, by emphasizing the principles of normative legitimacy and
political ecacy. Normative legitimacy refers to the idea that all those aected are able
to participate (Fraser, 2007: 20; see also Habermas, 1996: 365), which Fraser takes to
mean the principles of inclusiveness and parity. Political ecacy refers to the connection
of the public sphere with institutionalized politics, where the public sphere needs to act
“as a political force to hold public power accountable, ensuring that the latter’s exercise
reects the considered will of civil society” (Fraser, 2007: 22).
In addition to Fraser’s work, several other alternative public sphere models have been
developed. A more radical (and older) model is Negt and Kluge’s (1983: 92) concept
of the proletarian public sphere, based on the idea that “only when they [the workers]
organise themselves in a form of a public sphere, do they develop at all as interests and are
no longer mere possibilities”. Negt and Kluge (1983: 94) plead for the self-organization
of the working class, in which the proletarian public sphere acts as a “self-defence organ
[aimed at] the protection of individuals from the direct inuence of bourgeois interests
and ideologies”. More recently, emanating from critiques of the unitary public sphere,
Gitlin (1998) developed the concept of public sphericules. Gitlin (1998: 170) describes
it as follows: “e unitary public sphere is weak, riddled with anxiety and self-doubt,
but distinct communities of information and participation are multiplying, robust and
brimming with self-condence”.
Gitlin’s work brings us to the eld of communication and media studies, where the
concept of the public sphere is omnipresent in a diversity of approaches. A rst dimension
structuring this eld is the normative versus the neutralized-descriptive approach. To
immediately complicate things further, we can see – following Nieminen (2006) – that
within the normative approach two sub-approaches can be distinguished: A normative-
prescriptive sub-approach and a historical-sociological sub-approach (this latter is
also referred to by Nieminen as the cultural-diagnostic (sub-)approach), which are
in alignment with the two strands in Habermas’s work (see above). In the normative-
prescriptive sub-approach, the public sphere is a regulative idea, “an ideal which may
never be fully realized but which can act as a normative framework for critical evaluation”
(Nieminen, 2006: 106). Equally normative, the historical-sociological sub-approach
focuses on the “historical and sociological (pre)conditions of the phenomenon we call
the […] public sphere” (Nieminen, 2006: 107).
Characteristic of the normative approach (and its two sub-approaches) is that the
public sphere is articulated with a concern for the democratic-participatory process,
where participation, in the Habermasian version, is “governed by the norms of
equality and symmetry; all have the same chances to initiate speech acts, to question,
to interrogate, and open debate” (Benhabib, 1994: 31). Here we have Dahlgren’s (1995)
example of Television and the Public Sphere, which is in close parallel to Habermas’s
normative approach, for critical assessment of the democratic capacities of television
Media and Participation
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– “arguably the dominant media institution of the modern public sphere” (Dahlgren,
1995: 23). Although Dahlgren (1995: 148) points to the interpretative agency of
viewers, he also concludes that “we would be foolish to exaggerate its [television’s]
contribution to critical reason and progressive aect”. Another example is Livingstone
and Lunt’s (1996) Talk on Television: Audience Participation and Public Debate, which
looks at televised audience discussion programmes, using what is mainly an (adjusted)
Habermasian framework. In the conclusion to their book, they mention rst the
Habermasian call for a public sphere that is able to generate critical consensus within
the public, and then add a call of their own, for “communicative conventions linked
to narrative and inquiry or negotiation which may support a potentially emancipatory
public sphere” (Livingstone and Lunt, 1996: 180). As these examples show, this
concern is oen translated into an evaluatory position, which ranges from the positive-
emancipatory to the negative-dominative. McKee (2005: 2) summarizes the latter
position as critiquing the public sphere for being too trivialized, too commercialized,
too spectacular, too fragmented and too apathetic. In contrast, the rst position
stresses the democratization of the public sphere, and the increased opportunities for
opinion formation and the expression of a collective will.
Obviously, the Habermasian version is not the only possible normative approach to the
public sphere, nor does it constitute the only grounds for evaluating its democratic nature;
there is a very long tradition of normative media theories that are related structurally to
the public sphere concept. Curran’s (1991) book chapter Rethinking the Media as Public
Sphere, for instance, is an explicit attempt to connect these normative media theories to
the concept of the public sphere. By discussing and comparing the dierent traditions
in normative media theory, Curran shows that the public sphere can be seen as a public
forum or marketplace of ideas35 (in liberal media theories), as a site of class domination
(in Marxist media theories) or as a public arena of contestation (in radical-democratic
media theories). Curran’s article shows also that all these concepts incorporate or
allow for a normative positioning. For instance, in the case of liberal media theories,
the public forum (or the marketplace of ideas) is considered democratically relevant
because it is “the space between government and society in which private individuals
exercise formal and informal control over the state; formal control through the election
of governments and informal control through the pressure of public opinion” (Curran,
1991: 29). Because the more liberal media theories still insist on a separation between
institutionalized politics and the public sphere, where government is ultimately seen as
‘the’ seat of power (Curran, 1991: 29), these types of publics are articulated – in the words
of Fraser (1992) – as ‘weak publics’, whose deliberations are void of decision-making
authority, rendering participation minimalist. Other normative media theories use (or
plead for) ‘strong publics’, whose deliberations do matter both for opinion formation and
for producing decision-making authority (Fraser, 1992) (although without necessarily
taking the place of the state). Also, some of the alternative models of the public sphere,
such as the notion of counterpublics (see e.g., Asen and Brouwer, 2001 for a discussion
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
85
of counterpublics and ICTs), can be seen as part of the normative approach that focuses
on ‘strong publics’, because these alternative models value the counter-hegemonic
resistance that counterpublics can organize. In his book Culture and Democracy. Media,
Space and Representation, Barnett (2003: 79) stresses this component when he writes,
“It is also important to arm the practical existence of counterpublics with dierent
norms of access, conduct, participation and representation”. Moreover, the workings
of counterpublics show the permeability of the borders between public sphere and the
political system, which, again, emphasizes civil society’s participation.
e internal dierences between these normative approaches are fed by the diversity
of democratic theories, where the normative models that position publics as ‘weak
publics’ (e.g. the liberal media theories) are related to the more minimalist versions
of democratic participation, and where ‘strong public’ models dene a public sphere
that is more closely positioned to the maximalist democratic models. But we should
not forget that there are also neutralized-descriptive approaches to the public sphere,
which do not use an explicit normative framework. In these approaches the public
sphere concept is still used to demarcate “a network for communicating information
and points of view” (Habermas, 1996: 360), but they do not attribute specic democratic
characteristics to the public sphere. Here, the public sphere becomes a ‘mere’ public
space where communicational interchanges take place, in some cases almost a synonym
for publicness. McKee (2005: vii) links this approach to the everyday use of the term
public sphere, when he says that “It’s a term in everyday use to describe information
when it’s made generally available to the public: we say it’s in ‘the public sphere’”. One
example McKee points us to is Furedi’s (2004) book Where Have All e Intellectuals
Gone? Confronting 21st Century Philistinism, which indeed equates the public sphere
with publicness. Arguably, in these cases also, the use of the public sphere concept is
not entirely neutral, and still contains ideological-democratic assumptions. ‘Even’ in the
case of the Furedi example, the blurb for the book includes the following statement,
which brings in a normative position: “Frank Furedi explains the essential contribution
of intellectuals both to culture and to democracy – and why we need to recreate a public
sphere in which intellectuals and the general public can talk to each other again”.
A second dimension structuring the use of the public sphere concept within the eld
of media and communication studies is the media-centric/society-centric dimension.
An example is Poster’s (1997: 209) radical statement that: “e age of the public sphere
as face to face talk is clearly over; the question of democracy must henceforth take into
account new forms of electronically mediated discourse”. In other cases, this dimension
generates an uneasy tension, as communication and media studies analyses oen
arm a dierence between the public sphere and the media, but also argue that the
(mass) media are the most prominent contemporary form of the public sphere. For
instance, in Dahlgren’s (1995: 148) conclusions about television, we nd this duality
(between television as public sphere and television in the public sphere) encompassed
in one sentence: “While television is the dominant medium of the public sphere, ‘public
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sphering’ is clearly not television’s dominant purpose, and its institutional logic of course
greatly conditions its role within the public sphere”. McKee (2005: 5) explicitly formulates
this tension as follows.
e relationship between these two terms [media and public sphere] is complicated.
On the one hand it’s true that the public sphere is a bigger thing than just ‘the media’.
[…] But on the other hand, the mass media obviously play a central role in the public
sphere […] It’s only in the mass media that vast populations of people can come
together to exchange ideas. You can’t t the entire population of America, or Britain,
or Australia, into a town hall where they could all discuss issues that aect them.
Especially within the eld that studies the democratic capacities of ICTs (and more
specically the internet), there is a tendency towards more media-centric approaches.
An interesting example here is Barlow’s (2007) book entitled Blogging America: e
New Public Sphere, but there are also other examples (see e.g. Gerhards and Schäfer’s
(2010) comparative article with the – again – telling title Is the internet a better public
sphere?, and Castells, 2008). Lister et al. (2003: 176) explain this focus as follows (talking
about the pre-web internet): “e essentially participatory and interactive elements of
the pre-web internet clearly suggest attractive homologies with Habermas’s descriptions
of the idealized public sphere”, but Habermas’s ‘old’ media critiques also feed into this
preference. is apparently natural match further strengthens the tendency to look at
the media as (the most important part of) the public sphere, focusing on the internet’s
capacity “to take part in debate and [oer] us the chance to ‘talk back’ to the media,
creating dialogue instead of passivity,” and to represent new subjectivities (Lister et al.,
2003: 177). Dahlberg’s work (2001a; 2001b) is an example of the avoidance of a conation
of (new) media and the public sphere through an examination of how online discourse
is extending the public sphere. First he operationalizes the Habermasian normative
approach into six conditions: autonomy from state and economic power; exchange
and critique of criticizable moral-practical validity claims; reexivity; ideal role-taking;
sincerity; and discursive inclusion and equality. He then uses this matrix to evaluate
the claim that the internet is enhancing and extending the public sphere of rational-
critical deliberation. Although Dahlberg supports the claim, he qualies it, based on the
increasing commodication of cyberspace, the limited presence of reexivity, the lack of
respectful listening to others, the diculty involved in verifying claims and information,
the extensive exclusions, and the domination of discourse by specic groups and
individuals (Dahlberg, 2001a). A similar analysis brings Witschge (2007: 127–128) – who
focuses more on openness – to conclude that “openness to dierence is limited in online
debates and that voices are excluded from entering the dominant discourse in several
ways”. Also the more alternative counterpublics models are used to study how “online
media oer a space for free speech and participation” (Woo-Young, 2005: 395). In his
analysis of Korean polemicist websites, Woo-Young (2005) points to their capacity to
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
87
produce and distribute counter-discourses, but also mentions their strong gate-keeping,
their elimination of diversity, and the exclusiveness of these discursive communities.
In a number of other cases, more society-centred approaches are exploited. An
argument used to legitimize this broader approach is that most theoretical frameworks
do not restrict the public sphere to a specic set of institutions like the media. Here it is
relevant to repeat part of Habermas’s (1974: 49) older denition of the public sphere: “A
portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private
individuals assemble to form a public body”. Another argument supporting this approach
is that authors in other research elds have labelled other spaces public spheres.36
Shelton (2009), for instance, writes about the museum as a public sphere, Buschman
(2005) refers to the library, and Giroux (2002) and Vega Encabo and Gil Martín (2007)
discuss the university and science from this perspective. ere are many other examples,
such as public sphere analyses of the workplace (Roberts, 2009), the arts (Fernandes,
2006) and literature (Gustafson, 2008). As McGuigan (2005) reminds us in his article
on the cultural public sphere, Habermas (1991) discussed not only the political public
sphere, but also the literary public sphere, and McGuigan (2005: 435) expands the latter
notion to “the articulation of politics, public and personal, as a contested terrain through
aective (aesthetic and emotional) modes of communication”. A number of authors
have tried to develop this broader approach, contextualizing media and positioning
them within the social and the political, where concepts such as network societies,
transnational public spheres and counterpublics are shown to be useful (see e.g. Crack,
2007; Cammaerts, 2007b). Another (reasonably frequently used) instrument to support
this broadening of the scope is the concept of popular culture, although this focus also
has restrictions. A historical example is Brophy’s (2007) Popular Culture and the Public
Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800–1850, which groups chapters on public reading, singing,
use of public space (festivals, planting liberty trees), and carnival. A more contemporary
example is Hartley’s (1996: 182) connection between the postmodern public sphere,
suburbia and media, and his argument that “[…] the home and suburbia, together with
their associated institutions (shopping centre, family, media) and practices (dressing and
congregating; looking, listening and talking), constitute a place where and the means by
which public, political knowledges are not only circulated and consumed, but recreated,
generalized and personalized”. In this context, McKee (2005: 202) uses the concept of
cultural participation (in discussing Adbusters) to claim that (although again through
media technological developments) “cultural participation [is] a real possibility for all
citizens: and […] such participation is, in itself, a political act”.
e third dimension (which I discuss only briey here) is situated at the level of
the distinction between cultural(ist) and structural(ist) approaches. Support for this
distinction can be found in Dahlgren’s (2005; see also Dahlgren, 1995) discussion of the
structural, representational and interactional analytic dimensions of the public sphere.
Structural approaches to the public sphere refer to (analyses of) the infrastructure of the
public sphere; Dahlgren (2005: 148–149) (again focusing on media) provides a short list
Media and Participation
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of these infrastructural components, which also structure the participatory process within
the public sphere: media organizations, their political economy, ownership, control,
regulation, their nancial structures and the legal frameworks in which they (have to)
function. Arguably, these structural approaches to the public sphere can also be seen as
including the patterns of behaviour, rational-argumentative structures and value systems
that all characterize social interaction. More culturalist approaches to the public sphere
emphasize the processes of representation of the social and its actors, and the attribution
of meaning to events and phenomena, objects and social processes. Not only does this
approach allow for the recognition of contingency and uidity (oen without falling into
the trap of cultural nihilism), it also leaves more space for diversity and cultural struggle
and for the role of identities and aect. To use Fraser’s (1990: 68–69) words:
[…] public spheres are not only arenas for the formation of discursive opinion; in
addition, they are arenas for the formation and enactment of social identities. is
means that participation is not simply a matter of being able to state propositional
contents that are neutral with respect to form of expression. Rather […] participation
means being able to speak in one’s own voice, thereby simultaneously constructing
and expressing one’s cultural identity through idiom and style.
Another example is Dahlgren’s (2009: 118) civic cultures model, which attributes
considerable attention to civic identities, or “people’s subjective view of themselves
as members or participants of democracy”. Beyond the identity of formal citizenship,
Dahlgren mentions the importance of the sense of being an empowered political agent,
and the importance of membership of one or more political communities (Dahlgren,
2009: 120–121). In addition, the civic identity concept allows Dahlgren to emphasize the
emotional component of civic identities. Although he recognizes that political passions
have generated many horrors, he insists that aective involvement contributes to the
vibrancy of a democracy (and a public sphere). Others, such as Gripsrud (1992) and
McGuigan (2005), stress the importance of melodrama in the public sphere, and Moue
(2005: 24) more broadly pleads for acceptance of the importance of aect within the
political, in saying that ‘passions’ are to be seen as “one of the main moving forces in the
eld of politics”. In other words, these culturalist approaches allow for more emphasis
on the political and democratic culture, and the role played by identities, emotions and
discourses when analysing participation in the public sphere.
3.2.4 UNESCO, communication rights and development communication
Another eld in which participation is discussed intensively is located at the intersection
of international and development communication. Earlier in this chapter, I described the
close connection between participation and development, and this connection impacts
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
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on the role ascribed to communication in the development process. As Servaes (1999: 83)
argues, several Latin American scholars, such as Beltran, Bordenave and Martin-Barbero,
in the 1970s discussed the role of participatory communication as a tool to create a more
just world. Indicative of this is Bordenave’s (1994) article Participative Communication as a
Part of Building the Participative Society, in which he denes participatory communication
as “that type of communication in which all the interlocutors are free and have equal
access to the means to express their viewpoints, feelings and experiences” (Bordenave,
1994: 43). is re-articulates communication as “a two way process, in which the partners
– individual and collective – carry on a democratic and balanced dialogue” (MacBride
Commission, 1980: 172). Freire’s theories, in particular, have had a considerable impact on
this domain, as omas (1994: 51), for example, remarks:
Although he [Freire] never really linked his analysis to the use of particular media,
it is implicit in his writings that communication, in order to be eective, has to be
participatory, dialogic and reciprocal. In fact, the entire enterprise of participatory
communication projects, from the organization and production of community radio
in Latin America, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia, through the practices of
popular theatre in countries like Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, South Africa, India, and the
Philippines utilise Freire’s perspective.
e debate on participation and development moved onto the global stage in the
1970s when the struggle over the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and
NWICO began within UNESCO. e Declaration of Guiding Principles on the Use
of Satellite Broadcasting for the Free Flow of Information, the Spread of Education and
Greater Cultural Exchange (Res. 4.111 – UNESCO, 1973) was accepted at the October–
November 1972 UNESCO General Conference in Paris. is emphasized the need for
satellite broadcasting to “respect the sovereignty and equality of all States” (Art. 2). In
article 6, the declaration again stresses national sovereignty: “Each country has the right
to decide on the content of the educational programmes broadcast by satellite to its
people […]” Although the concept of the free ow of information is used explicitly, the
declaration contains correctives that shi it towards the free and balanced ow discourse
of the Non-aligned Movement. In article 5 of the declaration, this struggle becomes
apparent in mentioning explicitly (news of) developing countries: “e objective of
satellite broadcasting for the free ow of information is to ensure the widest possible
dissemination, among the peoples of the world, of news of all countries, developed and
developing alike”. McPhail (2002: 179) describes the decision to hold regional meetings
in order to discuss the national communication policies that were to be organized in the
‘peripheral’ regions. A series of meetings took place in Latin America, in Colombia (July
1974), Ecuador (June 1975) and Costa Rica (July 1976).
e struggle of the Non-aligned Movement resulted in participation becoming
prominent on the political agenda. At the General Conference in Paris held in October–
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November 1974, resolution 4.121 used the concept of participation more explicitly in the
preamble: “Convinced that all individuals should have equal opportunities to participate
actively in the means of communication and to benet from such means while preserving
the right to protection against their abuses […]” (Hamelink, 1997: 294). is resolution
also authorized the Director-General to
study ways and means by which active participation in the communication process
may become possible and analyse the right to communicate in consultation with
competent organs of the United Nations, Member States and professional organizations
and to report to the nineteenth General Conference on further steps which should be
taken […]. (UNESCO, 1975)
e resolution resulted in a report entitled Means of Enabling Active Participation in
the Communication Process and Analysis of the Right to Communicate (UNESCO, 1976),
which was accepted at the October–November 1976 General Conference. e 1976
conference also approved the Recommendation on Participation by the People at Large in
Cultural Life and their Contribution to it (UNESCO, 1977), which contained a section on
audience participation that stated that
Member States or the appropriate authorities [should] promote the active participation
of audiences by enabling them to have a voice in the selection and production of
programmes, by fostering the creation of a permanent ow of ideas between the
public, artists and producers and by encouraging the establishment of production
centres for use by audiences at local and community levels […].
As McPhail (2002: 182 – see also MacBride Commission, 1980: 295) explains, aer
dicult negotiations over a dra resolution (calling for state responsibility for media
activities) the decision was taken at this General Conference to undertake a review of
“the totality of problems of communication in modern society”. is led in December
1977 to the establishment of the sixteen-member International Commission for the
Study of Communication Problems, which was headed by Sean MacBride.
Before the MacBride Commission published its nal report, the 20th General
Conference accepted the Declaration on Fundamental Principles Concerning the
Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding,
to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement
to War (UNESCO, 1979), which was less ambitious than previous documents. However,
it did contain the statement in article 2 that “Similarly, it is important that the mass media
be responsive to concerns of peoples and individuals, thus promoting the participation of
the public in the elaboration of information”. e MacBride Commission report (1980),
Many Voices, One World. Towards a New More Just and More Ecient World Information
and Communication Order, took a strong position on audience participation. e chapter
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
91
on the Democratization of Communication describes the following four approaches to
breaking down the barriers to the democratization of communication:
(a) broader popular access to the media and the overall communication system,
through assertion of the right to reply and criticize, various forms of feedback, and
regular contact between communicators and the public […]; (b) participation of non-
professionals in producing and broadcasting programmes, which enables them to make
active use of information sources, and is also an outlet for individual skill and sometimes
for artistic creativity; (c) the development of ‘alternative’ channels of communication,
usually but not always on a local scale; (d) participation of the community and media
users in management and decision-making (this is usually limited to local media). Self-
management is the most radical form of participation since it presupposes an active
role for many individuals, not only in the programmes and news ow, but also in the
decision-making process on general issues. (MacBride Commission, 1980: 169)
In one of the meeting reports – of the 1977 meeting in Belgrade – Berrigan (1979: 18–19)
outlines a clear distinction between the three concepts that are used in the above-mentioned
citation (access, participation and self-management):
By denition, access infers the ability of the public to come closer to communication
systems, and in concrete terms it can be related to two levels: of choice and of
feedback. […] In summary, access refers to the use of media for public service. It may
be dened in terms of the opportunities available to the public to choose varied and
relevant programmes, and to have a means of feedback to transmit its reactions and
demands to production organizations. Participation implies a higher level of public
involvement in communication systems. It includes the involvement of the public in
the production process and also in the management and planning of communication
systems. […] Participation may be no more than representation and consultation of the
public in decision making. On the other hand, self-management is the most advanced
form of participation. In this case, the public exercises the power of decision making
within communication enterprises and is also fully involved in the formulation of
communication policies and plans.
e maximalist denition of participation can also be found in the MacBride Commission
(1980: 173–174) report, for instance, in the last summary paragraph, which emphasizes the
need for audience participation in the decision-making and programming activities:
ere is surely a necessity for more abundant information from a plurality of sources,
but if the opportunity to reciprocate is not available, the communication process
is not adequately democratic. Without a two-way ow between participants in the
process, without the existence of multiple information sources permitting wider
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selection, without more opportunity for each individual to reach decisions based on
a broad awareness of divergent facts and viewpoints, without increased participation
by readers, viewers and listeners in the decision-making and programming activities
of the media – true democratization will not become a reality.
Crucial to the MacBride Commission report, and to the debates that took place before it
was published, was the embedding of participation in the right to communicate, referred
to by Jacobson (1998) as a third-generation human right (see also Fisher and Harms,
1982; Servaes, 1998; Dakroury, 2009). is right was originally proposed in 1969 – by
the French civil servant Jean d’Arcy – and aimed to broaden the right to be informed,
which is embedded in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the
MacBride Commission report the right to communicate implies that “(a) the individual
becomes an active partner and not a mere object of communication; (b) the variety of
messages exchanged increases; and (c) the extent and quality of social representation or
participation in communication are augmented” (MacBride Commission, 1980: 166).
As Jacobson, slightly ironically, remarks, the MacBride Commission was correct in
its assumption37 that “[the] right to communicate [still has to] receive its nal form
and its full content” (MacBride Commission, 1980: 173). Harms’ denition, explicitly
mentioned in the MacBride Commission report, nevertheless remains relevant:
Everyone has the right to communicate: the components of this comprehensive Human
Right include but are not limited to the following specic communication rights: (1) a
right to assemble, a right to discuss, a right to participate and related association rights;
(2) a right to inquire, a right to be informed, a right to inform, and related information
rights; (3) a right to culture, a right to choose, a right to privacy, and related human
development rights. (Harms quoted in MacBride Commission, 1980: 173)
e debates on participation and the right to communicate continued in the 1980s,
and featured in a number of General Conferences, but the concept of the right to
communicate (almost) received its coup de grace when the USA and the UK pulled
out of UNESCO (Jacobson, 1998: 398). During the 1990s, the right to communicate
disappeared almost completely from UNESCO’s agenda (and from the agendas of other
international organizations), with the exception of forums such as the MacBride Round
Tables (Hamelink, 1997: 298).
Only in 2003, in the slipstream of the UN WSIS,38 was the debate on communication
rights reinvigorated,39 in part, thanks to initiatives such as the Communication Rights in
the Information Society Campaign (CRIS).40 e WSIS took place in two phases, with a
rst phase in Geneva from 10 to 12 December 2003 and the second phase in Tunis, from
16 to 18 November 2005. Aer the rst phase, A Declaration of Principles was published,
in which the rst sentence described “Our Common Vision of the Information Society”:
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
93
We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, assembled in Geneva from 10–12
December 2003 for the rst phase of the World Summit on the Information Society,
declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive
and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access,
utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and
peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and
improving their quality of life. (WSIS, 2003)
In evaluating the role of participation at the WSIS, it is important to emphasize that
the summit adopted a multi-stakeholder approach (see Rosenau, 1990; Hemmati, 2002),
which allowed business and civil society actors to play signicant roles. Although there
were clear limits to the levels of participation (see Cammaerts and Carpentier, 2005;
Padovani and Nordenstreng, 2005; Cammaerts, 2008), the presence of non-state actors at
a world summit was signicant, and allowed the opening up of “formerly closed decision-
making forums at the international level” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2006: 31). In one
of the nal WSIS documents, the Tunis Commitment (WSIS, 2005a), the importance of
multi-stakeholder participation was formally conrmed: “We acknowledge that multi-
stakeholder participation is essential to the successful building of a people-centred,
inclusive and development-oriented Information Society and that governments could
play an important role in this process”.
However, in the nal texts of the summit meetings (WSIS, 2003a; 2003b; 2005a; 2005b),
participation played only a minor role; it receives minimalist signications and does not
feature very oen. For instance, in the discussion on internet governance, there is mention
that this governance should be “based on the full participation of all stakeholders, from
both developed and developing countries, within their respective roles and responsibilities”
(WSIS, 2005a). More maximalist meanings of participation, linked to communication
rights, are missing, which provokes rather skeptical evaluations: “A surge, at least in the
short term, in the political will to incorporate such rights in a new international declaration
is unlikely, regardless of the WSIS document’s recommendations about the need to
respect human rights” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 30–31). is does not mean that
participation and communication rights were erased from the summit. e WSIS Civil
Society Plenary (2003), which published an ‘alternative’ declaration, uses the concepts of
full participation and empowerment, and elaborates on communication rights, providing
shelter for the more maximalist articulations of participation:
We are committed to building information and communication societies that are
people-centred, inclusive and equitable. Societies in which everyone can freely create,
access, utilise, share and disseminate information and knowledge, so that individuals,
communities and peoples are empowered to improve their quality of life and to
achieve their full potential. Societies founded on the principles of social, political, and
economic justice, and peoples’ full participation and empowerment, and thus societies
Media and Participation
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that truly address the key development challenges facing the world today. […] We
rearm that communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need
and a foundation of all social organization. Everyone, everywhere, at any time should
have the opportunity to participate in communication processes and no one should
be excluded from their benets. is implies that every person must have access to
the means of communication and must be able to exercise their right to freedom of
opinion and expression, which includes the right to hold opinions and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Similarly, the right to privacy, the right to access public information and the public
domain of knowledge, and many other universal human rights of specic relevance
to information and communication processes, must also be upheld. Together with
access, all these communication rights and freedoms must be actively guaranteed for
all in clearly written national laws and enforced with adequate technical requirements.
3.3 Participation in specic media technologies, organizations and genres
In this last part of this chapter, I turn my attention to three (theoretical) debates on
media praxis (and to the articulations of participation they contain) since these debates
have generated a considerable literature on media participation. First, I discuss a series of
Figure 7: A selection of (debates on) participatory media praxis and their (potential) participatory
intensity.
Source: Adapted from Carpentier and Hannot (2009: 612).
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
95
approaches to community and alternative media, showing the importance of (maximalist)
participation for this media sphere. Second, I move to the world of mainstream audio-
visual media, whose attempts to organize participatory practices, through talk shows and
reality TV, are equally relevant here, despite the many constraints to these participatory
practices. ird, the new media debate has generated huge numbers of reections on
participation, despite the concept of participation almost being replaced by the signiers
access and interaction, in the 1990s. All three cases of media praxis provide unique
perspectives on the notion of (media) participation in dierent contexts, dierent
periods and with dierent participatory intensities (as Figure 7 shows).
3.3.1 Community and alternative media
e discussion of the role of participation in the NWICO debates contained a
considerable number of references to community and alternative media, and it is
dicult to ignore their key role in participatory theory. At the same time, their diversity
makes them dicult to capture: Even the labels of these media organizations vary
widely. For example, in relation to radio, we nd that in Latin America it is termed
popular radio, educational radio, miners’ radio or peasants’ radio. In Africa, they refer to
local rural radio, while in Europe the terms associative radio, free radio, neighbourhood
radio and alternative radio or community radio are applied. Asians speak of radio for
development, and of community radio; in Oceania the labels aboriginal radio, public
radio and community radio are used (Servaes, 1999: 259). Although I am sensitive to the
argument that complete conation of these dierent labels should be avoided (Howley,
2005: 4), I want to focus on what this multiplicity of community and alternative media
organizations41 have in common, seeing their diversity and hybridity as a characteristic,
rather than as an analytical problem. Support for this position can be found in Atton’s
(2002: 209) argument that “is encourages us to approach these media from the
perspective of ‘mixed radicalism’, once again paying attention to hybridity rather than
meeting consistent adherence to a ‘pure,’ xed set of criteria […]”. Moreover, most
mono-theoretical approaches focus on certain characteristics and ignore others. In order
to capture the entire eld of community and alternative media, it is necessary to combine
these dierent approaches. Four approaches can be distinguished: community media,
alternative media, civil society media and rhizomatic media. e combination of these
approaches provides us with a typology to theorize community and alternative media,
and to analyse the role played by participation.
Traditional community and alternative media theory is built on media-centred models
in trying to describe the functioning of community media (approach 1) and alternative
media (approach 2). e rst approach uses a more essentialist theoretical framework,
stressing the importance of the community served by the media organization; alternative
media models focus on the relationship between alternative and mainstream media, putting
Media and Participation
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more emphasis on the discursive relation of interdependency between two antagonistic
sets of identities. ese traditional models for theorizing the identity of community and
alternative media are complemented here by two more society-centred approaches.42 e
third approach denes community and alternative media as part of civil society. In order
to incorporate the more relationist aspects of civil society theory – articulated, for instance,
by Walzer (1998) – they are combined with Downing et al.’s (2001) and Rodriguez’s (2001)
critiques of alternative media, and radicalized and unied in the fourth approach, which
builds on the Deleuzian metaphor of community and alternative media as rhizome. is
approach allows (even more) incorporating aspects of contingency, uidity and elusiveness
in the analysis of community and alternative media.
Figure 8: Positioning the four theoretical approaches.
Media-centred Society-centred
Autonomous identity of Community /
Alternative Media (Essentialist)
Approach I:
Serving the community
Approach III:
Part of civil
society
Identity of Community / Alternative
Media in relation to other identities
(Relationalist)
Approach II:
An alternative to mainstream
Approach IV:
Rhizome
Source: Based on Carpentier et al. (2003: 53).
ese four approaches, of course, are theoretical (and ideological) discourses, which
might materialize in practice (or not). But they do contain the core concepts that
structure (in always-unique combinations43) (Figure 8) the identities of community and
alternative media. In the rst approach, the role of these media organizations towards
the community is emphasized. Community media are seen as serving a specic – oen
geographically dened44 – community, and thus validating and strengthening that
community. is is a component of the 2008 European Parliament’s (2008) Resolution
on Community Media in Europe,45 which states that “community media are non-prot
organisations accountable to the community that they seek to serve”. Second, access by
the community and participation of the community (and its constituent subgroups)
should be considered key-dening factors. An illustration can be found in Howley’s
(2005: 4) work, when he describes community media as “locally oriented, participatory
media [that facilitate the] process of collective identity construction in geographically
dened communities”. Another example is the ‘working denition’ of community
radio adopted by AMARC-Europe, the European branch of the World Association
of Community Radio Broadcasters46, an organization that encompasses a wide range
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
97
of radio practice across the continents. Attempting to avoid a prescriptive denition,
AMARC-Europe (1994: 4) labels a community radio station as “a ‘non-prot’ station,
currently broadcasting, which oers a service to the community in which it is located,
or to which it broadcasts, while promoting the participation of this community in the
radio”.
is implies that the aim of community (and alternative) media organizations to serve
the community is oen translated as enabling and facilitating access and participation
by members of the community. A diversity of ordinary people is given the opportunity
to have their voices heard and valued. Societal groups who are misrepresented,
disadvantaged, stigmatized or even repressed can benet especially from using the
channels of communication opened by community and alternative media, strengthening
their internal identity, manifesting this identity to the outside world, and thus supporting
social change and/or development. e participation of these groups and communities
is facilitated through a more horizontal power structure, where core or sta members
(oen present in community and alternative media organizations) shy away from the
‘traditional’ media professional identities and practices. As Berrigan (1979: 8) eloquently
summarizes it:
[Community media] are media to which members of the community have access, for
information, education, entertainment, when they want access. ey are media in
which the community participates, as planners, producers, performers. ey are the
means of expression of the community, rather than for the community.
Also Tabing’s (2002: 9) denition of a community radio station – as “one that is operated
in the community, for the community, about the community and by the community” –
makes clear that participation in media organization is not only situated at the level of
content production, but is also related to management and ownership. Participation in
these media organizations is also translated as participation through media in society,
as Fairchild (2001: 103) puts it succinctly: “In short, participation in the station acts as
a bridge to participation in society”. For instance, in its 2009 Declaration on e role of
Community Media in Promoting Social Cohesion and Intercultural Dialogue, the Council
of Europe (2009) emphasizes the role of community and alternative media to stimulate
political (macro-) participation and enhance democratic learning: “Conscious that in
today’s radically changed media landscape, community media can play an important role,
notably by promoting social cohesion, intercultural dialogue and tolerance, as well as
by fostering community engagement and democratic participation at local and regional
level”. Fairchild (2001: 103) takes a broader-political perspective when discussing the
role of community media in facilitating societal participation:
[…] Community radio stations act as issue-based organizations devoted to
counteractiving the existing distribution of power by facilitating coalitions between
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other issue-based organizations and giving these groups a platform for airing their
views.
e second approach to dening alternative and community media is based on
the concept of alternative media, where it is emphasized that being a “third voice”
(Servaes, 1999: 260) or the “third type” (Girard, 1992: 2) is still a viable option for
media organizations. is concept is built on a distinction between mainstream (public
and commercial) media on the one hand, and alternative media on the other, where
alternative media are dened in a negative relationship to mainstream media. is
relational perspective can be found in Waltz’s (2005: 2) denition of alternative media as
“[…] those media that provide a dierent point of view from that usually expressed, that
cater to communities not well served by the mass media, or that expressly advocate social
change […]”. Present-day mainstream media are usually considered to be large-scale and
geared towards large, homogeneous (segments of) audiences; state-owned organizations
or commercial companies; vertically structured organizations staed by professionals;
and carriers of dominant discourses and representations. Alternative media can take
an (or several) opposite position(s) on these matters. Typically, they are small-scale and
oriented towards specic communities, possibly disadvantaged groups, respecting their
diversity; independent from state and market; horizontally structured, allowing for the
facilitation of audience access and participation within the frame of democratization and
multiplicity; and carriers of non-dominant (possibly counter-hegemonic) discourses
and representations, stressing the importance of self-representation.
Participation plays a crucial role here, on several levels. First, organizational structures
are seen as alternatives to the way mainstream broadcasters are organized. More horizontal
hierarchies allow for structural participation of producers in the management of the
media organizations. Prehn (1991: 259) describes this as follows: “participation implies
a wider range of activities related to involving people directly in station programming,
administration and policy activities”. Second, community and alternative media allow
for the participation of non-professional producers in the production of media content,
providing an alternative model of media production and facilitating the participation
of various (older and newer) social movements, minorities, and sub/counter-cultures.
rough their self-representation more alternative (or counter-hegemonic) content is
generated, signifying the multiplicity and heterogeneity of societal voices. ey provide
“air space to local cultural manifestations, to ethnic minority groups, to the hot political
issues in the neighbourhood or locality” (Jankowski, 1994: 3). At the same time, the
critical stance towards the production values of the ‘professional’ working in mainstream
media (Atton, 2008) leads to a diversity of formats and genres and creates room for
experimentation with content and form.
In the third (society-centred) approach, community and alternative media organizations
are seen as part of civil society,47 a societal segment considered crucial for the viability of
democracy. Community and alternative media can be seen as an ‘ordinary’ part of civil
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society, as one of the many types of organizations active in the eld of civil society that
facilitate multidirectional, micro- and macro-participation. Although the nature of civil
society varies markedly across nations and continents, it is argued here that, following
Cohen and Arato (1992: vii–viii), this concept is relevant to most types of contemporary
societies and can be seen as an important locus for the expansion or deepening of
democracy, by increasing the level of participation. Keane (1998: xviii) points to a
number of reasons why civil society matters, and includes civil society’s capacity to enable
“groups and individuals freely within the law to dene and express their various social
identities”, but also its important potential to revive the democratic imagination. In this list
of arguments in favour of civil society, Keane explicitly mentions “variously seized non-
state communications media”,48 providing support for the argument that alternative and
community media are part of civil society. Howley (2010: 73) takes a similar approach,
emphasizing the role played by (alternative and) community media as civil society:
Like other voluntary associations, community media consciously adopt participatory
decision-making structures and practices that promote a sense of belonging to, and
responsibility toward, the organization, its mission, and its relationship to the wider
community. Equally important, community media encourage private individuals to
work collaboratively in meaningful activities that not only promote sociability among
individual participants but also serve a variety of local needs and interests. In doing
so, community media cultivate a more deliberate approach to participation in public
life, nurture social networks within and between communities, and, potentially at
least, encourage innovative ways to think about the practice of democracy.
When the specicity of broadcasters, and their potential role as (one of the) major public
spaces, is brought into focus, and community and alternative media are no longer dened
as just ordinary parts of civil society, these media become important because they provide
spaces that allow citizens to have their voices heard, and because they intervene in the
mediascape. For these reasons, they are sometimes termed citizen media (Rodriguez,
2001; see also Pettit, et al., 2009) or civil society media49 (Hintz, 2007). As Rodriguez
(2001: 20 – emphasis in original) formulates it, citizen media allow citizens to become a
“collectivity [that] is enacting its citizenship by actively intervening and transforming the
established mediascape”. Hintz (2007: 244) refers to civil society media that encompass
“media organizations, groups, and projects, which t into the basic non-state non-
commercial model and share the structural and thematic tendencies of civil society”. He
continues, “Participation, emancipation, and empowerment represent crucial features”
(Hintz, 2007: 244). From this perspective, community and alternative media are seen
again as oering dierent societal groups and communities the opportunity for extensive
participation in public debate and for self-representation in public spaces.
In discussing the notion of alternative media, Downing et al. (2001: ix) critique
its ‘oxymoronic’ nature: “everything, at some point, is alternative to something else”,
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legitimizing the decision to focus on ‘radical alternative media’. At the same time they
still emphasize the diversity that characterizes these radical alternative media that are to
be found in a “colossal variety of formats” (Downing et al., 2001: xi). A similar argument
is developed by Rodriguez (2001: 20), who suggests abandoning the notion of alternative
media in favour of citizen media
because ‘alternative media’ rests on the assumption that these media are alternative to
something, this denition will easily entrap us in binary thinking: mainstream media
and their alternative, that is, alternative media. Also, the label ‘alternative media’
predetermines the type of oppositional thinking that limits the potential of these
media to their ability to resist the alienating power of mainstream media.
e rhizomatic approach to community and alternative media uses Deleuze and Guattari’s
(1987) metaphor to radicalize approaches 2 and 3 (Figure 9). In the late 1970s and early
1980s, both authors were heavily involved in the French alternative (‘free’) radio scene,
which they saw as an opportunity to realize their “utopie ‘deleuzoguattarienne’” (Dalle,
2006). Authors such as Sakolsky (1998), Chidgey et al. (2009), and Oi-Wan and Iam-
Chong (2009) also use Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor to label media organizations
rhizomatic media. If we transpose the rhizomatic approach into community and
alternative media theory, it allows us to focus on three aspects, without giving up on
the concept of alternativity: rhizomatic media’s role as a crossroads of civil society, their
elusiveness, and their interconnections and linkages with market and state (see Santana
and Carpentier, 2010, for a more elaborate argument). Community and alternative media
are oen part of large civil society networks, and act as meeting points and catalysts
for a variety of organizations and movements. Both their embeddedness in a uid civil
society (as part of a larger network) and their antagonistic relationship towards the state
and the market (as alternatives to mainstream public and commercial media) make the
identity of community and alternative media highly elusive and uid. In this approach,
it is argued that it is this elusiveness and contingency, which are ‘typical’ of a rhizome,
that are their main dening elements. ese translocal networks are characterized by
the uid articulation of a diversity of alternative media organizations, which reects
the strategy of what has been theorized by writers on contemporary resistance, such as
Benasayag and Sztulwark (2002: 68 – my translation):
[…] the counter-power arms on the contrary the development of the multiplicity
as the only road to attempt to conquer the capitalist centrality. From this perspective,
each experience has to be developed, not as something isolated, ‘provincial,’ but in a
network in the myriad of the other alternative and revolutionary experiences.
But these networks do not stop at the edge of civil society; like rhizomes, community
and alternative media tend to cut across borders and build linkages between pre-
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existing gaps. In the case of community and alternative media, these connections
apply not only to the pivotal role community and alternative media (can) play in civil
society, where they facilitate participatory networks. ey apply also to the linkages
alternative media (and other civil organizations) can establish with (segments of) the
state and the market, without losing their proper identity and becoming incorporated
and/or assimilated.
In discussing community and alternative media, I should avoid a too celebratory
position since this eld is characterized by a variety of problems. e four approaches
described above can be used to structure a list of some of the more major problems.
e community media approach highlights dependency on the community, which does
not always have a strong interest in participating, which, in turn, reduces heterogeneity.
When the power positions of core or sta members become too strong within these media
organizations, the more maximalist forms of participation are especially threatened.
Moreover, the concept of community – central to the identity of community media – is
oen reduced to a geographical articulation, which weakens the position of community
media and introduces the danger of localism or isolationism (see Mattelart and Piemme,
1983: 416). e alternative media approach brings in the problems encountered by small-
scale, independent and horizontally structured organizations that carry non-dominant
discourses and representations. ese characteristics hardly guarantee nancial and
organizational stability, and these types of problems become especially pertinent when
the relationships with public and commercial media become antagonistic and attempts
are made to hegemonize identities at the expense of community and alternative media.
In such cases, community and alternative media are articulated as unprofessional,
inecient, limited in their capacity to reach large audiences, and as marginal as some
Figure 9: Civil society and community and alternative media as rhizome.
Source: Carpentier et al. (2003: 62).
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of the societal groups to whom they try to give a voice. One of the main consequences
of marginalizing the alternative (or articulating it negatively as naïve, irrelevant or
superuous, for instance) is the low political priority given to what is considered to be
‘marginal’, causing a downward spiral. Considering community and alternative media
as a rhizome introduces a related threat: ese media may signify the uidity and
contingency of media organizations, in contrast to the rigidities and certainties of public
and commercial media organizations, but their very elusiveness might be a barrier to
a ‘common ground’ for policy-related actions. e civil society approach shows that
‘making participatory democracy work’, to paraphrase the title of one of Putnam’s (1993)
publications, is a very dicult task, requiring constant attention. Organizations that
are horizontally structured, and oriented towards community participation, have to
deal with certain degrees of ineciency, which sometimes make their functioning and
the realization of their objectives impossible, and in other instances perverting these
objectives. Finally, the rhizomatic media approach shows another set of problems, where
these media might be unable to realize their role as a crossroads because of diverging or
conicting objectives. Moreover, rhizomatic media are in permanent danger of losing
their independence towards, or becoming incorporated by, market and state.
3.3.2 Talk shows and reality TV
Within mainstream media, a series of genres and formats have allowed for a certain
degree of participation by ordinary people. It should be emphasized immediately that
participation in this context is structurally limited, as mainstream media only rarely
allow for structural participation (or participation within the media organization’s
decision-making structures themselves). Moreover, mainstream media have a variety
of objectives, and the organization of societal participation and audience empowerment
is not always part of their primary objectives (despite some authors protesting that it
should – see Keane, 1998).
Nevertheless, mainstream media remain signicant societal players that merit our
attention, also because the achievements and failures of the participatory processes they
organize can be very enriching to the debates on media participation. In this section I
want to focus on two audio-visual genres – talk shows and reality TV – in the knowledge
that other genres (in print and in audio-visual media) provide equally relevant (albeit
slightly less well discussed) examples. In his analysis of ordinary television, Bonner
(2003), for instance, discusses game shows50 (and the many subgenres such as quizzes
and dating shows (Teurlings, 2001)), lifestyle programmes and food programmes. Watts’
(2009) historical overview – of what she calls ‘postwar audience participation shows’
– provides us with many other examples. In newspapers, the letters to the editor genre
also plays a signicant role (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2006), but there are also more unusual
participatory genres, like the obituary in Iceland, which “can be written by anyone and
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about anyone; they are not solely written by journalists and about the elite as is the case
elsewhere” (Hastrup, 1998: 165). Here, I will discuss the two genres whose participatory
components have generated considerable academic debate: the talk show and reality TV.
e talk show genre does facilitate participation within the mainstream media again
to a certain extent, but the existence of many subgenres complicates this discussion. As
is oen the case with media genres, this label clusters together a wide diversity of actual
programme formats. ey have the common core element of a host talking to people in
a studio setting (Leurdijk, 1997: 149), and are aimed at a mixture of entertainment and
information; as Hallin (1996: 253 – emphasis in original) puts it, “ese new forms of
media are oen described as providing ‘unmediated’ communication. is is clearly not
accurate: they are shows, oen carefully scripted, each with its own logic of selection
and emphasis”. At the same time, talk shows dier in terms of the actual conversational
techniques used, the subjects discussed and the exact roles of hosts, guests, experts and
(studio) audiences. To deal with this diversity, several authors have categorized the talk
show into subgenres. Timberg and Erler (2002: 6–7) refer to the late-night entertainment
show, the day-time audience participation talk show and the morning magazine-format
show. Munson (1993: 8) lists as contemporary subgenres the ‘confrontalk’ show, the
sports talk show, the news/talk magazine (which includes news interview programmes,
investigative documentaries51 and audience participation talk shows), the celebrity talk
show (‘chat shows’ or talk/variety shows) and the talk/service show.
News interview programmes are described by Leurdijk as “interview programmes that
are related to the news”; they are based on “interviews or discussions with politicians or
other experts, without an active contribution of the studio audience. […] In general, they
follow the political news in the selection of their topics and guests” (Leurdijk, 1999: 37).
Other talk shows, such as talk/variety shows, feature fewer politicians, and focus more
on celebrities, “show business chit chat” (Steenland, 1990) and sports personalities,
while magazine-like talk/service shows deal with “fashion, cooking, gardening, health,
relationships and sometimes also social issues” (Leurdijk, 1999: 37 – my translation)
Arguably, confrontalk type shows are distinguishable by their moderation style and
studio setting, and overlap with the other subgenres.
e audience participation talk show subgenre nds its origins (partially) in what
Munson (1993: 36-37) calls the ‘interactive talk radio’ format, the call-in or the phone-
in. Munson explains in detail how, in the US from the 1930s on, disk-jockeys invited
listeners to phone in with comments, which were then paraphrased by the radio presenters
and broadcast on air. Allowing callers to speak live on air started in the mid-1940s, and
Munson (1993: 36) describes the early phone-in radio talk show as being characterized
by “Its relationship to public controversy, its appearance of spontaneity, and its calculated
blending of information and entertainment in a constant, productive deance of notions
of generic integrity […]”. e phone-in developed into a format that is still used today
(‘even’ on television – see Carpentier, 2005), where the topic is either set beforehand,
or the format is ‘open-line phone-in’ where the “callers select their own issue to talk
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about and are given the oor at the beginning of calls in order to introduce their issue
and express an opinion on it” (Hutchby, 1996: 482). But the phone-in talk show was not
the only (early) subgenre that (structurally) allowed for audience participation. Munson
(1993: 30–31) also mentions educational talk shows, such as e People’s Platform (1938–
1952), which used a panel of four (a ‘big name’, an expert and two ordinary people) to
discuss current issues. Other, more comedy-oriented, early talk shows, such as Vox Pop
(1932–1947), “dealt with spontaneous man-in-the-street interviews involving political,
personal, trick, or ‘nonsense’ questions calculated to surprise the interviewee into an
amusing response” (Munson, 1993: 31).
Audience participation talk shows (or audience discussion programmes) successfully
transferred to television, and became a popular subgenre that diered considerably from
set format programmes. In the US e Jerry Springer Show (Lunt and Stenner, 2005)
relied on confrontation; e Phil Donahue Show (Carbaugh, 1988) and e Oprah
Winfrey Show (Peck, 2008) were more restrained discussions of still very emotive
topics. In the UK, programmes such as Kilroy (Livingstone and Lunt, 1996) discussed
issues that were part of the broader political eld, while Question Time (McNair et al.,
2003) focused on institutionalized politics. Despite these intra-genre dierences, all
these programmes were based on the principle that “an active role is accorded to the
studio audience which participates in a discussion about social, personal or political
problems under the supervision of a presenter” (Leurdijk, 1999: 37, my translation).
A very detailed typology of televised audience discussion programmes is provided in
Livingstone and Lunt (1996: 39), which details a series of dening components: First,
the host, guests (oen experts) and the studio audience (consisting of non-experts) are
together in a studio, with the experts perhaps spatially separated, for example, ranged in
front of the audience. Second, the host – oen a television personality – is free to move
through the studio; in other words, he or she has spatial authority (Carpignano et al.,
1990: 48). e host (supported by an editorial sta) manages the conversation, but at the
same time, the course of the conversation also determines the opportunities for specic
participants to contribute. ird, each episode focuses on a specic (oen controversial)
subject that is political, social or personal in nature. Audience discussion programmes
rely on lively conversation and argumentation, in which opposed and dierent points
of view are expressed. e contributions of the participants are regarded as emotionally
signicant in themselves, and are grounded in personal experience rather than hearsay or
scientically ‘proven’ fact. Fourth, there is a specic production context: e production
cost of these programmes is relatively low, their ‘production value’ is also considered
to be low, and they are not (always) a part of prime-time programming. ey are oen
broadcast live or recorded in ‘real time’ with little or no editing.
As this discussion of dierent subgenres shows, not all of them have (strong)
participatory components, and the audience discussion programmes are a more
privileged site of audience participation. e genre’s complexity makes this ‘division
of labour’ less than straightforward, and the distinction made by Dahlgren (1995) is
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helpful: He distinguishes between vox-pop talk shows and elite talk shows, which unlike
the former remain embedded within journalism, and are based on interviews with
members of political elites – “On such programmes, inuential journalists would pose
questions to important power holders” (Dahlgren, 1995: 62–63). is is not to imply
that the show element disappears; on the contrary, this feature has led to erce critiques
of what Rosenstiel (1992) calls “talk show journalism” where the journalists become
the ‘stars’52 of the programme. is evolution, it is said, has created a situation where
“the journalists’ interpretation of events were almost becoming more signicant than
the news coverage of the events. […] ey are in a sense all ‘media stars,’ sitting and
discussing together” (Dahlgren, 1995: 63). Nevertheless, the strong focus on journalism
and personalities as guests is substantially dierent from vox-pop programmes that
focus on “popular involvement” (Dahlgren, 1995: 63).
Some talk show subgenres are closer to vox-pop talk shows, as the earlier discussion
on audience discussion programmes shows. But, again, their diversity has resulted in
categorizations. For instance, McNair et al. (2003: 33) mention the following (British)
talk show subgenres: the studio debate, the phone-in debate and the single-issue debate.
Analysing the north Belgian (participatory) talk show landscape, Resmann (2009)
mentions the audience discussion programme, the consumer or service magazine, the
survey programme, and the elite talk show with vox-pop interviews as programmes with
participatory components. Resmann’s analysis shows that the participation of ordinary
people is not conned to the ‘typical’ talk show subgenre of the audience discussion
programme, and that many subgenres have introduced participatory components.
Another element that increases the complexity of these subgenres is that they themselves
can be considered ‘intergenre’ because they combine dierent formats (inside and
outside the talk show genre). Livingstone and Lunt (1996: 179) explain that audience
discussion programmes have “elements of, for example, the game show and the current
aairs programme”. Like most genres, the entire talk show genre is characterized by
hybridity: “e talk show ‘genre’ – to the degree that it even is a single category – has to
come to assume many ‘messy,’ hybridized variations in the thousands of talkshows that
air locally and nationally – even internationally – in any given week” (Munson, 1993: 7
– emphasis in original).
Audience discussion programmes (and other talk show subgenres with participatory
components) have provoked many and very dierent evaluations. In the academic
literature on these talk shows, two main approaches can be distinguished: the
emancipation and the manipulation approaches.53 e emancipation approach, which
oen uses a conceptual repertoire that is closely related to alternative and community
media theory, argues that these programmes contribute to the democratization of
the mass media (Hamo, 2006: 428) since they provide access for ordinary people, to
public spaces, and allow them to participate in the production of media content. Not
surprisingly, the concept of the public sphere is oen deployed here (e.g., Carpignano
et al., 1990). Livingstone and Lunt (1996: 19) refer to the participants in audience
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discussion programmes as citizen-viewers, who are “seen as participating, potentially at
least, in democratic processes of the public sphere”. ey generate a “collage” (Leurdijk,
1999: 134) of the wide dierence in opinions and experiences but no nal conclusion or
solution, and are seen as articulating the heterogeneity and diversity of the participants
(and people in general).
is topical diversity argument links up to the argument that marginalized,
discriminated against and misrepresented groups in society can also achieve access to
and participate in these programmes, while in other genres the opportunity to speak
out rarely occurs. Leurdijk (1997: 148) explicitly lists women, black people and ordinary
people as examples, but “white supremacists” have also been discussed in this context
(Feder, 1993). And as Priest puts it, members of these marginalized groups are themselves
conscious of the importance of such channels:
[Marginalized groups] are aware of its importance and are therefore willing to step
forward to attempt to counteract its negative inuence through self- and group
representation that is carefully managed to put the best possible image forward.
(Priest, 1995: 194)
e interaction between ordinary people, experts and politicians – the latter two
articulated by Livingstone and Lunt (1996: 180) as representatives of the system – is
also deemed important. By placing both groups together in similar situations, audience
discussion programmes provide an upgrade to the so-called common sense and the
ordinary experience of social and political realities. Leurdijk (1999: 134 – my translation),
for example, emphasizes the importance of experience to public debate: “ese
experiences are, next to factual information and argued analyses, a valuable and even
necessary component of the public debate”. Moreover, the confrontation between both
groups makes it possible that “representatives of established power” (Livingstone and
Lunt, 1996: 180) are held accountable, subjecting them to public scrutiny (McNair et al.,
2003), which again incorporates a democratic argument.
To a more limited degree, we can nd arguments that stress the opportunities for
broader participation through the media. A more political version can be found in McNair
et al. (2003), who point to the possibility of mobilization through the increase in public
identication and engagement with institutionalized politics: “From such engagement,
it is hoped [by programme-makers], stems knowledge, opinion, and possibly motivation
to act politically.” Gamson (2001: 58), in relation to political talk shows, combines
dierent levels of participation, but includes an outcomes-component: “Mediated
public participation, then, is meaningful for the outcome of the political process, for
the individual self-development as a citizen, and for increasing the collective capacity of
citizens to act on their own behalf”. In the broader talk show literature, the (potential)
empowerment of participants and viewers is discussed, and these programmes
are seen to facilitate increased self-esteem and (psychological) self-determination,
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echoing democratic developmental arguments (see above). Shattuc (1997: 136), for
instance, suggests that (therapeutic) talk shows oer an alternative to the authority of
psychological expertise by favouring the “active/activist individual who has the capacity
to think and disagree”, which gives “a voice to normally voiceless women [who] speak for
themselves and are valued for their experience”. Priest (1995) immediately qualies this
type of empowerment by pointing to its individualized nature, since it focuses more on
individual well-being and less on structural-societal components.
In contrast to the emancipation approach, several authors highlight the manipulative
or pseudo-participatory nature of these programmes. One line of argument focuses on
the production context, which does not escape the processes of commodication. For
instance, Tomasulo (1984: 10) formulates the following harsh critique of the US talk
show Donahue: “e program, like any TV show, should not be expected to provide
easy solutions to complex problems. e commercials should”. A slightly more subtle –
but still critical – position occurs in White (1992: 80), who says that “[there is] little in
contemporary American culture that escapes commodication”, but at the same time
refuses an absolutist application of such criticism.
Another cluster of critiques focuses on the content of these programmes, which
are seen as lacking societal relevance and value. Tomasulo (1984: 10), for instance,
considers them to be machines that produce series of “pseudo-statements”. Moreover,
the instability of the debate and its many contradictions, and the lack of closure, is
considered problematic. eir discursive diversity is seized on by some authors as a
point of criticism, in which the absence of a rational discussion that results in a critical
consensus (à la Habermas) leads to a risk of trivialization of the performed utterances
(Priest, 1995: 17). Tomasulo (1984: 8–9) speaks about “an unstable debate full of
contradictions in an illusory atmosphere of free speech”, which preserves the illusion
of participation. Peck (1995) and Steenland (1990) problematize the emphasis on the
individual and the personal – over the structural and the social. Another content-related
critique focuses on the inability of these programmes to criticize (or undo) the existing
power imbalances in society (McLaughin, 1993), an argument used by Livingstone and
Lunt (1996: 175): “It remains problematic that giving voice may not aect real decision
making and power relations in society, but only give the illusion of participation”.
In addition, the power imbalances within these programmes are approached critically.
Within mainstream media, media professionals unavoidably play a signicant role in
organizing the participation in a context that is ‘theirs’ to control. Media professionals
are placed in hierarchically structured entities and assigned specic responsibilities
in the professional production of particular media products. is responsibility is
complemented by the notion of psychological property (Wilpert, 1991): To realize
professional goals in a world dominated by routine and time – a “stop-watch culture”
(Schlesinger, 1987: 83) – media professionals can make use of the production facilities
that are owned (in the strictly legal sense of the word) by the media organization.
Wilpert’s (1991) theory of psychological appropriation provides support for the thesis
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that control over these production facilities leads to a sense of property. It is precisely this
combination of responsibility and (psychological) property that supports the articulation
of the media professional as the manager of a diversity of resources, from technology,
via content, to people (Livingstone and Lunt, 1996; Carpentier, 2001), which, in turn,
legitimizes the management, surveillance and disciplining of ordinary participants.
Ethical frameworks have the capacity to mediate between these dierent components,
but do not always guarantee a strong power base for ordinary participants.
In the case of audience discussion programmes, critical analyses point precisely to the
diculties in (or the impossibility of) accomplishing a reasonable power balance between
producers and participants. is applies to the initial access to the programmes, but also
to the content of the debates. For instance, Leurdijk (1997), White (1992), Tomasulo
(1984) and Gruber (2004) describe how participants lose control over the narration of
personal stories because editorial teams try to orchestrate, canalize, structure or manage
the debate. e role of host, who not only decides on the turn-taking, but also on the
questions launched at the participants (and who only rarely discloses anything about
him- or herself, as Priest (1995: 17) remarks), particularly aects the programmes’ power
structures.
e second genre, reality TV, became very popular in the 1990s and 2000s, but also
has a long history going back to such programmes as Candid Camera (1948). As a genre,
it is based on the construction of both people and situations as real. In other words,
ordinary people feature prominently (although their presence in these programmes is
sometimes unplanned), and are placed in situations related to everyday life. e claim
to reality supporting the genre is translated into a series of visual strategies, through the
use, for instance, of y-on-the-wall camera techniques, which, in turn, are supported
by technological evolutions such as the lightweight camera and the possibilities for
audiences to create their own content. Nevertheless, the genre spans a very large group
of structurally very dierent programmes, which has led some authors to call reality TV
a trans-genre (see Van Bauwel and Carpentier, 2010). Kilborn’s (1994: 423) denition
gives us a good indication of the complexity of the genre:
Reality programming will involve (a) the recording, ‘on the wing,’ and frequently with
the help of lightweight equipment, of events in the lives of individuals or groups, (b)
the attempt to simulate such real-life events through various forms of dramatized
reconstruction and (c) the incorporation of this material, in suitable edited form,
into an attractively packaged television programme which can be promoted on the
strength of its ‘reality’ credentials.
Also within the reality TV genre we can distinguish a number of subgenres, such as those
mentioned by Ouellette and Hay (2008: 2): “dating shows, make-overs, job competitions,
gamedocs, reality soaps, interventions, lifestyle demonstrations”. Bonner’s (2003: 24–27)
list is dierent: clip shows, docu-soaps, and the “more tabloid kind of current aairs”
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programmes, and adds the reality game show as a separate category while at the same
time regretting its inclusion, because “these programmes do not assert that they are
showing some kind of minimally mediated ‘real’” (Bonner, 2003: 26).
Despite the hybridity of the genre, reality TV programmes still share a (oen strong)
claim to reality, which makes the genre – according to Biressi and Nunn (2005: 3) –
“loaded, since by denition, it should occupy a more privileged position in relation to
the representation of the ‘real’ than overtly ctional forms”. is combination of reality
TV’s reality claim, its focus on the ordinary and the everyday, and the management by
media professionals who control many of reality TV’s production aspects also makes
it a highly relevant genre in relation to the discussion on participation. Again, in this
debate we can nd approaches that focus on the concept of emancipation, while the
more critical approaches point to intervention, manipulation and pseudo-participation.
First, reality TV provides ordinary people access to the TV sphere or to the machineries
of mediation that render their existence, practices and utterances visible to an outside
world, and (in some cases) allows them to acquire celebrity status (Biressi and Nunn,
2005: 148). As Andrejevic (2004: 215) phrases it, “e promise of reality TV is not that of
access to unmediated reality […] so much as it is the promise of the access to the reality
of mediation”. is access renders ordinary people and their everyday lives visible, and
signies their importance. It resonates with what Lazarsfeld and Merton (1948) called
the status conferral function, and with Tuchman’s (1978) notion of (avoiding) symbolic
annihilation, summarized by Gerbner and Gross (1976) as follows: “Representation in
the ctional world signies social existence; absence means symbolic annihilation”.
But within the emancipation approach, the democratic importance of reality TV is
not reduced to mere access; this access is also seen to allow ordinary people to enter
into interactions with a number of other participants, with media professionals and
audiences, collaborating in the production of a televisual text. e presence of these
participants assists in the production of a wide set of discourses, which have (sometimes
strong) ideological and political signications. Moreover, their voting behaviour –
allowing the audience to vote is not uncommon in reality TV programming – and their
discussions on a multitude of online forums, allows the audience to become involved in
the interaction. At the same time, reality TV also produces discourses on participation
and power, allowing us to see something that might be termed a participatory process
(and its failures and constraints). ese screened interactions contain moments of joint
decision-making, providing a stage facilitating our entry to the realm of participation
(in Pateman’s (1970) strict denition; see also Andrejevic (2004)). As Ouellette and Hay
(2008: 215 – emphasis removed) remark, “To say that reality TV oers demonstrations
in group participation and governance is to point out TV’s little, everyday ways of
instructing viewers about the techniques and rules of participation”. is returns us to
Hartley’s (1999) argument about democratainment, indicating that TV can indeed oer
a combination of civic education and entertainment.
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Of course, all is not well with the participatory process of reality TV programmes,
as pointed out in the manipulative approach. Even if some ordinary people are granted
access to the TV sphere and the TV screen, the kinds of presences, practices and
discourses they are allowed to generate are questionable. As Deligiaouri and Popovic
(2010: 73) remark, the free-willed decision of participants does not protect them against
the workings of the “Reality-Panopticon”. And access on its own does not protect against
symbolic annihilation since omission is not its sole dimension. Tuchman (1978) added
two more dimensions to symbolic annihilation: trivialization and condemnation. In the
case of reality TV, and especially in the case of the humiliation TV subgenre, ordinary
participants can end up performing in rather disadvantageous (self-) representations
that produce a ‘spectacle of shame’ or a ‘freak show’ (Dovey, 2000). For instance, Palmer
(2003) argues that the ‘spectacle of shame’ is intrinsically linked to a major part of the
reality TV genre, while Hill’s (2007: 197) audience analysis maintains that humiliation
plays an important role in reality TV:
Some of the most dominant types of reality TV have been the reality gameshow [...]
and reality talentshow. ese formats, and their celebrity cousins, have concentrated
on putting people in dicult, oen emotionally challenging situations. Audiences
have come to categorize this specic type of reality TV as ‘humiliation TV’.
e levels of interaction and participation in reality TV are oen considered problematic.
One of the harshest critics is Andrejevic (2004: 215), who claims that reality TV might
result not in the demystication of TV, but rather in the fetishization of TV. is line of
reasoning is related to Couldry’s (2003) argument that a series of media rituals serves and
strengthens (the myth of) the mediated centre. is implies that (mainstream) media
organizations attempt not only to hegemonize their key position in social reality, but
also to hegemonize their embeddedness in capitalist economies, their organizational and
managerial cultures, their internal power structures, and their modi operandi. is media-
centric perspective impacts strongly on the intensity of participation within the reality TV
genre, to a degree that Andrejevic (2004: 218) refers to as the “democratization of access
to publicity as public relations” in his ponderings on the need to distinguish between
transactional and democratic participation, where transactional participation refers to
the forms of participation that are promoted by the ‘interactive digital economy’.
A crucial factor limiting the participatory intensity of reality TV is the specic
position of its media professionals, and the skewed power balance between them and
the ordinary participants. is type of argument can be found in Turner’s (2010: 46)
critique on the democratainment concept, which, Turner says, “over-estimates the power
available even to these newly empowered […] citizens”. Of course, the broad context of
the commodied media sphere creates a context in which (some) ordinary people are
transformed into what Rojek (2001) calls ‘celetoids’, or people whose public careers cater
to the interests of the media industry itself. But the unequal power relations also aect
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the relations between producers and participants, since media professionals (as argued
earlier) exert strong levels of control over the participants and their actions. Participants
are invited into these programme contexts, and then nd themselves exposed to this
heavy management, which is legitimized through the (psychological and legal) ownership
of the programme by the production team. In the case of reality TV, this imbalance
is aggravated by the programme’s strong focus on entertainment and disarticulation
with public service. As the protective ethical frameworks are oen linked to this public
service remit, we can see that these ethical frameworks are only minimally present in
reality TV programmes, which led Hibberd (2010: 88) to refer to reality TV’s media
professionals as post-professional. Moreover, the combination of reality TV’s focus on
ordinary participants, and identication of the media professional as the manager of
resources oen leads to reduced visibility of media professionals. ey remain visible, of
course, to the participants, but they resort to on-site managerial strategies (such as rules
and contracts) that render their operations at least partially invisible. In addition, they
are oen edited out of the programmes so that audiences do not witness them managing
participants. At the same time, we must be careful not to attribute absolute power to
these media professionals, since this would eliminate the possibility that participants
might resist their management. Nevertheless, the strength of professional interventions
renders access to and participation of ordinary people in the sphere of reality TV more
minimalist and sometimes even highly problematic.
3.3.3 New media/internet studies
e arrival of another generation of so-called ‘new’ media drastically aected the nature
of the discussion on participation and the media. From the 1990s onwards in particular
– and in some cases earlier (for instance Bey’s TAZ (1985)) – the focus of theoreticians
of participation and audience activity shied towards the so-called new media. e
development of the internet, and especially the web – the focal point of this text54 –
was to render most information available to all and to create a whole new world of
communication, the promise of a structural increase in the level of (media) participation,
within its slipstream, extending to the more maximalist versions of participation. At the
same time, these ‘new’ technologies in many cases have led to formulations of strong
claims to novelty and uniqueness, in combination with processes of amnesia in relation
to the societal roles of old media technologies.
One of the main specicity arguments is based on the structural nature of the shi from
one-to-many to many-to-many communication, which provides support for the more
multidirectional forms of participation and for the heterogeneity of the communicational
content and practices. An example of this argument can be found in Rosen’s (2008) essay
e People Formerly Known as the Audience. Rosen argues that the (commercial) media
system has lost control over its audiences, as it has been (re)transformed into “the public
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made realer, less ctional, more able, less predictable” (Rosen, 2008: 165). He describes
this change as follows:
e people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end
of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and
a few rms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened
in isolation from one another – and who today are not in a situation like that at all.
(Rosen, 2008: 163)
A second claim for specicity is based on privileging the ‘user’, and his or her
transformation into the ‘prod-user’ (e.g., Bruns, 2007, 2008, or the ‘pro-sumer’ – Toer
(1980)). At the theoretical level, the participatory component of audience activity (or the
material component) has gained especial strength in new media theory, which claims that
we are witnessing a convergence between the producers and the receivers of discourses
at the level of the production process (and not just at the level of interpretation).
is convergence is reducing the power positions of media organizations and media
professionals, and is seen to be increasing audience empowerment. A third claim is
based on the convergence argument. In Convergence Culture, Jenkins (2006) locates the
specicity of present-day media cultures in the combination of top-down business with
bottom-up consumption and production practices. For Jenkins (2006: 243) convergence:
represents a paradigm shi – a move from medium-specic content toward content
that ows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence
of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and
toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-
up participatory culture.
Jenkins’s argument is based on a multiple media approach that overcomes the old/new
media divide, in combination with attention to the intertwining of active consumers and
corporate media. Much in line with Fiske’s (1989) position, Jenkins sees popular culture as
the meeting place of active audiences and mainstream media, as the intersection between
participation and commodication. Here, lack of formal organizational structures and
the uidity of these online participatory practices are invoked to claim specicity.
Shirky’s (2008) Here Comes Everybody: e Power of Organizing Without Organizations
is a good illustration of this line of argument, and emphasizes the processes of collective
action and community building that support the digital participatory culture, bypassing
traditional organizational structures. Mass amateurization – “a world where participating
in the conversation is its own reward” (Shirky, 2002) – and mass collaboration are seen as
the main societal driving forces that have displaced media professionalism, for instance.
ere are problems with these specicity claims. We can see the homogenization
of audience articulations and practices, where the active audience (or the ‘user’)
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becomes the predominant model, and passive consumption is rendered either absent or
regrettable.55 e popularity of the ‘user’ concept can be explained, at least partially, by
its capacity to emphasize online audience activity, where people ‘use’ media technologies
and content more actively. e presupposition of a hyperactive and hyperproductive
audience feeds strongly into these specicity claims, although this presupposition is not
always substantiated by actual audience practices.
We see also the homogenization of the media, combined with a celebration of media
power where the diversity of media consumption is ignored, and the social impact
of media is overestimated. e convergence argument seems strongly invested into a
set of commercialized media worlds, which, again, tends to homogenize ‘the media’
and hegemonize the media’s tendency towards commodication. And even if we
(momentarily) accept the focus on commercial media, we need to take into account
Jenkins’s argument that the price paid is high, since the risks of being incorporated are
substantial. Media industries have not disappeared and “To be desired by the networks
is to have your tastes commodied” (Jenkins, 2006: 62). is impacts on the production
sphere since the audience’s leisure time is oen transformed into (free) labour (Terranova,
2000) and consumers are disciplined into work (Zwick et al., 2008).
Finally, we must not lose sight of the importance of formal organizational (participatory)
structures (see chapter 4). Here, the conation of community and organization into the
convergence culture argument poses a serious problem because this conation tends
to lead to an underestimation of the importance of formal organizational structures in
facilitating and protecting the more intense forms of participation, a rejection of (the
dierences in) power dynamics within organizations and communities, and a neglect of
the sometimes problematic power positions of participating (or interacting) individuals
in a context of networked individualism (Wellman, 2001). In this regard, audience activity
cannot be detached from the long history of participatory practices within the media. As
earlier parts of this chapter have shown, mainstream media and (especially) alternative
and community media have a long history of organizing participatory processes at the
level of content and management, and continue to play crucial roles.
Despite these problems,56 the debates on new media and participation contain a
wide variety of articulations of the key concepts of access, interaction and participation.
Ordinary users are seen to be enabled (or empowered) to avoid the mediating role of the
‘old’ media organizations, and publish their material (almost) directly on the web. ese
novel practices have aected discussions over access and participation in a fundamental
way. In a rst (pre-web 2.0) phase, the two key signiers of access and interaction gained
dominance, although participation did not (completely) vanish from the theoretical
scene. Later, the concept of participation made a remarkable comeback to reach a
prominent position in the 2000s.
In the 1990s (and in some cases before then), the importance of access increased
structurally, as techno-utopianism emphasized access for all, to all information, at all
times (Negroponte, 1995). is argument had an explicit political component since the
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increased potential of access to the public sphere was also emphasized. e potentially
benecial increase in information, which challenges the “existing political hierarchy’s
monopoly on powerful communications media” (Rheingold, 1993: 14), the strengthening
of social capital and civil society, and the opening up of a new public sphere, or a “global
electronic agora” (Castells, 2001: 138) began to take primacy. In turn, increased access
was seen as aecting subject positions. To use Poster’s (1997: 213) words, “the salient
characteristic of Internet community is the diminution in prevailing hierarchies of race,
class, age, status and especially gender”. e critical backlash to these and other rather
bold statements focused on the lack of access of some, foregrounding the notion of a
digital divide, but at the same time remaining within the realm of access. As I argue
elsewhere (Carpentier, 2003), the core of the digital divide discourse is based on the
articulation of three elements: (1) the importance of access to online computers, whose
use (2) results in increased levels of information, knowledge, communication or other
types of socially valued benets, which (3) in turn, are so vital that the absence of access
and the resulting ‘digibetism’ (or computer illiteracy) will eventually create or maintain
a dichotomized society of haves and have-nots. Especially the element of unequal access
to online computer technology plays a crucial role, and functions as a nodal point in the
digital divide discourse. e centrality of the signier access is well-illustrated by the
huge body of research aimed at documenting socio-demographically based dierences
in ICT access.
is always-specic articulation of the digital divide discourse, with access as its
nodal point, at the same time excludes a series of other meanings. A rst line of the
critiques of these discursively exclusionary practices is based on the argument of the
multi-dimensional character of (internet) access. Steyaert (2002), for instance, argues
that “physical access” (stressing the materiality of access) should be complemented
by the dierent skills required for interaction with ICT (informacy). He distinguishes
three levels of capabilities: instrumental, structural and strategic skills. His argument is
complemented by the emphasis on user practices. As Silverstone (1999: 252) remarks,
writing about the domestication of ICTs,
e more recent history of home computing indicates that individuals in the household
construct and arm their own identities through their appropriation of the machine
via processes of acceptance, resistance, and negotiation. What individuals do, and
how they do it, depends on both cultural and material resources.
More specic content-oriented approaches focus on ‘missing content’ from a user
perspective. e Children’s Partnership’s (2000) analysis, for instance, points to the
absence of content of interest to people (living in the US) with an underclass background,
with low levels of literacy in English and with interests in local politics and in culture, in
other words,
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underserved Americans [that] are seeking the following content on the Internet:
practical information focusing on local community; information at a basic literacy
level; material in multiple languages; information on ethnic and cultural interests;
interfaces and content accessible to people with disabilities; easier searching; and
coaches to guide them.
Another series of critiques, aimed at a more political re-articulation of the divide,
explicitly highlights the threat towards participation. An example of this position is
Gandy’s (2002) article entitled e Real Digital Divide: Citizens versus Consumers,
in which he sees “the new media as widening the distinction between the citizen and
the consumer” (Gandy, 2002: 448). e main concern here is that the ‘new economy’
will incorporate and thus foreclose on the democratic possibilities of the new media
(Barber, 1998; Kellner, 1999). e basis of analysis is provided by a distinction between
a ‘consumer’ and a ‘civic model’ of network activity. e balance between these models
will eventually determine the role of the internet in post-industrial democracy, where a
too dominant position of the ‘new economy’ is seen as detrimental towards participatory
intensity.
ese kinds of analyses show that the assumptions of the digital divide discourse
and its focus on access are not accepted totally uncritically, and openings are created
to (re-)establish the link between access and participation. But at the same time, in the
pre-web 2.0 phase of the internet, the notion of interaction and the derived concept
of interactivity played a signicant role in discourses about new media, much more
than participation did. For instance, in Rheingold’s (1993) summary of new media
consequences – supporting citizen activity in politics and power, increased interaction
with diverse others, and a new vocabulary and form of communication – interaction
features prominently.
Not dissimilarly to participation, the concepts of interaction and interactivity have
highly uid meanings, leaving them oen undened or under-dened (McMillan,
2002: 164; Rafaeli, 1988: 110). Manovich (2001: 55), for instance, problematizes the
newness and broadness of the concept of interactivity. He argues rst that it can be found
at work in many older cultural forms and media technologies. Second, he refers to the
“myth of interactivity”, claiming that its meaning becomes tautological when it is used in
relation to computer-based media: “Modern HCI [Human Computer Interaction] is by
denition interactive. […] erefore, to call computer media ‘interactive’ is meaningless
– it simply means stating the most basic facts about computers”. He points to the danger
of reducing interaction to physical interaction between a user and a media object, at
the expense of psychological interaction: “the psychological processes of lling-in,
hypothesis formation, recall, and identication, which are required for us to comprehend
any text or image at all, are mistakenly identied with an objectively existing structure of
interactive links” (Manovich, 2001: 57).
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In order to deal with this uidity and diversity, many authors reverted to categorizing
systems, distinguishing between dierent forms of interaction (see Jensen, 1999). ere
is one group of scholars that have introduced a distinction between two broad types of
interaction: person-to-person interaction and person-to-machine interaction (Carey,
1989; Homan and Novak, 1996; Lee, 2000); others identify three levels of interaction.
Szuprowicz’s (1995) distinction between user-to-user, user-to-documents and user-to-
system is one of the more commonly used threefold systems of categorization. e person-
to-person (or user-to-user interaction) and user-to-documents interactions are hardly
new, and have been analysed in a diversity of academic elds such as communication
studies, sociology, literary theory and cultural studies. User-to-system interaction, in
particular, is rather central to new media, since it focuses on the human–computer
relationship. Originally, in this tradition, interaction was used to describe the more
user-friendly interfaces that transcended the perceived limitations of batch processing.
Later HCI research focused “analogous to reception studies […] on the user-technology
interaction, rather than the technology per se. It deals with usage of technology, or, to
speak in discourse lingua, the pragmatics of technology” (Persson et al., 2000). is focus
allows me to return to the concept of interactivity, and Jensen’s (1999: 17) denition of
interactivity as “a measure of a media’s potential ability to let a user exert an inuence on
the content and/or form of the mediated communication”. In this denition, interactivity
is seen as a characteristic of specic media technologies (or systems) that incorporate the
possibility of user–content and user–user interaction through the interaction between user
and technology.
Some authors have attempted to return some of the key characteristics of participation
– namely power – to the discussion of interaction and interactivity. McMillan’s (2002)
important contribution to this debate is that she – very explicitly – links interactivity
with questions of control (and power). An important argument here is that the
relationship between the user and his ‘extension’ remains externally dened and can
hardly be questioned. In order to theorize this reduction, Penny (1995) proposes the
word interpassivity, echoing the above-discussed hierarchical systems that distinguish
between ‘real’ and ‘false’ interaction. Rokeby (1995: 148) argues that interactivity is
about “encounter rather than control”. He goes on to say that
interactive media have the power to […] expand the reach of our actions and decisions.
We trade subjectivity […] for the illusion of control; our control may appear absolute,
but the domain of that control is externally dened. We are engaged, but exercise no
power over the ltering language of interaction embedded in the interface. (Rokeby,
1995: 154)
However valuable these attempts, they were structurally unable to inuence the
mainstream pre-web 2.0 approach, which favoured interaction over participation,
implicitly reducing the intensity of participation. But the concept of participation
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managed to maintain a presence in a number of academic subelds. e theoretical
reections on electronic (direct) democracy and new media especially oered a safe
haven for participation. ese elaborations partially continued the work of earlier
participatory-democracy theorists such as Barber. In Strong Democracy (1984) Barber
(1984: 289) focuses mainly on “interactive video communications”,57 but already is
referring in a balanced way to the potential use of networked computers:
e wiring of homes for cable television across America […], the availability of low-
frequency and satellite transmissions in areas beyond regular transmission or cable,
and the interactive possibilities of video, computers, and information retrieval systems
open up a new mode of human communications that can be used either in civic and
constructive or in manipulative and destructive ways. (Barber, 1984: 274)
In a later work (1998: 81), Barber refers more explicitly to the web: “the World Wide
Web was, in its conception and compared to traditional broadcast media, a remarkably
promising means for point-to-point lateral communication among citizens and for
genuine interactivity (users not merely passively receiving information, but participating
in retrieving and creating it)”.
Especially when this discussion is framed in the quest for more direct and/or deliberative
democracy, the notions of power and decision-making maintained a strong presence. Budge
(1996: 1), for instance, defends the move towards more direct democracy, where “public
policy can be discussed and voted upon by everyone linked in an interactive communications
net”. ese principles made it to the realm of political practice; witness the rhetoric of US
presidential candidate Ross Perot on “electronic town halls” in 1992 and 1996 (Browning,
2002: 133). However, here the safe haven turned out to be more treacherous than expected.
When these attempts to deepen democracy are contrasted to representative democracy, the
entire project becomes (rightfully) vulnerable to criticisms of “technopopulism” (Coleman
and Gøtze, 2001: 5) and risk yet another form of discreditation. Some authors – such as
Coleman and Gøtze – manage to steer clear of these more dubious interpretations, to seek a
new balance between representation and participation. Coleman and Gøtze refer explicitly
to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) (2001) three-
stage model, which distinguishes information distribution and consultation from active
participation. Participation is dened as
a relation based on partnership with government, in which citizens actively engage
in the decision- and policy-making process. It acknowledges a role for citizens in
proposing policy options and shaping the policy dialogue – although the responsibility
for the nal decision or policy formulation rests with government. (OECD, 2001: 16)
Moreover, however relevant this safe haven for participation, it came at a high price
because participation was oen articulated exclusively within institutionalized politics
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in this pre-web 2.0 phase. Participation and institutionalized politics were frequently
seen as unidirectional instruments for increasing civil participation in the latter, which
positioned them more closely to the minimalist models than the above-mentioned
authors desired.
At the end of the 1990s, the situation changed, as web 2.058 slowly came into existence,
and the concepts of participation and democracy became more explicitly (re-)articulated
within the realm of new media, allowing for more discursive space for the maximalist
versions of participation. Parts of these debates were situated within the domain of
participation through the media, some were focused on participation in institutionalized
politics, while other debates used a broader articulation of the political. First, a series
of e-concepts (such as e-governance, e-democracy, e-campaigning, e-canvassing,
e-lobbying, e-consultation and e-voting – see Remenyi and Wilson, 2007; and see
Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (2007) for three Estonian examples) was used to point to the
possibilities for increased participation in institutionalized politics, but also to discuss
the increased possibilities for political actors to reach out to the political community
(see e.g., Williamson et al. (2010) on the digital campaign). For instance, the Hansard
Society’s denition of e-democracy (quoted in Chadwick, 2006: 84) focuses explicitly
on political participation and the relation to institutionalized politics: “e concept of
e-democracy is associated with eorts to broaden political participation by enabling
citizens to connect with one another and with their representatives via new information
and communication technologies”. In their discussion of e-democracy, Di Maria and
Rizzo (2005: 76) take a similar position by emphasizing the change in the power balance
between administration and citizenry: “e promotion of e-democracy means, above
all, a reverse approach in the relationship between Administrations and citizens, with a
shi of power towards the latter […]”. As Vedel (2003: 253 – my translation) argues, these
e-democracy techniques may range quite substantially, from “a one-time consultation
of citizens to their direct intervention into the decision-making process”. Vedel goes
on to list a number of these techniques (e.g. district committees, local referendums,
participatory budgeting, local citizen juries) where ICTs can provide signicant support.
For instance, participatory budgeting, where citizens participate in the decision-making
process of budget allocation (Souza, 2001; Shah, 2007; Sintomer et al., 2008), has been
organized through the web (Rios et al., 2005; Peixoto, 2008). But at the same time, the
maximalist versions of e-democracy remain rare, as “few democracies experiment [with
these kinds] of online practices” (Breindl and Francq, 2008: 18).
A second cluster of debates within the domain of participation through the media
uses the concept of deliberation, as the deliberative turn also aects new media studies.
is concept allows for a more maximalist approach to participation through the media,
sometimes described as a broader approach towards e-democracy. A rst description
can be found in Chadwick’s (2006: 100) book Internet Politics, where the deliberative
models “conceive of a more complex horizontal and multi-directional interactivity”. In
this perspective, new media are seen as potentially instrumental in providing a (series
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of) sites where deliberation can be organized. To use Gimmler’s (2001: 30) words, “Here
it is clear that, since it generates knowledge and functions as a medium of interaction,
the internet can play a signicant role in the deliberative public sphere”. Again, in these
discussions on the internet as a public sphere (which always run the risk of entering
a media-centric logic – see above), we can nd rst a set of positions related to the
normative-prescriptive Habermasian perspective. Habermas (1998: 120 – quoted in
Downey and Fenton, 2003: 189) in 1998 expressed his reservations about ICTs fullling
the conditions of the public sphere:
Whereas the growth of systems and networks multiplies possible contacts and
exchanges of information, it does not lead per se to the expansion of an intersubjectively
shared world and to the discursive interweaving of conceptions of relevance, themes,
and contradictions from which political public spheres arise.
Others use the Habermasian perspective to point to the internet’s restrictions in facilitating
deliberation, which is fed by the need for (a certain degree of) homogenization: e
already-mentioned analysis by Dahlberg (2001b: 623) operationalizes Habermas’s public
sphere discourse into a set of requirements, in order to point to the problems related to
reexivity, listening to others and working with dierence, identity verication, processes
of domination and exclusion, and the expansion of economic interests (see also Graham
and Witschge (2003); Janssen and Kies (2005)).
But the normative approaches to deliberative online democracy are not exclusively
Habermasian in nature. One strand of work is concerned with fragmentation and
narcissism, where the internet becomes (seen as) a series of echo chambers for the like-
minded (Sunstein, 2001). ere are more positive positions: Gimmler (2001: 31), for
example, points to the positive contribution of the internet to deliberative democracy by
providing access to information and opportunities for interaction, and by encouraging
the exchange of services and information. She points on the one hand to the opportunities
the internet creates for stronger forms of participation in institutionalized politics: “On
the local, regional and national level, moderated discourses, public forums, and a round-
table style of discussion can be established, all of which give citizens the opportunity
to be active participants in the process of decision-making” (Gimmler, 2001: 32). In
these kinds of logics, the need to link the public sphere to institutionalized politics is
emphasized (but also problematized), in order to pull “citizens into spheres where their
deliberations are likely to inuence the development of policy” (Chadwick, 2006: 111).
On the other hand, she (Gimmler, 2001: 33) opens up debate on online deliberation by
shiing it towards the use that civil society makes of the internet to “discuss topics of
particular interest to them”.
is brings us to the alternative approaches to the public sphere as, for instance,
captured by the concept of counterpublics, sometimes connected to models of
radical democracy and autonomism (see Dahlberg and Siapera, 2007), rendering it
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more sympathetic towards heterogeneity. Here, the link with the state is severed, and
attention is directed to “how the Internet impacts [on] counterpublic formation and
public sphere activism” (Palczewski, 2001: 161). Although “state-focused political
activism” is not abandoned, the broadened approach of the political allows this focus
to be combined with “culturally driven discursive politics” (Palczewski, 2001: 161).
is opens up space to see online identity politics (and the politics of identity) (Hall,
1989; Fung, 2002), culture jamming59 (Dery, 1993; Cammaerts, 2007a) and cyborg
politics (Haraway, 1991; Gray, 2002) as forms of participation of counterpublics in the
cultural realm, while retaining the broad political dimension. rough these logics,
ICTs are seen as sites of struggle, where a diversity of actors, individuals, groups,
communities and organizations intervene in the social and political. An example of
this is hacktivism, which refers to politically motivated hacking, by redirecting web
trac away from a website, defacing a website (or changing its content) or ooding a
server (Chadwick, 2006: 129–130; Jordan, 2007). A specic illustration is the Yes Men,
who used impersonation as a tool to focus public attention on social injustices. On the
eighteenth anniversary of the Union Carbide disaster at Bhopal (which occurred on
2–3 December, 1984), the Yes Men set up a fake Dow Chemical Company (the owner
of Union Carbide) website (Dow-Chemical.com) to send out a press release explaining
that Dow would not take responsibility for the disaster and was oering only limited
compensation. e website was registered in the name of James Parker, the son of the
Dow Chemical Company’s CEO, who later reclaimed it. Two years later, the Yes Men
received a request for an interview from the BBC on another website they control
(DowEthics.com) and decided to accept, and posed as a Dow representative. Andy
Bichlbaum (aka Jacque Servin) appeared on the BBC, and made the statement that
Dow would accept full responsibility for the Bhopal disaster and had a multi-billion
dollar plan to compensate the victims and remediate the site.60
Within this framework, ICTs become articulated as mobilization tools, assisting
in political (in the broad sense) recruitment, organization and campaigning, again
contributing to participation through the internet. In a discussion of Internetworked
Social Movements (ISMs), Langman (2005: 60) argues that there are three ideal-typical
kinds of ISMs that (partially) rely on the internet: alternative media, alternative politics
and “online cyberactivism, mobilizations organized by and/or on the Internet”. She
stresses that (cyber)activists are embodied agents, and that online mobilizations (and
activisms) are situated within online and oine worlds, or in other words, mobilizations
take place, and result in actions in both meatspaces and virtual spaces. Langman
(2005: 44) points explicitly to the uidity, multidirectionality and participatory nature
of these kinds of mobilizations:
Electronic communication media have unique capacities to create democratic,
participatory realms in cyberspace devoted to information and debates. Electronically
mediated participation has created conditions for the emergence of new kinds of highly
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
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uid ‘mobilizing structures’ that tend to be far less structured, with uid networks that
are more open and participatory, and are articulated across a wide variety of issues.
A well-known example of such a mobilization is the Zapatista movement and the
transnational mobilization that supported it: Downey and Fenton (2003: 196) call this
case of “oine protest and online counter-publicity” the “cause celebre of Internet
political activism” (see also Cleaver, 1999; Kowal, 2002; Ramírez de la Piscina, 2006).
e Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
or EZLN) is based in Chiapas (Mexico), and revolted against social inequality and
government corruption. While the rst uprising in 1994 was violent, the Zapatista
movement quickly changed its strategy and chose a more pacist path, supported by
strong communicational campaigns. Cleaver (1999: 3) describes the tools used by the
Zapatista movement:
From the use of mailing lists and conferences for the dissemination of information,
the sharing of experience and the facilitation of discussion and organizing through
the elaboration of multimedia web sites for the amplication and archiving of the
developing history of the struggle to the use of electronic voting technology to make
possible global participation in plebiscites on their political positions […]
I do not want to focus exclusively on leist and progressive movements. Hill and Hughes
(1998: 153) point to the use made of the web by more conservative actors, and claim
that “conservative websites are larger, ashier, and more visible on the World Wide Web
than are either liberal or le-wing sites”. Downey and Fenton (2003: 198) – and also
Cammaerts (2009) – point to the communication and mobilization strategies used by
extreme right wing groups, concluding that “the Internet permits radical groups from
both Le and Right […] to construct inexpensive virtual counter-public spheres to
accompany their other forms of organization and protest”.
In contrast to participation through the internet (and ICTs), participation in the
internet focuses on the opportunities provided to non-media professionals to (co-)
produce media content themselves and to (co-)organize the structures that allow
for this media production. In new media theory, the opportunities for bypassing
mainstream media organizations and professionals is one of the key arguments in
favour of the internet’s democratic-participatory potential, although its limits and
problems are also oen acknowledged. One entry into this debate, which also captures
some of its complexities, is the concept of user-generated content (UGC), which is
frequently used to describe internet content production. Despite the popularity of the
concept, clear denitions of UGC that move beyond the obvious statement that UGC
deals with online or “website content produced by users” (Schweiger and Quiring,
2006: 1) or with “services providing user-uploaded and user-generated audio and
video content” (Principles for User Generated Content Services, 2007) are rare. In
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its 2007 report Participative Web: User-created Content, the OECD (2007: 8) makes a
similar statement: “Despite frequent references to this topic by media and experts, no
commonly agreed denition of user-created content exists”. Even the concept itself has a
number of variations,61 and as an umbrella term, it encompasses many dierent practices
and platforms, which the OECD report attempts to categorize as follows: Blogs; Wikis
and other text-based collaboration formats; Sites allowing feedback on written works;
Group-based aggregation; Podcasting; Social network sites; Virtual worlds; Content or
lesharing sites (OECD, 2007: 17). In order to deal with this diversity, the OECD report
prefers to describe three distinguishing features of UGC. e report rst highlights the
“Publication requirement”, which implies that UGC requires some type of (semi-)public
distribution. A second distinguishing feature is the “Creative eort”, which refers to
the “certain amount of creative eort [that] was put into creating the work or adapting
existing works to construct a new one” (OECD, 2007: 8). ird, according to this report,
“Creation” takes place “outside of professional routines and practices”, which “in the
extreme” can imply that UGC is “produced by non-professionals without the expectation
of prot or remuneration” (OECD, 2007: 8). e third characteristic, especially, situates
UGC as a form of participation in the media production process.
is denition raises questions about the specicity of UGC in relation to all ‘other’
participatory media practices and about the dierences in participatory intensity within the
(broad) category of UGC. Again, the dierences between more minimalist and maximalist
articulations in participation play a signicant role. Mainstream media organizations that
have organized participation through new media oen revert to the concept of citizen
journalism to label the involvement of ordinary people in the media production process,
especially following the South Asian Tsunami in December 2004: “e remarkable range
of rst-person accounts, camcorder video footage, mobile and digital camera snapshots
[…] being generated by ordinary citizens on the scene […] was widely heralded for making
a unique contribution to mainstream media’s coverage” (Allan, 2009: 18). Although citizen
journalism can thrive in more commercial and commodied contexts,62 it then faces the
threat of incorporation by a diversity of mainstream media organizations that reduce
the intensity of the participatory process. Many mainstream media have tried to develop
business models to incorporate citizen journalists, and to reduce their roles to providers of
information, keeping intact the media professionals’ role as gatekeepers and maintaining
the level of participation at a minimum.
However, the broad category of UGC also leaves room for a wide variety of non-
mainstream practices and forms of online alternative journalism (see Atton and Hamilton
(2008), for a broad approach to alternative journalism), which allow for more maximalist
versions of participation. One example is the Indymedia network (Kidd, 2003), which uses
the principle of open publishing to allow for these more intense forms of participation
in the media. As Mamadouh (2004: 486) explains, “e main characteristics of open
publishing is that volunteers maintain the soware and the public act as publishers,
while media producers might take care of editorial parts, the editing of the newswire
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
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and the producing of other media products”. It is oen the case that alternative media,
such as Indymedia, combine participation with editorial control by the core group of
producers: “It is fascinating to observe the active negotiation going on here between the
ideals of open publishing and enabling participation for all, typical ‘journalistic’ ideals
of maintaining some kind of quality standard of information, and wanting to have
editorial control over a published story and storytelling in general” (Platon and Deuze,
2003: 350). But these power dynamics remain structurally dierent from mainstream
media settings, for example; they are more closely related to community and alternative
media, where the core groups (or sta members) that nd themselves in the heart of the
organization facilitate the democratic-participatory process respectfully.
Online alternative media are not the only organizations within civil society that deploy
online publishing activities. First, Ostertag (2006) shows that social movements have
always deployed a considerable amount of media activities in their attempts to present
themselves to the outside world, to do “organizational identity work” (Pudrovska and
Ferree, 2004: 123) and to gather support for their causes. Gamson’s (1995: 85) description
is telling: “Movements activists are media junkies”. As actors, they allow for participation
through the media (and more specically the internet), and for participation in the
production of media content. We should keep in mind, nevertheless, that there are oen
clear dierences in (the objectives of) alternative and community media on the one
hand, and (new) social movements on the other, which does not always guarantee the
participatory intensity of the media production activities in new social movements. At
the same time, it would be an exaggeration to claim that these worlds are completely
separate: For instance, a small research project conducted in 2009 on the coverage of a
Belgian peace movement action by Indymedia shows that the people involved combined
(active) roles within Indymedia and the peace movement (Carpentier et al., 2009).
Also, business actors organize participation in the media, which returns us to Jenkins’s
(2006) convergence argument, in which the top-down corporate forces are combined
with a bottom-up participatory culture. e case of YouTube has become a classic
example, allowing people to make their (or other’s) video material available. As Hartley
(2008: 5) formulates it in a conference paper on YouTube:
[…] with digital online media, there’s almost innite scope for DIY (do-it-yourself)
and DIWO (do-it-with-others) creative content produced by and for consumers and
users, without the need for institutional ltering or control bureaucracies. e so-
called ‘long tail’ of self-made content is accessible to anyone near a computer terminal.
Everyone is a potential publisher.
However, we should not lose sight of the impact of these media industries on the
participatory process, where structural participation in the decision-making process of
the involved companies, for instance, is excluded.63 Also, participation in internet content
production is not always unproblematic. Jenkins (2006: 175) describes how “the term
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participation has emerged as a governing concept, albeit one surrounded by conicting
expectations”. He explains that the corporate interpretation of participation still leans
towards the more minimalist forms, while consumers strive for more maximalist versions
(which, especially at the level of structural media participation, are oen out of reach):
Corporations imagine participation as something they can start and stop, channel
and reroute, commodify and market. […] Consumers, on the other side, are asserting
a right to participate in the culture, on their own terms, when and where they wish.
is empowered consumer faces a series of struggles to preserve and broaden this
perceived right to participate. (Jenkins, 2006: 175)
e above discussion indicates that participation in the internet is not always structured
through formal organizations, but takes many dierent, oen rather uid, forms,
captured in some cases by the autonomist concept of the multitude (Dyer-Witheford,
2007). Examples such as the online encyclopedia Wikipedia show that collaborative
cultural production can still be grounded into a maximalist participatory model, as
evidenced by O’Sullivan’s (2009: 186) description of Wikipedia: “A culture of sharing and
participation is the most radical feature of the entire project, and the most promising for
the future of the Internet […]”. In this sense, Bruns’s (2007, 2008) notion of produsage
not only signies the (alleged) mixture of production and consumption, but also refers
to the more maximalist forms of participation within media content production. is,
of course, is not to say that this model is without problems: In the case of Wikipedia,
there is dominance of a small group of core authors,64 and an “extraordinarily high
[author] mortality rate in all languages” (Ortega Soto, 2009: 157). But as an example of
collaborative cultural production (or participation in the media), Wikipedia shows the
presence of more maximalist versions of participation, and symbolizes the hope that
the participatory culture of the counterpublics can become hegemonized into dominant
(media) culture.
3.4 By way of conclusion: Access, interaction and participation
is book’s search for articulations of participation has resulted in a considerable
number of societal elds that use this concept as a nodal point. is chapter focuses on
a selection of these elds; many more are touched upon only briey (e.g. participation
in education – see Taylor and Robinson, 2009) or are not mentioned (e.g. participation
in the medical eld – see Guadagnoli and Ward, 1998). In addition to the eld of media
and participation itself, four elds were selected because they (arguably) matter most
to support the discussion on media and participation. Democratic theory still takes
a privileged position in the theoretical discussion on participation, as it immediately
shows its political nature. But the political-democratic does not stop at the edges of
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institutionalized politics: e political-democratic, and the distribution of power in
society that lies at its heart, is a dimension of the social that permeates every possible
societal eld. e three other elds discussed here show this pervasiveness of participation
as a deep social construction: Spatial planning is still connected to institutionalized
politics, but simultaneously touches upon one of the building blocks of everyday life
– the materiality of the spaces we inhabit (and do not inhabit). In addition, this eld
is one of the areas where the more maximalist interventions in the decision-making
process have been accepted and embedded in legal frameworks, and it also has a very
solid theoretical history. e eld of development has maintained its connection to
policy, but in the attempts to eradicate poverty, injustice and many other societal evils
on a global scale it touches upon every possible component of human life. is eld is
important for a media and participation discussion given its strong emphasis on the role
of (participatory) communication in development and its key role in the elaboration of
the right to communicate. e eld of the arts and museums might seem an unlikely
choice, but the investment of the arts in the generation of meanings shows that the
discussions on participation in the realm of the symbolic-cultural are not restricted to
what we traditionally dene as media. e discussions on participation in the (at times
still considered) sacral world of arts and museums, and the culturally privileged position
of the artist, illustrate how crucial the concept of participation is for the social.
In combination with discussions within the (h) eld of communication and
media, these debates on participation have a lot in common in that they all focus on the
distribution of power within society at both the macro- and micro-level. e balance
between people’s inclusion in the implicit and explicit decision-making processes within
these elds, and their exclusion through the delegation of power (again, implicit or
explicit), is central to discussions on participation in all elds. At the macro-level, they
deal with the degree to which people could and should be empowered to (co)decide on
political, spatial, developmental, symbolic-cultural and communicative matters. At the
micro-level, they deal with the power relations between privileged and non-privileged
actors, between politicians, architects and urban planners, development workers, artists
and media professionals on the one hand, and (ordinary) people who do not hold these
positions on the other. Although it would be too much of a simplication to dene all
privileged actors as part of one societal elite, these privileged actors do form (partially
overlapping) elite clusters, that hold stronger power positions compared to individuals
not part of these elite clusters. Within all elds, debates about participation focus exactly
on the legitimization or the questioning and critiquing of the power (in-)equilibrium
that structures these social relationships.
At the same time, these debates show rst that the models that support stronger forms
of participation (even the most maximalist versions) do not aim for the (symbolic)
annihilation of elite roles, but try to transform these roles in order to allow for power-
sharing between privileged and non-privileged (or elite and non-elite) actors. For instance,
the positions that defend strong forms of media participation do not necessarily focus on
Media and Participation
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the elimination of the media professional (or the journalist), but attempt to diversify and
open up this societal identity so that the processes and outcomes of media production do
not remain the privileged territory of media professionals and media industries. Second,
these more maximalist participatory models only rarely aim to impose participation.
eir necessary embeddedness in a democratic culture protects against a post-political
reduction of participation to a mere technique, but also against the enforcement of
participation. Here, I concur with Foss and Grin (1995: 3), who contrast invitation
and persuasion (the latter being fed by the “desire for control and domination”), and
Greiner and Singhal (2009: 34), who develop the concept of invitational social change,
which “seek[s] to substitute interventions which inform with calls to imagine and eorts
to inspire”. ese kinds of reections allow participation to be seen as invitational, which
implies that the enforcement of participation is dened as contradictory to the logics of
participation, and that the right not to participate should be respected.
What these debates also make clear is the contingency of the signier participation.
Within each of the elds discussed, we can nd discourses that provide dierent
articulatory contexts for the notion(s) of participation. is contingency also emerges
when we highlight the temporal dimension, since in dierent decades, dierent
articulations of participation gained dominance. Although a too linear-temporal
analysis should be avoided at all costs (as this would not do justice to the exceptions
and discontinuities), it is clear that in each of the elds discussed, the more maximalist
versions of participation played a signicant role in the 1960s and 1970s, while the 1980s
were characterized by the dominance of the more minimalist versions. It seems that it
took decades to recover from the legacy of participatory amnesia le by this period.
e complexity and contingency of participation requires theoretical coping
mechanisms, and I would argue here that there are two main ways of dealing with this
contingency. e rst strategy is based on the expression of regret for the signicatory
chaos, combined with attempts to undo it by (almost archaeologically) unravelling the
authentic meaning of participation. is led to the construction of dichotomized systems
of meaning, in which specic forms of participation are described as ‘real’ and ‘authentic’,
and other forms are described as ‘fake’ and ‘pseudo’. is strategy is relatively old and,
for example, in the eld of political participation, Verba (1961: 220–221) pointed to the
existence of ‘pseudo-participation’, in which the emphasis is not on creating a situation
in which participation is possible, but on creating the feeling that participation is
possible. An alternative label, used by Strauss (1998: 18) among others, is ‘manipulative
participation’. Other strategies arose out of the construction of hierarchically ordered
and multi-layered systems, of which Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of participation is a prime
example. ere are also more recent versions. One of these is the three-stage model
(information distribution, consultation and active participation) developed by the OECD
(2001). Considerably less critical and less radical than Arnstein’s model – as the bottom
and top steps of the ladder are eliminated – participation is dened as a relation based
on partnership with government, in which citizens actively engage in the decision- and
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
127
policy-making process. It acknowledges a role for citizens in proposing policy options
and shaping policy dialogue – although responsibility for the nal decision or policy
formulation rests with government (OECD, 2001: 16). Another classic denition of
participation that uses this strategy is developed by Pateman in her 1970 book Democratic
eory and Participation. As already discussed, Pateman distinguishes between partial
and full participation, where partial participation is dened as “a process in which two or
more parties inuence each other in the making of decisions but the nal power to decide
rests with one party only” (Pateman, 1970: 70). Full participation is seen as “a process
where each individual member of a decision-making body has equal power to determine
the outcome of decisions” (Pateman, 1970: 71). ese denitions and approaches share
an almost messianic concern for the concept of participation: ey want to protect and
rescue it. e tactics are relatively similar, because they all consist of dierentiating
between (‘authentic’ or ‘real’) participation and other practices that are only nominally
participatory – and which can be unmasked as forms of pseudo-participation.
e second strategy to deal with this signicatory diversity, which is also used in
this text, distances itself (at least in a rst phase) from the question of dierentiating
between authentic and pseudo-participation. is strategy focuses on the signicatory
process that lies beneath the articulation of participation and denes it as (part of) a
political-ideological struggle. From this perspective, the denition of participation is
one of the many societal elds where political struggle is waged between the minimalist
and the maximalist variations of democracy. As has been argued extensively in this
chapter (see Figure 1), in the minimalist model, democracy is conned mainly to
processes of representation, and participation to elite selection through elections that
form the expression of a homogeneous popular will. Moreover, participation here
exclusively serves the eld of institutionalized politics because the political is limited to
this eld. In the maximalist model, democracy is seen as a more balanced combination
of representation and participation, where attempts are made to maximize participation.
e political is considered a dimension of the social, which allows for a broad application
of participation in many dierent social elds (including the media), at both micro- and
macro-level, and with respect for societal diversity.
e signication of participation thus becomes part of a “politics of denition”
(Fierlbeck, 1998: 177), since its specic articulation shis depending on the ideological
framework that makes use of it. is implies that debates on participation are not mere
academic debates, but are part of a political-ideological struggle for how our political
realities are to be dened and organized. It is also not a mere semantic struggle, but a
struggle that is lived and practiced. In other words, our democratic practices are, at least
partially, structured and enabled through how we think participation. e denition of
participation allows us to think, to name and to communicate the participatory process
(as minimalist or as maximalist) and is simultaneously constituted by our specic
(minimalist or maximalist participatory) practices. As a consequence, the denition
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of participation is not a mere outcome of this political-ideological struggle, but an
integrated and constitutive part of this struggle.
However, it would still be wrong to disconnect this second strategy for dealing with the
signicatory diversity of the concept of participation from the rst strategy (looking for
authentic participation). ree components of the rst strategy, which have to do with three
dierent delineations, are worth salvaging. A rst delineation is related to what is arguably
the core issue in this debate on participation (and the political-ideological struggle that lies
behind the debate): power. Power – and, more specically, the way power is distributed in
society – is omnipresent in all debates on participation, and is also a constituting element
of the rst strategy. Some prudence is called for here, as power is oen reduced to the
possession of a specic societal group. Authors such as Foucault (1978) have argued against
this position (see below), claiming that power is an always-present characteristic of social
relations. In contemporary societies, the narrations of power are complex narrations of
power strategies, counter-powers and resistance. ese power struggles are never limited
to one specic societal eld (e.g., ‘the’ economy) but can be present in all societal elds and
at all levels. Despite (or because of) this nuance, the debates on participation can be seen
as a struggle for political power (in the broadest sense possible) – or, rather, as a power
struggle about who can take on which roles in society. In the minimalist models, power
is centralized as much as possible, while in the maximalist models the decentralization of
power is preferred. Revisiting the rst strategy (based on the authenticity of participation)
allows us to see the participation debate as a latent conict (which is sometimes rendered
manifest) about who can become involved in societal decision-making processes, in the
denition and resolution of societal problems, in deciding which procedures should be
followed, and in the societal debates about these denitions, procedures and resolutions.
Divergent positions on who should be empowered and granted the opportunity (and ‘the’
power) to speak thus become an integrated part of the debates on participation and the
underlying political-ideological struggle.
e second delineation that can be derived from the rst strategy is related to the
dierence between participation and its conditions of possibility. Although it remains
crucial not to ignore the contingency and structural openness of the signier participation,
some form of discursive xity is required in order to allow for this concept to be analysed.
is analytical problem can be remedied also by returning to the rst approach and to
the three dierent concepts used in this approach: participation, interaction and access.
Arguably, these notions are still very dierent – in their theoretical origins and in their
respective meanings. But they are oen integrated (or conated) into denitions of
participation. One example here is Melucci’s (1989: 174) denition, when he says that
participation has a double meaning: “It means both taking part, that is, acting so as
to promote the interests and the needs of an actor as well as belonging to a system,
identifying with the ‘general interests’ of the community”. However valuable these
approaches are, I would like to argue that participation is structurally dierent from
access and interaction, and that a negative-relationist strategy – distinguishing between
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
129
these three concepts – helps to clarify the meaning(s) of participation and to prevent the
link with the main dening component of participation, namely power, being obscured.
Moreover, conating these concepts oen causes the more maximalist meanings of
participation to remain hidden, which I also want to avoid. From this perspective, the
conation of access, interaction and participation is actually part of the struggle between
the minimalist and maximalist articulations of participation.
If we revisit the theoretical discussions on participation, we can nd numerous layers
of meanings that can be attributed to the three concepts. is diversity of meanings can
be used to relate the three concepts to each other; this strategy allows some eshing out
of the distinctions between them. All three concepts can then be situated in a model,
which is termed the AIP-model (see Figure 1065). First, through this negative-relationist
strategy, access becomes articulated as presence, in a variety of ways that are related to
four areas: technology, content, people and organizations. For instance, in the case of
digital divide discourse, the focus is placed on the access to media technologies (and
more specically ICTs), which in turn allows people to access media content. In both
cases, access implies achieving presence (to technology or media content). Access also
features in the more traditional media feedback discussions, where it has yet another
meaning. Here, access implies gaining a presence within media organizations, which
generates the opportunity for people to have their voices heard (in providing feedback).
If we focus more on media production, access still plays a key role in describing the
presence of media (production) technology, and of media organizations and other
people to (co-)produce and distribute the content.
e second concept, interaction, has a long history in sociological theory, where it
oen refers to the establishment of socio-communicative relationships. Subjectivist
sociologies, such as symbolic interactionism and phenomenological sociology, highlight
the importance of social interaction in the construction of meaning through lived and
intersubjective experiences embodied in language. In these sociologies the social is
shaped by actors interacting on the basis of shared interests, purposes and values, or
common knowledge.66 Although interaction is oen equated with participation, I here
want to distinguish between these two concepts, as this distinction allows an increase
in the focus on power and (formal or informal) decision-making in the denition of
participation, and – as mentioned before – protecting the more maximalist approaches
to participation.
If interaction is seen as the establishment of socio-communicative relationships
within the media sphere, there are again a variety of ways that these relationships can be
established. First, in the categorizations that some authors (Homan and Novak, 1996; Lee,
2000) have developed in order to deal with the dierent components of HCI, dierent types
of interaction have been distinguished. rough these categorizations the audience-to-
audience interaction component (strengthened later by analyses of co-creation) has been
developed, in combination with the audience-to-(media) technology component. At the
production level this refers to the interaction with media technology and people to (co-)
Media and Participation
130
produce content, possibly within organizational contexts. A set of other components can
be found within the ‘old’ media studies approaches. e traditional active audience models
have contributed to this debate through their focus on the interaction between audience
and content, which relates to the selection and interpretation of content. As these processes
are not always individualized, but sometimes collective, also forms of media consumption
like family or public viewing (Hartmann, 2008) can be included, not to forget the role that
interpretative communities can play (Radway, 1988; Lindlof, 1988).
Figure 10: Access, interaction and participation – e AIP model.
Access (presence)
Technology Content People Organizations
Production Presence of
(proto-)machines
to produce and
distribute content
Presence of
previously
produced content
(e.g., archives)
Presence of
people to
co-create
Presence of
organizational
structures and
facilities to produce
and distribute
content
Reception Presence of (proto-)
machines to receive
relevant content
Presence of
(relevant) content
Presence (of sites)
of joint media
consumption
Presence of
organizational
structures to
provide feedback to
Interaction (socio-communicative relationships)
Technology Content People Organizations
Production Using (proto-)
machines to
produce content
Producing
content
Co-producing
content as group
or community
Co-producing
content in an
organizational
context
Reception Using (proto-)
machines to receive
content
Selecting and
interpreting
content
Consuming
media together
as group or
community
Discussing
content in an
organizational
context (feedback)
Participation (co-deciding)
Technology Content People Organizations
Production
(and
reception)
Co-deciding on/
with technology
Co-deciding on/
with content
Co-deciding on/
with people
Co-deciding on/
with organizational
policy
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
131
is then brings me to the concept of participation. As repeatedly argued, this
dierence between participation on the one hand, and access and interaction on the
other is located within the key role that is attributed to power, and to equal(ized)
power relations in decision-making processes. Furthermore, the distinction between
content-related participation and structural participation can then be used to point
to dierent spheres of decision-making. First, there are decision-making processes
related to content production, which might also involve other people and (proto-)
machines (see chapter 5), and which might take place within the context of media
organizations. Second, there is the structural participation in the management and
policies of media organizations; also technology-producing organizations can be
added in this model, allowing for the inclusion of practices that can be found in, for
instance, the free soware and open source movement(s). At the level of reception,
many of the processes are categorized as interaction, but as there are still (implicit)
decision-making processes and power dynamics involved, the reception sphere
should still be mentioned here as well, although the main emphasis is placed on the
production sphere.
Before moving to the keywords and the case studies, there is a third delineation
that needs to be highlighted and, in this case, avoided. It concerns the unavoidability
of the positioning of any author who intervenes in these debates. Ideology does not
stop at the edges of analyses; it is an integrated part of any analysis. is, of course,
does not ignore the fact that mere debate on the ‘correct’ denition of participation is
too simple; for this reason, we need the second strategy. But mere description of the
dynamics of power in participatory processes – with no normative evaluation of these
processes – is also too simple. is is yet another area where the rst strategy of looking
for ‘real’ participation proves helpful. More specically, this means that I subscribe to
the call of many of the authors mentioned in this chapter (Giddens (2002) being one) to
continue to deepen democracy and to include all societal elds (including the media) in
this democratization process. It implies also that I consider the maximalist versions of
participation socially benecial attempts to improve the democratic quality of the social,
without remaining blind to their problems and challenges. I realize that this plea for
an increase in societal power balances has a clear utopian dimension. Situations of full
participation, as described by Pateman, are utopian non-places (or better, ‘never-to-be-
places’), which will always be unattainable and empty, but which simultaneously remain
to play a key role as ultimate anchoring points and horizons for my work (and the work
of many others). Despite the impossibility of fully realizing these situations in social
praxis, their fantasmatic realization serves as breeding ground for democratic renewal.
As the French writer of Irish descent Samuel Beckett eloquently put it,67 “Ever tried. Ever
failed. Never mind. Try again. Fail better”.
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Notes
1. See Laclau and Moue (1985), Carpentier and De Cleen (2007).
2. In this interview, Spivak refers to the etymology of Vertretung (“to thread into someone’s
shoes”), but also emphasizes the dierences and interconnections between the notions of
Vertretung and Darstellung, which she also refers to in her 1988 essay Can the Subaltern
Speak?.
3. e concept of ordinary citizens (and ordinary people) is a highly complicated signier, which
is discussed later. It suces to mention here that the ordinary people signier receives its
meaning through juxtaposition with societal elites. For aesthetic reasons, the term ordinary
is not inside quotation marks in this text, although here they would be appropriate.
4. Habermas uses a particular denition of discourse (which is why I quote the German version
here): “Unter dem Stichwort ‘Diskurs’ führe ich die durch Argumentation gekennzeichnete
Form der Kommunikation ein, in der problematisch gewordene Geltungsansprüche zum ema
gemacht und auf ihre Berechtigung hin untersucht werden” (Habermas, 1973: 214).
5. Obviously, there are many other examples that could be cited, including the Shoah. Also, the
Stalinist regime provides us with horrifying examples.
6. e reason for excluding this model is that it can be seen as a hybrid combination of
deliberative and radical democracy, both of which are discussed in this chapter.
7. e dictatorship of the proletariat should not be confused with the Leninist notion of the
dictatorship of the vanguard of the proletariat.
8. Some authors, like Gramsci, related the council to the soviet (Bottomore, 1991: 114).
9. Giddens (1992) went on to develop these ideas on the democratization of the family.
10. Of course, Habermas is not the only author in this debate. See Cohen (1989), Fishkin
(1991) and Dryzek (2000). e deliberative democratic model was also supported by Rawls
(1999: 139), who in 1999 declared that he was “concerned with a well-ordered constitutional
democracy […] understood also as a deliberative democracy”.
11. Habermas (1998: 360) sees the lifeworld as the site of communicative action, and the public
sphere as part of the lifeworld: “Like the lifeworld as a whole, so, too, the public sphere is
reproduced through communicative action, in which mastery of a natural language suces”.
12. For critiques on Habermas’s reductionism and romanticization of the bourgeois public sphere,
see Fraser (1990) and Negt and Kluge (1983).
13. For instance, Moue (2005) continues to criticize Habermas for his focus on consensual
outcomes.
14. See Carpentier and Spinoy (2008). is part is mainly based on the introductory chapter of
this book.
15. For a more historical analysis of autonomist Marxist theory, see Wright (2008).
16. Lane’s (2005) article on public participation in planning was very instrumental for this part.
Spatial planning is a very broad concept, which can range from the construction of housing
(see Misra’s (2002) and Pacione’s (2001: 394) discussions on user-generated design), to
neighbourhoods, cities and regions.
17. e Model Cities Programme in the US was a federal urban aid programme that ran from
1966 to the mid-1970s.
18. Pacione (2001: 125) also links advocacy planning to equity planning and pragmatic radicalism.
19. He later adds the third approach: multiplicity.
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
133
20. See also Smith (1991), Gesellscha für Technische Zusammenarbeit (1988), Narayan and
Srinivasan (1994), Srinivasan (1990), Salmen (1992), the World Bank (1994) and Cernea
(1991) for elaborate descriptions and discussions of these methods.
21. One example is the exhibition ‘e Art of Participation. 1950 to Now’, which was organized by
Rudolf Frieling for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and which was on view from 8
November 2008 to 8 February 2009. e exhibition catalogue (Frieling et al., 2008) was very
helpful in providing both reective articles and examples.
22. However important it is, to avoid the section on arts becoming too elaborate, the community
arts movement is not discussed here.
23. See http://www.markuskison.de/touched_echo/.
24. See Halpin (1997) for a brief historical analysis of earlier museum (theory) reform projects.
25. See Rigney and Fokkema (1993) for a dierent approach.
26. Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998: 4) sum up the elds within which the research of eects
is/has been active into six clusters: sexual activity, violence, children, elections/politics, gender
and race.
27. Although one could also argue that this is not always the case, and that formal and informal
power imbalances occur amongst media professionals too (e.g. through professional
hierarchies). Moreover, media professionals’ continued participation in a capitalist media
environment is not always guaranteed, as the possibility of a termination of employment can
never be excluded.
28. It should be added that Jenkins does distinguish between interactivity and participation
(Jenkins, 2006: 305), and that (in some rare cases) he uses the concepts of participation
and interaction alongside each other, leaving some room for the idea that they are dierent
concepts (Jenkins, 2006: 110, 137).
29. e social importance of the fourth component, the participation in society through
the interaction with media content, should not be underestimated, but it remains a more
minimalist form of participation (or interaction). For this reason, a grey arrow is used to
indicate this component in the Figure 6 model.
30. See for instance Coleman and Ross (2010) for a discussion on the audience as public.
31. In this text the term ‘community/society dimension’ is preferred.
32. Picard (1985: 69) denes the social-democrat project as “modern Marxist thought combined
with writings of classical liberal philosophers”.
33. e public sphere has not been exclusively theorized by Habermas. Other key authors are
Dewey (1927) and Arendt (1958), but in this text I focus on Habermas, as his work has gained
most prominence in communication and media studies.
34. In his chapter on the genesis of the bourgeois public sphere, Habermas (1991: 14) also looks
at earlier stages.
35. Both concepts, in turn, are also related to the argument of consumer sovereignty (see Pauwels
and Bauwens, 2007).
36. ese approaches are also oen not society-centred.
37. Even within the report the right to communicate was contested; witness the following remark
from the Soviet Commission member Sergei Losev: “e right to communicate is not an
internationally accepted right on either national or international level. erefore it should not
be discussed at such length and such a way in our report” (MacBride Commission, 1980: 172).
38. http://www.itu.int/wsis.
Media and Participation
134
39. Still, the exact signication, formulation and span of the concept of communication rights
have not stabilized. A more contemporary version can be found in Hamelink and Homan
(2004: 3): “those rights – codied in international and regional human rights instruments
– that pertain to standards of performance with regard to the provision of information and
the functioning of communication processes in society”. For more recent publications on
communication rights, see Alegre and O’Siochru (2005), Cammaerts and Carpentier (2007),
Mueller et al. (2007), Movius (2008) and Dakroury et al. (2009).
40. http://www.crisinfo.org/.
41. Selecting an overarching label for participatory/community/alternative/civil society/
rhizomatic media organizations poses an insoluble semantic problem. But, since in this
approach of combining the four dierent models all become structurally incorporated, the
question of the appropriate label seems relatively irrelevant. In this section, community and
alternative media is chosen as the overarching label.
42. e object of this analysis – alternative and community media – of course complicates an
unequivocal society-centred approach. Instead this type of approach should be interpreted as
the societal contextualization of alternative and community media.
43. e argument that these four approaches and concepts provide the elements that construct
the identities of the vast diversity of alternative and community media organizations, in
always-dierent ways, has generated some confusion (see Hadl and Dongwon, 2008: 97). is
theoretical strategy has no ambition to discredit the labels that specic organizations prefer
to use; it aims to oer a framework to understand the discursive and material complexities
of this eld.
44. In AMARC-Europe’s (1994) denition of community radio, for instance, the geographical
aspect is explicitly highlighted: “a ‘non-prot’ station, currently broadcasting, which oers a
service to the community in which it is located, or to which it broadcasts, while promoting
the participation of this community in the radio”. Nevertheless, other types of relationships
between medium and community are implied in AMARC-Europe’s phrase “to which it
broadcasts”. See Van Vuuren (2008: 16–17) for a discussion of alternative representations of
community.
45. For a discussion of these policy initiatives at European level, see Jiménez and Scifo (2009).
46. e World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters is usually referred to by its French
acronym AMARC, or the Association Mondiale des Radio diuseurs Communautaires. e
AMARC website is at: http://www.amarc.org.
47. In dening civil society, Cohen and Arrato (1992: ix) explicitly include what they call the
intimate sphere. e exact nature of civil society, and the question of which spheres to include,
is beyond the objectives of this text.
48. e full argument Keane (1998: xviii) uses in favour of civil society is “the impossibility,
especially in the era of computerised networks of communication media, of nurturing
‘freedom of communication’ without a plurality of variously seized non-state communications
media”.
49. For a brief genealogy of the concept, see Hintz (2009).
50. Reality TV, of course, overlaps with the game show genre.
51. e presence of this component on Munson’s list is debatable and is not discussed here.
52. Dahlgren (1995: 63) calls these journalists “opinion celebrities”.
53. is distinction is related to the Lefebvrian distinction between the ordinary and ordinariness
(see chapter 3).
Dening Participation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
135
54. is part of the book focuses on so-called internet studies or web studies (Gauntlett, 2004;
Silver, 2004), in the full realization that the ‘new media’ label captures more technologies than
the internet.
55. In the case of new media participation, this is in part compensated for by the attention to the
‘lurker’ in online communities, but the pejorative sound of this concept might be more an
indication of a problem than a solution.
56. In new media theory, the emancipatory and manipulative approaches are not frequently used.
Especially the related distinction between utopian and dystopian approaches has come to
replace it. is utopian/dystopian distinction is not used extensively in this book because
the articulation of the dystopia concept in new media theory has led to the conation of
the technology-as-regression-and-threat discourse with more critical approaches towards the
societal role of technology.
57. See London (1995) for a later analysis of teledemocracy.
58. Using web 2.0 as a time-delineating concept has a problematic side. Nevertheless, at the
beginning of the 2000s, web 2.0 became a nodal point of new media discourses on democracy,
which legitimizes its use. However, the label ‘web 2.0 period’ is used in a broad sense, referring
to new media discourses on democracy that were articulated from the 1990s onwards.
59. For a fascinating example of government use of performance activism, see Singhal and
Greiner (2008).
60. See http://theyesmen.org/hijinks?page=1.
61. Such as User Created Content (UCC) and Consumer Generated Media (CGM – see,
e.g., the Japanese 2006 White Paper (2006: 18) from the Ministry of Internal Aairs and
Communications).
62. A grey-zone example is YouTube.
63. An art project that parodies this structural imbalance is ‘Google will eat itself’ (GWEI) (http://
gwei.org/index.php). e idea is to serve Google text advertisements through a network of
hidden websites, and to use the money generated to buy Google shares. Aer an estimated
200 million years, GWEI will owe Google, and promises to hand over the share to GTTP Ltd.
(Google To e People Ltd.), which will then return the shares to the users.
64. is is also not uncommon with community and alternative media organizations.
65. See Carpentier (2007b) for an earlier version of the AIP model.
66. I do not want to claim that power plays no role in interactionist theory, but power and
especially decision-making processes do not feature as prominently as they do in the
democratic-participatory theories that provide the basis for this book.
67. In order not to do too much injustice to history: Samuel Beckett wrote these oen-quoted
sentences in relation to art and not democracy unrealized.
Chapter 2
Keyword – Power
1. A conceptual introduction
1.1 Participation, power and control
The complex dynamics of power have generated a long history of theoretical
elaborations, which it is impossible to summarize within the scope of this
book. Despite this disclaimer, however, the importance attributed to power in
the debates on participation makes it necessary to briey sketch some key elements of
these theoretical elaborations. e starting point is two basic models of power, namely
the causal and the strategic model. e causal model goes back to Weber’s (1947: 152)
denition of power (and before), which he saw as “the probability that one actor within
a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance,
regardless of the basis on which this probability rests”. e (traditional) Marxist model
uses a similar denition of power that focuses on the dominance of the bourgeoisie as
the owners of the means of production. Also, Dahl (1969: 80) refers to a linear-causal
model of power in dening power as a situation where “A has power over B to the extent
that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do”. Subsequent additions
to the causal model of power distinguish dierent levels, claiming that power intervenes
not only in decisions, but also in non-decisions and the logic of no decision. Barach and
Baratz (1970: 7) added the second layer to the discussion when they said that “power is
also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political
values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public
consideration of only those issues which are relatively innocuous to A”. e third layer
was added by Lukes (1974), in pointing to more latent conicts and emphasizing the role
of power in them.
e strategic model of power, which plays a substantial role in this chapter, was
developed by post-structuralists such as Foucault who pointed out that in the traditional
interpretation, power is oen approached negatively. In his two major works of the 1970s
– Discipline and Punish (1977) and the rst part of History of Sexuality1 (1978) – Foucault
rejects this exclusively restrictive meaning of power, and denes power as productive, as “a
general matrix of force relations at a given time, in a given society” (Dreyfus and Rabinow,
1983: 186). It is this approach to power as productive that brought Foucault to a strategic
model of power, since he saw power relations as mobile and multidirectional: Power
Media and Participation
140
is practiced and not possessed (Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 50). is multiplicity of
power relations also detaches the outcome of the power play from the actors’ intentions.
As Foucault (1978: 95) put it in his History of Sexuality, power relations are “intentional
and non-subjective”, which he later explains as follows: “people know what they do; they
frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they
do does” (Foucault quoted in Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 187).
Foucault (1978: 94) also stresses explicitly that power relations are non-egalitarian,
although domination should not be considered to be the essence of power. Simultaneously,
resistance to power is considered to be part of the exercise of power (Kendall and
Wickham, 1999: 50). As Hunt and Wickham (1994: 83) argue, “Power and resistance
are together the governance machine of society, but only in the sense that together they
contribute to the truism that ‘things never quite work,’ not in the conspiratorial sense
that resistance serves to make power work perfectly”. As no actor, however privileged,
can exercise full and total control over the social, and more dominant positions will oen
generate resistance, the Foucauldian model presents us with a multitude of strategies that
form a complex power-game. e analysis of the workings of power in this approach is
enriched by adding Giddens’s (1979: 91) dialectics of control, in which he distinguishes
between the transformative capacity of power – treating power in terms of the conduct
of agents, exercising their free will – on the one hand, and domination – treating power
as a structural quality – on the other. e restrictive component aligns itself quite nicely
with Foucault’s recognition that power relations can be unbalanced, while the generative
component refers to the objectives and achievements of the strategies on which Foucault
builds his analytics of power. Resistance intervenes in both the generative and the
restrictive component, and thus can be considered the third component of this power
model. Figure 1 depicts the interaction between the generative, restrictive and resistant
Figure 1: e dialectics of power.
Keyword – Power
141
power aspects as the building blocks of the productivity of power.2 rough the dialectics
of control, the dierent strategies of dierent actors produce specic (temporally) stable
outcomes, which can be seen as the end result or overall eect of the interaction(s) between
those strategies and actors. e emphasis on the overall eect that supersedes individual
strategies (and agencies) allows Foucault to foreground the productive aspects of power
and to claim that power is inherently neither positive nor negative (Hollway, 1984: 237).
1.2 Power, materiality and ideology
e dierence between strategic and causal models of power is mainly based at the
theoretical (power) level, and clearly is not the only way to categorize the omnipresent
workings of power. One other (but crucial) way to theorize power is to incorporate its
object(s), because power can (be intended to) aect many dierent realms of the social.
Here, it is helpful to use the concepts of idealism and materialism as the main structuring
categories to look at power’s objects, because these two concepts allow me to distinguish
discursive from material power.
Discursive power (obviously) functions within the world of ideas and has a close
connection to the notions of representation, ideology and hegemony. Although language
is an important carrier of discourse, the concept discourse is situated here at the more
abstract and macro-level, following authors such as Foucault, Laclau and Moue.
If we turn to an early Foucauldian model (such as is developed in his Archaeology of
Knowledge3) we nd a strong emphasis on the role (and power) of discursive formations
in constructing and producing their objects. For instance, when Foucault talks about
madness in the Archaeology of Knowledge, he claims that
mental illness was constituted by all that was said in all the statements that named
it, divided it up, described it, explained it, traced its developments, indicated it
various correlations, judged it, and possibly gave it speech by articulating, in its name,
discourses that were to be taken as its own (Foucault, 2002: 35).
Althusser makes a similar argument, although he prefers the concept of ideology to
theorize the importance of the ideal for the social. Here, ideology has discursive power
as a “representation of the world” that “relates men and women to their conditions of
existence, and to each other, in the division of their tasks and the equality and inequality
of their lot” (Althusser, 1990: 25). rough the logics of interpellation, ideology oers
over-determined frameworks of knowledge that allow subjects (actively) to make sense
of the social while, at the same time, pre-structuring the social and excluding other
frameworks.
Later, authors such as Hall (1997b) and Laclau and Moue (1985) (re)used the
concepts of representation and discourse to emphasize the importance of meaning
Media and Participation
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in accessing the social. Laclau and Moue (1985) stress the importance (and power)
of discourse to generate meaning, where discourse is dened as “a structure in which
meaning is constantly negotiated and constructed” (Laclau, 1988: 254). Hall, (1997b),
when emphasizing representational practices grounded in language, stresses the
necessity of representations to interpret the world meaningfully, but he (more than
Laclau and Moue do (1985)) also explicitly links the concept of representation to
the subject, and how individuals (and mainly their egos – to use a Freudian concept)
negotiate their individuality and subjectivity by using these discursive structures (or
subject positions), provided to them by the cultures that surround them, without losing
their freedom and independence. ese approaches (in contrast to the Foucault of the
1960s, but in accordance with his later work) move away from structuralism and allow for
the introduction of more human agency. ey provide the space for more contingency.
rough these re-articulations, discursive power becomes less anonymous as dierent
actors are seen to actively develop strategies in their attempts to x reality, which, in
turn, generates counter-strategies and counter-ideologies. Societal contingency, then,
becomes both the consequence and the condition of possibility of this discursive struggle
to represent the social. e never-ending struggle to x reality structurally unsettles any
attempt to provide reality’s ultimate and universal xation. And, at the same time, the
struggle itself is conditioned by the impossibility of xating reality.
In including especially Gramsci’s work (hegemony being the most obvious concept),
these re-articulations provide a political-ideological support structure for the concept
of discursive power. Gramsci (1999: 261) originally dened this notion to refer to the
formation of consent rather than to the (exclusive) domination of the other, without
however excluding a certain form of pressure and repression. Howarth (1998: 279)
describes Laclau and Moue’s interpretation of the concept as follows: “Hegemonic
practices are an exemplary form of political articulation which involves linking
together dierent identities into a common project”. is is not to imply that counter-
hegemonic articulations are impossible and that hegemony is total (Sayyid and Zac,
1998: 262). As Moue (2005: 18) formulated it, “Every hegemonic order is susceptible
of being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices, i.e. practices which will attempt to
disarticulate the existing order so as to install other forms of hegemony”.
e ambition of these hegemonic projects is to become a social imaginary, dened
by Laclau (1990: 64) as “a horizon: it is not one among other objects but an absolute
limit which structures a eld of intelligibility and is thus the condition of possibility of
the emergence of any object”. e strength of these social imaginaries is based on what
Stavrakakis (1999: 96) calls “an ethics of harmony,” a desire for reality to be coherent and
harmonious that is always frustrated and unattainable because of the contingency of the
social. Using the psycho-analytical vocabulary, we can say that social imaginaries are
fantasies that enable an overcoming of the lack generated by the contingency of the social
and the structural impossibility of attaining reality (or the Real, as Lacan would have it).
In Lacanian psycho-analytic theory, fantasy is conceptualized as having (among other
Keyword – Power
143
functions) a protective role (Lacan, 1979: 41). In providing the subject with (imaginary)
frames that attempt to conceal and nally to overcome the lack (Lacan, 1994: 119–120),
fantasy functions as “the support that gives consistency to what we call ‘reality’” (Žižek,
1989: 44). Subjects “push away reality in fantasy” (Lacan, 1999: 107); in order to make
the reality (imaginary) consistent, social imaginaries are produced, accepted and then
taken for granted.
Although these more recent theorizations of discursive power do not ignore the
importance of the material, they remain (to dierent degrees) embedded within an
idealist framework. A more materialist framework yields a dierent perspective, focusing
on the exercise of power over and through material objects and bodies, which I call
here material power. In his work in the 1970s,4 and especially in Discipline and Punish,
Foucault strongly advocates looking at how (disciplinary) power works upon bodies. He
distinguishes four components to the way that bodies are turned into “docile [bodies]”
that “may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved” (Foucault, 1977: 136). First,
the body is stripped of its signifying dimensions, turning the subject into an object. e
body is further divided into units, each subjected to detailed training, while the spaces
in which the bodies are located are carefully managed. Finally, the application of control
over bodies is consistent and continuous, not sporadic. Obviously, although power can
(quite easily) become domination, for Foucault, there is still space for reciprocity in
power relations and for resistance to unequal power relations.
Without claiming that all bodies are permanently subjected to ‘total institutions’ (à la
Goman (1961)), we can still bear witness to the presence of ideological and repressive
state apparatuses (in the Althusserian sense), which exercise power in relation to
individuals and organizations. rough the monopoly of violence, states, at all times, can
surveil, control and discipline the bodies of their citizens, for instance, through penal
systems. But as the governmentality school argues (Burchell et al., 1991; Barry et al.,
1996; Rose, 1999), the subjection of bodies to power is organized not only by the state, but
by a wide variety of aligned organizations. Because the mechanism of governmentality
is based on management through freedom, individual freedom plays a key role in its
functioning. In his essay Subject and Power, written in the early 1980s, Foucault states
that power is “exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar they are free. By this
we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a eld of possibilities in
which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments might be
realized” (Foucault, 1983: 221). A signicant example of this can be found in the eld of
employment where large numbers of people happily surrender part of their freedom in
order to function within hierarchically structured organizations, to allow their bodies
to perform specied tasks that serve aims not necessarily aligned to their own. Again,
it is crucial to remark that these types of the exercise of power are always characterized
by a unique and specic combination of structural constraints and agency-related
opportunities, and that these strategies always allow for tactics (de Certeau, 1984) to resist
the strategies. Like discursive power, body-related material power remains incorporated
Media and Participation
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in struggle and conict, and bodies maintain a degree of autonomy to enter into power
practices themselves.
Next to body-related material power, we can distinguish object-related material power.
Although this distinction runs the risk of anthropocentrism (see below), humans can
still exert control over a wide variety of objects (or resources) that incorporate varying
degrees of technicity, complexity and human intervention. is category ranges from
basic material objects and (proto-)machines to complex congurations of objects (such
as the assets of a company). A crucial concept to negotiate the relationships between
humans and objects is ownership. is concept creates the framework for generating
individuated and privileged connections between (groups of) individuals and (clusters
of) objects. Renner (1949: 73) argues:
Whatever the social system, disposal of all goods that have been seized and assimilated
must be regulated by the social order as the rights of persons over material objects.
[…] e legal institutions which eect this regulation, subject the world of matter bit
by bit to the will of singled-out individuals since the community exists only through
its individual members. ese legal institutions endow the individuals with detention
so that they may dispose of the objects and posses them.
But the concept of property has more levels of complexity. As Pels (1998: 20) says, there
are dierences, for instance, between physical possession and enforceable claims, and
between borders that are easily passable or relatively obstacled. Moreover, he points to
the diversity encapsulated within the concept of the owner, which may be “individuals,
kinship groups, cliques, corporations, states, or supranational bodies” (Pels, 1998: 20).
As Wilpert (1991) argues, a legal basis is important to support the concept of ownership,
but in the absence of a legal framework, even perceived property – what Wilpert calls
psychological property (see above) – can generate this type of connection between
individuals and objects. e same diversity applies to the object, which may be “tangible
or intangible, separable or non-separable from the person. Property can embrace the
object in its entirety, or can be divided into a scatter of partial rights” (Pels, 1998: 20).
ere is a long tradition of critique that rejects the productive capacity of property
and points to its exploitative characteristics. Not only Marxism, but also classic anarchist
theory, for instance, is “critical of private property to the extent that it was a source of
hierarchy and privilege” (Jennings, 1999: 136). Although some caution is needed: Even
Proudhon’s (2008) already-mentioned dictum – ‘property is the’ – was used for a specic
context. Still, together with Marx and Proudhon, numerous authors, for instance in the
eld of political economy, have criticized the impact of object-related material power on
(equality in) society.
ese – sometimes critical, sometimes neo-liberal – reections do conrm the power
relationship between humanity and the world of material objects, where in some cases
the impact of that relationship on the social is scrutinized. At the same time, I want to be
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careful not to presume too strong an anthropomorphic bias in the power relationships
between humans and objects. For instance, actor network theory (ANT) makes a strong
claim as to the agency of objects. As Latour (2005: 73) puts it, “objects are nowhere
to be said and everywhere to be felt”. ANT’s claim is that objects should be integrated
into the study of (power relations in) the social, rst of all because materiality is an
integrated and crucial component of the social: “When power is exerted for good, it
is because it is not made of social ties; when it has to relate only on social ties, it is not
exerted for long” (Latour, 2005: 66). But more importantly in this context, objects enter
into co-determining relationships with humans; aer all “any thing that does modify
a state of aairs by making a dierence is an actor” (Latour, 2005: 71 – emphasis in
original). rough the connections with humans, objects can become mediators and/or
intermediaries and become implicated in the exercise of power.
e model in Figure 2 shows the relationships between the four basic components
(disregarding the many synergies between the dierent spheres, and more complicated
societal structures). But we should keep in mind that the distinctions between discursive
power, body-related material power and object-related material power are, at the same
time, analytical, since they are found in the social only in an integrated and intertwined
form. Here, we can return to Foucault (1980: 30) and his argument that power “reaches
into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their
actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives” (Foucault,
1980: 30). Power is all-pervasive and continuously manifests itself at the micro-levels of
society through interlocking processes of discursive power, body-related material power
and object-related material power.
Figure 2: An object-based model of power.
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1.3 Participation and power in the media sphere
Like the general debates on power, the debates on media power are similarly vast,
and this chapter has no ambition to provide a complete overview of the literature on
this matter. Moreover, these debates on media power are characterized by strong,
paradigmatically driven disagreements, but so far the search for media eects – the ‘holy
grail’ of communication and media studies (Watson, 2003: 61) – has yet to provide us
with satisfactory answers. As Gauntlett (1998) argues in his essay Ten ings Wrong with
the ‘Eects Model’, the absence of straightforward answers might be related more to the
questions being asked than to our capacity to answer them. e theoretical reections
on (strategic) power illustrate the complexity of the dynamics of power, where power
relations are mobile and multidirectional, and where resistance remains always a
possibility, even against hegemonic articulations. is argument is strengthened further
by theoretical reections on the active audience, as the interactions with media content
show that the discursive powers of the content should not necessarily be privileged over
the audience’s capacity to interpret it. Also, the media sphere itself is characterized by a
considerable diversity of media organizations, oen producing contradictory discourses
on a wide variety of issues. Finally, we should keep in mind especially that the media
sphere and its audiences cannot be seen in isolation from (the rest of) the social. e
media sphere cannot be considered the magical fountain of discursive origins, which
produces the original discourses that then are distributed throughout the social. On
the contrary, the media sphere is an inseparable part of the social, interacts with many
already-existing discourses, and competes with many other discursive machineries (see
below).
is plea for acknowledgement of the complexity of ‘the’ media sphere does not
underestimate its discursive power. But the discursive power of the media sphere always
needs to be qualied since it is very much dependent on a discursive alignment, in which
a mediated statement becomes recognized and accepted (for instance, as truthful) by
audience members through its alignment with the context provided by a multiplicity of
other discourses, oen originating from multiple discursive machineries. One illustration
of the importance of this type of alignment can be found in Bourdieu’s (1991: 170) work
on the symbolic, when he writes, “What creates the power of words and slogans, a power
capable of maintaining or subverting the social order, is the belief in the legitimacy of
words and of those who utter them. And words alone cannot create this belief”. ese
logics of discursive alignment imply that mediated representations are embedded in the
social context and are part of an incessant generation of statements at all possible levels
of social life.
is implies also that the capacity of the media sphere to act as a legitimate discursive
machinery needs to be constructed and reproduced. Couldry (2003) formulates this as
follows: “Media power is reproduced through the details of what social actors (including
audience members) do and say”. Couldry’s work on media power points to the role that
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media organizations play in constructing their own centrality, through processes of
framing, ordering, naming, spacing and imagining (see Couldry (2003: 178) for a brief
summary). At the same time, this is not merely a media strategy, as the myth of media
centrality feeds on the societal tendency (or fantasy) to attribute large ‘quantities’ of
power to specic organizational systems. e clear attribution of one location of power –
in an era where power has become utterly multidirectional, where there is no privileged
seat of power le, and where multiple elites sometimes interlock and sometimes compete
– remains a powerful fantasy that sometimes takes on the character of a fetish, further
rendering the actual workings of power invisible.
When focusing more on media participation, the link between participation through
the media and the media power discussion (as sketched above) is reasonably obvious.
e media sphere is one that allows citizens to participate in public debates and to deploy
their discursive powers by voicing their views. rough the media sphere, citizens can
use their generative powers to become part of the societal decision-making processes,
or to resist them. At the same time, societal decision-making processes have many
inbuilt restrictions. At the material level, this includes the unbalanced control over a
variety of objects (in the broad sense, as discussed above): Societal resources are not
evenly distributed, and the control over the diverse discursive machineries is equally
unbalanced, as instanced by the dierences generated by media ownership. At the
discursive level, restrictions can be generated by the privileged access of some voices
(e.g., members of the political elites to mainstream news), which implies lack of access
for others. But, again, resistance always remains a possibility, and many dierent voices
can be heard through the channels of alternative media and new media. Even within the
mainstream media, non-elite and non-hegemonic voices do manage to sneak in, and
generate interventions in public debate.
However, the participation-in-the-media component opens up a dierent approach to
media power. Here, we are entering more into the realm of the micro-analytics of power,
and how power relations are played out in the specic locations of the broadcasting
studio, the newsroom, but also management boardrooms. e notion of co-decision-
making here becomes (even) more clearly articulated, because participation refers to
the sharing of power to mobilize the objects and bodies that are involved in the media
production process, to generate media discourses, and to decide on the management of
the actual media organization. But as object-related power, and more specically, control
over the media organizations, is highly unbalanced at the macro- and the micro-levels of,
especially, the mainstream media, participants face severe forms of restrictive power. As
Street (2001: 235) formulates it, “e routines and cultures of media, their commercial
and structural interests, all operate to determine the opportunities for access to [and
participation in] the airwaves and newspaper columns”. In many cases, participants’
opportunities to express themselves are limited by a wide variety of thresholds, created,
for instance, by the specic managerial interventions of media professionals. Moreover,
non-media elites are faced with their limited ability to intervene in the management of
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(mainstream) media organizations. But, here too, resistance can be exercised to cope
with these restrictions, especially at the level of self-expression. Within the dialectics
of control, one other angle deserves brief mention: at also participants can restrict
others’ participatory attempts.
In this context, the maximalist and minimalist dimension plays a crucial role, whether
this participatory process takes place in the sphere of participation through the media or
in the sphere of participation in the media. e maximalist forms of media participation,
where control and participation become balanced, where participation is multidirectional
and incorporated within a broad denition of the political, imply also a balance between the
ability to deploy generative and resistant powers, and the confrontation with the restrictive
powers deployed by others, at the levels of discursive power, body-related material power
and object-related material power. In minimalist forms of media participation, on the other
hand, we can nd a strong focus on media professional control, a reduction of participation
to access and interaction, and the utilization of participation to serve the interests of the
media organization that organizes the participatory process. Obviously, these maximalist
and minimalist forms are part of a dimension, and as the two case studies exemplify, many
in-between positions remain a possibility.
2. Case 1: Management in the north Belgian audience discussion programme Jan
Publiek
2.1 Introduction
Jan Publiek5 is a north Belgian (or Flemish)6 talk show that was put out by the public
broadcaster BRTN/VRT7 at the end of the 1990s, and comprised a panel of twenty ordinary
people who played a leading role. In each of a xed number of sixteen episodes,8 the same
participants, ten ordinary women and ten ordinary men, were granted access to a prime-
time, live9 television programme, to discuss one specic issue. is feature positions
Jan Publiek among the subformat of the audience discussion programmes (discussed in
chapter 1). From a dierent angle, and despite the fame of the host, Jan Publiek can be
described as an issue-type talk show, based on group discussion (Carbaugh, 1988), and
not a personality-type talk show, focusing on ‘show business chitchat’ (Steenland, 1990).
Although the programme is now quite old, it was (and still is) considered the agship
of audience participation on north Belgian television and incorporates all the power
dynamics characteristic of mainstream television audience discussion programmes,
making it a relevant case study for this book. e major questions here become how the
dierent power relations function, and how within the dialectics of control, voices10 are
managed, power is shared and unequal power relations are resisted. e overarching
question is what kind of maximalist or minimalist discourse on mediated participation
this combination of power and resistance eventually produces.
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2.2 A brief note on method
e data11 discussed here focus on the second series of Jan Publiek, broadcast between
September and December 1997 on the north Belgian public television channel BRTN.
A specic soware package (ISI’s Prole Timer©, or PRT) was used to facilitate content
analysis of the sixteen programmes in the series and to visualize the ndings (for the
researchers). e content analysis was conducted in two phases: First, the broadcasts
were semi-automatically timed and the Dutch text was transcribed.12 Data correction was
implemented using a PRT-algorithm (called ‘matching’) that linked and compared actual
timings with the estimated speaking times for the transcription. In a second phase the
transcription was used for further quantitative content analysis, based on seven dierent
coding systems.13 e results of the content analysis were subsequently fed back into
the PRT soware, and exported to statistical soware for further analysis. Quantitative
content analysis of the sixteen episodes was complemented by parallel, qualitative content
analysis (based on Maso’s (1989) and Wester’s (1987, 1995) methodological approach,
which supports the entire book) to provide more detailed results, which were further
supplemented by the results of qualitative analysis of interviews with nine members of
the production team14 and the twenty panel members.15
2.3 Power relations in Jan Publiek
In Jan Publiek, a selected group of ordinary people is allowed to gain access, exercise
their discursive powers and be seen and heard to do so by members of the audience at
home. e selected participants are seen as agents, and generate statements on the topics
being discussed in the programme. ey, the programme’s host, the production team,
the technical crew and other guests generate a broadcast, where a specic issue is being
discussed and dierent opinions are being aired/screened. e participation of these
ordinary people in the television programme, and their presence in the media sphere,
is managed by the production team, who have specic objectives, dene themselves as
owners of the means of production and are familiar with the rules of practice within the
media sphere. While the participants are empowered by the same production team that
is granting them access to perform in a television programme, these ordinary people
are simultaneously confronted with dierent forms of domination, authority, control,
management of voices, and confessional and disciplinary technologies. ey will resist
this domination, thereby continuing and deepening the dialectics of control, which will
result in a negotiated level of participation, a certain distribution of decision-making
powers and a certain access to the available resources.
is negotiation will eventually result in a (local) overall eect: the production of
discourses, both on (and related to) the issue being discussed, and on the participation
of ordinary people. In Jan Publiek, ordinary people are seen on television to take part
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in a process that is usually restricted to members of dierent elites, including media
professionals. ey are seen and heard discussing their views with other ordinary people
and with members of certain elites, oen inverting the lay–expert relation, “repudiating
criticisms of the ordinary person as incompetent or ignorant and asserting the worth of
the ‘common [wo]man’” (Livingstone and Lunt, 1996: 102). For this reason, Livingstone
and Lunt (1996: 101) poetically call audience discussion programmes “a celebration of
ordinary experience”. But the participants are also seen being subjected to management,
confessional and disciplinary technologies, and resisting those negative/restrictive aspects
of power. e analysis of Jan Publiek focuses on the dierent forms of management and
the presence of confessional and disciplinary technologies, combined with the resistance
provoked by these aspects of power. To analyse these dierent forms of management and
resistance, a distinction is introduced between the pre- and post-broadcasting phases
on the one hand and the broadcasting phase on the other. Although this case study may
not seem to do justice to the generative aspects of power, it should be remembered that
the dierent agents gain access to a broadcast and are able to enter into a generational
process of “co-creation in which the producers, panelists and audience partake” (Dixon
and Spee, 2003: 420; see also Dixon, 2009). e large number of statements from panel
members in the sixteen broadcasts (see Figure 3) is clear evidence of the presence of
generative power.
2.4 Management of and futile resistance by panel members in the pre- and post-
broadcasting phases of Jan Publiek
In the pre-broadcasting phase, the production team is rmly in control. Before the
series is broadcast, they have decided about the concept (in agreement with the network
management and without any involvement of the yet to be selected panel members).
In the preparatory phase, the panel of twenty ordinary people who will feature in the
sixteen consecutive programmes is selected by the production team based on criteria
they established themselves. e production team’s control over the media environment
and its objects is accompanied by control over which bodies will be allowed to enter the
television studio. As they want the panel to be representative of north Belgian society
and to respect its diversity, they focus mainly on traditional socio-demographic criteria
(with specic attention to the presence of two people with allochthonous origins and
equal numbers of men and women), and (to a lesser degree) on the participants’ political
orientations and personalities. e production team also requires that each panel member
is eloquent and quick thinking, speaks clearly, has clear-cut opinions and is not xated
on particular topics. Following selection, the panel members receive some training (on
media and debating techniques and in the use of the audio-visual technology) and are
provided with some information. Before the rst of the sixteen broadcasts, they are asked
to participate in a test broadcast, which consists of a technical brieng – explaining to
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the new panel the functioning of microphones and cameras – and a résumé of the house-
rules, which links the brieng to the production team’s managerial strategy. e house-
rules are reiterated in various correspondences to panel members from the programme’s
executive editor and its host:
It is impossible for Jan [the host] to give the oor to everyone at the same time.
e possibility exists that you didn’t get the opportunity to say something about a
particular subtopic. Avoid coming back to something that has been said before. […]
If you react, react to the topic that is being discussed at that moment. (Letter from
Jean Philip De Tender, Executive Editor, to the panel members, 18 September 1997)
Prior to each broadcast, and without consulting the panel members, the chosen topic
is divided by the production team into subtopics that allow a specic approach to the
general topic, thus pre-structuring (or ‘framing’ as Leurdijk (1997) describes it) the
entire debate. In addition to the panel of twenty ordinary people, the production team
invites four (more or less) famous Flemish people (in Dutch abbreviated to ‘BVs’) to
participate. Several other guests (experts and ‘experience experts’16) are included. e
topic of each broadcast is revealed to the panel members in a short telephone call or via
fax from the production assistant one or two days before the day of the broadcast. No
information about the structure of the broadcast, the subtopics or the guests is given to
panel members. ey are encouraged not to read or reect on the topic, and are asked
not to discuss it with other panel members, and especially not in the hours immediately
before the broadcast, when they are in the VIP bar, having dinner, or waiting to have
their make-up done. On the evening of the broadcast the production assistant is charged
with receiving panel members in line with the production team’s policy not to speak with
them before the broadcast.
e production team legitimizes the lack of training and information given to panel
members by stressing the importance of spontaneity, which, in their view, increases the
level of reality and authenticity. ey also argue that training and information might
inuence the panel members’ abilities or opinions:
ey are 20 people chosen from the audience, and that is their strongest point. And
you should keep that strongest point, you shouldn’t start to mould them, you shouldn’t
model them, as you do with a host, or counsel them, as you would counsel an expert
because he [or she] has a specic function. eir function was to be themselves. It was
important to have […] them play the same role. (Jean Philip De Tender, Executive
Editor, 4 December 1998 interview)
e lack of communication before the broadcast severely limits the possibilities for panel
members to resist the production team’s management; they have two options – to come
unprepared or to decline the invitation to participate. Some panel members did study on
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some of the topics, ignoring one of the elementary house-rules, but were discouraged by
fellow panel members and by members of the production team from repeating this. Two
panel members considered their contribution too limited and had considered quitting
the programme, but in fact did not. One panel member le the television studio before
the nal (live) broadcast started, but the other members of the panel contacted him on
his mobile phone and persuaded him to return to the studio: He arrived just in time for
the start of the broadcast.
Aer the broadcast, panel members have greater opportunity to (try to) counter the
production team’s management when they met with the team in the green room. In these
conversations they expressed some dissatisfaction and frustration with certain aspects of
the programme, especially the lack of feedback (or evaluation) and the time constraints
imposed upon their contributions. Some panel members tried (unsuccessfully) to
suggest topics for future programmes. ese conversations were usually described by the
production team as ‘complaining’ or ‘nagging’, showing that even these subtle attempts
to co-decide are seen as interference and not taken seriously. Moreover, the situation of
panel members was described by the production team as deplorable, but unavoidable.
e reluctance of the production team to contemplate what they saw as ‘interference’ is
illustrated by comments made by the executive editor and the production assistant:
[e panel members] are an important instrument in the programme, but you should
be able to continue using them as instruments, which means that you cannot aord
to show your cards. ey have strongly requested to be evaluated, to see whether
they performed well or not. We did, but you shouldn’t change them. (Jean Philip De
Tender, Executive Editor, 4 December 1998 interview)
If you involve the panel, they’ll soon take over the entire building. (Eva Vansteene,
Production Assistant, 27 October 1998 interview)
2.5 Management in the broadcasting phase of Jan Publiek
During the broadcasting phase, the processes of control are more complex. e
production team exercises its discursive control and its control over the bodies (voices)
of the participants on two main planes. First, the host controls the process of turn-
taking: He has the authority to grant or deny panel members permission to speak. In
this he is supported by the director and the technical crew, who control key objects in the
power play: the microphones and the cameras. is form of control is combined with a
pre-prepared structure, which is not known to the panel members. Second, the host has
the authority also to interview people.
e production team’s control, of course, does not exclude the possibility that panel
members will generate statements during the broadcast. Quantitative content analysis
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of the sixteen Jan Publiek broadcasts shows that the panel members (as a group, and
compared to the other groups of participants) occupied the largest part of the total
speaking time: about 35 per cent (see Figure 3). Although the number of interventions
by the host was noticeably higher (50 per cent of the total number of interventions),
panel members were responsible for 27 per cent of the total interventions and their
average speaking time per turn was considerably higher than the speaking time of the
host: 10.1 compared to 3.5 seconds.
Figure 3: Interventions according to types of participant in the sixteen Jan Publiek episodes.
Number of interventions Total speaking time Average speaking time/turn
N % Total % Mean Std
Host 4521 50 15889 22.5 3.5 6.5
Panel members 2446 27 24679 35 10.1 10.4
BVs 446 5 5454 8 12.2 11.7
Guests 1471 16 14470 20.5 9.8 11.6
Reportage 206 2 10079 14 48.9 65.6
Total 9090 100 70571 100 7.8 15.0
e presence of generative power does not eliminate the attempts of the production team
to manage the participants. First, a programme is highly structured: e 70 minutes air
time is allocated to subtopics, initiated by a pre-made reportage, a general question by the
host to the panel or an interview with one of the guests. Panel members are asked not to
make reference to earlier parts of the discussion, which means that they also contribute
to this segmentation. is segmentation into a certain number of subtopics serves to
eliminate other possible subtopics or angles. In his introduction the host proposes the
topic and interviews a few of the panel members on their relationship to it. e core of
the broadcast is formed by a series of subtopics, oen with specic reportages and/or
guests. In the nal phase of the broadcast the host briey thanks the participants and
introduces the following week’s topic.
e host – and the production team – knows the structure of the broadcast, and tries
to keep the discussion within the bounds of the subtopics. In the fragment below, a panel
member raises a new subtopic during the discussion of the private life of a north Belgian
politician (Bert Anciaux). e panel member’s comment is quickly cut o by the host,
and another panel member (Fatiha) is given the oor.
Panel member Simone Goossens: […] ere’s one thing I would like to ask for these
women: don’t look […]
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Host Jan Van Rompaey: Don’t look down on them.
Panel member Simone Goossens: Don’t look down on women who do the house-
keeping and have children.
Host Jan Van Rompaey: Yes, but we are talking now about Bert [Anciaux] and later we
will discuss all those other women. Fatiha?
(Broadcast 3617 – 11 December 1997 – Start: 11:13 – Stop 12:36)
Within the subtopics, the authority of the host is the second aspect of control: At a
procedural level, panel members have to ask for permission to speak by raising their
hand. Based on advice from the director of the programme (via an audio connection),
the host decides who is allowed to speak, and who is not. is leads to a specic pattern
of turn-taking (see Figure 4): Most panel members (and the BVs) explicitly solicit a rst
turn (79.3% of panel members’ rst interventions) and if permission is granted the panel
member can make an intervention. e host can decide to respond to the panel member
– asking for elaboration – or give someone else the oor. ese second and third turns
Figure 4: Interventions of participants (host excluded) – Turn-taking and type of participant.
Panel BVs Experts18 Experience
experts
Gets a turn from the host and has solicited
Total 908 37% 167 37% 42 13% 89 8%
First intervention 900 99% 166 99% 41 98% 87 98%
Later interventions 8 1% 1 1% 1 2% 2 2%
Gets a turn from the host and has not solicited
Total 1184 48% 228 51% 222 69% 797 73%
First intervention 114* 10% 38 17% 52 23% 156 20%
Later interventions 1070 90% 190 83% 170 77% 641 80%
Gets a turn from a participant and has not solicited
Total 172 7% 23 5% 40 12% 118 11%
First intervention 15 9% 2 9% 7 18% 28 24%
Later interventions 157 91% 21 91% 33 82% 90 76%
Takes a turn
Total 178 7% 28 6% 18 6% 83 8%
First intervention 106 60% 12 43% 14 78% 53 64%
Later interventions 72 40% 16 57% 4 22% 30 36%
Type unknown
Total 4 0.5% 0 0% 2 1% 4 0.5%
* Mainly in the introductory phase of the broadcast.
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are not solicited by the panel members, and the decision to ask for some elaboration is
entirely the host’s to make. It is only during the rst introductory phase of the broadcast
that the pattern is dierent, when the host selects a few panel members (without their
soliciting a rst turn) to question about their personal experience in relation to the topic
of the broadcast.
e turn-taking pattern for guests (both experts and experience experts) is completely
dierent. ey rarely solicit for a turn (13% of expert interventions, 8% of experience
experts’ interventions). In their case, turns are initiated by the host without being
solicited (respectively, 69% and 73% of interventions). Again, the decision is the host’s to
make. e host also decides when the next speaker gets a turn, which oen means that
the previous speaker is interrupted. e host legitimates any cutting o of comments by
pointing to the time constraints and his desire to allow every guest and panel member to
contribute at least once during a broadcast. Arguments therefore need to be “encapsulated
into catch phrases” (Tomasulo, 1984: 10) – or according to the host of Jan Publiek:
We cannot give someone the oor for an entire minute. If you count the number of
people who are present in the studio, and the minutes we have, the total speaking
time, this leaves little time for the individuals. So, uh. What we do – what I do – is
giving the oor to as many people as possible. is means that long statements are out
of the question. (Jan Van Rompaey, Host, 30 November 1998 interview)
e favouring of clear-cut opinions – and the exclusion of knowledge acquisition
through learning in its diverse forms, including discussion – leads to competition among
panel members for opportunities to intervene. Panel members try to attract the host’s
attention using various non-verbal strategies, such as waving or clearly showing their
(dis)agreement and emotional involvement. Although the production team stresses the
importance of continuing where the previous speaker(s) has le o, these non-verbal
strategies for attracting attention are dicult to reconcile with the notion of listening to
the other participants. us, debate is oen reduced to a succession of isolated statements,
expressing approval or disapproval of a certain phenomenon. As panel members oen
focus on achieving at least one ‘good intervention’ per broadcast, opinions remain
fragmented and can rarely be articulated. Without necessarily wanting to plead for the
Habermasian ideal of a “rational discussion leading to a critical consensus” (Livingstone
and Lunt, 1996: 160) in a talk show, it could be argued that a swi succession of isolated
statements barely resembles any discussion at all.
e degree of fragmentation in the broadcasts can be analysed in two ways. First, the mere
reference to (any of the) previous interventions of other speakers is taken into account: About
half of the interventions of panel members (47%) are detached from the previous remark.
e interventions of the guests are even more detached from previous interventions (56% of
the expert interventions and 66% of the experience expert interventions).
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Second, we can consider the immediate interaction among participants, which puts
more emphasis on the continuation of a discussion between two or more participants.
Figure 5 shows (again) that the majority of the inventions made by participants are not
directly related to those of previous speakers, but that when participants do react to a
previous comment, an unmediated reply to this reaction oen does not materialize: 330
out of 593 multilevel reactions of all participants are level 1 reactions.
Figure 5: Interactions between the Jan Publiek participants.
Participants Panel members BVs Experts Experience experts
# % # % # % # % # %
No interaction 3370 86.41 2140 87.60 399 89.46 279 86.11 900 82.49
Level 1 330 7.56 163 6.67 30 6.73 26 8.02 106 9.72
Level 2 127 2.91 72 2.95 9 2.02 10 3.09 36 3.30
Level 3 51 1.17 22 0.90 2 0.45 5 1.54 21 1.92
Level 4 32 0.73 17 0.70 3 0.67 3 0.93 9 0.82
Level 5 18 0.41 7 0.29 1 0.22 1 0.31 8 0.73
Level 6 10 0.23 7 0.29 1 0.22 0 0.00 2 0.18
Level 7 7 0.16 3 0.12 1 0.22 0 0.00 3 0.27
Level 8 6 0.14 6 0.25 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00
Level 9 5 0.11 2 0.08 0 0.00 0 0.00 3 0.27
Level 10 3 0.07 2 0.08 0 0.00 0 0.00 1 0.09
Level 11 3 0.07 2 0.08 0 0.00 0 0.00 1 0.09
Level 12 1 0.02 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00 1 0.09
Total 4363 100.00 2443 100.00 446 100.00 324 100.00 1091 100.00
e authority of the host is not limited to his procedural-level function as moderator,
deciding on who gets a turn to speak or not. Figure 6 shows that the host of an audience
debating programme can take on dierent roles, depending on the degree to which they
intervene at content and at procedural level.
Figure 6: Possible roles of the host in an audience discussion programme.
Permission to speak not needed
Formal introducer Debating partner
No intervention Interviewer Intervention
Regarding content Regarding content
Formal moderator Moderator-debater
Permission to speak needed
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Figure 719 shows that the host’s role as formal moderator is far less important than his
interviewer role, which involves his questioning both the invited guests and the panel
members either in response to their expressed desire to intervene or as a result of his
decision to solicit for more information. For example, the host can decide to change
the format and start a small-scale interview, oen related to an interviewee’s personal
experience or personal situation.
If the host’s interventions (especially his moderation and interviewing interventions)
are related to the person they are addressed to,20 then it is clear that he is preferring
interviewing to moderating. When the host addresses a panel member, the moderating/
interviewing-type intervention is more balanced, but his interviewing role remains
evident (see Figure 8).
As the rules of practice of interviews seem quite clear – a question followed by a
response – interviewees tend to be very open in their responses to the interviewer’s
questions. is openness is supported by the (abstract) assurance of the production
Figure 7: Host’s interventions.
Figure 8: Types of intervention by the host in relation to type of participant.
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team that the interviewee’s privacy will not be violated. In practice, this means rst
that the production team will ensure that the questions posed are not too intrusive or
sensitive. Second, interviewees can choose whether or not to respond to a question. e
situation in which the host interrogates a participant and claries a statement resembles
a situation of pastoral authority, in particular, because it is assumed that participants
are being truthful in their answers about themselves, their experiences, their emotions
and their personalities. In the rst part of History of Sexuality, Foucault argues that one
of the strategies of power is self-examination (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 175). e
need, in particular, for experts to interpret and/or to clarify the statements resulting
from such self-examination enmeshes us in relations of power with those who claim to
be able (or to be helping) to extract the truth from these statements. e role of the host
then could be seen (partially) as one of a guide (Karskens, 1986: 154) searching for the
‘real’ opinions and lives of the participants. In his role of guide, the host is able to use
confessional strategies.
2.6 Resistance to management in the broadcasting phase of Jan Publiek
e discursive and material power of the host in his roles of moderator and interviewer
is resisted repeatedly. At the procedural level, the host nds it dicult to impose his
pre-prepared structure, especially in terms of deciding when a new subtopic has – in
his opinion – to be launched. ere is also resistance when the authority of the host
concerning the turn-taking is contested: On several occasions, people started speaking
without asking for or being granted permission. e host also faces resistance when
he interrupts panel members in order to give others a turn: In some cases they simply
continued to speak, or protested at being interrupted, as the example below shows.
Panel member Gorik Pinkhof: […] But another problem that occurs as well, is what
happens when one of them earns a lot of money. e choice they are confronted with
is: who’s going to stay at home?
Host Jan Van Rompaey: Bruno [a househusband], were you the one that […]
Panel member Gorik Pinkhof: Wait, let me nish
Host Jan Van Rompaey: Yes, but I’m going to ask Bruno rst. Which one of the two
earned more? I mean, if you still have to […]
Guest Bruno: Now you mean?
Host Jan Van Rompaey: No no, now it’s your wife, but at the time?
Guest Bruno: At the time I think it was my wife, yes.
Host Jan Van Rompaey: Your wife, ok, yes. Gorik, you can continue.
(Broadcast 36 – 11 December 1997 – Start: 30:11 – Stop 31:21)
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e role of the host as interviewer is also contested. Some panel members became expert
at ignoring questions from the host and not losing their turn. ere were instances of
panel members trying to question the guests, which meant that the panel member (not
the host) was giving someone else (usually a guest or a BV) a turn, taking on part of
the host’s moderator role. By directly addressing another participant they, and not the
host, decide that the guest or BV should make a statement. Panel members sometimes
succeeded in asking direct questions, thus completely undermining the role of the
interviewer; however, more oen such behaviour was resisted by the host, who was not
willing to yield authority. Some situations were resolved through the panel member
asking permission to put a question, or the host echoing the panel member’s question, as
illustrated in this fragment.
Panel member Misjel Vossen: […] I would like to ask Bert [Anciaux], do you still nd
some time for yourself?
Host Jan Van Rompaey: Bert, do you still nd some time for yourself?
Panel member Misjel Vossen: I think that’s important as well.
Host Jan Van Rompaey: at’s important as well, says Misjel. Tough question.
Bert Anciaux: […]
(Broadcast 36 – 11 December 1997 – Start: 12:36 – Stop: 13:10)
Figure 9 provides an overview of the most frequently used forms of resistance. It shows
that interrupting the host, taking turns and giving other participants a turn are frequent
devices, as is not being deterred by an attempt to interrupt. e stronger forms of
resistance (such as protesting) are less frequent.
Figure 9: Most frequently used resistance strategies.
Type (selection) Frequency %
Giving other participants a turn 356 8.20
Interrupting the host 352 8.10
Taking a turn 311 7.10
Continuing despite an attempted interruption 155 3.60
Posing a question 54 1.20
Protesting against the host’s interruption 32 0.70
Other types of explicit criticism 22 0.50
Ignoring other instructions from the host 21 0.50
Protesting against the questions of the host 17 0.40
Explicit criticism of the subtopics/reportages 15 0.30
Refusing to answer a new question (but continuing) 14 0.30
Total number of interventions 4363 100.00
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2.7 Conclusion
e discourse on participation produced as a result of the dialectics of control strongly
foregrounds the importance of the presence of ordinary people in the media sphere.
During the 70-minute live Jan Publiek programmes broadcast on primetime television,
ordinary people were enabled to generate statements on specic topics and air their
opinions to a large audience. Panel members oen talked about personal experiences,
connoting that lay knowledge based on personal experience is worth talking about on
television. Also, their prolonged media presence prevented such statements from being
reduced to mere narrations of very specic authentic experience, and showed that
ordinary people have opinions on a diversity of issues.
In Jan Publiek, panel members are placed in a relative egalitarian position towards
members of dierent elites, and are seen discussing the topics with politicians and
experts, sometimes even interviewing them and questioning their opinions. From this
point of view, Jan Publiek does produce a participatory discourse involving ordinary
people because these people are positioned in power relations towards the programme
guests, which are at least egalitarian, but sometimes even unequal – to the advantage of
the panel members (and thus the opposite of ‘real’ life). is reversal, of course, is only
temporary, and could be interpreted as hiding traditional ‘real’-life power relations. To
put it simply: Questioning a politician does not automatically change her or his policies,
although showing a politician being questioned by ordinary people does support a more
egalitarian, participatory discourse.
Analysis of the power relations between the production team – especially the host
– and the panel members shows that in the discourse on participation, management
of the voices and confessional and disciplinary technologies play an important role.
eir subjection to this management unites the ordinary people with the members from
dierent non-media elites. e professional identity of the production team legitimates a
clear, unequal division of power: Panel members are limited in their ability to co-decide
in the pre- and post-broadcasting phases, and their capacity to articulate is hampered by
the authority of the host, resulting in fragmentation, segregation and lack of dialogue.
e unequal power distribution in Jan Publiek and the subjection of these ordinary
people to dierent forms of restrictive power (through the production team’s
management) did not prevent panel members from engaging in acts of resistance. ey
too took an active role in the dialectics of control, where power is always (but only to a
certain degree) shared and resisted. In particular, their continued participation oered
room for negotiation in order to resist the various types of management – connoting that
ordinary people can resist unequal power relations – by making unsolicited interventions,
protesting at losing their turns, contesting the role of the host or simply ignoring him,
but such resistance was still relatively limited. In most cases, panel members accepted
the rigid structure imposed on them.
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Comparing the generative powers of panel members, the restrictive powers they were
subjected to and their ability to resist those restrictive powers supports the conclusion
that the discourse on participation in Jan Publiek hardly approximates the maximalist
model of participation. Jan Publiek involves participation of ordinary people, who are
allowed to generate statements under the strong guidance of professional authority and
management. Participation is shown to be impossible without the management of a host
(and his production team), and to be highly constrained by the professional standards
of the broadcasters, whose main objective is still to make a ‘good’ programme, reducing
participation to a secondary objective. At the same time, Jan Publiek does more than
oer a purely minimalist form of participation, since participants are allowed to speak
their minds, their diversity is recognized, and the professional management is organized
in way that respects participants’ autonomy. Moreover, the programme does recognize
the political nature of the social, and acknowledges the importance of organizing the
participation of ordinary people (even if only as a secondary objective). However, Jan
Publiek fails to overcome the restrictions generated by traditional articulations of the
identities of the media professionals and the mainstream media production cultures.
3. Case 2: Barometer and the post-political
3.1 e post-political and post-democratic condition
e second case study looks at the hegemonic identity of media professionals and how
its discursive power legitimizes strong power imbalance in the context of a north Belgian
TV programme called Barometer. Although a wide variety of hegemonic and counter-
hegemonic discourses on participation and participatory practices can be generated
in the context of mainstream television, in this specic case there is a strong power
imbalance, and a dominant position of the media professionals that proves dicult to
contest.
Although the Foucauldian analytics of power structures this analysis of the dominant
position of the media professional (combined with a avour of the Aristotelian (myth of)
the rst mover), additional support can be found in the theories of the post-political and
the post-democratic. e argument oered here is that these two concepts, which refer
to the construction of an ultimate consensus that transcends (and disallows) political
dissent and thus legitimizes a specic regime, can be used also to analyse the media
sphere, and the management culture of its media professionals.
We rst turn to political theory, and more specically the work of Moue (and
others such as Žižek and Rancière) on the post-political. e starting point is Moue’s
recent work focusing on (amongst other issues) the conditions for the possibility of
agonism. Moue’s agonistic model of democracy is built on the distinction between
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antagonism (between enemies) and agonism (between adversaries). While the presence
of an adversary is considered legitimate, and his/her right to defend his/her ideas is not
questioned, an enemy is (to be) excluded from the political community (Moue, 1997: 4).
e aim of democratic politics then becomes to ‘tame’ or ‘sublimate’ antagonisms
(Moue, 2005: 20–21), without eliminating from the political realm conict or passion
or relegating them to the outskirts of the private, and without denying the structural
existence of antagonisms in society. Although agonistic struggle has been criticized by
Žižek (Žižek and Daly, 2004) for its inability to challenge the present-day, neo-liberal
status quo, Moue (2005: 33) believes that it can and should “bring about new meanings
and elds of application for the idea of democracy to be radicalized”.
But, at the same time, and as argued at the beginning of this chapter, Moue
recognizes the tendencies of political actors to strive for hegemony. To briey reiterate
this argument, as it will be developed further in chapter 3: Already in 1985, in Hegemony
and Socialist Strategy, co-authored with Ernesto Laclau, Moue makes extensive use of
the Gramscian (version of the) concept of hegemony. e ultimate objective of these
hegemonic projects is to construct and stabilize the nodal points that can constitute the
basis of a social order, the aim being to transform myths into a social imaginary, i.e. a
horizon that “is not one among other objects but an absolute limit which structures a
eld of intelligibility and is thus the condition of possibility of the emergence of any
object” (Laclau, 1990: 64). At the same time, these hegemonies can never be total, all-
encompassing or unchangeable, as they can always be challenged by counter-hegemonic
practices (Moue, 2005: 18).
In her 2005 book On the Political, Moue critiques the neo-liberal hegemony and
its capacity to ignore the pluralist and antagonistic characteristics of the political,
replacing it with an ethics of harmony and consensus. For Moue (2005: 9), the “context
of conictuality” remains crucial to our understanding of the political, and more
specically, conict and antagonisms are seen as the driving forces of contemporary
political realities. is position is hardly surprising, given Moue’s post-structuralist
emphasis on contingency and dierence, starting from the idea that re-articulations
and recongurations of the social are always possible. At the same time she recognizes
that stability and xity exist, but that at the same time the social is always structurally
unstable and unxed because any kind of stability and xity can always be destabilized
and dislocated. From this perspective, harmony and consensus are seen as temporarily
and spatially contingent, and cannot be seen as structural characteristics of the political.
Although Moue agrees that consensus is necessary, dissent continues to be an equally
necessary compagnion de route. Moue’s radical pluralism (whose development
originated in earlier work with Laclau21) articulates the existence of diversity and conict
as structuring forces of the political, which she contrasts with (a “dominant tendency
within” (Moue, 2005: 31)) liberalism, and the way it understands pluralism:
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e typical liberal understanding of pluralism is that we live in a world in which there
are indeed many perspectives and values and that, owing to empirical limitations, we
will never be able to adopt them all, but that, when put together, they constitute an
harmonious and non-conictual ensemble. (Moue, 2005: 10)
e discourse of consensus thus becomes another strategy to hegemonize (or
universalize, or essentialize) political projects that are intrinsically particular, a strategy
that aims to mute the voices that nd themselves outside the dominant social imaginary.
Moue’s (2005: 30) work suggests that this hegemonic strategy uses “essentialist forms
of identication or non-negotiable moral values” to establish a consensus and disregard
the possibility of dissensus. In this post-political conguration even the possibility
of contesting these forms of identication and moral values is non-existent. In other
words, the post-political is a political project that negates what structurally denes the
political (namely the existence of antagonism, dierence and dissensus), and that posits
a particular perspective on social reality as a universal and non-negotiable truth.
Moue’s perspective on the post-political is similar to Rancière’s concept of the
post-democratic, although Rancière focuses more on the (hegemonizing) role of
government.22 However, a more general formulation develops (in discussing “the
communitarian miscalculations”), in which Rancière (2007: 88) sees post-democracy as
“the rule of the principle of unication of the multitude under the common law of the
One”. His more specic formulation (relating post-democracy to government) resonates
with earlier critiques on the technocratization of the political and on competitive-elitist
democratic theory, where democratic government becomes detached from participation
(in whatever form), as illustrated by the following:
Postdemocracy is the government practice and conceptual legitimation of a democracy
aer the demos, a democracy that has eliminated the appearance, miscount, and dispute
of the people and is thereby reducible to the sole interplay of state mechanisms and
combinations […] It is the practice and theory of what is appropriate with no gap le
between the forms of the State and the state of social relations. (Rancière, 1991: 102;
quoted in Moue, 2005: 29, translation modied and emphasis in original)
Just as in the political, the role of power in the post-political and post-democratic
condition is crucial. Foucault’s analytics of power, where power is seen as mobile and
multidirectional, recognizes explicitly that power relations are not necessarily balanced. Of
course, the possibility of resistance and contra-strategies remains, and no actor will be able
ever to fully realize her or his strategies and intentions; but, at the same time, hegemonic
discourses and practices will continue to play crucial roles in structuring the social. In
some cases, hegemonic forces will manage to establish a social horizon that “is not one
among other objects but an absolute limit which structures a eld of intelligibility and is
thus the condition of possibility of the emergence of any object” (Laclau, 1990: 64).
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Another metaphor that can be applied to analyse this condition of hegemony is
Aristotle’s rst mover concept. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle claims that the divine is
dened by its capacity to generate movement without moving itself. As what is being
moved is intermediate, the rst mover is “something which moves without being moved,
being eternal, substance, and actuality”.23 Of course, the rst mover metaphor is hardly
capable of providing a convincing case for a divine existence. Nevertheless, it is a good
metaphor for the intensity and rigidity of hegemony, where the rst mover is perceived
as the source and origin of the emergence and movement of any object (to paraphrase
Laclau, 1990: 64), signifying its normality, taken-for-grantedness and indisputability.
As is the case with hegemony, the rst mover can be dethroned, denaturalized and de-
essentialized, but usually the rst mover does not yield lightly. From a Foucauldian
position, the rst mover also cannot escape being implicated, being moved, pushing the
rst mover to the level of the mythical.
Such is perhaps the most diabolical aspect of the idea and of all the applications it
brought about. In this form of management, power is not totally entrusted to someone
who would exercise it alone, over others, in an absolute fashion; rather this machine is
one in which everyone is caught, those who exercise this power as well as those who
are subjected to it. (Foucault, 1996)
In the context of this case study, special attention is paid to the notions of visibility and
invisibility in the exercise of power. Obviously, Foucault’s (use of the) metaphor of the
Panopticon shows the importance of visibility and invisibility in the exercise of power,
as the objects of the disciplining power are rendered visible to the disciplining gaze of
the guards that wield the power, while the guards remain invisible. In her discussion
of performance, Phelan (1993: 6) formulates this as follows: “e binary between the
power of visibility and the impotency of invisibility is falsifying. ere is real power
in remaining unmarked; and there are serious limitations to visual representation as a
political goal”. Referring to Lacan, she continues, “Visibility is a trap […] it summons
surveillance and the law; it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the colonialist/imperial
appetite for possession”. To put this within a Foucauldian perspective: e objects of
power have become more visible, while the exercise of power has become less visible.
And to use the Aristotelian metaphor, the rst mover becomes hidden, its operations
cloaked, whilst what is being moved becomes visible.
3.2 Media participation and the post-political
We can now return to the mainstream media, where (in some cases) the hegemony of
media-centrality, strengthened by, and translated into, the dominant position of the media
professional, allows the use of such concepts as the post-political and post-democracy. At the
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same time, it would be too simple to claim an all-encompassing application of these concepts
in the media sphere. Arguably, the post-political is not everywhere. One stage that it does
not necessarily enter is produced discourse, which remains diverse and oen contradictory
(avoiding hegemonic closure), and where the political can still play a major part.
But the post-political becomes very present at the level of the production process
and its skewed power relations. In many cases, mainstream media organizations remain
political because of the structural openness of the wide range of specic discourses
they produce, but oen simultaneously are post-political because the hegemonic and
consensual positions of the media professional (and the capitalist media system in which
the media professional is embedded) are normalized and almost impossible to contest.
We see many examples of resistant practices, but these practices are oen characterized by
their temporality and are incorporated quickly and easily within televisional narratives,
and absorbed within the power structures of programmes.
e alliance between media organizations and media professionals generates a
power bloc that has managed acceptance of its self-proclaimed centrality, and has
consolidated legitimacy of its high levels of control as a societal horizon. Mainstream
media, and even their participatory programming, become an illustration of post-
(media)democracy, with the alteration that, in these cases, media organizations, and
not the state, exercise extraordinary powers. is process is rst of all an example
of the workings of discursive powers, as this media-centrality and its interconnected
legitimacy to control is a cultural construct. At the same time, once media-centrality
and legitimacy to control have been hegemonized, they in their turn legitimize a wide
variety of other discursive and material power strategies. In this sense, mainstream
media production teams become the rst movers: ey are not seen themselves to be
movable, but they manage to generate the movements on which the media product is
constructed. And, especially in comparison to the powers they wield, their on-screen
visibility is limited (sometimes virtually non-existent); oen we can detect their
presence only through the eects of their actions.
3.3 A post-political case study: Barometer
An illustration of this emerges from analysis of the 2002 TV programme Barometer,
which was broadcast in north Belgian and was directly inspired by BBC’s Video Nation
(see chapter 4). ere have been two series of Barometer with, respectively, ve and eight
episodes. e programme is produced by Kanakna, and broadcast on the TV1 channel of
the public broadcaster VRT. All the episodes, and eight interviews with the producers,24
were analysed using qualitative content analysis (see Maso, 1989; Wester, 1987, 1995).
Each 20-minute episode of Barometer was based on six two-and-a-half- to three-
and-a-half-minute ‘video letters’, produced by ordinary viewers. e topics of these
video letters varied widely, as illustrated by the episode shown on 30 April 2002, which
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dealt with (1) practicing remen; (2) a 16-year-old, happy, mother; (3) a practical joke
involving a trac light; (4) a mucoviscidosis patient receiving a new pair of lungs; (5) a
complaint against rack renters; and (6) some elderly skydivers.
e programme and the video letters are introduced by Michiel Hendryckx, a (press)
photographer, who only later achieved some renown for presenting a motorcycle/travel
show (called e Gang of Wim). What is unusual is that Michiel Hendryckx is lmed
in his own living room making the Barometer introductions, a device that is used to
increase the authenticity and appearance of ordinariness. At the start of the rst episode,
the presenter explains this:
Good evening, and welcome to Barometer, the new TV1 programme. But also welcome
to my home, and this is rather unusual – TV programmes are only rarely produced
or broadcast from somebody’s home. But Barometer isn’t an ordinary programme,
it is a programme that is made by you, the viewers. (Michiel Hendryckx, Presenter
Barometer, episode 30 April 2002)
e programme’s production process is seemingly straightforward. Viewers are invited
to send in video letters to the programme’s presenter, Michiel Hendryckx. As his
introduction in the second episode suggests, he makes the selection of which material
will be broadcast.
Good evening, and welcome to the second episode of Barometer. It has been a busy
week, I’ve received many video letters, letters that were made by you. I have watched
them with pleasure and, as usual, I have selected six. e rst letter is from Keerbergen
[a small Belgian city], and was made by Linda. Linda is a happy woman, the daughter
of a farming family, who is afraid that the environment and scenery of her youth is
about to disappear. (Michiel Hendryckx, Presenter Barometer, episode 6 May 2002)
On other occasions, the presenter’s intros and outros suggest a slightly more complicated
production process, in which the production team supplies the camera and provides
technical support. Nevertheless, the idea is that ordinary people can produce these video
letters themselves, as explained by VRT’s producer Wendel Goossens: “e idea was
to give a half hour of our broadcasting time to our viewers. We want to be a forum
for viewers, that they can go to, and where we as programme makers do not interfere”
(Wendel Goossens, VRT Producer Barometer, November 2002 interview). If we compare
the (public version of the) production process of Barometer with Video Nation (see chapter
4), two important dierences emerge. First, in the case of (the televised version of) Video
Nation, the participant support structure is extensive; participants had possession of
the camera for a longer period, and a member of the production team was on hand to
provide assistance. Second, because Video Nation was embedded in the ideology of the
BBC’s Community Programme Unit, attempts were made to maximize the participant
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power base within the BBC’s institutional context. In the case of Barometer, the support
and the intensity of the participatory process were less developed.
3.4 Barometer and the hidden production team
If we examine the management techniques used by the Barometer production team,
we can see that power relations in its production process were not very well balanced.
e media professionals intervened at a number of levels to facilitate the production
process and to increase the professional quality of the video letters. First, they contacted
participants in advance, which allowed the production team to plan and structure the
actual lming. Although the participants had a voice in this negotiation, the media
professional culture had a strong impact on the negotiation and its outcomes. One of the
producers explains this as follows:
What happens beforehand is a discussion over the phone; then we say: Yes, and how
will we be able to do that? We’ll start with you in the playground, and then we should
go into the classroom to lm, so all the girlfriends need to be there. And what class
are we going to take? So we do create a structure beforehand, and then we explain
how they need to operate the camera. Some of them can do it themselves, others can’t
and then we do it for them. (Wendel Goossens, VRT Producer Barometer, November
2002 interview)
Second, when lming had been completed, the raw material was collected and processed
by the media professionals. Aer an initial screening, the material was passed to a
(professional) editor, to reduce it to a well-structured, short video letter, and add music.
Although VRT’s managers criticized Kanakna for “aesthetisizing the [video letters]
too much, modifying them and adding sound to them” (Frank Symoens, Production
Manager VRT, November 2002 interview), and the presenter expressed dissatisfaction
with the addition of music, Kanakna refused to implement the ‘rough’ editing style,
which audience research indicated would have been disliked. Kanakna’s producer of
Barometer articulated Kanakna’s role as follows, again emphasizing the role of the media
professional and the imposition of professional standards at the levels of both content
and form:
It is something that these people have been working on for two hours; you can’t
broadcast the full version. It [the unedited version] is of no value to the viewer, so of
course we have to edit it. It is our job, to reduce the length, and to make the story –
how it is told by the person – as clear and specic as possible in the three minutes
available. And that’s the hardest thing of all, because these people are clearly having
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trouble saying clearly and concretely what it boils down to. (Isabel Dierckx, Kanakna
Producer Barometer, November 2002 interview)
But the production team’s most important intervention arguably was at the level of
selection. On this point, interviews were contradictory. Most people involved in the
production process described the formal procedure as outlined above. In one case, the
VRT producer of Barometer referred to the small number of contributions, but then
changed the conversation (“It wasn’t the case that we got a gigantic number of [pause]
but let’s look at the procedure […]”) (Wendel Goossens, VRT’s Barometer Producer,
November 2002 interview). But in an interview, the presenter – a press photographer and
not a Kanakna employee – described a dierent procedure, later (in 2008) conrmed by
three other interviews.25 e presenter explained that Kanakna had not received enough
contributions and decided to add some researchers to the production team to scan the
newspapers for potential stories and participants.
I was led to believe that these people [the participants] contacted Kanakna themselves
[…] but aer the summer, during the second series, it turned out that almost nobody
[…] ey had to go and look for people. ey searched the newspaper for articles,
then they contacted the people, and asked them: Would you like to make a video
letter? (Michiel Hendryckx, Presenter Barometer, November 2002 interview)
is extract is not only an indication of the post-political and post-democratic condition
within the media system, it shows also the invisibility of the power exercised by the
production team. Again, with the exception of the presenter, who was not a formal
member of the production team, the media professionals were not visible on the screen.
e presenter symbolically represents the Barometer production team (making the media
professional seem visible in the programme), but, at the same time, he is an outsider with
little control (rendering the ‘real’ media professionals invisible). For instance, with one
exception and despite the formulation of his introduction to the programmes, which
suggests otherwise, he has no say in the selection of the video letters. e presenter
claims to have received the video letters on the day before his introductions are lmed.
When asked who is responsible for the selection, he replies (rhetorically excluding
himself from the production team), “e people from the production team do that. You’ll
have to ask them […] I didn’t […] I only vetoed a letter once, but I didn’t have a say”
(Michiel Hendryckx, Presenter Barometer, November 2002 interview). VRT’s producer
of Barometer conrmed that the presenter was not involved in the selection process, and
legitimized this decision as follows:
It was certainly the impression that he [the presenter] had something to do with it,
and that he chose and selected the topics. It really didn’t happen like that – but that is
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oen the case with television programmes: Not everything is what it seems. (Wendel
Goossens, VRT’s Producer Barometer, November 2002 interview)
Of course, the invisibility in Barometer does not apply only to the personages of the
media professionals; it applied also to their interventions in the programme. e most
interesting case is the presenter’s claim that he was – at least initially – unaware that people
were invited to contribute by the researchers on the production team. e possibility
that invited contributions were used was never mentioned during the programme.
Showing clear irritation during the interview, the presenter referred to a conversation
he had with Wim Van Severen, the VRT channel manager of TV1, in which he (Michiel
Hendryckx) expressed his dissatisfaction with these management techniques. He not only
problematized that these techniques were hidden, he also made it clear that he did not
appreciate the fact that they contradicted what he said in his televised introductions:
I say [on TV]: ‘Good evening, welcome to Barometer, I’ve had a tremendous number
of contributions’. But I hadn’t had any! You had to go and look for them, like idiots, for
all kinds of people that might have something to say!’ (Michiel Hendryckx, Presenter
Barometer, November 2002 interview – referring to a conversation with Wim Van
Severen, Channel manager VRT TV1)
3.5 e post-political and its ethical-democratic questions
In this case study, my major claim is that one of the democratic problems of mainstream
television (in a broad sense) is the post-political and post-democratic nature of the power
position of its media professionals. Although a diversity of discourses can be generated
through mainstream television, its participatory practices and its produced discourses on
participation and democracy remain problematic, due to the management of the media
professionals involved, and the apparent impossibility of contesting the unequal power
relations that legitimize this management. Many identities, discourses and practices in
mainstream television can be contested, but the position of the media professionals,
exerting their psychological property, is oen situated beyond (structural) contestation
and becomes a social imaginary, making the media professional a rst mover. is rst
mover power position allows the media professionals to exercise the generative and
restrictive powers required to overcome resistance and to make things move.
We see clearly the opportunities for empowerment (mainly related to the specicity
of programme discourses and practices), but combined here with a high likelihood of
disempowerment related to the production process and its televisional representation.
Whatever the limitations in terms of the technical and narrative skills of ordinary
people in Barometer, and whatever the need for eciency and production speed, the
deontological question is how to legitimize the programme’s unfounded claims of
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participatory intensity, and the reconciliation of claims to maximalist participation
combined with heavy management.
Both case studies, Barometer and (to a lesser degree) Jan Publiek, illustrate the strong
presence (and impact) of management techniques, and how the television sphere
manages, very eectively, to hide its power and render the production team’s management
role largely invisible. Because the production team’s direct interventions are meant to
be invisible, control is translated into a system of rules, or a set of procedures. In the
case of Barometer, the presenter becomes the visual representation of the production
team, deecting attention from the ‘real’ production team’s power, rendering it invisible.
Moreover, the team’s restricted denition of participation, and lack of participatory
attitude, leads to a specic operationalization of the participatory process in a set of
procedures, which aects the entire programme and the roles allowed for participants.
To defend the programme, participants in Barometer are, to some extent, still valued,
although their lack of skills is sometimes held against them. e intense management is
legitimized by the need for quality, eciency and speed within a capitalist media economy.
is makes Barometer an illustration of the normalization of media (professional) power
as an impassive mover, the primum movens immobile, that manages to hegemonize its
own basic assumptions, cultures, practices, principles and procedures.
Notes
1. e rst part of History of Sexuality in French has the subtitle La Volonté du Savoir (e Will
to Know), which, in the English translation, is replaced by the unimaginative An Introduction.
In using the title History of Sexuality in this chapter, I refer only to the rst part of Foucault’s
trilogy: La Volonté du Savoir.
2. Not all authors agree upon the distinction between the Foucauldian concept of productive
power and Giddens’s concept of generative power. Tucker (1998: 114), for instance, treats both
concepts as more or less equal: “Giddens sees the primary importance of power in somewhat
Foucauldian terms, for power is productive as well as repressive”.
3. Foucault (2002).
4. Already in the Archaeology of Knowledge, he was discussing what he then called the non-
discursive, which is “an institutional eld, a set of events, practices and political decisions,
a sequence of economic processes that also involve demographic uctuations, techniques
of public assistance, manpower needs, dierent levels of unemployment, etc” (Foucault,
2002: 174). e role of the body as an object of (bio)power was thematized only later.
5. e name of the programme originates from a Dutch expression that could be translated as
‘Joe Public’, referring to the so-called ‘man in the street’.
6. In order not to resonate with the strong Flemish identity construction process, the description
‘north Belgium’ is preferred.
7. e name of the public broadcaster, BRTN (Belgische Radio- en Televisieomroep
Nederlandstalige Uitzendingen – Belgian Radio and Television Broadcaster – Dutch-spoken
Broadcasts), was changed in 1998 to VRT (Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep – Flemish Radio
Keyword – Power
171
and Television Broadcaster, and in 2009 to Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie –
Flemish Radio and Television Broadcasting Organization).
8. e rst series of Jan Publiek (the only series without a panel of ordinary people) had 21
episodes, the second series sixteen and the three subsequent series thirteen episodes.
9. Not all episodes were broadcast live. For instance, three episodes of the second series of Jan
Publiek were not broadcast live because the main studio was not available. In these cases, the
programme was broadcast ‘as live’, with only minimal intervention.
10. Because Jan Publiek is mainly (but not exclusively) based on group discussion, the management of
bodies is reduced to the management of voices. Spatial elements will thus (largely) be ignored.
11. Data were collected during an elaborate project on three Dutch-spoken audience discussion
programmes, in collaboration with Sonja Spee, who was then based at the Centre for Women’s
Studies, Antwerp, Belgium. I also want to thank her.
12. In the original transcription Button and Lee’s (1987) transcription system was used, but the
transcription symbols were not included in the English translation of the selected fragments.
13. e coding of one broadcast (broadcast 37) was subjected to Scott’s intercoder reliability test
(Krippendor, 1980), resulting in values larger than 0.80 for all coding systems.
14. e nine media professionals were Stefan De Bouver, Jean Philip De Tender, Ann Geeraert,
Veerle Heyvaert, Murielle Sterckendries, Steven Van Campenhout, Jan Van Rompaey, Eva
Vansteene and Luc Vermaut. ese interviews took place in October and November 1998. In
all cases, the full names will be mentioned.
15. e twenty panel members were Damien Besard, Suzanne De Bruyn, Rudi De Kerpel, Albert
Dumortier, Simone Goossens, Astrid Houthuys, Marga Jorissen, Simonne Laget, Betty
Lathouwers, Fatiha Mataiche, Carmen Morales Ortiz, Gorik Pinkhof, Pierre Raemdonck,
Roeland Rummers, Geert Van Beek, Annie Van Mulders, Frans Vanhelmont, Eric Verhoye,
Misjel Vossen and Sandrina Walschap. Also these interviews took place in October and
November 1998. e 2007 interviews with 13 of these panel members were not used in this
chapter, but only in chapter 3.
16. ‘Experience expert’ is a category that refers to an ordinary person who has lived a specic
experience, which legitimizes her or his participation.
17. All fragments used as illustrations originate from one randomly selected episode.
18. Fiy-six interventions could not be attributed to the (experience) expert categories, and were
not included.
19. is analysis is based on the 4521 interventions made by the host. Because codes overlap, the
total number is 5883.
20. In this analysis only a proportion (3256) of the available coded fragments could be used. For
example, in some cases the host’s intervention clearly applied to the previous and not the next
speaker. In other cases, no speaker contributed aer the host’s intervention.
21. See Laclau and Moue (1985).
22. Rancière’s version of the post-democratic does not lament the demise of (representative)
democracy, but theorizes hegemonic processes within (representative) democracies.
23. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book XII, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.12.xii.html.
24. I want to thank Ann Braeckman for her help with the analysis; David De Wachter, Geert
Dexters, Faiza Djait, Adil Fares, Paul Lashmana, Sabine Lemache, Tine Peeters and Yolanda
Van Dorsselaer for conducting the interviews in November 2002 with Michiel Hendryckx
(Presenter Barometer), Isabel Dierckx (Kanakna Barometer Producer), Wendel Goossens
(VRT Producer Barometer), Noel Swinnen (Manager Kanakna), Frank Symoens (Production
Manager TV1 VRT), and Jean-Philip De Tender (Channel Adviser TV1 VRT). I also want
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to thank Maaika Santana for her interviews with Barometer researchers Eva Willems (24
September 2008) and Joke Blommaerts (26 September 2008). All interview and programme
citations are translations by the author from Dutch.
25. On 30 August 2008, in a Facebook exchange, Isabel Dierckx (former Barometer Kanakna
Producer) conrmed that there were four researchers involved: Joke Blommaert, Eva Willems,
Caroline Meerschaert and Koen De Blende (the last two were also involved in the lming).
In subsequent interviews, Joke Blommaert and Eva Willems conrmed that they had scouted
for potential participants.
Chapter 3
Keyword – Identity
1. A conceptual introduction
1.1 Identity theory
As the notion of identity carries many dierent meanings, I need to explain how
I use the concept here. Two major theoretical strands dene identity, the more
psychological (personal identity) strand and the more sociocultural (social
or cultural identity) strand: e present text is aligned to the latter. More specically,
identity is seen as a discursive structure that endows meaning to objects and individual
and collective agents. From this perspective, the social is characterized by a multitude
of circulating identities, contested and contestable, that oer subjects opportunities for
identication (which in turn creates the link with the more psychological approaches)
and provide them with the building blocks of their subjectivities. Support for this
position can be found in Sayyid and Zac’s (1998: 263) approach, when they write that
identity is to be dened in two related ways. First, identity is “the unity of any object
or subject”. is denition is in line with Fuss’s (1989: ix) denition of identity as “the
‘whatness’ of a given entity”. A second component of the denition of identity comes into
play when the concept is applied to the way in which social agents are identied and/or
identify themselves within a certain discourse. Sayyid and Zac’s (1998: 263) examples in
this context are “workers, women, atheists, British”.
As mentioned in chapter 2, Laclau and Moue call this last component of identity
a subject position (i.e., the result of the positioning of subjects within a discursive
structure), which is used to describe the discursive positionings of actors. An important
characteristic of the subject position concept is that it emphasizes the role of discursive
structures to provide people with positions within the social, but simultaneously allows
space for the contingent articulation of these positionings:
Whenever we use the category of ‘subject’ in this text, we will do so in the sense of
‘subject positions’ within a discursive structure. Subjects cannot, therefore, be the
origin of social relations – not even in the limited sense of being endowed with powers
that render an experience possible – as all ‘experience’ depends on precise discursive
conditions of possibility (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 115).
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In other words, Laclau and Moue’s denition implies neither a structuralist nor a
voluntarist position. Although they endorse Althusser’s critique of the autonomous
and self-transparent subject (a voluntarist position), they vehemently reject Althusser’s
economic determinism (a structuralist position), because in their view this aspect of
Althusser’s theory leads to a “new variant of essentialism” (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 98).
However, Laclau and Moue’s rejection of this aspect of Althusser’s work does not
deter their borrowing from him the originally Freudian concept of overdetermination,
although they alter its meaning:
Society and social agents lack any essence, and their regularities merely consist of
the relative and precarious forms of xation which accompany the establishment
of a certain order. is [Althusser’s] analysis seemed to open up the possibility of
elaborating a new concept of articulation, which would start from the overdetermined
character of social relations. But this did not occur. (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 98)
e notion of overdetermination is one of the strategies that Laclau and Moue use to
emphasize the contingency of the social and of identities. is contingency can already
be found at the heart of their discourse theory, when they discuss the nature of discursive
structures (including identities and subject positions), the importance of articulation,
the oating of signiers and the innitude of the eld of discursivity. A discourse is seen
as a structured entity that articulates dierent elements, whose meaning is altered by the
process of articulation itself. Inspired by early semiology, Laclau and Moue (1985: 106)
claim that “all identity is relational”, which implies the establishment of relationships
of inclusion and exclusion, but also a process of modication. is becomes clear in
their denition of articulation, which is seen as a “practice establishing a relation among
elements such that their identity is modied as a result of the articulatory practice” (Laclau
and Moue, 1985: 105). Contingency originates from the specicity of the articulated
elements (where some elements become articulated in a discourse, and others are not
– they remain available in the eld of discursivity), from the process of articulation and
the specicity of the combination of elements, and from the possibility of re-articulation
(where new elements become articulated or old elements become disarticulated, which
aects the entire discourse).
But contingency also features prominently in Laclau and Moue’s political identity
theory (which builds upon their discourse theory in the strict sense – see Carpentier and
Spinoy, 2008), where the political is seen as a site of conict, antagonism and struggle
for hegemony (see also Moue (2005) for an elaborate argumentation). Although their
political identity theory focuses more on attempted stabilizations of the social through
hegemonizing processes, they still base their theory on an ontology of contingency
where hegemony can never be total. Also the actual process of establishing a hegemonic
social imaginary presupposes societal contingency. is struggle for hegemony takes
place in “a eld criss-crossed by antagonisms” (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 135), where
Keyword – Identity
177
dierent sets of identities are aligned into a hegemonic project1 and opposed to another
negative identity, a constitutive outside. rough the interplay between antagonistic
identities, these identities become constructed and can (in some cases) gain dominance.
But Laclau and Moue’s negative-relationalist approach to identity also allows them to
show the limits of the formative capacity of antagonism (in constructing identities),
since the presence of the ‘other’ identity remains a necessary component in the identity
construction process. is means that identity can never be fully developed and
foreclosed: “e presence of the Other prevents me from being totally myself ” (Laclau
and Moue, 1985: 125). Antagonistic identities try to (discursively) eliminate each other
but simultaneously need each other as each other’s outsides.
Despite Laclau and Moue’s careful positioning of the subject between structuralism
and voluntarism, Žižek critiques their reduction of the subject to its subject positions.
In an essay published in Laclau’s New Reections on the Revolution of our Time, Žižek
(1990: 250) explains this reduction as “an eect of the fact that Laclau and Moue had
progressed too quickly” and did not manage to combine the “radical breakthrough” at
the level of the concept of antagonism with an equally well-elaborated theory of the
subject. is criticism has led Laclau, in particular, to acknowledge “the importance of an
understanding of subjectivity in terms of the subject-as-lack” (Glynos and Stavrakakis,
2004: 202). Although in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Laclau and Moue, 1985)
subjectivities are already seen as a fusion of a multiplicity of identities, where the
overdetermined presence of some identities in others prevents their closure, Laclau’s
later work more clearly distinguishes between subject and subjectivation, identity, and
identication. e impossibility of the multiplicity of identities lling the constitutive
lack of the subject prevents their full and complete constitution because of the inevitable
distance between the obtained identity and the subject, and because of the (always
possible) subversion of that identity by other identities. In Laclau’s (1990: 60) own
words, “the identication never reaches the point of full identity”. Or as Sayyid and Zac
(1998: 263) put it, “the subject is always something more than its identity”. As Torng
(1999: 150) illustrates, there are many possible points of identication:
A student who is expelled from the university might seek to restore the full identity
she never had by becoming either a militant who rebels against the ‘system,’ the perfect
mother for her two children, or an independent artist who cares nothing for formal
education.
Precisely the contingency of identities and the failure to reach a fully constituted identity
creates the space for subjectivity, agency, freedom and the particularity of human
behaviour:
e freedom thus won in relation to the structure is therefore a traumatic fact initially: I
am condemned to be free, not because I have no structural identity as the existentialists
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assert, but because I have a failed structural identity. is means that the subject is
partially self-determined. However, as this self-determination is not the expression of
what the subject already is but the result of the lack of its being instead, self-determination
can only proceed though processes of identication. (Laclau, 1990: 44)
e self-determination that Laclau mentions generates space for subjects to become
actively involved in the identity construction process, working with the building blocks
that are available within the social, (re-)articulating and performing them, struggling
against them and adopting them. Identity politics (or the politics of identity – see Hall,
1989), for instance, is very much based on the political agency of those engaged in the
deconstruction of dominant identities. Another concept that refers to the active role
of subjects in dealing with their identities is identity work. is concept – originally
used at a more individual level (see Snow and Anderson, 1987) but later applied to
collective identities and subject positions (see e.g., Reger et al., 2008) – captures the
discursive eorts that people undertake in order to (re)construct and maintain their
identities. But identity work and identity politics also have a material component, as is
theorized by Butler (1990) in relation to gender identities. She stresses the performativity
of identity, where identities become constructed through the repetition of acts. is
does not mean that Butler (1993: 12) disconnects performativity from its discursive
environment: “Performativity is thus not a singular ‘act,’ for it is always a reiteration of
a norm or a set of norms […]”. Nevertheless, Butler’s work allows the addition of an
important material component to identity theory.
Human self-determination, of course, is not unlimited. As Laclau (1990: 44) argues,
“self-determination can only proceed though processes of identication”, which generate
the connection with discursive structures (or subject positions) that are outside the
subject itself. At the same time, there is a strong desire for the wholeness of identities and
the harmonious resolution of social antagonisms, although this wholeness and harmony
is structurally lacking. If we turn to a Lacanian perspective, we can see that desire is
conceptualized exactly through a relation to a lack (and not as a relation to an object).
What causes the desire is exactly the lack, the incompleteness, of identity, which lies at
the core of all subjectivity (Lacan, 1991: 139; Kirshner, 2005: 83). Subjects crave fully
constituted identities, but they can never be realized. e lack can never be lled; the
desire can never be satised. Desire is the “lack of being whereby the being exists” (Lacan,
1988: 223), which turns it into an endless unconscious driving force. e mechanism
that allows us to cope with this structural inability and the frustration it generates is
fantasy, because fantasy provides us with hope and protection (Lacan, 1979: 41). Fantasy
provides the subject with (imaginary) frames to conceal the lack, and the promise to
overcome it (Lacan 1994: 119–120). Nevertheless, this ultimate victory remains out of
reach, and eventually all fantasies are again frustrated and their limits become visible,
showing the contingency of identity and the social.
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1.2 e subject position of ordinary people
In participatory processes, subject positions play a signicant role, as they (co-)
structure discursive positionings and material practices. Subject positions such as
‘audience member’ or ‘media professional’ circulate widely in society, and carry
specic – sometimes dominant – meanings that aect the position and power relations
of actors in participatory processes. e discursive aordances of these signiers, for
instance, normalize specic types of behaviour, and disallow other kinds of behaviour.
As mentioned in the previous part of this chapter, subject positions are not necessarily
stable, and they can be contested, resisted and re-articulated. In this sense, signiers
such as ‘audience member’ or ‘media professional’ are always implicated in the struggle
between more minimalist and more maximalist approaches to participation.
When analysing participation, the concept of ordinary people merits special attention.
As will be argued below, this subject position – and its discursive relationship towards
societal elites – encapsulates basic societal dierences, which might become (and oen
are) translated into a societal hierarchy that incorporates structural power imbalances.
ese discursive power imbalances, of course, are also generative and constitutive, and
not exclusively restrictive and problematic, and they will also be resisted in a variety of
ways. Nevertheless, the articulation of the concept of ordinary people – for instance, as
an active, relevant social group with valuable opinions and knowledges, or as a passive
mass – contributes to (pre)structuring the positions people (can) take in society, and
may enable or limit their role in participatory processes.
is applies also to participation in and through the media. e subject position
of ordinary people – which is closely related to, but still distinct from, the subject
position of the audience – gains its meanings by becoming juxtaposed to a series of
more elitist subject positions that also circulate in the media sphere, such as media
professionals, celebrities, experts and politicians.2 e specic articulations of ordinary
people, through their juxtaposition to elitist positions (and the dierences this entails)
impact on the intensity of ordinary people’s participation in media productions and in
media organizations because these articulations (co-)dene the levels of participation
that are socially desirable and possible. Moreover, media organizations are one of the
many discursive machines that produce and reproduce a diversity of these subject
positions, turning the (inter)actions of ordinary people, media professionals, experts
and many other actors embedded in a wide range of social categories into mediated
discourses. ese discourses in some cases are highly uid, multi-layered and
sometimes contradictory, but in other cases they are more singular and rigid since
they are embedded within specic hegemonies. In other words, media discourses not
only relate to the topics being explicitly addressed; but media organizations also (re)
produce discourses on participation, on ordinary people and other social categories,
on the power relations that lie behind the participatory process, and on the conditions
of possibility and limits of the participatory process. Finally, reception will also be
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impacted by these subject positions, as audience members will use them to make sense
of that they see, read and hear.
Before we can address the subject position of ordinary people more thoroughly, we need
to look at the theoretical reections on a related concept – everyday life. First, the concept
of everyday life has received much more theoretical attention than that of ordinary people,
and generated much richer theoretical frameworks. Following Gregg’s and Sandywell’s
arguments, care should nevertheless be taken not to “erase” (Gregg, 2007: 99) the ordinary
through an unnecessary focus on the everyday, or not to “denigrate” the ordinary through
“the very act of being theorised as ‘everyday life’” (Sandywell, 2004: 174). Second, especially
Lefebvre’s work on the everyday increases the weight of the political in the ordinary and is
relevant for discussion here. A third argument is that one of the main signications of the
ordinary is grounded in the everyday, when the ordinary is dened through its articulation
with everyday (authentic) experiences.
1.2.1 e everyday
When analysing the everyday (and the ordinary) we can distinguish between more
essentialist and relationist perspectives. e more essentialist approaches tend to see
identities as stable, independent and possessing a ‘true’ essence. e more relationist
approaches incorporate notions of uidity and contingency, see identities as mutually
dependent and ignore the existence of ‘true’ essences. Despite the incorporation of
these essentialist approaches in this chapter, identities are still – as mentioned above
– seen basically as relational, contingent and the result of articulatory practices within
a discursive framework, which eventually will allow us to rework these essentialist
approaches and to show their relationist nature.
e more essentialist frameworks that theorize the everyday stress the repetitive,
the unpurposeful, the unnoticed and the routine-based as the main characteristics
of the everyday. One illustration is Felski’s (1999/2000: 18) seminal denition of the
everyday as “grounded in three key facets: time, space and modality. e temporality of
the everyday […] is that of repetition, the spatial ordering of the everyday is anchored
in a sense of home and the characteristic mode of experiencing the everyday is that of
habit”.
e diculty in capturing the everyday has led many authors to dene the everyday
in a relationist way, or at least to generate some openings towards a relationist denition.
In these relationist approaches, everyday life is seen as dierent from the exceptional, or
the sublime and its enchantment. For instance, de Certeau (1984: xx) refers to everyday
“practices that produce without capitalizing”, and Bennett and Watson (2002: x) mention
that everyday life is depicted “as ordinary in the sense that it is not imbued with any
special religious, ritual or magical signicance”. Even Lefebvre (1958: 97), whose
Marxist orientation leads him to a more essentialist approach to the everyday, proposes
Keyword – Identity
181
a denition of everyday life in relation to “exceptional” or “superior” activities such as
dreams, art, philosophy, politics, etc.
e advantage of these relationist approaches is that they allow the uid construction
of the everyday life to be emphasized, and highlight the impossibility of (permanently)
capturing this oating signier (Laclau and Moue, 1985: 112–113). On the downside,
the risk of the relationist approaches is twofold. First, the old romantic dichotomy
between the everyday ‘inauthentic’ and the tragic ‘authentic’, which characterized the
work of the early Lukács (1974) for instance, still threatens to contaminate any type of
relationist approach towards the everyday. Second, hyper-relationist approaches bring
along the risks of cultural relativism, and the disarticulation of everyday life from its
potentially empowering signication. For these reasons it is crucial not to disregard the
essentialist approaches of the everyday, but to incorporate them in a more constructivist/
relationist position that allows articulation of the uid nature of everyday life. For
instance, in the case of Felski’s denition, where the everyday is based on repetition, home
and habit, a more relationist re-articulation would emphasize the need for singularity,
non-homely spaces and uniqueness as constitutive outsides for the denition of the
everyday. Moreover, this relationist re-articulation would also stress the contamination
of repetition with singularity, home with non-home and habit with uniqueness.
e distinction that Lefebvre (1988) makes between the everyday (le quotidien) and
everydayness (la quotidiennité) is especially worth salvaging. Lefebvre strongly emphasizes
the critical, political and emancipatory potential of the everyday, as the site where social
change resides. Roberts (2006: 13) summarizes Lefebvre’s position as follows: “the everyday
is that social or experimental space in which the relations between technology and cognition,
art and labour are congured and brought to critical consciousness”. It is not “simply the
expression of dominant social relations, but the very place where critical thinking and
action begins” (Roberts, 2006: 38). In order to theorize the dierence between capital’s
administration of atomization and repetition, and the modality of social transformation
and class resistance against this atomization and repetition, Lefebvre uses the distinction
between the everyday and everydayness. is safeguards the critical-political potential
of the everyday, which is seen as “lived experience (le vécu) elevated to the status of a
concept and to language. And this is not done to accept it but, on the contrary, to change
it” (Lefebvre, 1988: 86).
1.2.2 e ordinary (people)
Similar to the above discussion on the everyday, the ordinary and, more specically,
ordinary people can also be approached by using more essentialist perspectives. While
the concept of ordinary people is sometimes seen as a synonym for ‘the people’, in many
other cases, a class-based denition is used in which ordinary people are dened as
“members of the working and middle classes” (Bennett and Watson, 2002: x). Hartley
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(1994: 173) explicitly refers to the moments when the concept of ordinary people is used
as “convenient ‘erasures’ or euphemisms for class”.
But, again, the uidity of the signier ordinary people (and of class), and the diculty
of capturing the signier (see umim, 2006) need to be emphasized. De Certeau
(1984: 2) pointed out that ordinary people are “Everyman & Nobody, Chacun & Personne,
Jedermann & Niemand”. In his preface to e Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau (1984)
stresses this uidity as follows: “To a common hero, an ubiquitous character, walking in
countless thousands on the streets. In invoking here at the outset of my narratives the
absent gure who provides both their beginning and their necessity, I inquire into the
desire whose impossible object he represents”. As was the case with everyday life, this
uidity has resulted in the development of a number of relationist approaches, assisted
by the de-essentialization of the notion of class itself. rough this process, class not only
lost its privileged position as explanans, but also became articulated as more contingent
and part of a struggle to signify. While the class concept is not completely abandoned,
some authors translated class dierences into an elite versus the people relationship. For
instance, Hall (1981: 238) positions (ordinary) people versus this power bloc, consisting
of members of societal elites, i.e. “the side with the cultural power to decide what belongs
and what does not, an alliance of social forces which constitute what is not the people”.
Also Williams (1981: 226) uses a people–elite approach when he refers to ordinary people
as “a generalised body of Others […] from the point of view of a conscious governing or
administrative minority”.
A number of authors writing from a communication and media studies perspective
also use these relationist approaches. Ytreberg (2004: 679) describes ordinary people as
non-professional and non-specialized performers. Syvertsen (2001: 319) denes ordinary
people as people who are not media professionals, experts, celebrities or newsworthy for
any other reason. And Turner (2010), in his book on the demotic turn, contrasts ordinary
people with celebrities, experts and media professionals. ese subject positions act as
constitutive outsides for the subject position of ordinary people. is means also that the
qualities that are articulated with these ‘other’ subject positions are out of the reach of
the ordinary people subject position: ey actually contribute to the construction of the
dierence between them. For example, the level of renown is a quality that ‘belongs’ to
celebrities, and is (thus) disarticulated from ordinary people (Hamo, 2006: 430). Other
examples are the elements of knowledge (Livingstone and Lunt, 1994: 101–102) and
authenticity (ornborrow, 2001: 478), which construct the dierence between experts
and ordinary people.
Finally, Laclau (1977: 166), who also uses this relational approach, emphasizes the
conictual and dominating nature of the relationship between ordinary people and the
power bloc. He writes, “the people/power bloc contradiction is an antagonism whose
intelligibility depends not on the relations of production but the complex of political and
ideological relations of domination constituting a determinate social formation”. e
issue of domination that Laclau raises unavoidably foregrounds the resistance debate
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(see also de Certeau, 1984). Another way to capture this resistance and to emphasize
the political nature of the signier ordinary people is by using Lefebvre’s distinction
between the everyday and everydayness. is distinction allows us to see the ordinary
as a site of resistance against the workings of power elites, and ordinariness can then be
used to refer to the administration, disciplining and management of ordinary people
by these power blocs. rough this distinction, the ordinary is invested with a clear
emancipatory signication, which consists of resisting the strategies of the societal elites
and power blocs. As this semantic strategy again risks introducing a number of too
essentialist positions, it remains a necessary condition to embed these concepts within
a more constructivist/relationist model, where both the ordinary and ordinariness are
seen as uid and contingent (also see Sandywell, 2004).
1.2.3 Hybrid ordinary people–elite relationships
e (ordinary) people/power bloc approach has a number of structural problems, which
necessitate a more thoughtful and careful application of this concept that avoids a too
rigid denition of the concepts of ordinary people and power bloc. As the introduction
to this chapter highlighted, subject positions are explicitly seen as not completely rigid
and xed, and not dened as forces that determine subjects. Subject positions are
characterized by contingency and overdetermination but, at the same time, are seen as
the objects of hegemonic projects that aim for specic stabilizations and xations. is
implies that the subject positions related to the (ordinary) people power bloc approach,
also in the media sphere, are not necessarily stable, and that they can take dierent
stances towards each other, which can change over time and space.
is is not to say that the oppositional and antagonistic articulation of the ordinary
people subject position and the media professional elite subject position does not exist.
Or that its translation into the discourse that uses this oppositional and antagonistic
articulation to privilege elitist positions and ordinariness, based on the fantasy of full
control and management and post-political strategies, has disappeared. ese articulations
exist, but they have simultaneously become highly contested and problematized in
contemporary societies, a process that creates a structural tension. Nevertheless, many
mainstream media organizations gratefully provide a shelter for the articulation of
the media professional as privileged, in its stronger or in its weaker versions. In some
cases this tension leads to nostalgia, where the complexities of uidity and hybridity are
mourned, and the return to a more straightforward past with ‘clear’ subject positions is
longed for. In other cases antagonistic identity strategies are applied, whereas ordinary
people are dened as ‘others’. rough these dichotomizing articulatory processes,
ordinary people are constructed as a homogeneous mass, and detached from social
structures (e.g., civil society or communities). eir everyday life knowledge is discarded
as irrelevant and illegitimate. ey are deemed to lack any expertise, and to be in dire
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need of education. In other cases, more benevolent (but not necessarily less problematic)
discourses are used to construct a dierence between the media professional and the
societal groups they aim to serve. Here we can mention, for instance, the strategy of
respectful detachment, where otherness is acknowledged and the other is respected, but
no attempt at communication or interaction (let alone participation) is initiated.
A major contestation of the articulation of the media professional as privileged is
the democratic-populist discourse, which is based on the radicalization of a cultural-
democratic discourse that articulates the media professional as superuous and about-to-
disappear. In contrast to the othering processes, which privilege the media professional,
this democratic-populist discourse is based on the replacement of a hierarchical dierence
with total equality. It is considered to be a populist discourse, because (following Laclau’s
approach) it is based on an antagonist resistance of the people against an elite. As Laclau
(1977: 143) puts is, “Populism starts at the point where popular-democratic elements
are presented as an antagonistic option against the ideology of the dominant bloc”.
is democratic-populist discourse has two main variations. e celebrative-utopian
variation denes the equalization of society and the disappearance of its elites, as the
ultimate objective for the realization of a ‘truly’ democratic society. Media professionals
in this perspective become problematized, and the symbolic power that is attributed
to them is seen to be obstructing the process of democratization. But there is also an
anxietatic-dystopian variation, based on the fear that the democratic-populist discourse
might actually be realized. One recent example is Keen’s (2007) e Cult of the Amateur,
where the ‘amateurs’ who produce user-generated content come to be seen as a threat to
(expert) tastes, knowledges and truths.
To resolve this apparent deadlock, I want to return to the debate on maximalist
participation, which obviously wants to break with articulations of the media
professional as privileged, but also needs to shy away from the democratic-populist
articulation. Maximalist participation (as I dene it here – see chapter 1) emphasizes
more balanced power relations in society and in the media sphere, but seeks also to
reconcile the dierent subject positions without collapsing them into one category or
without privileging one over the other. Maximalist participation does not imply that the
position of (one of) the involved parties (in this case media professionals or ordinary
people) should be erased. On the contrary, maximalist participation entails a decision-
making process that is respectful of all the parties involved, on the basis of power
sharing. is plea for an increase in societal power balances still has a clear utopian,
fantasmatic dimension. Despite the impossibility of fully realizing these situations in
the social praxis, their fantasmatic realization serves as breeding ground for democratic
renewal in the media sphere.
Simultaneously, it is necessary to avoid ignoring dierence and the conicts that
dierence brings about, while framing dierences as necessarily antagonistic also needs
to be avoided. Here, we can turn to Moue’s work, which suggests the concept of agonism
to describe a “we/they relation where the conicting parties, although acknowledging
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that there is no rational solution to their conict, nevertheless recognize the legitimacy of
their opponents” (Moue, 2005: 20). An agonist relationship does not hide the dierences
in position and interest between the involved parties; they are “in conict” but “share a
common symbolic space within which the conict takes places” (Moue, 2005: 20). is
implies that the structural dierences between media professionals and ordinary people
(and other social categories) are acknowledged, but that all parties accept that they share
a common cultural space and accept each other’s perspectives, however dierent they
may be.
2. Case 1: e construction of ordinary people in Jan Publiek
2.1 Introduction
e rst case study in this chapter revisits the north Belgian audience discussion
programme (ADP) Jan Publiek. In collaboration with Wim Hannot (Carpentier and
Hannot, 2009), I looked at the experiences of the participants in and at the reception
of Jan Publiek by focus group members, in relation to the construction of the subject
position of ordinary people in the programme. rough its format, Jan Publiek made
use of, and (re)produced, a series of specic subject positions. Apart from ordinary
people, who were invited on the basis of their authentic experiences or who were part of
the panel of ordinary people, the programme included four more subject positions: the
media professional (in casu the host), the celebrity, the expert and the politician. e
production team of Jan Publiek carefully selected a number of individuals to ll these
social categories, and built the entire programme structure on the interventions that
these individuals were expected to make. During the actual broadcast, the moderator/
host assiduously selected the participants and combined traditional interview strategies
with more open moderation strategies (all of which were based on a pre-prepared script
– see chapter 2). e interactions of individual participants (structured through their
participant-categories and subject positions), the host (and his subject position(s) and
scripts), the pre-prepared footage and the tele-voting interventions of the viewers at
home, combined with the ideologies of participation and those of television production,
all contributed to the construction of a weekly broadcast television text.
2.2 A brief note on method
e methodology of this case study rests on two main approaches, which incorporate
the two types of audiences of ADPs. First, there is the regular or home audience, whose
audience constructions are researched through a reception analysis based on focus
groups. Second, there is the studio audience that participates in the actual debates. e
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panel members, representing the audience in the actual ADP, were interviewed twice –
in 1999 and 2007.
Reception analysis of the rst edition of Jan Publiek was organized already in 1999.3
Based on an initial intention to focus on both participation and gender issues,4 four
specic broadcasts from the rst edition of Jan Publiek were selected for eight focus group
discussions (and qualitative and quantitative content analysis5). Participants watched a
whole episode of Jan Publiek before engaging in actual discussion. A total of 45 people
participated6 in the eight focus groups, two of which included only men, and two of
which included only women. Most of the participants knew about the programme Jan
Publiek and had seen one or more broadcasts, but there were not many regular viewers.
Each programme was discussed in two focus groups. e four programmes had the
following topics (see Figure 1):
Figure 1: e four Jan Publiek broadcasts (rst edition).
Date Topic
13-Feb-97 A brief love aair should be acceptable
10-Apr-97 Women make better bosses
17-Apr-97 Children are always the victims in a divorce
22-May-97 Porn should be banned
e second methodological component is based on a series of interviews with the panel
members in Jan Publiek’s second edition. All twenty panel members that participated
in Jan Publiek in 1997 were interviewed in 1999, using a semi-open questionnaire. In
2007, ten years aer their participation in Jan Publiek, panel members were traced and
contacted again: thirteen of them were eventually interviewed.7 ree of the original
panel members had died, two of them were not traceable and two refused to be
interviewed. All thirteen former participants interviewed had very vivid and consistent
memories of their participation, and had little trouble answering the questions, despite
this participation in Jan Publiek having taken place ten years earlier.
For my analysis of the reception focus groups and the interviews, I again used
qualitative content analysis (Maso, 1989; Wester, 1987, 1995). e main sensitizing
concept (see Blumer, 1969) was the notion of the subject position (and more specically
the interrelated, uid and sometimes antagonistic subject positions of the ordinary
people, the celebrity, the expert, the politician and the media professional). One potential
problem was the time lag between the dierent research phases, but the outcomes of the
reception focus groups and the interviews were actually very similar. For this reason they
are discussed together, and only where there were structural dierences do I dierentiate
between focus groups and interviews.
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2.3 Communication rights and pluralism
In the course of the focus group discussions and interviews, the ordinary and its presence
in the television system in Jan Publiek are validated explicitly. Two interrelated discourses
are used to legitimize the presence of ordinary people, based on a democratic quality
argument (see chapter 6). e rst discourse is grounded in the concept of communication
rights and simply claims access to the television system for ordinary people, as a basic
(human) right. is is exemplied by the following quote from the focus groups:
Interviewer: What do you think about people giving their opinions on tv?
Noëlla (F, 58y, L, FG48): It’s their fullest right that they want to be on television.
Similarly, the interviewed participants claimed that Jan Publiek is specic because they
are given the opportunity to “speak their minds” (Geert Van Beek, M, 34y, 1997) or oer
their “vision” (Frans Vanhelmont, M, 72y, 1997), “have their say” (Eric Verhoye, M, 54y,
1997) or “say what they think” (Frans Vanhelmont, M, 72y, 1997). As these interview
quotes illustrate, the participants felt validated through this process of self-expression:
Roeland Rummers (M, 21y, 1997): Just my opinion counts, and that’s how it really was.
Coming home and hearing reactions of people who had really watched and listened.
People came up to me on the street with: sorry, I totally disagree with you, for this and
that reason. Just talking. at moved me, it gave me some self-condence, that’s what
I got out of it.
e second (interrelated) discourse is based on pluralism. It is deemed important that
the dierent views expressed by (among others) the ordinary participants can gain
publicness through Jan Publiek. is is illustrated by the following quote from one of the
participants.
Rudi De Kerpel (M, 48y, 2007): at was the programme’s strength, to avoid repeating
the same positions, but to get dierent and opposing positions, which resulted in
more fascinating television.
Although the two discourses of communication rights and pluralism legitimize the
presence of ordinary people in Jan Publiek, the ordinary people’s on-screen presence
is not accepted unconditionally: It requires the condition of relevance.9 For the focus
group participants, relevance is generated rst by the representativeness of the ordinary
participants in Jan Publiek. For that reason the ordinary participants need to be in a
group, so that they can speak on behalf of the population and generate the pluralism of
ideas, which is much valued. is articulation renders the ordinary people concept as
always plural, articulating them as the public opinion.
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Not surprisingly, the talk show participants inevitably take a dierent position here,
since they are (and can hardly avoid) emphasizing their own individuality. As one of the
participants put it, “Every person in itself was unique” (Betty Lathouwers, F, 58y, 2007).
Nevertheless, they stress the need for relevance. As another participant expressed it,
“What’s the use of having people talk about a topic with which they have nothing to do, and
that want to give their opinion because they want to be on television” (Fatiha Mataiche,
F, 34y, 2007). e tension between the participants’ emphasis on individuality and the need
for relevance is resolved only by reverting to another legitimizing concept: authenticity.
For both focus group respondents and interviewees, authenticity is the main argument
supporting the relevance of the ordinary people’s presence, which is referred to in other
research (see Montgomery, 2001; Scannell, 2001; ornborrow, 2001). Montgomery
(2001: 399) remarked that authenticity can be situated at the level of spontaneity, at
the level of truthfulness of the lived experience and at the level of the truthfulness of
the performed self. In the case of Jan Publiek, the importance of the authentic lived
experience is especially emphasized. When this authentic experience is deemed to be
absent, the legitimacy of the presence of ordinary people in Jan Publiek is questioned
by its audiences. In a number of cases, both focus group participants and interviewees
expressed how dicult it was to talk about issues they had not experienced; yet in other
cases they revoke the access rights of ordinary talk show participants when there is no
authentic experience to support their presence.
Also, if these authentic experiences become too intense, the same process of
delegitimization takes place. Ordinary people need to have authentic everyday life
experiences, but when these are considered (too) extraordinary, too abundantly detailed
or even vulgar, their narrations become disarticulated from the subject positions of
ordinary people and they are marginalized. Similarly, when ordinary people are seen
to appear on-screen only to become ‘famous’, they are no longer seen as authentic,
and are considered to be disarticulated from the subject position of ordinary people
(to have become pseudo-celebrities). Although the interviewed participants took
the same position with regard to publicness and authenticity, all still emphasized the
diculties of reconciling these two, and a small number of the talk show participants
referred explicitly to the harm the talk show had caused them, for instance, loss of a job,
and ending of a relationship in one case and economic problems in relation to a small
business in another.
2.4 e oppositional/antagonistic position of ordinary people towards the other
subject positions
e subject position of ordinary people is not articulated only through the simple
presence of this social category in the studio and the way that the format denes them
as owners of authentic experiences.10 eir subject position is also dened within an
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oppositional/antagonistic relationship involving a set of other subject positions that
also feature prominently in Jan Publiek: those of celebrity, expert, politician and media
professional. It is through the oppositional/antagonistic relationships with these more
elitist social categories that the subject position of ordinary people becomes intertwined
with ordinariness.
As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, a too rigid interpretation of these
subject positions should be avoided, as these oppositional/antagonistic relationships
can be uid and mobile in some cases, allowing people to shi, for instance, from one
position to another. ornborrow (2001: 478) rightly observes that the dichotomy of
broadly oppositional criteria “in practice oen breaks down when the discursive roles
and interactions of participants in these shows is examined more closely”, something
that we can observe in the case of Jan Publiek. But at the same time the rigid structure
of Jan Publiek, with its media professionals protecting the pre-dened subject positions
and the sometimes evenly rigid discursive frameworks used by the audiences, causes
these subject positions to remain very present in articulating the identities of the other
and the self.
2.4.1 Celebrities
In constructing a three-level typology (famous, semi-famous, anonymous), Hamo
(2006: 430) points out that the degree of renown is one of the main structuring elements
of the subject position of celebrity. Fame based on celebrity status is (at least partially)
generated through frequent presence in popular public spaces, which allows the celebrity
to develop a wide range of communicative skills (Ytreberg, 2004: 679).
As the subject position of the celebrity nds itself in an oppositional/antagonistic
relationship with that of ordinary people, ordinary people become articulated as
unknown (or anonymous), with no access to or experience of these popular public spaces.
e following citation illustrates how a focus group participant constructs the dierence
between celebrity and ordinary people in their access to popular public spaces, and the
need to adjust this imbalance.
Johanna (F, 83y, L, FG5): If we would get to hear only the opinions of famous
Flemings[11], that would be too narrow … I think that people that usually don’t get
the opportunity [to have their voices heard] should be allowed for once to express their
opinion. I think that’s good.
e element of authenticity that characterizes ordinary people also aects the identity of
celebrities. First, the lack of authentic experience among the celebrities who participated
in Jan Publiek was critiqued. Second, authenticity is seen as restricted by the processes
of commodication and image construction. Celebrities, in contrast to ordinary people,
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are part of a specic cultural-industrial system, which is seen structurally to limit their
capacity to participate openly and to act spontaneously (and to be authentic). As one
of the participants in Jan Publiek remarked, “they wear masks” (Suzanne De Bruyn, F,
57y, 2007). Moreover, the Jan Publiek participants pointed to the arrogance of (some
of) the celebrities, which serves only to contribute to the construction of celebrities
as not ordinary and as inauthentic. ese critiques again strengthen the importance
of authenticity since its absence delegitimizes the participation of celebrities, and also
positions ordinary people as non-commodied, which can be added to their articulations
as unknown and non-experienced.
ere are moments, nevertheless, when these subject positions start to shi. First,
celebrities are still allowed access to lived experience, as the following citation illustrates.
Because of this uidity, their identities can be described as semi-authentic.
Evelien (F, 23y, H, FG4): I think that celebrities who talk about their divorce … that
they come across much better.
Ordinary people can gain access to celebrity status through their contribution to
participatory programming. Although the focus groups discussed only the rst episode
of Jan Publiek, some participants were familiar with the later episodes. Aer the rst
episode, the format changed such that ordinary participants returned to subsequent
episodes as members of a permanent panel (see also chapter 2). During the focus group
discussions, some focus group participants spontaneously started comparing episodes
(which also had been broadcast at the time the focus groups took place), claiming that
the ordinary panel members became celebrities themselves.
In the interviews with these panel members, stories emerged of their being recognized
and approached by strangers. For instance, Astrid Houthuys (F, 27y, 2007) describes
how she was recognized by an anesthetist, who asked her (when she was about to have
her appendix removed), “Hey, you’re from Jan Publiek. How are you doing now? And
what are you doing on a day like today?” Even aer ten years, some participants were
still being recognized as familiar, and asked by people where they knew them from.
In a small number of cases, Jan Publiek participants had appeared on other television
programmes, which had increased their celebrity status.
2.4.2 Experts
In the case of the expert subject position, legitimacy is provided by expertise (Van
Leeuwen, 2007: 94). Traditional genres, such as documentaries or current aairs
programmes, valorize the expert for his objective, rational and factual knowledge, but
in ADPs this position is oen inversed and they are articulated as inauthentic, alienated,
cold and articial (Livingstone and Lunt, 1996: 101–102). Despite the critical position of
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ADPs towards expert knowledge (and its reception), the expert subject position remains
very present in ADPs, and is articulated in a specic way. Most importantly, experts are
seen as knowledgeable (even if this knowledgeability is valued negatively). ey are not
seen as expressing personal opinions, but their interventions are grounded in (academic)
research and knowledge. is articulation has consequences for the identity of ordinary
people, who are linked to authentic experiences, through the oppositional/antagonistic
relationship with the expert identity, as is illustrated in the citation below.
Jan B (M, 22y, L, FG3): Yes, their experience is just their own experience and not the
experience of other people. at’s why they are not experts.
Apart from being knowledgeable, experts are also individuated, embedded in professional
systems and considered to be experienced. e process of individuation is in part
strengthened by the way experts are treated by the media professionals who attribute names,
ranks, institutional aliation and status to them (ornborrow, 2001: 459). rough their
aliation, their institutional and organizational membership is highlighted: In the reception
focus groups, the experts were oen referred to by name or according to their aliations.
Moreover, they are considered to be more experienced (similar to the celebrities) about
speaking in public, another contrast with ordinary people.
As already indicated, the expert position (however present in the programme) is not
always valued positively. In some cases, respondents use a exible denition of expert,
attributing the label to a science journalist (writing for Knack12), or to a psychologist
writing for Libelle, a north Belgian women’s magazine. However, this attribution is not
wholehearted, since, in other cases, there is a perceived absence of ‘real’ experts, which
is fed by the need to ground knowledge in academia. For yet another group, even the
presence of these ‘real’ experts – described as “superprofessors” by one participant
(Jan B, M, L, 22y, FG3) – is considered problematic. Again, these articulations of the
expert identity have consequences for the subject position of ordinary people, which
again articulates them with ordinariness. rough this antagonism, ordinary people are
considered unknowledgeable but still authentic, unorganized but still part of a collective,
and inexperienced.
In contrast to the celebrities, there is little overlap between the subject positions of
experts and ordinary people. ey are still deemed very dierent categories, and the
dierence between knowledge and opinion remains very rigid. ere is one exception,
which is when ordinary panel members turn out to be experts. e most important
case was the panel member Fatiha, who worked in the so-called integration agency of
the city of Leuven, and initially was approached by the editorial team of Jan Publiek
to help locate potential panel members with a migrant background. Since there was a
shortage of candidates, she herself agreed to participate as a panel member. However,
her professional expert background was hardly mentioned during the broadcasts, which
renders her a hidden expert.
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2.4.3 Politicians
e focus group discussions rarely touched on this third subject position, despite the
fact that several politicians feature in the Jan Publiek broadcasts. e legitimacy of their
presence is based on the notion of accountability to ‘the people’. Politicians are articulated
in ADPs as representing the people and, through the ADPs, the people – the ordinary
participants and the audience at home – can decide on the quality of this representation.
Similar to the experts, politicians do not escape some negative and sometimes cynical
connotations, articulating them as alienated and even corrupt. e citation below
contains both the representational and the cynical element.
Patrick (M, 47y, H, FG7): It’s a serious problem and a dicult one to nd a ready-
made solution for. Politicians who are supposed to lead the people, who are selected
by the people, they fail too. Because, uh, their moral standards are blurred too.
e nature of this representation, however, is dierent from the case of ordinary
people: While politicians are known to us, ordinary participants represent the people
anonymously, symbolically and collectively. Traditional (political) representation
becomes individuated and linked to power through the mechanism of delegation,
establishing a “two-tier playing eld, one of the represented and one of those who act for
them as representatives” (Arditi, 2007: 63). Politicians are also dened as grounded in
(political) organizations and as (political) experts, as they know how the political system
works. is again is contrasted to ordinary people who – according to the focus group
respondents – do not posses this kind of knowledge and expertise. Similar to the expert
subject position, the antagonism between politicians and ordinary people articulates
ordinary people as authentic, but at the same time unknowledgeable, unorganized and
inexperienced.
Again, the border between the subject position of the politician and the ordinary
people turns out to be more uid than expected. is in some part was because one
panel member was a member of a city council before her participation in Jan Publiek, but
mainly was because of the approaches from various political parties that panel members
received aer their appearance on Jan Publiek. At least one panel member had become
a candidate in one of the local elections, one panel member had been asked to stand
(but had refused), and a third was the north Belgian liberal party’s VLD nominee for
the Management Board of the public broadcaster VRT, a position Rudi De Kerpel has
occupied for ve years. e latter later became party secretary and treasurer of the right
wing populist party Lijst Dedecker, and was a candidate for the Belgian federal elections
of 2010.13
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2.4.4 Media professionals
e central role of the media professional in an ADP is based on that of moderator
combined with an interviewing role (see chapter 2). An important part of the critiques
levelled against ADPs is focused on the role of the host, as she or he is seen to play a
key role in the management of the debate and of the participants (see e.g. White, 1992).
Whatever the connotations attached to the role of host in Jan Publiek, it is a role that
articulates him as professional, and as part of a professional media system. is meaning
emerged in the focus group discussions also, where both his identity and his actions were
linked to professionalism, as illustrated by the two citations below.
Gabriël (M, 49y, H, FG7): He surely is, how shall I put it, he’s a pro.
Patrick (M, 47y, H, FG7): Yes, but what I want to say is that, concerning Jan Van
Rompaey, whatever he does, he does it in a professional way.
Being professional, in some cases, also implies embeddedness in the professional
media system and culture. e host’s on-screen presence rst of all generates renown,
which is not dissimilar to the fame of ‘other’ celebrities. His on-screen moderating and
interviewing role articulates his subject position with power. e host (supported by the
invisible production team) controls the setting and nature of the debate, and for instance
decides who takes the oor, who gets which question, how long an intervention will be
and who will be the next speaker. In the antagonistic position of the media professional
towards the ordinary people, ordinary people thus become positioned as unknown,
powerless, unprofessional and not part of a professional system or organization, again
articulating them with ordinariness.
Again, this does not imply that the position of the media professional escapes critique.
In particular, the combination of professionalism and being perceived as powerful
generates heavy criticisms that the host (and his production team) are not professional
enough, interrupt too much, keep debate supercial, are not suciently neutral and are
even manipulative. Most of the panel members (having experienced the professional
management of the producers themselves) indicated that they had become more critical
television viewers than before their participation. As Fatiha Mataiche (F, 34y, 2007) put it,
“What I learned from it is that media cannot contain reality. It’s always a representation,
an image, and not reality”.
Finally, the border between media professionals and ordinary people becomes
unstable, but this happens only aer the broadcasts. A number of panel members used
the fame generated by their appearance in Jan Publiek to become media professionals
themselves. One of them had presented a programme about gardening on public radio,
another had taken part, for two years, in a show about dogs on Liberty TV, and a third
panel member had begun freelancing for the magazine Knack.
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2.4.5 Jan Publiek – a model
As a preliminary conclusion, the model rendered below (Figure 2) provides us with an
overview of the oppositional/antagonistic relations between ordinary people and the
alliance of power blocs, at the discursive level of the dierent subject positions, as they
were articulated by the viewers in the reception analysis focus groups. rough these
oppositions/antagonisms, all subject positions become articulated with a wide range of
elements that co-construct the identities of all the individuals involved.
Figure 2: e articulations of the subject positions in Jan Publiek.
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2.5 Conclusion
When looking at (the reception of) the participatory nature of Jan Publiek, or the perceived
balance between the being ordinary and the ordinariness in these ADPs, the outcome –
not surprisingly – is nuanced. e focus group respondents and talk show participants
clearly emphasize the importance of the public participation of ordinary people, by
invoking a communication rights discourse and a pluralism discourse. eir narrations
of authentic experiences are highly valued and their interventions are connotated in a
positive way, especially when compared with some of the other participant groups.
e relationist argument of the ordinary people versus the alliance of power blocs is
not a mere theoretical construct, but was (spontaneously) raised in the focus groups and
interviews. e participants articulate ordinary people in an oppositional/antagonistic
position towards the more elitist groups, such as celebrities, politicians, experts and media
professionals, and use that antagonism to expand their appreciation of the authenticity
of ordinary people. In this sense, the ordinary – with its Lefebvrian emancipatory load –
seems to be strongly present in Jan Publiek, and there seems to be little ordinariness (and
related administration, disciplining and management of ordinary people).
But this antagonism comes at a high price because it entraps the recipients and
participants into linking other characteristics to both the ordinary people subject position
and the other elitist subject positions. e antagonism between media professionals and
ordinary people, for instance, produces a powerful–powerless dimension; the antagonism
between experts and politicians, and ordinary people supports the knowledgeable–
unknowledgeable dimension; and the antagonism between celebrities and ordinary
people constructs the latter as unknown compared to the fame of the celebrities. At a
more generalized level, the antagonism between the power blocs and ordinary people
constructs ordinary people as inexperienced, detached and atomized, restricts them
to the private, and traps them in their authenticity. rough this mechanism ordinary
people are again reintroduced to their ordinariness, and cut o from the emancipatory
potential of the ordinary, which works against the maximalist participatory model.
3. Case 2: Temptation Island – reality TV and minimalist participation14
3.1 Introduction
e reality TV show Temptation Island was televised for the rst time in 2001 on the
FOX network in the USA. Many television networks bought the rights to this format,
resulting in local variations of the original in several countries including the UK, France,
Australia, Brazil and Italy. In Belgium and the Netherlands the local version was produced
by Kanakna Productions for two SBS network broadcasters, VT4 in north Belgium and
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Veronica in the Netherlands. e rst Dutch-spoken Temptation Island was televised in
2002, and since then there has been a new series almost every year up to 2009.15 e h
series, which is analysed here, was televised in April 2006, on VT4 and Veronica, with
Hans Otten (VT4) and Tanja Jess (Veronica) as presenters.
e format of Temptation Island is relatively simple, and is based on a clear and quasi-
impenetrable categorizing of the participants that makes use of two subject positions.
Eight people, four men and four women, who are constructed as ‘partners’ in ‘couples’,
are housed separately in so-called resorts on two tropical islands,16 where they meet a
number of people who are dened through the subject position of ‘bachelor’ (or ‘tempter’
and ‘temptress’). e programme format revolves around a relationship test in which
each partner in each couple receives the attention of the tempters or temptresses, for a
period of two weeks. As the Veronica Temptation Island website says, “During their stay
they are seduced by attractive men and women who give rise to their ultimate fantasies”.17
e eight partners (and their tempters/temptresses) spend most of their time having
fun, in smaller or larger groups, while (almost) every action is lmed and recorded by
the (sometimes hidden) cameras and sound recording equipment of Temptation Island’s
production team. e various episodes consist of montages of these components, with
commentaries, and interviews with the participants.
e (group) interactions are alternated with two subformats. On the so-called ‘dates’,
which culminate in a ‘dream date’, the partners choose one of the tempters/temptresses
for a private date during which they embark on a romantic activity or an adventure,
through which the Temptation Island production team attempts to heighten the pressure
on the partners (and their relationships). In the second scenario the participants are
shown short lm clips of their partners’ escapades at so-called ‘bonres’, while being
interviewed by one of the presenters. e nal meeting between the couples is also
during a bonre. Both the lm clips and interview questions are aimed at increasing
the pressure on the partners. e nal episode shows a visit to the couples some months
aer their Temptation Island stay, when an inventory is made of the damage caused to
their relationships.
In some programmes the basic format was changed. For example, in Temptation
Island 2005 the bar attendants (a man and a woman) – who played important roles in
the festivities – took on the roles of tempter and temptress. In Temptation Island 2006,
an extra temptress (Rebecca Loos) was invited onto the show, and a new group of
tempters/temptresses, including some previous participants (Tim De Pril, Gaby Visser
and Rowena Guldenaar18) was brought to the island. e participants then had to choose
which of the tempters/temptresses could stay. Also in one episode, the mother of one
of the participants came to visit her, and the respective dream dates of the couple were
replaced by a ‘reconciliation date’, which allowed the couple to spend time alone to try
and mend their relationship and “to make something special of their second last day on
Temptation Island” (Veronica Temptation Island website).
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3.2 Key discourses in Temptation Island
It was mainly the interactions between participants, encouraged by the production
team’s management thereof, that were the basis of the television text. As is the case of any
text, the Temptation Island text contains a series of discourses that transcend individual
statements and interactions cast in pictures and sounds. Although Temptation Island is
not explicitly framed by its producers as a participatory programme, it still produces a
discourse on participation. Of course, this discourse is not the only one being produced.
Moreover, to fully understand Temptation Island’s discourse on participation, we rst
need to look at another set of key discourses.
One of the most important discourses generated in (and through) Temptation Island
was the discourse about sexual delity, which is linked to the subject position of the
partner (in the couple). In principle, human relationships can be organized in many
dierent ways, but in Temptation Island – through the emphasis on the couple/bachelor
dichotomy – a specic form of heterosexual relational organization is privileged, thereby
ruthlessly excluding many other societal forms. At the same time, the status of the
bachelor is acknowledged, but without dierentiating between the tempter and temptress.
eir identity stands in an antagonistic relationship with the partners: e bachelors
represent hedonistic pleasure, which at the same time is articulated as threatening. It
is the forbidden fruit, which itself is a specic and reduced representation of this social
category.
It is noticeable that there are limits to the relationships that are subjected to the
Temptation Island test. e following sentence from Kanakna productions’ call19 for
participants indicates that married couples would not be considered: “Participants must
be older than 20, unmarried, and must be free for two weeks”. A second limitation –
not mentioned in the call – is children. e impact (and evidence) of this limitation
became clear during Temptation Island 2 in 2003, when one of the couples (Cindy Stoop
and James Serbeniuk) had to leave the island because Cindy Stoop was pregnant. In
the Temptation Island discourse, marriage and children are seen as too important to be
drawn into the game or even considered.
Moreover, the idea of the relationship test is reduced to one of resisting (physical)
seduction, and maintaining sexual delity. On the Veronica Temptation Island
website, the end result of the h series (broadcast in episode een) is summarized
as follows: “Bianca was not the only one to stray; Liesbeth and Cheyenne also could
not resist temptation, even though they denied this in the strongest terms. e pictures
tell a dierent story”. A specic and homogenous representation is oered of what is
regarded as primordial in a relationship, what the subject position of the partner entails,
and what criteria should be used to test a relationship. e problematic character of
(sexual) indelity and the intrinsic link between love and sexuality is strengthened by
the recurrent references in the broadcasts to earlier crises between the partners as a result
of indelity. It is precisely this testing of mutual trust that is seen in the Temptation Island
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text as an important motivating factor for participation. is element is also emphasized
on the VT4 website, where the couple Bianca Mommen and Björn20 were introduced as
follows: “Bianca and Björn are from Willebroek. She has previously been unfaithful, and
he oen confronts her with this. She now wants to prove to him that one mistake means
nothing, and win back his total trust”.
Once this trust is backed up by practical evidence during the Temptation Island
encounter, and the partners have proven their delity to each other, the way is open to
an everlasting and harmonic relationship. Sexual delity becomes the proof of a love that
– once the ‘right one’ has been found – is forever. is is well illustrated by the following
sentence from the description of the couple Lisette van Veenendaal and Len Konings, on
the VT4 website: “ey take part in Temptation Island to prove that they were born for
each other”. In this sense Temptation Island is articulated as a rite of passage, allowing
people to enter the world of ‘genuine’ relationships. us, the programme forms part of
the hegemonic discourse of heterosexual monogamy, where the subject position of the
partner is articulated with exclusive and lifelong relationships.
When the partners fail the relationship test, another element takes precedence to
articulate the (failed) partner: honesty. e entire conguration (and power dynamics)
of Temptation Island is in any case based on truth speaking. Participants who are
interviewed (alone or during the bonres) are trusted to be revealing their innermost
feelings to others (the presenters, their partners, the viewers). If they are not honest, they
run the risk of having their actions interpreted negatively by the production team, or
being pressured to be ‘honest’, with the constant threat of being ‘unmasked’ by the clips.
However, it is particularly when it comes to sexual indelity that the pressure to be ‘honest’
becomes extreme. Of course this emphasis on honesty forms part of the production
team’s management strategies, because the ‘struggle’ followed by the ‘confession’ creates
‘good’ television, and it can also be used to further undermine the position of the other
partner. But these management strategies only strengthen the emphasis on the cultural
importance of honesty, presenting it in the television text as an important regulatory
mechanism in human relationships.
Apart from the emphasis on honesty, other cultural demands are made on human
actions. e strong emphasis on the narration of the self, within the basic framework
of the relationship test, presupposes consistent and rational (or rationalizable) action.
Emotional uctuations and (seemingly) inconsequent behaviour are frowned upon in
the commentary and in the interactions with other participants. For example, when
Bianca Mommen, at rst, holds herself very aloof from the single males and reacts very
emotionally to clips of her partner, Björn, holding hands with a temptress. A few episodes
later she was seen to have sex a couple of times with one of the bachelors. Aer these
events, the other partners and singles, and the commentator’s voice-over, express their
disbelief and lack of understanding.
e immediacy of the television system plays a role here because there is a time limit
on lming, and participants do not have the opportunity to withdraw and to reassess
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their positions and/or to rationalize their actions. Withdrawing from the group in any
event is regarded as problematic since the sociability of the participants is taken for
granted. Some participants do isolate themselves, but this is articulated as a problem in
the broadcasts, for example, through reference to the particular participant being upset.
Such emotion is the only explanation accepted as legitimate for voluntary social isolation.
At the same time the participants’ individual responsibility is strongly emphasized. ey
are framed as taking their decisions as mature and independent individuals, so that
the entire structurizing context (and in particular the production team’s management)
moves to the background, very much according to the post-political logic described in
the Barometer case study in chapter 2.
A second key discourse in Temptation Island is based on the ideal of physical beauty
as the source of and catalyst for attraction and seduction. On the Kanakna website the
invitation to participate is expressly directed at “good-looking people (singles/couples)”.
According to the Veronica Temptation Island website the partners are exposed to seduction
by “handsome single men and women”, and it is not by chance that a tropical island is
chosen as set for the series, resulting in an endless parade of scanty swimwear, bikinis
and shorts. Here, the production team does revert to gendered stereotypes (although the
male bachelors do not escape these processes of objectication). An illustration of this
is the scene where the female singles are introduced to the male partners. In an unsubtle
reference to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, the masked singles parade in long hooded gowns
with, clearly, only lingerie beneath. ese images were reproduced on the front page
of the VT4 website and in a poster campaign. Aer this ‘revelation’ the singles wrap
themselves around the partners. is elicited the following remark from one of the
partners, Andries de Jong: “ey were touching us all over, and I thought: I hope they
stay away from my business”.
A signicant number of the Temptation Island scenes support the idea of physical
seduction, including the apparently inevitable wet T-shirt competition, the slapping of
(female) buttocks, the selection rituals for the ‘dates’ (reminiscent of beauty contests),
and short-skirted or bare-chested dancing. In particular, the relationship test involves
exposing the partners to the physical component of sexuality, and to female and male
beauty. It is thus also no accident that magazines such as Maxim and P-Magazine, which
rely very strongly on the ‘babe’ concept, as well as nude publications, such as Playboy
and Penthouse, published photo reports on the female singles. Examples of these are
the photographs of Liesbeth van Muylem in P-Magazine (April 2006) and of Mieke and
Rowena Guldenaar in Playboy (July 2006). e male participants received little such
publicity. With this emphasis on physicality, Temptation Island’s discourse also reinforces
the classic ideals of (female) beauty, with symmetry and slimness as key components.
is somewhat exclusive focus on physicality and beauty is toned down by the notion
of the ‘connection’. Already attracted by the bodies of the singles, the partners quickly
develop a preference for one or two of them. ese individual preferences are legitimized
by the concept of the ‘connection’, which suggests that there is compatibility between the
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relevant personalities. is ‘connection’ refers more to an attraction based on character
than one based on the physical, and partly soens the exclusive focus on participants’
bodies. e repertoire of ‘connection’, however, mostly comes to the fore later, and thus
does not really diminish the emphasis on the physical.
A third and last key discourse involves the ‘holy’ rules of the game. As the direct
interventions of the production team are supposed to remain hidden, their control is
translated into a system of rules. e power of the media professionals is never directly
seen in operation in Temptation Island; we see only the results of this power imbalance.
Despite a number of modest manifestations of resistance, the entire programme radiates
obedience. e participants are docile bodies, disciplined by the production team, which
takes a post-political position. ey are key examples of ordinariness in a Lefebvrian
meaning. One example of this is the escape scene, where some of the partners decided to
swim to the women’s resort. When they discovered that their boat was within swimming
distance of the women’s resort, they jumped into the water to swim the rest of the way.
However, they were persuaded to return to the boat, and the escape ended in failure.
Here the concept of the relationship test also plays an important role, as departing from
the rules equates to undermining the test. erefore, disobedience (or a critical attitude)
is re-articulated as cheating, creating a catch-22 situation for the participants.
3.3 Power in Temptation Island’s production sphere
When the power relations between the participants and the production team are
examined more closely, it is dicult to ignore the inequality of these relations, which
renders this programme an example of minimalist participation. e production team
uses a number of sophisticated management techniques to place the partners under
pressure, the most important being the unlimited trial.
Basing the entire programme concept on a relationship test to which the participants
voluntarily subject themselves legitimizes the extreme interventions of the production
team. On the Temptation Island websites of VT4 and Veronica, the concept of the
relationship test is explicitly mentioned. e rst sentence of the introductory text on the
VT4 website21 is “Four couples travel to ailand, where they are separated for sixteen
days, during which their relationships are subjected to extreme tests”. On the Veronica
Temptation Island website the rst sentence reads “Temptation Island: the ultimate
fantasy is a reality programme where four unmarried couples travel to an exotic location
the test their relationships”.
Based on the concept of the relationship test and supported by the subject positions
of the partner and the tempter/temptress, Temptation Island becomes an unlimited trial,
where it is not only the people who are articulated as tempters/temptresses who “do
everything in their power to place as much pressure as possible on the women [and men]”
(VT4 website), but where the production team also tries to inuence the context in such
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a way that the relationships of the carefully selected couples are put under even greater
pressure, oen resulting in a break-up between the partners during the programme or
aer it ends. By taking part in a programme of this format, the participants relinquish their
power over the nature and intensity of the tests to which they are subjected. At the same
time this willingness to relinquish power legitimizes the production team’s interventions
and their intensity. In the nal episode of the programme several participants said that
they had underestimated the pressure that would be put on their relationship, but without
referring to those persons who – under the pretext of an unlimited trial – had knowingly
placed their relationship under duress. In their discussions, the participants emphasized
the ‘seduction’ to which they had been subjected by the tempters/temptresses. As oen
happens in the television sphere, the interventions of the media professionals were not
mentioned; they remained concealed.
e basic mechanism of the unlimited trial as a management technique is strengthened
by the articial setting, which is strongly reminiscent of a panopticon. e participants
are cleverly isolated by their location on a distant tropical island, which oers a wide
range of tourist (and sexual) attractions, but at the same time strongly resembles a prison
(demonstrated by including the occasional ‘escape’ attempt). Within the imaginary walls
of the so-called resorts, participants are subjected to numerous surveillance techniques
by means of which (almost) all their activities are captured – day and night. ese images
are edited by the production team, and shown to the viewers and also to partners. Finally,
Temptation Island is ‘safeguarded’ by numerous rules, contractually enforced, which
direct and discipline the participants’ behaviour.
A third management technique is based on what Foucault terms confessional power.
Inter alia, through interviews, the participants are continually urged to describe their
activities and emotional states, and to confess even the slightest ‘infringements’ to the
specic articulation of the subject position of the partner. e interview questions are
(partly) enabled by the production team’s Olympian perspective (through the ubiquitous
cameras). e result was not only a seemingly endless series of (self-)revelations on
the part of the participants, of course unreciprocated by the presenters, but also the
presenters being the rst witnesses (and judges) of the, oen inevitable, ‘lapses’ of the
partners. e culmination of confessional power lies in the subformat of the bonres,
where partners are questioned about their reactions to suggestive or explicit clips of
their partners’ activities, and where they confess their own ‘bad behaviour’. It is at the
last bonre, in particular – where the partners are reunited and have to confess their
‘sins’ to one another (and to the presenter and viewers) – that the most intimate details
are revealed, leading oen to emotional outbursts. One example is the bonre during
Temptation Island 5 where the couple Björn and Bianca Mommen were reunited, earlier
than usual. Aer clips had been shown to the viewers, and to Björn, Bianca confessed to
having had sex with one of the bachelors, Stephen. Björn then stormed o in a rage: “Ten
days, even that you could not do for me”, and ran weeping to the beach, where he began
shouting “Why?” – so loudly that it aected the sound quality of the recording.
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Two remarks have to be made regarding this analysis of the production team’s
management techniques. First, the interaction between the participants is important, and
not only because the programme is based on the seduction of the partners by tempters/
temptresses. e power dynamics are more complex because the partners try to support
and protect each other, but also discuss and judge each other’s behaviour during the
interviews. Second, and more important, is that resistance to the production team’s
management, from all the participants, still occurs, although only rarely. How it was
practiced oers dierent articulations of the subject positions of (obedient) participant,
(faithful) partner and (seducing) tempter/temptress. Participants did manage to escape
the cameras and microphones: Although opportunities were few, some participants
swam far out to sea, thereby becoming invisible and also inaudible, or simply removed
the portable microphones. In some instances, refusing to participate in the interaction by
locking themselves in a room, or ‘going to bed early’, can be seen as resistance, as can rather
unenthusiastic performances by the tempters/temptresses. For example, in episode 12 of
Temptation Island 5, the temptress Mieke initially accepted partner Len Konings’ invitation
to go on his dream date, but later returned the chain – symbolizing the ‘chosen one’ – to
him, saying that he was too arrogant, and that she no longer wanted to be his dream date.
3.4 Viewer (dis)identication and pleasure
e popularity of the programme is evidenced not only by the many hundreds of
thousands of viewers, but also by the numerous responses and discussions on online
discussion forums, blogs and feedback forms.22 Analysis of these forum postings shows
how viewers engaged with the text of Temptation Island. More specically, it investigates
how viewing pleasure is generated by viewers watching the disintegration of relationships,
and the hardships and pain this causes to the people involved. e main argument
explaining this tension recalls the identity theories discussed earlier in this chapter. In
particular, this part of the analysis focuses on the process of viewer disidentication,
which is constructed through the discreditation and dehumanization of the participants.
Analysing online forums has certain limitations since these are specic communicative
systems with specic characteristics. For example, a number of these forums were
moderated, so some postings were removed or not shown in full. Sometimes the
moderation policy was explained, such as in the case of the VT4 forum on Temptation
Island; in other cases it was not:
Our aim is to talk about the programme, not let participants hang their dirty washing
on the line! We will be very strict in this regard […] such postings are removed because
of their aggressive and oensive nature. (Amourath, Forum Moderator, 1 April 2006,
vt4.be)
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Despite these methodological problems, qualitative analysis of these forums allowed
me to incorporate the voices of audience members, who oen responded immediately
aer the programme, or sometimes even while the programme was being screened. e
quasi-anonymity of the forums adds another layer to the viewer responses: e postings
are written in very raw and direct language, and (more oen than might be expected)
are shockingly insulting. I have decided to quote these postings here, regardless of the
crude language, not out of sensationalism, but because the language use is crucial to my
analysis. I would emphasize that I have not selected exceptional pieces, and that these
citations are illustrative of a pervasive phenomenon.
As might be expected, these online responses are extremely diverse. A large part
of the postings is purely informative, asking for or oering information on how the
programme is developing, and on the private lives of the participants. is category
of postings includes so-called ‘caps’ (or programme stills), which appear quite oen in
the forums, and quotes from the broadcasts. For instance, partner Björn’s cry – “TEN
DAYS!!!” (SEMTEX, 24 April 2006, fok.nl) – was a popular quote, along with references
to quotes from earlier programmes that had become part of Temptation Island’s standard
repertoire, such as “No kissing, no fucking” and “Drink is the devil”, statements made
by partner James Serbeniuk in Temptation Island 2. e more informative postings are
supplemented by a small number of predictions about future developments and analyses
of cultural23 and gender dierences (or expressions of cultural and gendered (lack of)
understandings). However, the main tone of the messages in the postings on the forums
analysed was judgemental. Posters gave their opinions, on many dierent levels, of the
participants, their behaviour, their physical appearance, their personalities and their
moral bre. It is mainly these types of statements that are analysed in relation to the
processes of disidentication, discreditation and dehumanization.
e starting point of this analysis, though, is the viewing pleasure generated by this
programme. Although there are some (old) postings from non-viewers (“[I] never
watch this kind of nonsense”. (jootje02, 4 July 2005, sbs.nl)), the majority of posters are
viewers and, in most cases, fans, who also express their appreciation of the programme.
One example is the following statement from Lady_Y: “We love this programme”
(Lady_Y, 5 April 2006, veronica.nl). However, many viewers combined expressions of
their appreciation with distancing statements, implying partial disidentication with
the entire programme, similar to what Ang (1985) observed when analysing another
popular culture programme, Dallas.
Of course it’s trash, but I keep on saying that it’s fun at certain moments. Life is serious
enough as it is. (Angel45, 2 July 2005, sbs.nl)
Sad? Sure. Pathetic? Denitely. Entertaining? Enormously!’ (sugababe, 14 April 2006,
vt4.be)
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e process of disidentication is related mainly to the identicatory relationship
between viewers and participants. In the online forums, we can distinguish four
strategies of disidentication with the participants. First, disidentication takes place
through the articulation of Temptation Island as a game and the attribution of individual
responsibility to participants for participating in it, and risking their relationships in the
process. It is particularly the idea of the (unlimited) trial that emphasizes the element
of play. In a number of instances the actual words ‘play’ or ‘game’ are used. Temptation
Island is a game in which the stakes that participants will fail are high, and some viewers
watch eagerly for participants to ‘transgress’. Some strongly support certain participants
as opposed to others, such that the programme becomes a race into decline, rather than
a series of smaller and larger human dramas.
I nd it an amazing programme; just cannot understand that there are still couples
who want to participate, because by now everyone knows the game so well!! I would
never participate, but I like to watch it. (praia, 12 May 2006, verionica.nl)
It is very clear that this year they are doing their best to brew mischief and to make
the couples uneasy about their partners (but OK, that is part of the game) (Megara,
13 April 2006, vt4.be).
Discreditation and disidentication take place through the emphasis on the individual
responsibility of participants. e participants are seen as responsible for the decision to
participate, and consequently are discredited through their descriptions of ‘mad’, ‘silly’ or
‘stupid’. is mechanism reduces some of the partners to jokers, providing the broadcasts
with legitimate entertainment value, and leaving participants open to be judged. In
exceptional cases, posters (such as Bobette) were more self-reexive in their attitude to
this aspect, and in some cases participants were defended against this type of criticism
(although it is not always easy to distinguish between supporters and critics).
What fool goes to an island with her boyfriend where she leaves him alone with single
girls?? You’re begging for it! And the single girls? I would die of shame (Maartjj*, 30
May 2006, sbs.nl).
A more stupid person is dicult to imagine […] if she were to stand amongst a ock
of sheep, I wouldn’t notice hahahaha what a stupid woman!!! (ZuseJ, 8 May 2006, belg.
be).
Let’s be honest: Temptation Island is an immoral programme. And that’s why we
watch it: to be able to say ‘I’ll never do that,’ and meanwhile we enjoy being a voyeur,
hoping that, for example Len, will try and make amends in a following programme,
understandable in front of the camera (Bobette, 7 April 2006, femistyle.be).
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Second, the process of disidentication is organized through the rigid articulation of
the subject position of partner, which is based on validation of sexual delity, honesty
and monogamy. e television text of Temptation Island is based on a complex tension
between upholding conservative sexual values and showing practices that do not
live up to these expectations. Viewers oen react to this tension by disapproving and
condemning the practices of the participants, and it is no coincidence that one of the
most frequently used words to describe (at least some of) the participants is ‘slut’, mostly
oriented towards female participants.
is extends to one of the posters referring to the entire programme as “Slut
Camp”: “Ah, is that one of the ten girlies who are part of the Slut Camp? Is there not
enough going on in your lives? Is it so boring? I nd it only a 6/10” (Zagato, 11 April
2006, zattevrienden.be). One section of the posters sees the female singles as ‘sluts’, since
their assumed promiscuity is in conict with traditional monogamous moral values,
including the gendered double standard. While the television text portrays the hedonism
of the singles in a mostly positive manner, the attitude of (some of) the posters is more
negative. And the partners, who (presumably) succumb, are not spared censure. One
of the most striking postings (by Jayatonism) identies the partners through a specic
characteristic. Two are described as ‘whores’: “Kevin is smart. Matthieu is gross. Len
is smart. Lisette has a sweet smile. Bianca is a whore. So is Cheyenne. Björn is naive”
(Jaytonism, 22 May 2006, fok.nl). On the same day there was another posting that
defended only one of the women, but even so reiterated the importance of honesty for
judging Cheyenne: “Ok, Cheyenne had sex with the Smoothy […] but come on, this
does not suddenly make her a whore? ough it is sad that she was not honest about this
[…] Kevin is far too good, and perhaps he would even have forgiven her” (hardsilence,
22 May 2006, fok.nl).
It is no surprise that the second woman, Bianca Mommen, was not defended. Very
soon aer the rst broadcast, the news that Bianca Mommen (aka Alana) was an erotic
masseuse and prostitute circulated on some websites, and appeared in an article in a
major north Belgian popular newspaper, Het Laatste Nieuws. In this article, Bianca
Mommen defends herself with the Clintonesque reasoning, “I only give massages with
my breasts. at is not sex. I have never been paid to have sex with a client”. e articles
generated an avid online investigation into Bianca Mommen’s private life, resulting in
a series of texts that ran in parallel to Temptation Island’s television text. Photos and a
masturbation video were posted, and a series of testimonies by clients appeared that
contradicted her defence.
Even more important than this privacy-infringing variation of what has to be called
citizen journalism was the abusive tirade that broke over Bianca Mommen’s head. A very
large number of posters insulted her, and her initial reticence and emotionality were held
against her. At a more structural level, her subjectivity was seen to completely violate the
conservative subject position of the partner, and triggered severe social sanctions.
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An ugly whore who gives a stupid and prudish performance on TV. One should throw
such a person in the Willebroek canal. (danzig, 11 April 2006, zattevrienden.be)
I don’t understand this female. On TV she does not even want to talk to a guest,
there she is such a prude [!] what is the world coming to. (nXr, 11 April 2006,
zattevrienden.be)
So, at last Bianca had a good fuck; perhaps she will now keep her stupid wits together.
What an impossibly irritating person. ose who talk the most rst get the chop. But
of course, an escort girl cannot do without. Sorry, Veronica, that the programme is
now totally without credibility. It has always been fun to watch. (Angeliekje, 25 April
2006, veronica.nl)
Whenever she was lmed making out with one of the singles, this was seen as nal
conrmation of her promiscuity. For most of the posters it was unthinkable that her
professional work and her relational sphere could be separated. e fact that she was
seen as a prostitute brought the traditional repertoires about prostitution to the fore in
the discussions, resulting in her being dehumanized, objectied, dened as abnormal
and deviant, and stigmatized. A small number of posters came out in defence of Bianca
Mommen, for example, by trying to make a distinction between a ‘slut’ and a prostitute,
but these postings were ignored or countered.
I nd the whole business rather crude and mean, with all the comments. Bianca’s
occupation is her business, and it does not mean that the child is a slut. (sugababe, 11
May 2006, vt4.be)
Yes? en what is your denition of a slut? If a prostitute is not slut, then I don’t what
is. (Kuifer, 16 May 2006, vt4.be)
Bianca’s denials of her professional activities and her sexual escapades with bachelor
Stephen also elicited negative responses, since they violated the principle of honesty.
However, she was not the only participant to be subjected to such condemnatory
responses. Others who were suspected of lying were condemned, and their deceived
partners received expressions of sympathy. e lying participants were expected to
confess and apologize. If they did not, the postings became even more condemnatory.
is emphasizes again the cultural importance – or even the hegemony – of the traditional
monogamous relationship, of sexual delity and of honesty.
I ask myself […] if Bianca sees the clips again … how does she feel? Not because of
the sex scenes, you know, but because she lied so shamelessly. (Amourath, Forum
Moderator, 28 April 2006, vt4.be)
Keyword – Identity
207
hihi, I’m also watching TV :D Really sad for Andries :( Stupid woman that she is! All
this lying, I so hate that! Good luck, Andries! (Direct_gek, 24 May 2006, veronica.nl)
ird, and in addition to the debate on delity, the debate on physicality and beauty is
paramount in the postings. In some instances the clips of specic body parts (especially
female) were applauded, for example, in the posting by eronmiller: “To quote HUMO
[24]: TITS, TITS and again TITS! Whether it is Rebecca or Bianca, they are wiggling there
for our visual pleasure [!]” (eronmiller, 12 April 2006, vt4.be). e objectication of
(female) bodies for the pleasure of the male gaze is very much in line with Mulvey’s (1975)
analysis, and again leads to the viewers distancing themselves from the participants’
subjectivities. Oen, certain participants were singled out, and the attractiveness (or lack
thereof) of their bodies exhaustively discussed and evaluated. An example is the debate
on whether the ‘super-temptress’ (Rebecca Loos) is ‘fat’ or ‘well-rounded’. ose singles
(and sometimes also the partners) who t the beauty ideal are judged in a positive light,
and called ‘pretty’, ‘nice’ or ‘sweet’. In some cases this resulted in renewed attacks on
participants, with Bianca Mommen again being the target.
She walked face rst into a wall, fell down, and aerwards a bus rode slowly over her
face […] (Kenneth89, 12 April 2006, zattevrienden.be)
I would rather go to a toothless crack whore than to stick my prick into Bianca with the
cow spots on her legs and her crooked eye! (mark25utrg, 21 April 2006, whitelinerm.nl)
e fourth strategy of disidentication is related to the lack of participatory intensity. e
participants are portrayed as docile bodies that submit themselves to the management of
the production team, which does not leave much space for their representation as active
and empowered individuals. Although postings on the production team’s management
are rare – aer all, the management oen remains hidden – there are some that show
that viewers were aware of the production team’s interventions. Some posters referred
to the suggestive clips during the bonre evenings, the creation of a particular mood by
means of music, the importance of the montage and the ‘mean’ interview questions.
However, as Temptation Island is dened as a game where participation is voluntary,
the (sometimes) problematic character of these techniques is oen secondary. is
important aspect in some cases provoked some posters to criticize the imperfect character
of the management techniques, which reduced participants to pawns in a game:
e presenters’ questions were much meaner this year, but they missed the opportunity
to make good use of the footage of the partners having sex, in order to position the
partners against each other, as they did the year before. Of course, we do not get a
Kenny and a Sven every year. (_Boo_, 24 May 2006, fok.nl)
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208
However, the situation becomes more complex: In some rare instances the posters
critiqued the (legitimacy of) Temptation Island’s management via the concept of the
game and the trial. e programme (or a facet thereof) was dened as ‘ridiculous’ or
‘miserable’, and some posters vented their annoyance. Sometimes this irritation was
limited to para-social interactions with the television screen (as in the case of Mikkel),
with the poster engaging in a dialogue with the ‘personages’ (participants). In a small
number of instances their irritation led to deep-seated criticisms of the production team’s
(and in particular the presenter’s) behaviour. e posting by ‘believer’ is one of the few
that actually questions the deontology of the programme-makers.
I always get irritated when they manipulate the clips during the bonres. en I sit and
shout at the TV: ‘No, that’s not at all true!!!’ (Mikkel, 16 March 2006, femistyle.be)
And I actually nd that the whole thing can no longer be justied by the producers.
OK, the participants ask for this, but surely as a human being, this must kill you?
(believer, 28 April 2006, femistyle.be)
e criterion that is applied here is based on the seriousness of the emotional and
relational impact on the participants, but at the same time they are reminded of their
individual responsibility, and relatively little is said about the structural limitations. Most
of these ‘critical’ readings of the television text (with some exceptions, such as Bobette’s
postings on femistyle.be, cited below) in fact refer to specic aspects, and ignore the all-
encompassing character of the production management, which in any case is unseen by
most of the posters.
You know, in this series I am over-conscious of the way in which everything
is directed: Mieke’s letter with the key would really not have come without a tip
(+ key) from the producers; trying to make the partners jealous was staged. e whole
programme is only insinuation, and if everything goes too well, the producers will
intervene. (Bobette, 24 April 2006, femistyle.be)
ere is a second (and more signicant) example of the professional management being
questioned, and the television text critically evaluated. is criticism goes to the heart of
the programme concept, and questions the authenticity and real-life quality of Temptation
Island as a reality show. e contradictions in Bianca Mommen’s behaviour, the sensational
news that she is a prostitute, and the inclusion of participants who have appeared in other
television programmes and, therefore, cannot be dened as ordinary people were enough
for one group of posters to call the entire programme a ‘put-up job’.
A total put-up job, that Temptation. And an ex-participant of Big Brother is also there!
ey are all actors! (Tim, 1 April 2006, whiteLineFirm.nl).
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209
Not true […] a friend of mine, temptress Mavis, is NO actress! She works in an
accounting oce. So, keep your prejudices for yourself!!! (Sinneke, 4 April 2006,
whiteLineFirm.nl).
Despite a number of reexive postings coming out against this criticism (as, for instance,
Sinneke’s), combined with testimonies and behavioural analyses, many posters expressed
their disapproval. In this roundabout way the production management comes under re
(and heavy re, at that) because the credibility of the programme is prejudiced by the
interventions of the production team – negating the idea of fair play, and the idea of
ordinary people. Such resistance is not aimed at the productions team’s deontological
code, but at the fact that they transcended the programme format. Simultaneously, it
works against the participants, who are discredited, this time by being articulated as
actors posing as ordinary people who are dishonest about their identities.
3.5 Conclusion
Both the programme and the viewers who responded online demonstrate a rigid moral
perspective on sexual delity and monogamy. While the television text oers scope for
hedonism (through the central, and legitimately dened, role of the singles), the online
discussions are dominated by a conservative perspective, which in some instances escalates to
moralizing, intolerance, sexism and stigmatization, aimed mostly at the female participants.
rough the logic of photo-negativism, where visions of order are photo-negativized
into stories of disorder (see Hartley, 1992), Temptation Island conrms the hegemonic
interpretation of the ideal relationship. e partners who, one aer the other, succumb to
the pressure present negative points of identication against which viewers can measure
themselves, enabling them to conrm their own moral value system as presented on the
(television) plate. e viewers receive malicious satisfaction as well as pleasure when they
see the failure of people whom they articulate as inferior. When the partners succumb,
anticipating the catharsis of the nal confession that has to restore social order is another
source of pleasure for the viewers.
In order to legitimize their viewing pleasure, the viewers enter into a social contract
with the programme. e programme and the viewers together construct a distance
between the latter and the participants, discouraging identications. Several strategies
of disidentication are used to create this distance. ere is the articulation of the
participants as being individually responsible for participating in an irresponsible game,
which results in their representation as ‘stupid’ (for entering into a situation that will
inevitably lead to their downfall). rough the rigid articulation of the subject position
of the partner, based on the validation of sexual delity, honesty and monogamy,
they become represented as immoral and promiscuous. e voyeuristic focus on the
(female) bodies and the strong, virtually uncontested, professional management further
Media and Participation
210
contribute to the processes of disidentication. Temptation Island in this respect is not
only an illustration of the dangers of (minimalist) participation and a prime example of
how participants are reduced to Lefebvrian ordinariness, it is also an anti-empathetic
programme, in both its production and reception.
Of course, there are exceptions at both the textual and the reception level. For instance,
the bachelors are portrayed positively in the television text, and gender dierences in the
representation of the concept of the bachelor are rare. Moreover, I would not want to
claim that there is only one reading of the programme: In the online discussions a number
of posters use alternative readings, for instance, posters defending Bianca Mommen, or
oering structural critiques of the professional management. But the dominant reading
in the diversity of online forums remains highly judgemental and problematic.
All this raises the ethical question of how the members of the production team can
justify treating other people in such a destructive manner. e question is not whether
the participants should be protected ‘against themselves’, which would place me in a
paternalistic position. e question is how media professionals can justify – to themselves
and to the entire media sector – spending two weeks (and more) trying to destroy
people’s relationships. e argument that it is ‘only a game’ and that participants take
part voluntarily in my opinion is not a satisfactory answer to this ethical question. Even
in the case of informed consent25 one might wonder whether such subtle management
techniques could be communicated suciently well to generate informed consent, or
whether consent should ever be granted, given these kinds of techniques. In this respect,
Temptation Island shows the need for reality TV to be embedded into the production
values of human-interest journalism, or entertainment-oriented journalism (see Meijer,
2001; Campbell, 2004), so that reality TV and human-interest programming can be
rmly anchored in a more ethical system.
Notes
1. is happens through the so-called logic of equivalence, but without totally eliminating their
dierences: A chain of equivalence “can weaken, but not domesticate dierences” (Laclau,
2005: 79).
2. e subject position of ordinary people plays a key role in a variety of media organizations
and communities, including mainstream media, alternative and community media, and
(non-mainstream) online media. Arguably, the exact articulations of the ordinary people
subject position and its juxtapositions with elitist subject positions will be very dierent in
these media (sub)spheres, but this does not nullify the role of these subject positions and the
antagonistic/oppositional structure in which they are placed.
3. e focus groups took place in January 1999. e reception project was organized in
collaboration with Sonja Spee, who was then aliated with the Centre for Women’s Studies at
the University of Antwerp, and Mieke De Clercq, then a teaching assistant at the University of
Ghent, Communication Studies Department. My thanks also to the Ghent students for their
work: Jo Bambust, Sylvie De Bock, Frederik De Pesseroey, Wendy De Schrijver, Elke Devroye,
Keyword – Identity
211
Soe Eyckerman, Elke Feys, An Goedgezelschap, Karla Liebrecht, Charlotte Nyssen, Jelle
Osselaer, Pedro Pisonier, Liesbeth Ponsaerts, Evelyne Six, Lode Spincemaille, Peter Stoels,
omas Swannet, Frederik Taevernier, Kim Van den Eeckhout, Eddy Van Geyte, Wim Van
Peteghem, ijs Vandeplassche, Guy Verbruggen and Kirsten Victor.
4. Whilst the original analysis focused more on power relations between media professionals
and participants, and on gender issues, the material was suciently rich to enable analysis
related to the topic discussed in this case study.
5. Although a detailed qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the four programmes was
used as a basis for the reception analysis, it is not discussed in this article.
6. When age is a consideration, the range is 18–83 years. e category 20–29 years was over-
represented and 30–39 years was under-represented. Although some geographical spread was
achieved, most people came from the Ghent area where the focus groups were conducted. e
categories of students and retired people were also over-represented.
7. ese thirteen panel members were traced and interviewed by Lies Vandenberghe. I am very
grateful to her and appreciative of her help also in the data gathering phase for this chapter
(see also Vandenberghe, 2008). e table below gives an overview of the panel of twenty
ordinary people.
Name Sex 2007 contact information Age when interviewed in 2007
Besard Damien M Deceased
De Bruyn Suzanne F Interviewed 57
De Kerpel Rudi M Interviewed 48
Dumortier Albert M Deceased
Goossens Simone F Interviewed 81
Houthuys Astrid F Interviewed 27
Jorissen Marga F Interviewed 32
Laget Simonne F Refused
Lathouwers Betty F Interviewed 58
Mataiche Fatiha F Interviewed 34
Morales Ortiz Carmen F Moved abroad
Pinkhof Gorik M Refused
Raemdonck Pierre M Interviewed 38
Rummers Roeland M Interviewed 30
Van Beek Geert M Untraceable
Van Mulders Annie F Interviewed 52
Vanhelmont Frans M Deceased
Verhoye Eric M Interviewed 64
Vossen Misjel M Interviewed 59
Walschap Sandrina F Interviewed 36
8. In all cases, focus group participants’ genders, ages and educational status (High/Low) are
mentioned as well as the number of the focus group in which they participated. e sex, age
and year of interview are mentioned for the Jan Publiek participants.
9. In chapter 6, this will be theorized as social quality.
10. One could speculate about the reception of the authenticity of ordinary people in cases when
the participants were positioned (slightly) dierently (which happened to an extent in the
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other episodes of Jan Publiek); in the case of the rst episode of Jan Publiek both the format
and the reception emphasize the articulation of authenticity of ordinary people.
11. As mentioned in chapter 2, north Belgian celebrities are oen referred to in Dutch as BVs, or
‘Bekende Vlamingen’, which translates as FFs, or Famous Flemings.
12. Knack is a north Belgian newsmagazine.
13. http://www.dekerpel.com/.
14 . An earlier, Dutch, version of this case study was translated into English by Fernanda Snyman;
I would like to thank her for her work.
15. In 2008 there was no Temptation Island edition broadcast, and the 2009 edition was produced
by VT4 only.
16. e television text makes hardly any reference to the locality of these resorts, disconnecting
them from their (post)colonial realities.
17. http://www.temptation-island.nl/.
18. Tim De Pril was a partner in Temptation Island 2. Gaby Visser and Rowena Guldenaar were
temptresses in, respectively, Temptation Island 3 and 4.
19. e Dutch text was originally available online at: http://www.rotationz.be/new/news.
php?newsid=1949, but the page no longer exists. It can now be accessed at http://forum.
losippos.be/thread.php?threadid=2775&boardid=12&sid=bd91818b93114b65f2a5e208af7
5e923&goto=nextnewest.
20. Not all participants’ surnames were available. If they are not known, only rst names are used.
21. At the time of writing, this website was no longer online.
22. e following forums, blogs and feedback pages were analysed. e selection was based on a
number of criteria to generate diversity (Dutch/North Belgian, broadcaster/non-broadcaster,
large/small, male/female focus, formalized debate/comments).
belg.be: http://www.belg.be/leesmeer.php?x=3457 (no longer accessible)
femistyle.be:http://www.femistyle.be/ubbthreads/showat.php?Cat=0&Number=311289&p
age=0&fpart=1&vc=1 (no longer accessible)
fok.nl: http://forum.fok.nl/topic/840554, 844298, 848519, 849903, 851659, 852485, 854457,
854746, 856631, 858232, 860619 en 863794
goedZO?!.com:http://www.goedzo.com/index.php/2006/04/26/lmpje_temptation_island_
deelneemster_b
sbs.nl: http://www.sbs.nl/modules.php?name=special&site=televisienieuws&sid=1326 (no
longer accessible)
veronica.nl:http://veronica.sbs.nl/modules.php?name=special&site=televisienieuws&sid=48
35&rubrieknaam (no longer accessible)
vt4.be:http://www.forum.vt4.be/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=11&TopicID=17887&
ReturnPage=&PagePosition=1&readPage=1 (no longer accessible)
whitelinerm.nl: http://www.whitelinerm.nl/node/202
zattevrienden.be:http://www.zattevrienden.be/Alana_aka_Bianca_uit_Temptation_Island_
de_verboden_fotos
All citations in this chapter have been translated into English by the author.
23 e focus of the analysis was not on the cultural dierences between the north Belgian and
the Dutch broadcasts; nor was it on the dierences in online culture between north Belgium
and the Netherlands, or on the dierence in status between the posters (‘ordinary viewers’ and
participants).
24 Humo is a popular north Belgian magazine.
25 See Hibberd et al. (2000).
Chapter 4
Keyword – Organization
1. A conceptual introduction
1.1 e organization concept
The concept of organization still plays a signicant role in capturing the social
structures through which media activities are deployed. It is considered to be stating
the obvious to say that small- and large-sized media organizations are ubiquitous
within the media sphere. Media organizations are interconnections of the material and the
discursive, and arrange and regulate specic people and objects within the organization,
creating a border between them and their outsides, while at the same time establishing
material links with their political, economic, technological and cultural environments.
Moreover, organizational cultures attribute roles and identities to these people and objects,
discursively structuring their practices. Media organizations work also as discursive
machineries that generate media output (in combination with a variety of other texts, such
as annual reports) and produce discourses on all possible societal elds (including the media
sphere itself). At the same time, the articulation of the concept of the (media) organization
with the mainstream (media) has provoked substantial critiques. First, within the eld
of alternative (and community) media, the concept of the alternative media organization
implies a re-articulation of the mainstream media organization. Second, the success of
internet communication has supported the development of the (virtual) community as a
dierent model to structure media production.
e debate on the role of the organizational structure aects the problematics of
participation, since these social structures impact on the intensity of the participatory
process by impeding and channelling participation, as well as facilitating and allowing
for it. Media organizations – through their presence, objectives and practices – can
support more maximalist forms of participation, but at the same time, they can limit
participants’ participation and steer them towards more minimalist forms. In order
to see what role the organizational structure can play in supporting participation, it is
necessary to briey discuss the nature of this social structure and its ways of operating
within the media sphere. rough discussion of the above-mentioned contestations, I
show the potential role of organizational structure in directing participation towards
more maximalist (or minimalist) forms.
Media and Participation
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ere is a wide variety of denitions of the concept of organization, but as Lammers
(1987: 22) remarks, there is consensus on a number of key characteristics. Lammers
(1987: 29) describes the organization as a social structure that has been consciously
constructed and is (more or less) regularly reconstructed. Organizations have a formally
dened design which is intended to be rational and is characterized by functionalization,
coordination and nalization. Within the organization, tasks are dened and grouped
together (functionalization); these tasks are then combined (coordination) with the aim
of achieving the general objective(s) (nalization), which can range from utilitarian to
normative (Etzioni, 1961). A short denition that emphasizes this aspect can be found
in Etzioni (1964: 3): “Organizations are social units (or human groupings) deliberately
constructed and reconstructed to seek specic goals”. rough these logics, hierarchies
and power imbalances become embedded within the organization, as described in
Stinchcombe’s (1967: 155) denition: “Any social arrangement in which the activities of
some people are systematically planned by other people (who, therefore, have authority
over them) in order to achieve some special purpose is called a formal organization”.
ese denitions are not meant to create the impression that all organizations
are similar. As in many elds of the social, there is a wide variety of organizational
structures, practices and cultures. Attempts to deal with this complexity have resulted in
a series of categorizing systems, among which the distinction between the mechanistic,
organic and bureaucratic organization is one of the most prominent. Hatch (1997)
uses three characteristics, complexity, formalization and centralization, to support this
typology. Whereas organic organizations have low levels of complexity, formalization
and centralization, mechanistic and bureaucratic organizations have high levels of
complexity and formalization. e distinction between mechanistic and bureaucratic
organizations is that the former is characterized by high levels of centralization, while
bureaucracies – though highly formalized – function in a decentralized way.1 Also
related to this typology is the debate on the role of institutionalization, or the way that
organizations become “infused with value beyond the technical requirements of the
task at hand” (Selznick, 1957: 17). As Scott (1992) argues, institutionalization implies
that the organization is embedded in an environment with specic expectations of
the organization, and imposes rules in order to ensure the organization’s social
legitimacy.
Despite the diversity that characterizes the world of organizations, these social
structures have a common focus on the realization of a specic set of objectives. In
order to achieve this aim, the people and objects that are constructed as internal to the
organization are arranged in a specic (hierarchical-formalized) order. rough these
logics, but in a variety of ways, people become members, and objects become owned.
Keeping in mind Rafaeli’s (1997) argument, we should not lose sight of the complexities of
membership because membership might be based on physical or temporal relationships,
production relationships or cultural relationships. And, as Pels (1998) argues, also the
notions of ownership and owner are not always straightforward.
Keyword – Organization
217
ese internal-material characteristics (see Figure 1) are rst of all complemented
by external-material characteristics, which position the organization within a network
of other organizations and within the context of the organizational environment. is
network can be extended to include the circulating objects that leave or enter the
organization. Although the internal logics of organizations should not necessarily be
articulated as stable, especially the relations of organizations with their environments
and the constant ux of people and objects that move across their boundaries show the
structural instability and contingency of organizations.
Figure 1: Organizational characteristics.
Material Discursive
Internal Hierarchical-formalized and objective-
oriented arrangement of people and objects
Organizational culture
Discursive
External Interorganizational network, organizational
environment and circulating objects
machinery
From this perspective, organizations can be seen as attempts to delineate a unity and to
protect its stability, through the logics of functionalization, coordination, nalization,
formalization and centralization, while simultaneously being exposed to centrifugal and
centripetal forces. Also, at this level, organizations cannot be seen as homogenous; they
react dierently when confronted with the complexity of environmental relationships.
Just as the dierences between mechanistic and organic organizations (from an internal-
material approach) have been theorized, we can argue also that there are mechanic and
organic networks in which organizations are situated. Here, dierences arise from the more
rigid or more uid articulations of the dierent actors that constitute these networks.
One way to capture the (dierences in) organizational, interorganizational and
environmental uidity is through Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) metaphor of the rhizome
(as was already discussed in chapter 1). is metaphor is based on the juxtaposition
of rhizomatic and arbolic thinking. e structures of mechanistic and bureaucratic
organizations, and the networks in which they are situated, can be seen as arbolic. e
arbolic is a structure that is linear, hierarchic and sedentary, and can be represented as
“the tree-like structure of genealogy, branches that continue to subdivide into smaller
and lesser categories” (Wray, 1998: 3). According to Deleuze and Guattari, it is the
philosophy of the State.
e rhizomatic, on the other hand, links to organic organizations and their networks.
e rhizomatic is closely related to the alternative in being non-linear, anarchic and
nomadic: “Unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other
Media and Participation
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point” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 19). In A ousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari
(1987) enumerate a series of characteristics of the rhizome – the principles of connection
and heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture, cartography, and decalcomania.
Connection and heterogeneity imply that any point of the network can be connected to
any other point, despite the dierent characteristics of the components. e concept of
multiplicity constructs the rhizome, not on the basis of elements that are each operating
within xed sets of rules, but as an entity whose rules are constantly in motion because
new elements are always included. e principle of the asignifying rupture means that “a
rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its
old lines, or on new lines” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 9). Finally, the principle of the
map is juxtaposed with the idea of the copy. In contrast to the copy, the map is:
open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible
to constant modication. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting,
reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall,
conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation.
Perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has
multiple entryways. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 12)
Apart from the more material characteristics of organizations, their discursive
characteristics can be emphasized also, without aiming to disconnect the discursive from
the material. At the internal-discursive level, organizations are sites where organizational
culture develops, circulates and is preserved. Siehl and Martin (1984: 227) describe
organizational culture as follows: “organizational culture can be thought of as the glue
that holds an organization together through a sharing of patterns of meaning. e
culture focuses on the values, beliefs, and expectations that members come to share”. As
Martin (2002: 3) remarks, the eld of organizational culture is broad, and, for instance,
includes “the stories people tell to newcomers to explain ‘how things are done around
here,’ the ways in which oces are arranged and personal items are or are not displayed,
jokes people tell, the working atmosphere […], the relations among people […], and so
on”. Organizational culture, or “the way of life in an organization” (Hatch, 1997: 204),
produces discourses on (amongst many other areas) the general objectives and specic
tasks of the organization, the means and decision-making procedures that need to
be used to achieve them, the language and conceptual framework, the membership
boundaries and criteria for inclusion (and exclusion), and the criteria for allocation of
status, power and authority, and rewards and punishments (based on Schein (1985), see
also the summary by Hatch (1997: 213)). At the same time, organizational culture is not
homogeneous, and the above-mentioned areas provide ample opportunity for conict,
contestation and power struggles within the organization.
Again, organizational culture does not stop at the borders of the organization (however
permeable these borders might be). Organizational identities and discourses interact
Keyword – Organization
219
with the networks, environments and cultures in which the organizations are embedded.
ese outsides oer to organizations elds of discursivities that provide the discursive
elements to construct the organizational cultures. Obviously, discourses on ‘good’
decision-making, leadership and membership, and on the legitimacy of the organizational
objectives, are not continuously reinvented by each individual organization, but are part
of a broader cultural conguration that seeps into these organizations. Organizations, at
the same time, are not without agency, and can – within the limits of a set of hegemonies
– articulate existing elements into particular discourses. rough their practices and
discourses, organizations also support, normalize, and sometimes undermine and
contradict existing cultural congurations. eir voices contribute to society’s discursive
production, sometimes entailing the promise of social change, but oen contributing to
the continued xation of society’s rigidities.
One way to theorize (and name) these discursive productive capacities is to return to
Deleuze and Guattari’s work, and more specically their notion of the machine. In their
Anti-Oedipus, they dene the machine as “a system of interruptions or breaks”, whereas
the breaks “should in no way be considered as a separation from reality; rather, they
operate along lines that vary according to whatever aspect of them we are considering.
Every machine, in the rst place, is related to a continual material ow […] that it cuts
into” (1984: 36 – emphasis removed). Deleuze and Guattari (1984: 36) also point to the
interconnectedness of machines when they say that “every machine is the machine of
a machine”. It is seen as the law of the production of production: “[…] every machine
functions as a break in the ow in relation to the machine to which it is connected,
but at the same time is also a ow itself, or the production of a ow, in relation to the
machine connected to it”. Although Deleuze and Guattari oen apply their machine
concept to the human body (e.g., the mouth-machine), they also use the machine
concept in a much broader way, for instance in talking about abstract machines such
as capitalism. As Raunig (2007: 147) points out, in Guattari’s (1972) rst machine text
(Machine and Structure, originally written in 1969) he uses the machine to discuss the
revolutionary organization as an institutional machine that does not become a state or
party structure. Without being completely faithful to Guattari’s framework, which sees
the machine as unstructuralizable (see Genosko, 2002: 197), his theoretical reections
on the revolutionary machine allow me to articulate the organization as a discursive
machine, which is contingent on, but also embedded in, elds of discursivity and
continuous productivity.
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1.2 Media organizations and their critiques
Mainstream media organizations are rmly embedded within a capitalist context, which
structures and xates many of the organizational characteristics. As Cottle (2003: 3)
formulates it, “[…] media industries are businesses, sites of investment and sources of
employment”. At the level of the internal-material, mainstream media organizations group
a wide variety of people and objects, but simultaneously they structure these actors in
specic ways. McQuail (1994: 191), for instance, mentions three basic categories, media
professionals, management and technical sta, which all perform specic roles and
conform to specic identities, and contribute to organizational objectives in dierent
(and sometimes contradictory) ways. Within (but also beyond) these basic categories,
the actors nd themselves situated in complex power structures that are nevertheless
oen still characterized by strong vertical hierarchies and arbolic structures. Apart from
human actors, there is a wide range of objects, among which so-called media technologies
play a crucial role. Together, these people and objects are set to achieve a number of mixed
goals, which, according to Tunstall (1971: 51), combine revenue goals (audience revenue
goals and advertiser revenue goals) and non-revenue goals (gaining prestige, exercising
inuence but also serving a nation). e balance between these dierent objectives is not
necessarily stable, as Tunstall (1971: 50) notes in remarking that “A continual process of
bargaining takes place as to which goals should be pursued”.
Also the (mainstream) media organization’s interorganizational network and
organizational environment are specic, because they obviously have strong
communicative objectives. e process of media production requires the establishment
and maintenance of connections with large-sized audience groups that consume these
media products, which in turn result in the media organizations’ ambition to maximize
the circulation of these (symbolic or physical) objects. Moreover, mainstream media
organizations are dependent for their revenues on advertisers, sponsors and governments,
and for their functioning on a wide range of suppliers and service providers. And –
through processes of economic convergence, and vertical and horizontal integration
– they are oen connected to other (media) organizations. As the domain of media
production is considered to be of high societal relevance, a wide range of other actors
has taken a keen interest in the media sphere, a situation – articulated by Gerbner (1969)
as institutional pressures – that has led to the development of media regulation and
media activism.
At the discursive level, media organizations accommodate a series of identities that
play a key role in the (media) organizational culture. Especially the journalistic identity,
and its articulation with professionalism, is worth mentioning here because it combines
notions of public service, ethics, management of resources, autonomy, membership
of a professional elite, the need for immediacy, and objectivity (see Deuze, 2005;
Carpentier, 2005). But the journalistic identity is only one of the many subject positions
that circulate within media organizations. It has nevertheless received ample attention,
Keyword – Organization
221
especially in its discursive struggle with other subject positions, such as manager and
marketer, as evidenced by such books as Market-driven Journalism (McManus, 1994)
or When MBAs Rule the Newsroom (Underwood, 1995). Despite the specicity of the
journalist identity, a number of the above-mentioned elements, including the claim on
provision of a societal service, the right to manage resources (including people), the
right to autonomy, elitist positioning, the claim to reality and an acclaimed central role
in society (see Couldry, 2003), are shared at a much broader level, and characterize the
entire sphere of mainstream media organizations.
is specic position of (mainstream) media organizations within society strengthens
their role as discursive machines. Obviously, media products have achieved a pervasive
and spectacular presence in everyday life, to the degree that they have become
dicult to (desire to) escape from. ese media products are carriers of a multitude
of discourses, which in many cases are contradictory, but they do not always evade
the workings of hegemony. Especially the discourses about the media sphere oer
contained legitimizations for the media organization’s hegemonic practices and cultures.
Media products, for instance, are carriers of normalizing discourses about the media
organization’s claims to direct access to reality, its centrality and its elitist position in
society. But they include also normalizations of mainstream media production cultures,
where media professionals still hold strong – sometimes post-political – positions of
power to internally manage the resources deemed necessary and to provide publicness
and visibility to, and framings for, other societal actors. In this sense (mainstream)
media organizations are machines that interrupt, channel, xate and produce ows.
eir position also brings contestation, struggle, resistance and instability because the
ways that they interrupt, channel, xate and produce ows are not always accepted.
However dominant the mainstream media organizational logics, there are two
structural contestations of (some of) its basic premises. e rst contestation is grounded
in the sphere of alternative and community media organizations, which introduced a
dierent model of media organization. is alternative model was a critical response
to the internal logics of mainstream media organizations, and their construction as
large-scale, vertically structured, arbolic, sometimes bureaucratic organizations, staed
by professionals and geared towards large, homogeneous (segments of ) audiences. e
alternative model critiques the nature of the external-material articulation of mainstream
media as closely connected or part of the arbolic networks of state and market. On an
external-discursive level, mainstream media are critiqued for being carriers of dominant
discourses and representations.
e alternative organizational model consists of organizations that are horizontally
structured, and that facilitate audience access and participation within the frame of
democratization and multiplicity. e critical stance towards the production values of
the media professional working in mainstream media has led to a diversity of formats
and genres and creates room for experimentation with content and form. is alternative
organizational model articulates media organizations as small-scale, and independent of
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state and market, but part of the rhizomatic network of civil society and oriented towards
specic communities, possibly disadvantaged groups, and respecting of their diversity. At
the level of the discursive, alternative and community media are articulated as carriers of
non-dominant (possibly counter-hegemonic) discourses and representations, which also
value the principle of self-representation (see chapter 1). One of the clearest examples
of these articulations can be found in the introduction to Girard’s A Passion for Radio,
where he formulates the following answer to the question:
a passion for [community] radio?: e answer to that question can be found in a
third type of radio – an alternative to commercial and state radio. Oen referred
to as community radio, its most distinguishing characteristic is its commitment to
community participation at all levels. While listeners of commercial radio are able
to participate in the programming in limited ways – via open line telephone shows
or by requesting a favourite song, for example – community radio listeners are the
producers, managers, directors and even owners of the stations. (Girard, 1992: 2)
e second structural contestation of the mainstream media organizational model shis
attention to another concept, that of community. Here, the argument is that (mainstream
media) organizations are bypassed by communities of users. One component of this argument
is the virtual community’s capacity to bring people together. For instance, Rheingold’s (2002:
2 – emphasis removed) denition of virtual community includes the verb ‘to organize’, but it
is the community that is the location of the process, not the organization.
t0SHBOJ[FEBSPVOEBďOJUJFTTIBSFEJOUFSFTUTCSJOHJOHUPHFUIFSQFPQMFXIPEJEOPU
necessarily know each other before meeting online.
t.BOZUPNBOZNFEJB<y>
t5FYUCBTFEFWPMWJOHJOUPUFYUQMVTHSBQIJDTCBTFEDPNNVOJDBUJPOT<y>
t3FMBUJWFMZVODPVQMFEGSPNGBDFUPGBDFTPDJBMMJGFJOHFPHSBQIJDDPNNVOJUJFT<y>
Castells (1996: 352) employs a similar denition in his e Rise of the Network Society,
which also uses the verb ‘to organize’ in relation to the virtual community. Moreover,
he emphasizes the possible and relative formalization of communities, which again are
(implicitly) contrasted with organizations. He denes the virtual community as:
a self-dened electronic network of interactive communication organized around a
shared interest or purpose, although sometimes communication becomes the goal
in itself. Such communities may be relatively formalized, as in the case of hosted
conferences or bulletin board systems, or be spontaneously formed by social networks,
which keep logging into the network to send and retrieve messages in a chosen time
pattern (either delayed or in real time).
Keyword – Organization
223
e emphasis on community increases with the success of web 2.0, which became
seen as juxtaposed to mainstream media organizations. Shirky’s (2008: 29) already-
mentioned book Here Comes Everybody. e Power of Organizing Without Organizations,
for instance, contains the following statement about organizations: “e typical
organization is hierarchical, with workers answering to a manager, and that manager
answering to a still-higher manager, and so on”. Although it is not always made explicit,
the focus of these kinds of analyses is oen on the commercial media organization,
which functions as a constitutive outside for new “non-hierarchical and collaborative
forms of organization” (O’Sullivan, 2009: 87). Groups and communities (and not
organizations) are the structuring components of these forms of collaboration and co-
creation. Shirky (2008: 47) uses the concept of the post-managerial organization, but in
practice he refers to “loosely coordinated groups [that] can now achieve things that were
previously out of reach for any other organizational structure […]”. Similarly, Jenkins
(2006: 243) constructs a juxtaposition between commercial media organizations and
bottom-up consumption and production practices, in Convergence Culture, which he
denes as a move towards “ever more complex relations between top-down corporate
media and bottom-up participatory culture”. On the one hand consumers, as groups or
communities, are “asserting their right to participate in the culture, on their own terms,
when and where they wish” (Jenkins, 2006: 175). Corporate organizations, on the other
hand, fall into two groups, prohibitionists and collaborationists. According to Jenkins
(2006: 175):
Corporations imagine participation as something they can start and stop, channel
and reroute, commodify and market. e prohibitionists are trying to shut down
unauthorized participation; the collaborationists are trying to win grassroots creators
over to their side.
In contrast to these corporate organizations, Jenkins (2006: 260) stresses the importance
of what he calls consumption communities, for instance when he writes, “A politics of
participation starts from the assumption that we may have greater collective bargaining
power if we form consumption communities”. Jenkins does not entirely shy away from
the notion of the organization since as he uses the concept of adhocracy. Jenkins links
this organizational concept to the work of the science ction writer Cory Doctorow
(2003), but it features also in earlier writings such as Toer (1970) and Waterman (1990).
Here, the bureaucratic organization becomes the constitutive outside, as the adhocratic
organization is “characterized by a lack of hierarchy. In it, each person contributes to
confronting a particular problem as needed based on his or her knowledge and abilities,
and leadership roles shi as tasks change” (Jenkins, 2006: 262).
Another concept frequently used in this context is community of practice, originally
developed by Lave and Wenger (1991 – see also Wenger, 1998). As Wenger et al.
(2002: 4) put it, communities of practice are “groups of people who share a concern, a set
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of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise
in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis”. Shirky, and also O’Sullivan (2009) in his
analysis of Wikipedia, translates this concept to the context of social media. Again, the
notion of the community is lauded as an alternative form of organization, which does not
incorporate the problems related to the organization as structure:
Communities of practice are inherently cooperative, and are beautifully supported
by social tools, because that is exactly the kind of community whose members can
recruit one another or allow themselves to be found by interested searchers. ey can
thrive and even grow to enormous size without advertising their existence in public.
(Shirky, 2008: 101)
1.3 e (maximalist-)participatory organization
e next question that emerges is related to the importance of the organization for
maximalist participatory processes. is does not imply that the notion of community
should necessarily be discredited, nor does it mean that the connections between
community and organization should be ignored. For instance, Jenkins’s (2006) work –
and especially his reference to adhocracies – shows how closely related are communities
and organization. Moreover, as Williams (1981: 76) puts it in his Keywords, communities
can materialize in organizations:
e complexity of community thus relates to the dicult interaction between the
tendencies originally distinguished in the historical development: on the one hand
the sense of direct common concern; on the other hand the materialization of various
forms of common organization, which may or may not adequately express this.
But arguably, the organization remains an important social structure, dierent from
the community (and the group) because of its logics of functionalization, coordination,
nalization, formalization and centralization. Reducing the concept of the organization
to the antipode of the multiplicity, to a position of minimalist participation or non-
participation, would be too simple. e alternative media organizational models, in
particular, show that it is possible to attribute a signicant role to the organization as a
tool for and location of the more maximalist forms of participation.
1.3.1 Variations of participatory media organizations
As argued earlier (see chapter 1), participation cannot be equated with ‘mere’ access
to or interaction with media organizations. Access and interaction are the conditions
Keyword – Organization
225
of possibility of participation, but do not capture the power dynamics and decision-
making enshrined in the meaning(s) of the signier participation. And even in the case
of participatory media organizations, which do focus on participation, we can see many
dierences.
ese dierences are usually not situated so much at the level of participation through
the media, since participatory media organizations oen play a key role in providing
a voice to the social actors. But the degree to which participants can (co-)decide on
the content production of the media organization (content-related participation) and
its management (structural participation) varies strongly. In order to position the
participatory organization, which uses (more) maximalist approaches to participation,
the intensity of participation in the media is used as a rst dimension. Also the locus
of the production process varies widely, since production in some cases takes place within
the organization and in others outside of it. In the latter cases, the media organization
becomes more exclusively a channel for distributing content (produced elsewhere) and
for providing access to the media sphere. e consequence is oen that the production
process (and its potentially participatory nature) becomes disconnected from the media
organization itself, which places the participatory nature of the production process
beyond the remit of the organization.
e combination of these two dimensions results in four ideal-typical models, which
all have a place, without being neatly positioned at the four corners of the matrix cells,
in the matrix generated by the combination of these dimensions (see Figure 2). e
rst model deals with organizations that have maximalist forms of participation within
the organization, and where the (oen participatory) production process is an intrinsic
part of the organization. In other words, these participatory processes involve people
that organize their own participation. Classic examples are (community and) alternative
radio stations and the so-called Independent Media Centers (IMCs), Indymedia2 being
the most famous example. Although in both these cases there are dierent types of
membership (with varying degrees of involvement), this model presupposes an explicit
link between the participants and the organization.
e second model includes organizations that aim to have others (oen non-members
of the organization) participate in the media production, which still takes place within
the organization. Because of the dierent (power) positions of the organization (and its
members) and the actual producers, the level of participation within the organization
of the latter is reduced. In some cases, this level of participation is still considerable,
as examples from the sector of (the less radical) community media illustrate. ese
media organizations are oen oriented towards facilitating the participation of members
of a specic community, where these members remain relatively detached from the
actual organization. e digital storytelling sector presents a number of examples, for
instance, when organizations, such as the Center for Digital Storytelling,3 support ‘their’
participants’ creation of digital narrations (see Lambert 2002). In some other cases
Media and Participation
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the opportunities for participation within the organization are more restricted, as the
example of the British Video Nation project (see below) shows.
In the third and fourth models the locus of production becomes detached from the
organization, and renders the organization mostly a provider of access. In a relatively
small number of organizations this still allows for (some level of) participation within
the organization itself (Model 3). Examples can be found in the eld of community Wi-
Fi, where the organization’s aim is to provide access to the internet for its members.
Organizations that focus almost exclusively on providing access to the media sphere,
with only minimal participation within the organization itself (Model 4), are frequent,
and exist in many dierent forms. Examples are organizations that provide blog or vlog
facilities, such as Ourmedia and YouTube,4 and websites aimed at social networking,
such as Facebook and MySpace.5 Instances of what is oen called citizen journalism,
where non-professionals provide raw materials to mainstream media newsrooms, can
be included in this fourth model.
e four models described above assume only limited internal organizational
interaction. is oen matches the actual situation of these organizations, in which
Figure 2: Models of participatory organizations.
Keyword – Organization
227
participants are frequently individualized. In other cases participants have direct
and exclusive relationships with the nuclear group that (in practice) is managing the
organization. Nevertheless, it is possible that participants collaborate (i.e. interact with
each other and co-decide). us, Figure 3 oers an alternative version of these four
models, visualizing practices of cooperation and co-creation within the organizational
structures.
1.3.2 Importance of organizational structures for facilitating participation
Categorizing (maximalist-)participatory media organizations might provide us with
an overview of the diversity that characterizes this media (sub)sphere. But their mere
existence and diversity does not show the importance of organizational structures for
the facilitation of participatory processes. To make that argument I need to return to the
original discussion of the denitions and characteristics of organizations (see Figure 4).
At the material level, organizations articulate people and objects within an entity, with
the ambition to realize specic objectives (through the processes of functionalization,
coordination, nalization, formalization and centralization). e existence of a formal
organizational structure allows an explicit denition of participation as (one of) the
objective(s) of the organization, which commits the people involved, and embeds the
notion of participation in the material practices of the organization, at the levels of
decision-making procedures and production practices. e formalization of participation
as an objective, and the explicit commitment and responsibility of its members to protect
it, oers an organizational shelter (and oen a material space) for these (maximalist)
participatory practices, in a societal context that is not always appreciative of the more
maximalist forms of participation.
Moreover, (maximalist-)participatory media organizations are nodal points in
rhizomes of participatory and civil society organizations. eir presence in these
rhizomes oen plays a strengthening role, as they are instrumental in the articulation
of these networks. e rhizomes also have a protective role in making the incorporation
by market and state actors more dicult. In some cases, these rhizomes are strong
enough to deterritorialize market and state actors. An analysis of two Brussels-based
alternative radio stations (Santana and Carpentier, 2010) shows how their many radio
Figure 3: Models of (semi-)participatory organizations with networked participants.
Model 1b Model 2b Model 3b Model 4b
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programmes (each with its own producer(s)) were almost all connected to one or more
civil society organizations and to other alternative media organizations. Together they
formed a substantial network of organizations that included human rights, feminist and
pacist organizations, art house cinemas, and alternative record labels. e participation
in this network of state and market organizations was limited. Networks in which
participatory media organizations feature vary in scale, but are oen highly localized.
In some cases, participatory media organizations move beyond the local but continue
to protect their local embeddedness, a process I describe (Carpentier, 2008 – see also
below) as translocalism, based on Appadurai’s (1995) conceptual work. In even fewer
cases, participatory media organizations become part of what Keane (2003) calls global
civil society.
Figure 4: e signicance of participatory media organizations.
Material Discursive
Internal Participation as objective; Space for
participation; Horizontal organizational
structures
Participatory culture and democratic
decision-making; Egalitarian subject
positions and participatory attitudes;
Cultural archive
Discursive
External Nodal points in participatory networks/
rhizomes; Oen local; sometimes
translocal, rarely global
machinery producing discourses of
participation in media output, in
discursied material practices and in
external communication
e importance of participatory media organizations can also be argued for at the
discursive level because their organizational cultures can be seen as cherishing a
participatory culture at the levels of both production and management. eir formal
decision-making structures, combined with their objective to facilitate participation,
create an ongoing need to democratize their own structures and to create and protect
internal power balances. As the maintenance of egalitarian and horizontal structures
requires almost continuous eort, and as challenges to this power balance constantly
lurk around the corner, the discourse of participation and democracy plays a key role in
the organizational culture. is, in turn, renders these (maximalist-)participatory media
organizations centres of expertise based on the considerable amount of knowledge on the
practical organization of participatory processes and how to overcome the many problems
these processes encompass. e longer that these participatory media organizations have
Keyword – Organization
229
been in existence, the larger are their archives of participatory knowledge. (Maximalist-)
participatory media organizations are also sites of more egalitarian subject positions.
e concepts of professional, producer, audience and the manager all receive dierent –
non-mainstream – articulations, in which elitist positionings are avoided and where the
audience becomes radically activated.
eir activities as media organizations oen render their participatory backstages
visible and oer a discursication of their material participatory practices. Combined
with their more explicit communicative activities, which demonstrate the workings of
access, interaction and participation in the eld of media production, these (maximalist-)
participatory media organizations are discursive machines that allow for the mettre en
discours of participation. Care should be taken not to romanticize them; frequently they
fail because of their tendencies towards lethargy, isolationism and even self-destruction.
But these crisis moments are oen constitutive, and oer purifying rituals that enhance
their participatory natures.
is text should not be seen as a plea to ignore the importance of mainstream media
organizations in organizing participation (despite their limitations), nor should it be
interpreted as a naïve celebration of alternative forms of media organizations that aim
to discredit the multitude of communities and social groups that, in many cases, uphold
maximalist articulations of participation and material participatory practices. In the
processes of social change, in which the media sphere is characterized by an increased
diversity of actors, discourses and practices, all types of social structures can take on
key roles. We should avoid privileging one specic type of structure, whether it be the
traditional vertically structured media organization, the social group, the community
or the alternative, more horizontally structured, media organization. Nevertheless,
we must avoid stepping into the trap of using the (neo-)liberal dichotomy between a
problematicized macro-structure (whether the state or mainstream media) and a
celebrated micro-structure of non-organized citizens.
In this text I want to explicitly stress the importance of creating organizational nodal
points in the multitude that will allow maximalist participation to be identied as an
explicit objective; that channel and xate the commitment of people towards participatory
media production; that generate physical and virtual spaces for participation; that allow
for the intentional creation of participatory rhizomes at the local, translocal, glocal and
global level; that provide safe havens for participatory cultures and egalitarian subject
positions; that allow the storage and reuse of participatory experiences in cultural archives
and centres of expertise; and that support the production of participation through their
discursive machineries.
Media and Participation
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2. Case 1: BBC’s Video Nation
2.1 Introduction
Despite the attempts of mainstream media organizations to organize participatory
programming and projects (see chapter 2), on the whole it is dicult to articulate them
as (maximalist-)participatory organizations because their hierarchical structures, close
connections to market and state, professional organizational cultures, and anity with
hegemonic discursive environments do not enable strong commitment to maximalist
participatory positions. Simultaneously, a homogenization (and demonization) of
mainstream media organizations must be avoided. One obvious and major structural
dierence is the distinction between commercial and public broadcasting organizations.
Also within mainstream media organizations, dierences occur, supported, for instance,
by the relative autonomy of production units. ese phenomena of compartmentalization
facilitate the existence of organizational subcultures (see Hatch, 1997: 225), which van
Maanen and Barley (1985: 38) dene as follows:
A subset of an organization’s members who interact regularly with one another,
identify themselves as a distinct group within the organization, share a set of problems
commonly dened to be the problems of all, and routinely take action on the basis of
collective understandings unique to the group.
If organizational subcultures bend or translate the more general objectives of mainstream
media towards a more maximalist participatory direction, they can benet from the
internal-material capacities of these large-scale organizations, which allow for the
mobilization of a more considerable amount of resources in order to create participatory
substructures that cherish a more maximalist participatory culture and a reworking of
traditional mainstream professional identities. e force of the mainstream discursive
machine can be utilized to communicate a maximalist participatory discourse, which
(at least indirectly) questions the ‘regular’ hegemonic professional discourses of that
particular organization (and other mainstream media organizations). ese subcultural
islands are vulnerable because they do not function outside the hierarchical structure of
the mainstream media organization, and there is always the threat of corrective action to
bring the organizational subcultures back into line with the mainstream organizational
culture.
Although commercial media organizations cannot be excluded as a location for these
kinds of dynamics, the public service remit makes public media organizations the more
likely hosts of these participatory subcultures.6 Arguably, in the case of the BBC, its
Community Programme Unit (CPU) oered such a structural shelter for a participatory
subculture. e CPU was launched in 1973, headed by Rowan Ayers, and was established
Keyword – Organization
231
with the support of then Director of Programming David Attenborough.7 Its establishment
was fed by a number of critical media professionals who were (partially) connected to
pressure groups such as the Free Communications Group, the Standing Conference on
Broadcasting and the 76 Group. Since the late 1960s these groups had been advocating
media democratization (Crisell, 2002: 202; Briggs, 1995: 787–788).
e BBC’s evening discussion programme Late Night Line-Up played an especially
signicant role in the establishment of the CPU. is programme had already broadcast
(parts of) Canadian and US participatory programmes,8 but the making and screening
of the Guinness Workers Film by Late Night Line-Up in 1971 is considered formative for
the establishment of the CPU. An interview with workers in a Guinness factory about
the BBC’s autumn schedule turned into a critique of television in general, and of how
poorly television represented (working-class) people more particularly (Aldridge and
Hewitt, 1994: 21; Dowmunt, 1997: 202; Harvey, 2000: 164). Late Night Line-Up producer
Rowan Ayers and some of his colleagues translated this event as a need for “a platform on
national television for voices and viewpoints normally unheard or misrepresented in the
mainstream” (Dowmunt, 1997: 202). An ocial version of the CPU’s remit is contained
in the BBC’s 1986 annual report: “is Unit is responsible for programmes made by and
with the general public, usually as a direct response to public request” (BBC, 1986: 236).
e CPU produced a variety of programmes (and projects), such as Open Door, Open
Space, Video Diaries and Video Nation.
e relationship of the CPU with the BBC management was not conict-free. Harvey
(2000: 163) writes that the programme out of which the CPU grew, Late Night Line-Up,
enjoyed “a sort of h column status within the BBC, criticising some of the Corporation’s
most prestigious output […]”. Also the work of the CPU itself was at times considered
controversial, and the unit received only limited funding (Aldridge and Hewitt, 1994: 22;
Biressi and Nunn, 2005: 17). Johnson (1991: 30) describes the CPU as “committed,
seasoned, and struggling”. In his article he also describes the critiques launched against
the CPU, and how the CPU was seen as “a guerrilla unit”:
e unit has been under attack in some way or another since it rst emerged from
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Board of Governors besieged Attenborough, claiming the producers were a guerrilla
unit using the BCC to promote their own le-wing ideology. Critics from the le
denounced the project as a plot to make the BBC more legitimate, attacking even
those groups who were given access. (Johnson, 1991: 31)
Earlier, Lewis (1984: 101) had written that the CPU’s work had “little eect on the
practice of the news and current aairs teams <y>w-FXJTBMTPQPJOUTPVU
that the CPU’s programmes suered from “ghetto scheduling”, an argument reiterated
by Hibberd et al. (2000: 13): “Such programming has, however, frequently been
consigned to late-evening slots and has, therefore, tended to remain at the periphery
Media and Participation
232
of mainstream television”. e CPU was discontinued in the 2000s, allegedly because
of budget cuts.
ese analyses provide support for the idea that the CPU functioned as an organizational
subculture within the BBC, facilitating more maximalist versions of participation, and in
doing so, going against the grain of the BBC’s professional culture and mainstream media
ideology. e CPU’s resistant position came at a price: Its weakened position le it with
limited resources, undesirable broadcasting timings and reduced impact on the BBC’s
professional culture, and nally resulted in its demise. e CPU nevertheless shows
that these pockets of more maximalist participation – one could say even temporary
autonomous zones (see Bey, 1985) – can exist within mainstream media organizations,
while they can still use (some of) the quite substantial resources of mainstream media
organizations to organize these participatory processes.
2.2 A brief history of Video Nation
One of the CPU’s projects that illustrates how these more maximalist participatory
processes were enabled (and what the limitations were) is Video Nation. e
BBC’s press service (1994) summarized the concept of Video Nation as follows –
demonstrating with some immediacy the participatory claim of the project: “people
[can use cameras] to directly portray their own lives in their own terms”. Evolving from
a televised to a web-based9 project (and later becoming multi-platform), Video Nation
is a platform where participants (‘members of the audience’) can provide a wide range
of representations of their daily lives. Taken as a whole, the aim of these images is to
signify the multi-layered culture of ordinary people and the cultural diversity within
the British nation.
e Video Nation project was born in 1992, when Alan Yentob, BBC2’s then controller,
gave his approval for the project. What is crucial and was unusual is that this approval
was not related to a proposal for a programme, but was the approval for a project aimed
at providing material for a diversity of yet to be developed programmes. e basic idea
was to provide camcorders to a semi-representative selection of ‘the audience’, to train
these (about) 50 people and ask them to lm fragments of their daily lives. One of the co-
producers summarized its ambition as follows: “the aim was an anthropology of Britain
in the Nineties seen through the eyes of the people themselves” (Rose, 2000: 174). To
introduce the rst documentary that resulted from the Video Nation project (Money,
Money, Money – 13 March 1994) a series of ten trailers was commissioned and broadcast.
A programme slot for these very short broadcasts, immediately before the current aairs
programme Newsnight, already existed on BBC2 and had been lled by programmes
such as A picture of Rembrandt and Sarajevo: a street under siege. e rst of the so-
called Video Nation Shorts – Mirror, made by retired Colonel Gordon Hensher10 – was
broadcast on 7 March 1994.
Keyword – Organization
233
Aer 1994, the weekly output (for 40 weeks a year) of the Video Nation project consisted
of ve Shorts, which in most cases were broadcast in the slot before Newsnight on BBC2.
During the six years of their existence on television, about 1300 of these “mini-portraits”
or “windows on the people’s worlds” (Chris Mohr, 12 August 2002 interview11) were
produced. A year’s production also included three hours worth of longer documentaries
(Rose, 2000: 176). By 1999, the project had occupied more than 60 hours of broadcast
time and produced more than 10,000 hours of raw material, made by more than 300
participants (BBC, 1999).
Ironically, the rst phase of the Video Nation project ended in June 2000 because of the
scheduling of the Shorts: eir place in the programme schedule was claimed by new BBC2
Controller Jane Root, who wanted tighter scheduling in order “to hold viewers” (McCann,
1999). Some time later, the BBC CPU, where Video Nation was located, disappeared.
e web-based existence of the Shorts started relatively inconspicuously, through
a number of collaborations with other projects, such as the BBC’s language education
programme Learning English12 and the anti-tobacco campaign Kick the Habit,13 but did
not result in a real revival of the project. It was not until mid-2001 that BBC Online
discovered the potential of the Shorts:
e Shorts library provided a unique source of (relatively) cheap and copyright-free
video content ideal for broadband to demonstrate its potential. It was already cut into
hundreds of segments whose duration and personal nature were perfect for the web.
(Feedback Chris Mohr, 6 November 2002)
is discovery led to the launch in November 2001 of the BBC Video Nation website as
an “on-line community and archive”. us, the Video Nation website preceded the well-
known video-sharing website YouTube (created in 2005), by some four years, although
YouTube’s existence and success later inuenced the decision to restructure the Video
Nation website. e Video Nation website, however, is very dierent from YouTube,
based mainly on Video Nation’s production practices and ambitions, which continue to
be in line with those of the television phase:
It’s about handing over the agenda to members of the public, encouraging them to
record what they think is important. e aim is to reect everyday life across the UK
in all its rich diversity. (BBC Video Nation, 2002)
In the rst phase the national website (see Figure 5) contained an archive of 250 already-
televised Shorts – made by 91 dierent participants14 – and a small number of new
Shorts.15 e national website was linked to four local BBC websites (Humber, Leicester,
Liverpool and London) that were part of the Where I live project. On these local websites
(and only there) new participants could “[put their] views and experiences on camera
and share them with the whole community” (BBC Video Nation Liverpool, 2002).
Media and Participation
234
Figure 5: e rst Video Nation website
(2001–2002).
Figure 6: e second Video Nation website
(2003–2009).
Figure 7: e third Video Nation website (2009–2011).
In 2003 a series of changes was implemented: A new look was created for the national
website (see Figure 6), and the Shorts became available in a broadband version. Also,
fourteen local sites were added to the original group of four local sites, and the total
number of Shorts available on the national website was dramatically increased. By the
middle of 2003, 750 Shorts – made by 365 participants16 – were online. In April 2005,
the number of local BBC websites had increased to 27, with just under 600 local Shorts
Keyword – Organization
235
available on the national website.17 A year later, the local Isle of Man site was added,
and the number of local Shorts on the national website had increased to 869.18 e
local centres also produced several Shorts that were not made available on the national
website (their content being considered of local interest only (Rosemary Richards – 3
August 2010 interview)). e BBC (2006: 17) Corporate Responsibility & Partnerships
2006 Review refers to an annual production of 800 Shorts: “We make around 800 lms
a year with the help of more than 3,000 contributors”. Although this annual production
decreased – a 2009 BBC (2009: 20) report mentions a total production of 500 – the
number of Shorts available on the national website had increased in number and in
September 2009 was 1274, with the total of national Shorts exceeding 800.19
In autumn 2009 Video Nation was re-launched as an “online video submission website”
(BBC, 2010: 29) called Video Nation Network (VNN) (see Figure 7). e restructuring
was part of a longer evolution in which, through a system of internal commissioning,
Video Nation increased its collaboration with other BBC production teams (including
television) and other (cultural) institutions. In the words of one member of the production
team, Video Nation became “more plugged into dierent parts of the BBC” (Tariq Aziz,
29 July 2010 interview). is resulted in the Video Nation content being structured into
so-called Features, and in a more multi-platform distribution of this content. By the rst
half of 2002, Reggae Music Memories had been established, based on a collaboration
between Video Nation and BBCi Music. Another example of collaboration was the
2003 partnering between Video Nation and BBC4 to produce a series of Shorts about
Lomography, which were published online to coincide with the Happy Snappy Days
exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Also in 2003, Video Nation
produced a series of Shorts on the Iraq War for BBC4. A more recent example (2009–
2010) is the feature on the 1984–85 miners’ strike.
Aer the restructuring of Video Nation in 2009, it became impossible to submit just
any kind of content. e Video Nation core team proactively researched to identify
potential producers, oen within community groups (in connection to features), and
also used a system of online feature calls, where Video Nation invited “members of the
public to submit content that contributes to BBC series and features” (BBC, 2010: 29).
As a BBC local website, BBC Stoke and Staordshire (2010), formulated it, “Once upon
a time we could submit anything we liked; but now submissions should be themed”.
e Video Nation production team became more centralized (similar to the television
phase), and the regional library-loan system and support from regional Video Nation
producers was abandoned.
In the past, the BBC in Staordshire used to loan out cameras to anyone who thought
they had a story to tell in moving images. ere was even a ‘Video Nation’ producer.
<y>/PXBEBZTXJUITPNBOZQFPQMFIBWJOHBDDFTTUPDBNDPSEFSTBOEFWFONPCJMF
phone video recorders – and with new video machines being so easy to use – there’s
no longer so much need for a loan-library system. (BBC Stoke and Staordshire, 2010)
Media and Participation
236
Despite these changes, the Video Nation team is carefully protecting the “original values”
of Video NationiOPUMFUUJOHJU ESJę UPXBSETWPYQPQ<y>CVUSFBDIJOHPVUUPQFPQMF
and letting them tell stories in their own way” (Tariq Aziz, 29 July 2010 interview).
Also, according to Rosemary Richards (3 August 2010 interview), Video Nation is still
very much about “what people want to say and not about what [the media] demand”.
e enthusiasm of the production team and the importance of Video Nation have not
dissuaded the BBC from announcing its closure (BBC Press Oce, 2011). e Video
Nation production team tweeted on 28 January 2011: “As part of the 50% online service
reduction in BBC websites the closure of VNN has been announced for the end of March
2011” (Video Nation Network, 2011).
2.3 From television to the web
Compared to the original television-based existence of the Video Nation Shorts, there
are several dierences. ese dierences in part can be attributed to the nature of the
medium and the way it was being used. e televised shorts were normally broadcast only
once, were aimed at a wide audience20 and oered very limited amounts of contextual
information. ese Shorts were an interruption to or transformation of ordinary or
‘normal’ programming, which maximized the surprise eect: “You never knew what and
who to expect. And then someone would pop up and for two minutes you would be in
their world” (Chris Mohr – 12 August 2002 interview).
Access to the archived online Shorts changed the viewing experience, because the
web is more of a lean-forward than a lean-backward medium. Furthermore, the website
oered access to a multitude of images, not just one interruption of the television ow, in
combination with a (still concise) summary, and the name and place of residence of the
authors. e structure of the website allowed the Shorts to be ordered according to topic,
authors and region, which implied more contextual information. It also allowed for the
potential construction of connections between the Shorts, and in some cases, an overview
of the lives of some participants who were involved over extended periods of time.
Alongside these medium-related changes, a number of other changes were
implemented in the production process. In the rst, television, phase a more or less
stable group of 50 people was selected and trained. ey could use the cameras for one
year, on the condition that they would send in 90 minutes on tape every fortnight. is
procedure allowed participants time to develop their own lmic language. In the web
phase the number of people who could get access to the project was increased, and
ironically to the detriment of the level of their participation. e online Shorts were
lmed by participants who, in many cases, had cameras at their disposal for only limited
periods of time. In some cases, in order to save time and resources, training sessions
were followed immediately by lming of the rst Shorts (Carole Gilligan, 22 April
2003 interview). Aer the 2009 restructuring, the regional loan system and the one-
Keyword – Organization
237
on-one training model involving regional Video Nation producers were abandoned,
although the core team still make available production toolkits and provide support
for groups of potential producers (Freelance collaborator Ameneh Enayat, 29 July
2010 interview).
Figure 8: Video Nation website link to the lming tips.
e changes from television to web were accompanied by lming tips (see Figure 8)
based on training-Shorts made by some of the more experienced participants. ese
Shorts are intended to give new and potential participants a modest overview of the
Video Nation lming style,21 both making the training method public and illustrating
its simplicity. In the example below (from the rst Video Nation website), one of the
participants shows how easy it is to lm an improvised travel-shot (see Figure 9).
Figure 9: A training-Short: Hollywood by C. Gorner.
2.4 Video Nation’s basic principles
e television and the web phase(s) of the Video Nation project are characterized by
three basic principles that, to a very high degree, determined the outcome of the project.
1. An emphasis on the everyday lived culture of ordinary people
2. A project that aspires to signify the diversity of contemporary British society
Media and Participation
238
3. Material that originates from a partnership between the production team and
participants, where the participants are granted more control over the production
process and outcome than is common practice in the mainstream media sphere
2.4.1 Everyday culture of ordinary people
e emphasis on the everyday culture of ordinary people – the rst basic principle – was
already present in Video Nation’s rst press communiqué, where it was pointed out that
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family relationships and cultural identity, as well as those of public concern such as
unemployment, racism and law and order. By asking them to lm everyday events,
like eating breakfast, shopping, or having a night out, the project will explore a wide
range of contemporary issues in a personal, highly immediate way. (BBC Press Service,
1994: 2)
Building on de Certeau’s work, Video Nation is not only a validation of the everyday,
the repetitive, the unpurposeful and the heterogeneous, but also contains elements
that signify sublime and aesthetic aspects of everyday life. As Parret formulates it, “the
everyday shows ssures: Privileged moments of intense aesthetic experience” (1996: 74
– my translation).
rough this process surfaces the constructed and complex nature of the distinction
between the everyday centre and the privileged margin, and between ordinary people
and the power bloc(s). e members of the Video Nation production team do not
escape from the hybridity of the everyday, as they themselves aim to contribute to its
‘aestheticization’ by applying a series of criteria in order to make ‘good’ and ‘watchable’
television (which refers to the notions of professional and technical quality discussed in
chapter 6). is type of analysis circulates internally within the production team, and
can be summarized by the statement made on the basis of their ongoing self-evaluation,
that there are not enough ‘bad people’ in Video Nation. It is also sharply expressed by
Morrison:
e point I am making here is that VNS is part of a larger political project and this
does have repercussions in terms of the construction of ‘ordinary’ and ‘everyday’.
Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, snobbery – the things that divide us –
do not feature in this version of British society. In VNS, I feel, the everyday operates
as a mythic realm in which ordinary people are equated with ‘the people,’ holding out
the promise of national community. (Morrison, 2000: 50)
Keyword – Organization
239
Especially at the level of articulation of the signier ordinary people the Video Nation
production team found itself in an uncomfortable position, described in a quote from
in the BBC’s house magazine, Ariel: “Although there are probably no such things as
‘ordinary people,’ that’s what Video Nation was to be about” (Assistant Producer Newby,
1994: 11). It is signicant that the former executive producer of Video Nation – when
asked – dened ordinary people as non-media professionals (Bob Long, 22 August 2002
interview), which contrasts with more class-based articulations that dene ordinary
people in an antagonistic relationship with the elite (see Laclau, 1977; Hall, 1981; Fiske,
1993; see also chapter 3). ere were repercussions for the composition of the group of
participants, as illustrated by the presence of members of the British aristocracy in the
Shorts. An example is the Short Horses made by the Duke of Devonshire,22 who talks
about his love of horse racing and of his horses.
e articulation of ordinary people naturally still implies the inclusion of people
who do not belong to one of the many societal elites. Within the multitude of cultures
on display, there is room also for popular culture, subculture or anti-culture, and
for identity politics and the articulation of citizenship. Taking the broadly dened
political and emancipatory perspectives and keeping in mind the importance of the
Foucauldian micro-physics of power, the Shorts cannot be seen in isolation from the
political domain (Dovey, 2000: 128; Matthews, 2007: 445). In some cases the political
load is manifest, and the tactics of daily life are oriented against the political system,
as is the case in one of the Shorts where a participant ostentatiously tears up her
membership card for the British Conservative Party. In another case the presence of
this political load is more subtle, and the Shorts become carriers of identity politics
and cultural citizenship.
An example of this is the Short Daodils, by Connie Mark (see Figure 10), who recites
two stanzas from the eponymous poem by Wordsworth, followed by a stanza from a
poem by Herrick,23 while she portrays elds lled with daodils. She is showing her
cultural capacity in knowing these poems and her capacity to create her own bricolage.
Again, this illustrates the interwoven-ness of the everyday and the sublime (in this case
poetry). Additionally, she takes a position in the discussion on (post)colonial relations
on the basis of her lived experience, quoting from these well-known symbols of cultural
imperialism.24 eir symbolic load becomes explicit when she states (in a tone of some
bewilderment) that she was taught these poems by her British teachers in a school in
Jamaica, when she had never seen a daodil.
Media and Participation
240
Figure 10: Culture and (post)colonialism: Daodils by C. Mark.
“I remember when I was a child, I had to do
this in school: poems about daodils:
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud
at oats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
ey stretched in never-ending line
Across the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance …’
Having those and other wonders said:
‘Fair daodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soone;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained its noone.’
e amazing thing is I never ever saw a
daodil in Jamaica, but because our teachers
were all British, we have to learn British
poems, and British history and British
geography.”
2.4.2 e cultural diversity of contemporary British society
e second basic principle relates to the representation of the cultural diversity that
characterizes the UK. A former managing director of the BBC formulates this topic in
a speech, as follows: “Video Nation treats the tapestry of individuals and cultures that
make up the United Kingdom with dignity and respect” (Birt, 1999: 13). e objective
to guarantee cultural diversity is supported by the clear intention of the members of
the production team to avoid stereotyping, and links to an appeal for societal unity and
nationhood. Video Nation’s two former co-producers describe their position in an article
in e Independent:
Keyword – Organization
241
In a mass society that’s quite fragmented, we need to be confronted with one another’s
similarities as well as our dierences; and we desperately need the dierences to be
humanised. (Rose and Mohr, 1999: Media-13)
is neo-Griersonian appeal for national unity (Dovey, 2000: 131) – based on the above-
mentioned similarities and dierences or on transcending diversity in order to support
national unity – is present in Video Nation in several forms. At the start of the project,
representativeness and diversity are combined in a well-considered selection strategy.
On the one hand, a general call was launched using BBC’s radio and television channels,
resulting in 7000 responses, among which about 3500 candidates returned the requested
form. Of these, some 200 were visited by a member of the production team. About half
of the rst participant group was selected in this fashion. On the other hand, “pro-active
research” was used to reach candidates from target groups that had proven dicult to
contact and mobilize through the use of general appeals (Chris Mohr, 12 August 2002
interview).
In the rst phase the production team aimed for traditional socio-demographic
representativeness and an equal distribution of participants based on characteristics such
as age, place of residence and income (Rose, 2000: 183). With a view to optimizing the
diversity of the participant group, this ambition was abandoned in the second selection
phase, when the production team explicitly scouted for participants from specic societal
groups or who represented specic positions content-wise. e local websites applied a
similar combination of a general call and proactive research (Chris Mohr, 26 September
2002 interview), with the one dierence that the general call was permanently online.25
Below is the London example (Figure 11):
e nation is not only constructed by grouping the contributions of dierent
participants in a series of televised Shorts and later in the archive, but also by the way
the participants and the production team handle the medium when producing the
Shorts. e individual contributions, based on “feeling, sentiment and subjectivity”
Figure 11: London Video Nation section.
Do you want to get involved?
Send us an e-mail, and say (in not more
than 50 words) why you think you’d be
a good subject for Video London.
yourlondon@bbc.co.uk
Media and Participation
242
(Dovey, 2000: 127), are personal testimonies and forms of self-expression (Dowmunt,
2001: 20) that are oriented towards the nation. ey oer images that originate and
are consumed in a cycle of domesticity: “the camcorder records private life, which is
brought into the public domain, for consumption in the private world of the living
room” (Dinsmore, 1996: 54). In the Shorts the traditional narrative situation is
replaced by a speaking to the nation approach; as Dovey remarks, “Contributors are
all too aware that they are being given a chance to ‘speak to the nation,’ that they have
a platform from which to project” (Dovey, 2000: 129).
At the same time the question arises as to which national community is being
represented. Morrison’s (2000: 50) critique has been referred to above: Racism,
xenophobia, misogyny and snobbery are not present in the Video Nation Shorts, which
results in a very positive and uncritical portrayal of British society. In her conclusion
Morrison writes:
Life is not cruel, degrading, divisive or meaningless the lms say; this is a positive
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moving – being no stranger to ‘romantic faith’ myself – but I think it is important to
recognise the argument that it risks ignoring the power dynamics that exist in British
society and their impact upon all of our everyday lives. (Morrison, 2000: 60)
It could be said that many of the problems that Morrison enumerates are dealt with in the
Shorts but from the position of the person confronted by the problem. e crime section
of the web archive includes two Shorts on burglary, Break-in by Jean Lee and Crime by
Colin O’Dell-Athill.26 Imtiaz Viad, in the Short Why, reports on a racist-inspired attack:
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progress. We’re supposed to be called a civilized society, and then you go up to people
of a dierent colour, and then you hit them for being of a dierent colour. Why?27
A second critique aimed at the representation of the national community is oriented
towards the focus on the lming individual, which results in the exclusion of a number
of elements of the social structure. One important exception is the frequent visual and
audio presence of the family, for example, in the Short Mouse, where a father, accompanied
by his family and some of his children’s friends, walks through a eld looking for a
location to release a captured mouse. Other social systems – such as the workplace and
civil society organizations – are more absent, which is explained in part by a lack of
enthusiasm among the participants and their colleagues to lm in the workplace and,
more importantly, by the focus of the project on the participants’ private lives (Mandy
Rose, 13 August 2002 interview).
Alongside the reduced representation of social systems and the resulting risk of
conning daily life to the private sphere (Morrison, 2000: 49), Video Nation also oers a
Keyword – Organization
243
reduced representation of community, especially in the light of the more recent debates
on co-creation. e various participants address the viewer and the nation; however, in
these Shorts dialogue or debate between participants is absent. Communication among
members of families is quite oen depicted, but this type of communication rarely
exceeds the frame of the Short. From this perspective Video Nation’s original claim to be
an “on-line video community” is only partially substantiated. e participants consider
themselves to be part of the Video Nation project – in other words there is a sense of
belonging – and they speak to the nation from this perspective. But at the same time some
of the vital components that constitute community, namely communication, interaction
and dialogue, are missing (see Van Dijk, 1998: 45). Explicit references to other Shorts are
not included for production reasons (Mandy Rose, 13 August 2002 interview), and the
feedback form that was a later addition is not oen used. When it is, it is used by website
visitors, not participants. Although the participants are seen to be part of the national
community, it remains problematic to consider the group of participants within the web-
structure a ‘community’.28
2.4.3 Participation and “some really good concrete power”
e third basic principle of Video Nation is the decentralized power structure, which
tends towards the more maximalist versions of participation, in particular in the
television phase. Dovey (2000: 126) calls this “the most devolved power structure that
TV institutions can oer”. One of the former co-producers formulates this as follows: “I
think, what they had was some really good concrete power, they had concrete power that
we underlined and made very clear they got” (Mandy Rose 13 August 2002 interview).
In Video Nation three dierent domains can be distinguished, in which participants
are attributed higher levels of power than is common within the mainstream media
sphere. All three domains are based on the participatory attitude of the involved media
professionals, which bears witness to the organizational subculture of the CPU from
which Video Nation originated. e Video Nation sta accepts the participants as equal
partners in the production process. is attitude is closely related to the Freirian (1992)
approach to the egalitarian student–teacher relation, to Curran’s (1997: 30) view of
the media professional as the facilitator of participation in the public domain, and to
Manca’s (1989) plea for the media professional as the gate-opener, and not the traditional
gatekeeper.
e rst domain in which the participants are attributed more control is use of
technology. A camcorder is placed at their disposal and the decision about what to lm
is theirs.29 Moreover, former and current producers stated clearly that at all times they
refrain from exercising pressure. An important rider to this is that not all the videos are
shot by the participants alone, without assistance from the production team. In some cases
– when confronted, for instance, with time constraints or specic content requirements
Media and Participation
244
– a procedure of “assisted lming” is applied, and participants are counselled during
the lming of the raw material. In the web phase the procedure of “assisted lming”
became more frequent (Carole Gilligan 22 April 2003 interview), owing to the increase
in participant diversity and the decrease in support.
e second domain where the position of the participants is strengthened is situated at
the level of training and support. e participants receive a brief training, with a view to
familiarizing them with the equipment, the lmic language and the legal consequences
of working for a broadcasting company. Originally the production team opted for two-
day workshops, but later the duration of these training sessions was shortened; in the
web phase the training initially was one to one, but later, especially aer 2009, became
more group-based.
ird, in the domain of editing, participants are enabled to exercise control. As it was
deemed impossible logistically to have participants physically present during the editing
process, they are allowed an ‘editorial veto’. Rose (1995: 10) summarizes this right as
follows: “to see any material we wanted to transmit in context and to say no if, for any
reason they weren’t happy with it”. Also, the production team prefer to adopt an ‘open’
attitude towards editing the material handed in, and tend to exercise restraint towards
interventions, which explains the absence of music and “fancy editing” (Chris Mohr,
12 August 2002 interview). A former co-producer described and summarized this
attitude in the one word: “unobtrusive” (Chris Mohr, 12 August 2002 interview). e
editorial veto has been invoked only rarely, but has been used. is method was still
being used aer Video Nation transferred to the web-environment, as illustrated by the
following quote from the ‘faq’-le of the national website:
Who edits the tapes? We do, but Video Nation hands over control to you. If you are
unhappy about a nished video, then it just doesn’t get shown. at way you are free
to shoot rst, decide later. (BBC Video Nation, 2002)
ese more egalitarian power relations do not imply that the production team abandoned
their professional management. ey retained their control over the production process
and the output in a number of ways. As one co-producer remarked, “It would be naïve
to underestimate how – even in that context – we were the BBC people and they were
the public” (Mandy Rose 13 August 2002 interview). e production team remained
responsible for the selection of the participants, and for the concept development and
its protection. Later, the features played a structuring role in allowing (and disallowing)
content. During training the participants were familiarized with the style and concept
the production team had created. e participants, in other words, were accustomed to
the constraints with regard to the form and content deemed proper by the mainstream
media sphere. e criteria for ‘good’ and ‘watchable’ were normalized during the training
sessions. It was made clear, for instance, that a ‘subjective’ lming style was preferred to
the observational style more common in home movies (Rose, 1995: 10), but also the
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use of other documentary lming styles was discouraged.30 Other constraints had an
impact too: When confronted with the eect of the professional “stop-watch culture”
(Schlesinger, 1987: 83), the production team, for instance, tended to cut back on its basic
principles, and increase the impact on the lming process and its outcome.
e conceptual and stylistic preferences were consolidated by the contacts between
participants and the production team, and can also be found in the output, which
was edited by the production team. While providing support, the production team
maintained a central position in the communicative network. Direct communication
between the participants was not promoted, “[in order not] to blur the dierences”
(Chris Mohr 12 August 2002 interview). In contrast to the lives of participants, the
private lives of the members of the production team remained out of sight. Finally, the
members of the production team took on a motivating role. As the former executive
producer put it, “We were never shy of asking people to lm things” (Bob Long
22 August 2002 interview). Originally, these initiatives were structured by written
content-related briengs and by so-called envelope-questions. is latter technique
consisted of presenting participants with a sealed envelope and asking them to open
it in front of the camera. One of the Shorts (Video Nation by Jean Lee – see Figure 12)
shows this technique in operation. Also, the later focus on features can be seen as part
of this stimulation role.
Alongside these quite structured techniques, some more content-related requests were
embedded in the ordinary communication between participants and production team:
Sometimes they might have lmed something on a tape that was almost there but
not quite so we might commission additional material or suggest that they might try
again at a later date. ere was this kind of in between stu that went on all the time.
(Chris Mohr 12 August 2002 interview)
Figure 12: An envelope-question: Video Nation
by J. Lee.
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Finally, the editing process was controlled to a high degree by the production team.
e editorial veto was mainly a negative right that empowered participants to prevent
material from being broadcast but, at the same time, was a motivation for participants
to lm without any restraint, and was again part of the arsenal of managerial techniques.
e actual selection of material from the master tapes remained rmly the domain of
the production team, whose functioning was driven by professional criteria, although
some informal negotiation with participants was still possible. Also the decision
to broadcast or webcast approved Shorts remained exclusively in the hands of the
production team.
2.5 Conclusion
Video Nation is a project that was able to stimulate on- and o-screen access, interaction
and participation. Although confronted by a number of constraints, which are visible
only rarely on-screen, this project oers ordinary people the opportunity to address the
nation; to show the national community the dierences and similarities, the repetitive
and the sublime, that characterize everyday culture; to illustrate the interconnectedness
of the cultural, social, artistic and political dimensions; to engage in identity politics
and the construction of cultural citizenship; and to prove that professionals are not
urged to keep control over the media system but can share it with empowered non-
professionals.
When looking behind the screen the complex nature of content-related audience
participation in mainstream media organizations becomes clearer. As Pateman (1970)
argued, (audience) participation can theoretically be dened as full. Within the context
of mainstream media, the presence of media professionals unavoidably puts pressure on
this possibility of full participation, even if these media professionals are located with
a subcultural organizational shelter. Nevertheless, Video Nation attempts to maximize
participation and to establish a power equilibrium between media professionals and
participants. It substantially reduces the managerial impact of the production team and
to a large degree fulls its ambitions to create audience participation.
Crucial to protecting this power equilibrium is the participatory attitude of the media
professionals, whose identity is no longer built solely on being the gatekeepers and
producers of content but includes gate-opening and facilitating content creation. e
following statement from a former co-producer shows that this change in position was
not always eortless:
Early on it felt like an abdication of my role as a producer to let views I disagreed with
be transmitted without context or comment. I don’t think so anymore (though that’s
not to say that particular pieces aren’t troubling). (Rose, 1995: 10)
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is ‘abdication’ is never complete. Neither could it be expected to be complete. In the
case of Video Nation the production team’s strategic management remains very much
present during the production process. In most cases the participatory attitude of the
media professionals prevents the power balance from being disturbed too much. In
some other cases, for instance when the production team cloaks its own interventions
and active role or weakens the concept by increasing the weight of its interventions (in
the ‘assisted lming’ scenario), the institutionalized power imbalance returns to the
foreground and reduces the level of participation, showing the diculties of stabilizing
the more maximalist participatory practices.
e power equilibrium between participants and professionals has from the
beginning of Video Nation been under constant pressure from the institutional context
of a mainstream broadcaster that, hesitantly, allowed a containable form of content-
related participation that never evolved into forms of structural participation (not even
within the CPU). e history of Video Nation also shows that this enclave of maximalist
participation was unstable and oen threatened, which eventually lead to its closure.
is again illustrates the intrinsic instability of maximalist forms of participation in
mainstream organizational (sub) cultures. Arguably, Video Nation’s position was already
structurally weakened when its institutional base – the subcultural enclave of the CPU
– was eliminated. Ironically, the shi to a web platform also reduced the participatory
intensity of Video Nation – mainly by decreasing its support structure – though without
causing it to give up on its basic participatory principles.
3. Case 2: RadioSwap
3.1 Introduction
Community and alternative media organizations have developed organizational models
that can be seen as operationalizations of the maximalist participatory organization,
as discussed earlier in this chapter. Participation, in its more maximalist articulations,
features prominently in their remits and becomes translated into horizontal organizational
structures and inclusive decision-making processes and practices. eir material reach
is not limited to the organizations themselves. Characterized by uidity and diversity,
community and alternative media organizations function as nodal points in civil society
rhizomes. At the discursive level, they are environments where participatory cultures
and egalitarian subject positions are lived, nurtured and archived. Moreover, they are
discursive machineries that incessantly produce discourses on participation.
But there is another side to this analysis. In contrast to the more optimistic (and
sometimes celebratory) version of the analysis, as it is summarized in the previous
paragraph, it is necessary to point to some of the many problems these organizations
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have to face. First, facilitating participation is oen a signicant objective, but processes
of exclusion and unequal power relations remain present, oen at rather informal levels.
e context of a capitalist society is also dicult to reconcile with the organizational
objective of facilitating participation. Working within organizations that cherish
participatory cultures is not always easy, since participatory processes tend to slow
organizational decision-making, especially when conicts emerge. ey are machines
with organizational cultures that oer specic consolidations of the societal ow – to
come back to Deleuze and Guattari’s machine concept – which implies also that (some)
organizational processes become hampered and restricted (as will be illustrated below).
To broaden the machine metaphor: Community and alternative media organizations
function as discursive machines with almost continuous output, but they are not always
heard. Moreover, they do not always manage to play their role of crossroads within civil
society. As Mattelart and Piemme (1983: 416) remark – already a considerable time ago
– there is always the danger of localism or isolationism.
e tendency towards localism and isolationism is one of the major restrictions
that community and alternative media organizations are required to deal with. e
connement to the local that is embedded in their objectives and organizational cultures
oen traps them on one side of the local/global dichotomy. is dominant mode of
locality can be explained by the emphasis it receives in the interconnecting traditional
media-centred approaches (see chapter 1). e alternative media approach uses large-
scale mainstream media organizations as a reference point, almost automatically
positioning alternative media organizations on the other side of the binary. e serving-
the-community approach draws on the dominant conceptualizations of community,
which – as Leunissen (1986) argues – refer predominantly to geography and ethnicity as
structuring notions of the collective identity or the group relations. Of course, Howley’s
(2005: 267) point that “community media rather forcefully undermined the binary
opposition of the categories ‘local’ and ‘global’ in two discrete, but interrelated ways” is
well taken when he refers to the “historicizing and particularizing [of] the penetration of
global forces into local contexts” and to the “endless stream of variation and diversity of
cultural forms and practices around the world” generated by community and alternative
media organizations. Nevertheless, the dominant mode of locality keeps them at the
same time rmly locked within its ‘essence’ of being part of the local community.
is reduction structurally weakens community and alternative media organizations
in comparison to large-scale – and sometimes global – mainstream media organizations.
It also complicates the possibility of connecting to other organizations and renders
their potentially enlarged societal role virtually unthinkable. It is dicult, for instance,
to imagine how community and alternative media organizations could feature in John
Keane’s (1991: 150) futuristic redenition of the public service model, based on the
“development of a plurality of non-state media of communication which both function
as permanent thorns in the side of political power […] and serve as the primary means
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of communication for citizens living, working, loving, quarrelling and tolerating others
within a genuinely pluralist society”.
e model of the rhizome oers theoretical support for resolving, or at least reducing,
this problem. Simply enlarging the scale of operations to overcome the connements
of locality would be a self-defeating strategy towards the elusive and diversied
identity of community and alternative media organizations. To draw on Deleuze and
Guattari’s sentiment: Creating an arbolic structure would imply the creation of a copy
of mainstream and large-scale media, and would not generate a map (see principles 5
and 6 of the rhizome: cartography and decalcomania). Also the other characteristics of
the rhizome enumerated by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in A ousand Plateaus – the
principles of connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity and asignifying rupture – allow
for a theorizing of the development of rhizomatic networks that takes into account the
complexities of community and alternative media organizations in the construction of
their networks. Rhizomatic connections provoke thinking about organizational structures
where community and alternative media organizations can remain grounded in local
communities and simultaneously become engaged in translocal networks characterized
by the uid articulation of a diversity of community and alternative media organizations.
From this perspective, there is no reason why the rhizome should necessarily stop at the
edge of the local community.
Appadurai’s (1995) concept of the translocal allows more theorizing about these
moments where the local is eectively expanded by moving into the realm of the outer
context, which traditionally is not considered to be part of the local. e translocal then
becomes the moment when the local is stretched beyond its borders, while still remaining
situated in the local. As Broeckmann (1998) puts it, it is the moment where “dierent
worlds and their local agents – individuals, organisations, machines – co-operate with
global and nomadic agents within networked environments”. It is the moment where
the local merges with a part of its outside context, without transforming itself into this
context. It is the moment where the local simultaneously incorporates its context and
transgresses into it. It is the moment where the local reaches out to a familiar unknown,
and fuses it with the known. It is the place-based version of the rhizome.31
ICTs can play an important – but non-deterministic – role in the creation of these
rhizomatic and translocal connections. ICTs, and more specically networked computer
communication, have been thoroughly researched through the metaphor of the rhizome.
For instance, Spiller (2002: 96) writes the following in the introduction to the fragment
of A ousand Plateaus included in the Cyber_reader:
A ousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is the philosophical bible of the
cyber-evangelist. is book is possibly one of the most quoted philosophical texts
in connection with the technological ‘spacescape’ that computers have created and
augmented.
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More relevant to the topic of this case study is that dierent types of civil society
organizations have transcended geographical/national frontiers and have initiated the
use of ICTs to support this construction of rhizomatic networks. Various names (and
perspectives) have been used to describe the phenomenon: Keck and Sikkink (1998)
referred to transnational advocacy networks and Keane (2003) to global civil society, whilst
Smith et al. (1997) employ the notion of transnational social movements. Whatever name
is attributed, ICTs are seen to play an important role within those networks of individuals
and civil society organizations (Scott and Street, 2000; Cammaerts, 2005). Within the
media sphere the rise of IMCs, especially, can be seen as a fascinating example. Focusing
on Indymedia, Mamadouh (2004: 488–489) describes the interconnected functioning of
these IMCs and the dialectics between the local and the global as follows:
e Indymedia websites provide platforms to mobilize activists at dierent scales at
once, with global sites addressing a global audience and local sites addressing local
ones, but both scales are entwined, constantly connected through newswires and
links.
Earlier in her article, Mamadouh (2004: 487) stresses the importance of ICTs as decision-
making tools for IMCs:
e Internet is a local resource for IMCs as they oen run their decision-making
through electronic lists, on top of regular meetings (oen weekly). is resource is
even more crucial to sustain the global network. e coordination activities of the
global network occur through computer-mediated communication: via mailing lists
and IRC chats.
ese examples from within the realm of civil society, and even from within the sphere of
alternative and community (new) media, raise important questions about the potential
of alternative and community media to establish similar rhizomatic networks beyond
the local, to overcome the reduction to locality and to link up with translocal and (even)
transnational social struggles. In the next part of this chapter, I analyse a case study of
RadioSwap, a very modest attempt to move beyond these connements and to contribute
to the generation of a more translocal rhizome.
3.2 Creating a more translocal rhizome? e RadioSwap case
A number of projects in Europe and the US focus on facilitating the exchange of audio
content by alternative and community media organizations through ICTs.32 For instance,
the Stream on the Fly project33 is an Austrian-based collaboration of radio stations and
companies, such as Public Netbase. Following several years of trialling, they now have
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an operational “open-source, station-management interface, a programme exchange
platform and a portal engine for radio programme reuse” (Alton-Scheidl et al., 2005: 1).
e Programme Exchange Initiative was initiated by the British Community Media
Association (CMA), and was “particularly aimed at assisting Community Radio stations
in accessing the wealth of community radio programmes that are produced each year
in the UK Community Radio sector”.34 is initiative later evolved into the GetMedia
database.35 Finally, the A-Infos radio project, which started in 1996 and is based in the US,
has almost 36,000 les in MP3-format, about 2500 of which last for more than two hours.
A-Infos’ “goal is to support and expand the movement for democratic communications
worldwide. We exist to be an alternative to the corporate and government media which
do not serve struggles for liberty, justice and peace, nor enable the free expression of
creativity”.36
e present case study37 focuses on a Belgian radio exchange project, called RadioSwap,
which is a project involving six Belgian radio stations – Radio Campus (Brussels),
Urgent (Ghent), Radio Universitaire Namuroise (RUN-Namur), FMBrussel (Brussels),
Radio Panik (Brussels) and Radio Centraal (Antwerp). Radio Campus, Urgent and
RUN are student radio stations, closely related to the basic principles of alternative and
community media organizations. Radio Campus, the oldest of these three stations, was
formally established in 1980, but was built on the heritage of an illegal radio station that
started broadcasting in 1968. Its original objective was described as follows:
To be a quality radio station, a display for the university, and at the service of the
university community, determinedly non-commercial and not giving into fashions,
easy militantism, or external pressures, whether they are political or cultural (Former
Radio Campus website, quoted in Carpentier et al., 2006: 33–34 – my translation).
Although the scope of Radio Campus broadened, it maintains a close relationship with
the Free University of Brussels (ULB), which continues to have representation on its
Board of Directors. Radio Campus currently has about 150 volunteers. e volunteers
elect the executive council, which is in charge of the daily management of the radio
station, from amongst their number. Urgent (1996) and RUN (1992) are more recent
initiatives, but are also supported by large numbers of volunteers and based on principles
of self-management. For instance, RUN (2010) describes its public as follows:
e people from Namur, locals [de souche] or here through migration, but also
everybody that likes independent music (pop-rock, metal, hip hop, electro, chanson
GSBOÎBJTF<y>BOEUIFQFPQMFUIBUBSFDPODFSOFECZUIFTPDJFUBMUPQJDTUIBUXFEJTDVTT
e fourth radio station, FMBrussel, was also originally a student radio station. It was
established in 2000 by students from the Brussels lm school Rits, but became a more
hybrid ‘professionalized’ organization when the Flemish Community started subsidizing
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it in 2004. e number of volunteers and their participation in the internal decision-
making structures decreased, and the radio station can now be considered a mix of
public broadcaster and community radio station (D’Hulst, 2005).
e last two radio stations are alternative radio stations, with strong participatory
traditions. Radio Panik – broadcasting since 1983 – describes its website (and itself)
as “a zone of sound turbulence” (Radio Panik, 2005). A later website self-description
explicitly refers to alternativity in its opening title: “Radio Panik, an alternative radio
station” (Radio Panik, 2008). e Antwerp alternative radio station Radio Centraal
was established in 1980, and the following citation from its website shows how much it
stresses its non-commercial and independent nature:
Radio Centraal disagrees with a society where economic interests decide what makes
it to the media, and upon the course of politics. For this reason, every producer lls
his own broadcasting time with unheard sound. And Radio Centraal wants to make
a noise. We are not happy with the way our society is evolving, and we are rarely
intrigued by current debates. We are convinced that the economy should be controlled
by humans, and not the other way round. Economic pressure on the media threatens
society. Radio Centraal, as a non-commercial media, sees it imperative to run in the
other direction. (Radio Centraal, 2010)
Together, these six radio stations initiated the RadioSwap project, which started in 2002
and received funding from the Belgian federal government. In the rst phase of the
project the six radio stations were supported by four academic research centres: Groupe
de Réexion sur les Processus Organisationnels (GREPO), Recherche et Diusion de
l’Information Scientique (RDIS), Centre de Recherches Informatique et Droit (CRID)
and Centrum voor Intellectuele Rechten (CIR).38
In the second phase of the project, CRID, the Centre for Communication for Social
Change (CSC) and two commercial companies, Nerom N.V. and Info-Graphic SA,
provided support. A rst evaluation of the RadioSwap project was published by the CSC
in June 2006 (Carpentier et al., 2006), and strongly informs this case study. Aer the
project (nancing) ended in 2006, the RadioSwap project came close to disappearing;
it went oine in early 2008 (Pierre De Jaeger 7 August 2010 interview), but in autumn
2009 a new website development phase was launched, and this is ongoing at the time of
writing this chapter (February 2011).
3.2.1 RadioSwap’s objectives
Quite similar to the other European projects mentioned above, the main objective of
this project is focused on the exchange of alternative and community radio content.
RadioSwap’s main objective was articulated on its rst website as follows:
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e Radioswap.net project aims to develop a technical as well as an organizational
system that will allow sta working for non-commercial and community radio
stations – inside and outside Belgium – to exchange radio programmes via the
Internet. (RadioSwap, 200139)
On a second website the project objectives are regrouped under ve headings: Seeking
multilingualism; Directed at volunteers; Giving a greater place to forms of self-
management; Dreaming of co-productions, partnership and news exchanges; and
Willing to experiment (RadioSwap, 2002). e rst item refers to the participatory
nature of the six radio stations. ey40 function on a non-commercial basis, their sta
is not remunerated and produces radio programmes on a voluntary basis, and there are
co-decision structures that allow for structural participation. Moreover, the RadioSwap
database is built on a participatory model, as described in the self-management item:
e point of all of this is not to build a ‘normalized network’ such as some of the
networks found in the world of commercial radio. It is rather to develop a common
tool, whose management would be shared, which the radio stations and their
collaborators could exploit according to needs, in order to reinforce singularities and
specicities. (RadioSwap, 2002)
e project not only aims to “give the radio collaborators an opportunity to spread their
programmes beyond their original radio” (RadioSwap, 2002), but also wants to construct
and enhance networks between dierent individuals and organizations.
Another objective of the project is to make it possible to use the system to set up co-
productions with other radio stations, or with outside partners. e system should
allow collaborators to work together, at a distance, on the same content and the same
programmes, each using her/his own way of working, with his/her own culture.
(RadioSwap, 2002)
RadioSwap is no longer restricted to the six original ‘founding’ radio stations. In April
2007 RadioSwap included 81 radio stations or aliated organizations and 209 registered
users based in Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Hungary, Macedonia, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Slovenia, the UK and the Czech Republic. ese radio stations have uploaded
982 radio programmes, which account for 47GB of audio. When the RadioSwap data were
uploaded into the new database in 2009, there were 83 stations or aliated organizations,
1242 programmes and 52 series.41
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Figure 13: e RadioSwap websites.
2002–2005
2006–2008
2009–2011
Keyword – Organization
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3.2.2 Rhizomatic technologies?
e RadioSwap technology and procedures (like the radio stations) were built on the
idea of self-(data)management. e initial database construction was managed by a
project group with representatives from all the participating radio stations. Although
administrators were involved in the actual database construction, implementing the radio’s
participatory principles outside the radio stations proved dicult and the administrators’
participation remained limited, despite the eorts of the RadioSwap coordinators. is
limited involvement of the partner radio stations was considered problematic by the
project management, who preferred to meet with interested individuals who represented
evenly interested partner radio organizations, but were obliged to face continuously
changing and only moderately interested individuals who could not (formally) represent
the radio station. Although the reasons for the lack of interest are complex (see below),
the uid and horizontal organizational structures of the partner radio stations worked
against the project:
We discovered, very gradually, that we weren’t facing ‘organizations’ (community
NFEJBPSOPUXJUIXIPNXFDPVMEDPOTUSVDUBQSPKFDUCBTFEPOUIFJSFYQFSUJTF<y>
but a group of individuals who had agreed – not always willingly – to come to a
meeting once in a while, but only to express their personal opinions. (Feedback from
Didier Demorcy, RadioSwap, 22 September 2005)
Figure 14: RadioSwap production model.
RadioSwap (2001).
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Despite the problems related to (participation in) the construction process, the password-
protected interface facilitates radio producers to record, digitize, compress (using MP3
or OGG Vorbis compression) and upload the audio that they themselves have produced.
During upload, the users provide the necessary metadata, allowing later use of search
engines. ese sound les (and their metadata) are stored on the RadioSwap server for
retrieval by other radio producers, providing a material expansion of the radio content
production of the participating radio stations.
e uploaded broadcasts are oen locally embedded, via the large number of
individuals who live their lives in the urban communities of these Belgian (or other)
cities. is of course includes those radio producers that reach Belgium in the slipstream
of the global ethnoscapes. eir news and current aairs programmes combine local
with national and international news items, and many producers have close relationships
with local (branches of) civil society organizations, and with small local businesses such
as record shops and cafes. Finally, these media organizations and their participatory
approaches require (relatively) high involvement of their sta, who mostly live nearby.
e RadioSwap technologies facilitate the potentially global distribution of this
uploaded material, although this of course is dependent on the willingness of the partner
radio stations to re-broadcast the material. e exchange of radio content allows the
alternative discourses and representations to circulate far beyond the local. e Antwerp
radio producers, whose radio station has been experiencing severe restrictions to its
broadcast range, point especially to the irony of being listened to in other cities, whilst
facing problems ‘at home,’ being conned within a mere three-kilometre broadcasting
zone.
Now you have the opportunity to have your programme broadcast in London, or
Prague or Berlin, or wherever, even in Rotterdam. If this is happening, then it is
really bizarre, because here [at home] we are trying to operate with this frequency
and insucient power from the transmitter. People living even three kilometres from
the station nd it dicult to get good reception, whilst people living hundreds of
kilometres away in other countries get perfect reception. (Daniel Renders, Radio
Centraal 14 April 2005 interview)
At the same time the interface does generate a considerable number of limitations.
Most ‘ordinary’ users describe the interface as dicult, non-user oriented and time-
consuming.42 ey complain also about others’ lack of systematic and regular uploading,
and about the lack of uniformity in the metadata provided. ey mention linguistic
problems and problems related to lack of human, non-computer-mediated interaction.
Despite these problems, most users do see and do validate the capacity to exchange audio
and to broaden their networks, creating connections with other radio producers.
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e most important points. First the material aspects, in other words, the possibility
to easily exchange content. Second, the problem of putting the dierent actors in
touch with each other. ese contacts might be in the form of a conversation, or
might involve exchanging programmes. We did send representatives to international
meetings, etc, and we did decide to install structures for European lobbying which
was a new venture. (Bernard Dubuisson, Radio Campus 18 July 2005 interview)
In analysing the resulting user practices, four patterns of usage were distinguished. In
a limited number of cases entire broadcasts are regularly re-broadcast by other radio
stations. is is the case, for instance, of Rock Minute Soup, produced by Radio Campus
Brussels and re-broadcast by RUN, and Micro Ouvert, produced by Radio Campus
Brussels and re-broadcast by Radio Campus Lille. A second ‘structural’ use is related
to the idea of creating a RadioSwap slot in the programming schedules of the dierent
radio stations. Although Radio Centraal, for example, has considered this option, it has
not implemented it (yet). A third ‘structural’ use is related to specic thematic needs
that arise when the ‘normal’ programming is suspended for radiophonic or journalistic
projects or festivals. In that case the RadioSwap database provides an opportunity to
locate thematically relevant content. e fourth pattern of usage is linked more to
individual radio producers’ practices, and consists of using fragments of downloaded
material within their ‘own’ time slots.
is does not mean that the radio producers embraced RadioSwap. e problems
related to the construction and uptake of the RadioSwap project are (at least partially)
linked to the position of the original RadioSwap project in relation to the alternative
organizational culture.43 Although initiated by members of the community radio stations,
RadioSwap is to some degree dened as being outside of the radio stations. One of the
producers formulates this rather directly:
It is a problem when a project comes from the outside, when it is not a project in
which the radio station can participate in the formulation of objectives, when the
project must be accepted as it is. (Karl Noben, RUN 21 September 2004 interview)
is balancing between being on the inside and the outside can be explained by the
project’s dependence on government funding and the consequences for the project
(such as the requirement for management procedures that are considered bureaucratic,
and lack of continuity and uncertainty). Also the heavy involvement of people linked
to academia is considered problematic (as illustrated by the quote below). Both these
components can be seen as forms of resistance against what can be considered the more
arbolic parts of society, against which these radio stations need to protect themselves.
I think that the website needs to be completely changed. e way it has been built
makes sense from the perspective of people working in a university, but it doesn’t
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make sense from the perspective of the people that have to use it. (Wim Geeraerts
Radio Centraal 5 October 2004 interview)
But there are also explanations that touch upon the nature of the alternative and
community media organizations, and their organizational cultures. e technology
used is still perceived as strange to the core business of audio broadcasting. e radio
stations lack immediate and considerable benets in relation to their organizational
(participatory) remit. Moreover, dierences exist between the positions of individual
radio producers and the people in charge of the radio station’s programming. Individual
radio producers usually have only one-hour slots in the radio’s programming schedule,
and are not greatly inclined or motivated to broadcast ‘other’ material than their ‘own’.
Principally, I think that I just have one broadcast, which I produce on a regular basis.
ere is no need to nd ways to ll it and it was not conceived to be open to another
broadcast(er). (Benoit Deuxant, Radio Campus 28 July 2005 interview)
At the same time the RadioSwap project is still seen as part of the world of community
and alternative media rhizome. e project’s identity reiterates the core values of the
participating community radio stations, and thus serves as a discursive machine that
supports the construction of alternative and community media identities. is process
is exemplied (and symbolized) by the remark made by one of the radio producers in
relation to the RadioSwap logo.
I like even the look of RadioSwap. It shows a submarine, with a periscope. It is a clear
reference to the underground. I think that we will stay underground, despite eorts to
arm ourselves more publicly. (Jean-Christophe Poncelet, Radio Campus, 1 August
2005 interview)
As a discursive machine, RadioSwap is deemed important because it generates alternative
discourses on (intellectual) property. e planned opening-up of the database to the
‘general public’ has created a series of legal problems concerning copyright, which are
addressed by reverting to the promotion of copyle material. One of the radio producers
pointed to the importance of discourses that (at least attempt to) nuance the hegemony
of commercial music production.
Figure 15: RadioSwap logo.
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259
I do like the initiative, because it is instrumental in the distribution of non-registered
music, and of the copyle idea. Also the distribution of reportages is very interesting.
(Daniel Renders, Radio Centraal, 14 April 2005 interview)
e RadioSwap project is also explicitly seen as a step towards the strengthening of the
(rhizome of the) community radio movement.
If, thanks to Swap, we can nd the ‘cement,’ the means to link together 10 to 15 radio
stations, to form a strong association of alternative radio stations, to create a counter-
force against the commercial networks. We could also have the power to go to the
French Community [one of the regional governments] and tell them; we’re 10; we’re 15;
we have RadioSwap; we need more frequencies. If Swap could play this role, become
a political tool, then it would become alter-radiophonic. (Jean-Christophe Poncelet,
Radio Campus, 1 August 2005 interview)
ere are limits, nevertheless, to how far the rhizome can reach: It cannot move too
deep into the arbolic. e idea of including commercial media in the RadioSwap project
is rejected, as alternative and community media are positioned antagonistically towards
these commercial media. ese media are not to be granted membership, as radio
producers feel very strongly (in a negative way) about the idea that these commercial
media might benet from their work.
Disregarding our nancial situation now, or last year, or whenever, I think it is important
that people do not make money from broadcasting our fragments. If they are rebroadcast,
and commercials are put in before and aer, well, then, we’re actually entitled to the
money from those commercials, because we covered the production costs, however
minimal they were. (Koen Verbert, FMBrussel, 6 August 2004, interview)
3.3 Conclusion: A translocal community of interest
With its focus on community radio producers, the RadioSwap database attempts to become
a machine of machines and to construct a new community alongside the communities
these radio stations are serving when broadcasting to their publics. In its architecture,
this new community is a translocal community of interest, based on the exchange of self-
produced radio content. Access to this community is negotiated through membership
in the partner radio stations, which themselves are participatory organizations (albeit
to dierent degrees). Once access is granted, the radio producers (again on a voluntary
basis) can upload and download content, thus facilitating the circulation of alternative
and community media content and adding nodes to the rhizome. Although there is a
form of gatekeeping that creates access restrictions, the access model that RadioSwap
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uses also shapes and structures the sub-rhizome RadioSwap (as part of the larger rhizome
of alternative and community media) and thus allows for the generation of new nodes.
Despite RadioSwap’s ambition to create a community of interest that transgresses
locality, and despite its contribution to the generation of alternative and community
rhizomes, the question needs to be raised as to whether there is a sense of belonging,
uidly articulating the elements of the network, crucial to the denition of community
(Morris and Morton, 1998). Does RadioSwap, in other words, show a certain degree of
cross-cutting articulations that move beyond the arbolic star-shaped network oering
nothing but a service to radio producers?
A number of constraints necessarily produce a rather pessimistic answer to these
questions. e rst restriction is the size of the network. Although the numbers (of
members, both individual and collective, and of hours of uploaded content) at rst
sight are impressive, the core group of regular users is limited.44 Moreover, as the Radia
network is also linked to RadioSwap, a sub-community of radio artists has formed, which
remains relatively disconnected from the other radio producers. Second, the project
suers from the fallacy of a technology-centred approach to human interaction (see
chapter 5). e interface is seen as sucient stimulation for community-building. is
can only be considered illusory, especially because it conicts with the general objectives
and organizational cultures of the radio stations involved, which are focused more on
organizing participation within their organizations than on participating in a project
outside their organizations. is constraint is further strengthened by the (unavoidable)
top-down approach used for (applying for) the project, reducing the possibility for the
radio producers to appropriate the database and adapt it to their specic needs. is
approach also makes the project a target for the deterritorializing strategies from (the
more radical of) the radio stations, which usually target the state and the market. e
radio producers interviewed sometimes appeared to be a disinterested and detached
community of self-interest, but their remarks are merely translations of the structural
and cultural constraints they have to face, not necessarily signs of total lack of interest.
e mindsets of alternative and community media organizations are oen
transnational, and there are links to national and transnational community media
organizations. For instance, the sensitivity of these media organizations towards the
problems of marginalized societal subgroups45 allows members of those subgroups,
from a diversity of nationalities and origins, to have their ‘own’ broadcasts and gain the
ability to have their voices heard. But their organizational structures and cultures still
equally remain oen conned to the locality of a (geographically dened) community.
In this case study we can see how organizational structures and cultures matter because
they allow certain participatory practices and disallow others. e RadioSwap project
is a very modest contribution to expanding this network of alternative and community
media organizations and other civil society organizations. It is nevertheless important
because it has explicitly incorporated this unattainable – at least in the short run –
horizon. RadioSwap not only shows the diculties that alternative and community
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261
media organizations have to face when striving for a translocal identity, and how their
participatory organizational cultures can actually impede upon this process, it is also a
materialization of the need and the dream to move beyond the local rhizome, to follow
the trajectory of a global civil society, transnational social movements and glocalized
independent media centres, and to oer a viable alternative for the global (media)
market.
Notes
1. Not surprisingly, Hatch (1997) refers here to the work of Weber (1947).
2. http://www.indymedia.org/.
3. See http://www.storycenter.org/.
4. See http://www.ourmedia.org/ and http://www.youtube.com/.
5. See http://www.facebook.com/ and http://www.myspace.com/.
6. Potentially, depending on its articulation, the public service remit could legitimize the
transformation of entire public media organizations into (maximalist-)participatory organizations,
but the present-day position of public media organizations (as part of the mainstream) does not
seem to make such a transformation likely.
7. See Harvey (2000). Sometimes 1972 is also mentioned (see e.g., Crisell, 2002: 202).
8. Harvey (2000: 164) mentions George Stoney’s lm You Are on Indian Land, and the Catch 44
series.
9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation.
10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/person/hencher_col_gordon.
11. In addition to the illustrative use of the Shorts that can be found at the national Video Nation
website, this case study also draws on interviews with BBC sta members and with freelancers
involved in the project (Bob Long, Chris Mohr, Mandy Rose, Carole Gilligan, Ameneh
Enayat, Tariq Aziz and Rosemary Richards) and with Tim Williams of the World Service
Trust. Chris Mohr read a dra version of an early version of this text and formulated a series
of remarks and additions, a method that can be dened as a form of respondent validation
(or feedback analysis). e interviews were held on the following dates: Chris Mohr: 26 April
2002, 12 August 2002, 26 September 2002 and 6 November 2002 (feedback); Mandy Rose: 13
August 2002; Bob Long: 22 August 2002; Tim Williams: 13 August 2002; Carole Gilligan: 22
April 2003; Ameneh Enayat: 29 July 2010; Tariq Aziz: 29 July 2010 and Rosemary Richards:
3 August 2010. Special thanks to them and to Adrian Toll for providing the stills. Other data
used in the analysis are a selection of the Video Nation press archive (kept in the BBC Written
Archives Centre at Caversham) and a selection of the video log les (selected on the basis of
the presence of the keyword ‘evaluation’), which (together with the raw material) is housed at
the British Film Institute. Both archives were consulted on 14 August 2002.
12. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/youmeus/videonation/video_nation_
index.shtml.
13. http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/kth/programmes_vnss.shtml.
14. e situation as it was on 10 September 2002.
15. ese new Shorts were produced in collaboration with BBCi Music (Reggae Music Memories)
and BBCi News (the Race UK Shorts).
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16. e situation as it was on 9 July 2003.
17. Situation on 17 April 2005.
18. Situation on 18 August 2006.
19. Situation on 17 September 2009.
20. Viewing rates range from 500,000 up to 9,000,000 viewers, and were heavily dependent upon
the programmes that were scheduled before and aer the Shorts (Interview Chris Mohr – 26
September 2002).
21. e training-Shorts were originally made available to potential participants on VHS (Interview
Chris Mohr – 26 September 2002).
22. http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/person/devonshire_duke_of.
23. e dates of the English poet William Wordsworth are 1770 to 1850; the dates of Robert
Herrick, poet and clergyman, are 1591 to 1674.
24. Wordsworth’s poem has become a frequently used metaphor in postcolonial literature. A good
example can be found in Greene’s (1994) discussion on Kincaid’s (1990) use of the daodil
poem in her novel Lucy.
25. Aer 2009, the system of the call is still used, but the contributions have to t in specic
features.
26. http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/category/anger/.
27. http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/u/uk_why.shtml.
28. Based on Merton’s (1957: 299) discussion of the denitions of groups and collectivities, it
could be questioned whether the participants can be called a group, and should not rather be
referred to as a collectivity.
29. is choice was restricted with the Features becoming more prominent.
30. More recently, Video Nation opened up for more diverse styles (Tariq Aziz 29 July 2010
interview).
31. e translocal is not so dierent from the glocal (Robertson, 1995) since both concepts use
uid denitions of the local and the global, of place and space. One of the disadvantages of the
concept of glocalization is that it cannot distance itself from its genesis, still taking the global
as its starting point for analysis and situating the local in a reactive position. In comparison
to the glocal, the translocal implies an inversed approach that allows the local to be the point
of departure, and adds the global as a second component. In this way, translocalization acts
as glocalization’s mirror image.
32. ere is also a long tradition of organizing these exchanges through more informal networks,
for instance by making use of audio cassettes (see Pehlemann and Galenza (2006) for a series
of German examples).
33. http://sotf.berlios.de/.
34. http://w ww.commedia.org.uk/about-cma/cmas-projects/the-showcase/programme-
exchange/ (no longer available online).
35. http://www.getmedia.org.uk/.
36. http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/about/.
37. is case study is based on a qualitative analysis of a series of interviews and diaries. e six
radio station coordinators (the administrators) were interviewed at the end of 2004: Anthony
van Hoe, Karl Noben, Koen Verbert, Michel Goedart, Pierre De Jaeger (also project
coordinator) and Wim Geeraerts. Pierre De Jaeger was interviewed again on 7 August 2010.
Also nineteen ordinary RadioSwap users were interviewed (between July and September
2005): Anne Van Wichelen, Bart Cammaerts, Benoit Deuxant, Bernard Dubuisson, Chris
Weaver, Daniel Renders, Diana McCarty, Elisabeth Zimmerman, Frédéric Mignon, Graziella
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263
Van Loo, Gregory Beck, Jean-Christophe Poncelet, Konstantin Petrov, Peter Gonda, Philippe
Cunat, Ricardo Reis, Rokia Bamba, Simon Collet and Wendy Van Wynsberghe. ree people
from this group of ordinary RadioSwap users (Anne Van Wichelen, Daniel Renders and
Simon Collet) kept diaries for four months, describing the use they made of RadioSwap.
Finally, the RadioSwap coordinators received and commented upon an earlier dra of
this text. A feedback analysis of the reactions from Didier Demorcy and Pierre De Jaeger
is included in this chapter. I am grateful to the RadioSwap coordinators and users, and the
student researchers Andries Fluit, Nathalie Gonzalez, Nathalie Colsoul, Laura Schuerwegen
and Jozeen Vanhaverbeke who worked on this project.
38. GREPO is the Reection Group on Organizational Processes, RDIS is the Centre for Research
and Diusion of Scientic Information, CRID is the Centre for Research of Informatics and
Law, and CIR is the Centre for Intellectual Rights.
39. Translations of the citations are mine or those of the student researchers mentioned earlier.
40. As already explained, the exception here is FMBrussel.
41. Personal e-mail communication with Hadrian Bnin-Bninski on 8 March 2010.
42. e users consider the uploading procedure with its compression and the required addition
of metadata as especially time-consuming.
43. e new RadioSwap development team might be able to position RadioSwap dierently, as
the formal links with government and universities no longer exist. At the time of writing, the
development phase was ongoing, and the ‘old’ users had just been informed about the new
RadioSwap interface (on 4 February 2011).
44. When the RadioSwap data were integrated into the new database, it became clear that “46
of the 83 stations had no audio content and/or very little info about them” (Personal e-mail
communication with Hadrian Bnin-Bninski – 8 March 2010).
45. Item 5 of the 1994 Community Radio Charter for Europe of the World Association of
Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC-Europe, 1994) states that “[Community radio
stations] provide a right of access to minority and marginalized groups and promote and
protect cultural and linguistic diversity”.
Chapter 5
Keyword – Technology
1. A conceptual introduction
1.1 Technology and society
The articulation of technology as a concept is a fairly recent development.1
Also, technology has been associated with a very strong societal impact. For
example, Bain’s (1937: 860) article, which contains one of the seminal denitions
of technology, starts with the following sentence: “Broadly conceived, technology
is the most important single factor in producing, integrating and destroying cultural
phenomena”. Bain continues by dening technology as follows: “technology includes all
tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and
transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them”.
In this denition there is a strong emphasis on the material, which we nd also in
Stiegler’s (1998: 82) brief denition of technology as “organized inorganic matter”. But
even here, we nd hints of its societal context in the emphasis on skills, knowledge and
its organizational nature. Another illustration of this is Derry and Williams’s (1970: 3)
denition of technology as “that bewilderingly varied body of knowledge and devices
by which man progressively masters his natural environment […]”. ere are some
denitions that place even more emphasis on the societal and cultural component. For
instance, Volti’s (2006: 6) denition reads as follows: Technology is “a system that uses
knowledge and organization to produce objects and techniques for the attainment [of]
specic goals”.
is tension can be found in Guattari’s work on the machine (see chapter 4). In his
chapter Machinic Heterogenesis,2 Guattari (1993: 14) refers to the “rst type of machine
that comes to mind”, which is that of “material assemblages […] put together articially
by the human hand and by the intermediary of other machines, according to the
diagrammatic schemas whose end is the production of eects, of products, or of particular
services”. And in the next sentence, he immediately points to the need to go beyond3 the
“delimitation of machines in the strict sense to include the functional ensemble that
associates them with humankind to multiple components […]”. is list of components
is lengthy, and includes material and energy components; semiotic components that are
diagrammatic and algorithmic; social components; components related to the human
body;4 representational components; investments by what he calls desiring machines;
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and abstract machines. Guattari (1993: 14) terms this functional ensemble the machinic
assemblage,5 in which the basic material components are called proto-machines: “the
utensils, the instruments, the simplest tools and, […] the least structured pieces of a
machinery will acquire the status of a proto-machine”.
e arrangement (or assemblage) still has many interconnecting material components,
as Volti’s (2006: 5) argument of technology as a material system shows. Volti uses the
example of the invention of the light bulb to show that the isolated material object is
useless unless it is (quite literally) connected to an electrical generator through a network
of electrical lines, combined with metering devices, which allows for its commodication.
But Guattari’s approach to the machinic assemblage includes more than materiality. Also,
the discursive dimension and our sense-making practices of technology are considered
of fundamental importance on a variety of levels. e individual use of technology is
highly discursive, for instance, when people use technologies to generate distinctions
or to support their identity constructions. As Du Gay et al. (1997) illustrate with the
case of the Sony Walkman, cultural meanings are attributed through the production
process of technologies, but the consumption process is also the location of a multitude
of generated meanings. A similar argument can be found in the domestication approach
to technology, which studies the integration of technologies in everyday life. As the quote
below shows, this process of integration again has a strong discursive component:
When the domestication of technologies has been ‘successful,’ the technologies are
not regarded as cold, lifeless, problematic and challenging consumer goods at the root
of family arguments and/or work-related stress, but as comfortable, useful tools –
functional and/or symbolic – that are reliable and trustworthy. (Berker et al., 2006: 3)
e processes of sense-making and the role of the discursive are not only restricted to the
more micro-levels of society. Mackenzie (2002: 36) refers to Laclau and Moue’s (1985)
work to express the uidity of the signier technology itself: “[Technology] refers to no
single signier or semiotic substance. […] It would be possible to map out how shis in
the signication of the term ‘technology’ over the last centuries have allowed it to function
as an empty signier in relation to certain political and economic formations”. Despite
the structural contingency of the meaning of technology, Laclau and Moue’s (1985)
discourse theory can also be used to point to the hegemonic articulations of technology,
which (attempt to) xate its meaning. is can be applied rst of all to the dominant
ways of using (and not using) specic technologies. Many technologies are surrounded
by a wide variety of norms, rules and regulations that mediate their production and
consumption. An obvious example here is military technology, which is a technology
of destruction that is highly regulated, but still widely (and sometimes approvingly and
even eagerly) used in specic circumstances.
e hegemonic articulations of technology also function at a broader societal level.
Technology production and consumption, for instance, remain strongly embedded
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269
within a capitalist hegemony. One other (related) example is the dominant articulation of
technology within a discourse of progress, where technology is seen to be part of, or even
a driving force for, a rational-linear process of societal self-improvement. Obviously, this
discourse oers a very partial representation, as the technologies of death used during the
Holocaust, for instance, most painfully show. Technology is embedded within society’s
power struggles and oen comes at a very high cost to some specic groups or to all. To
use one of McLuhan’s (1964) concepts: Technology acts as the extension of man, but new
extensions can also bring about numbness and amputations.
At the heart of the technology-as-progress discourse lies “a profound sense of optimism,
that a rapidly expanding base of knowledge would contribute to an increase in the
quality and virtue of the social and human condition” (Custer, 1996: 66). When applied
to technology, this discourse of progress is oen fed by a technological determinist logic,
where technology is seen as an independent force that has the potential to realize utopias.
is technological determinist logic is sometimes used also in an inverse, dystopian way,
where it becomes articulated as a threat to progress. e Frankenstein version of this
logic claims that “what began more than a million years ago as a human creation has
taken on a life of its own, with technology advancing according to its own dynamic,
and unrestrained by social arrangements, culture, and thought” (Volti, 2006: 271). is
argument (in both its versions) is inherently problematic – as Volti points out – because
it ignores the embeddedness of technology in the social: “New technologies brings
changes to many aspects of society, while at the same time social forces do much to
stimulate and shape these technologies” (Volti, 2006: 272).
It would be equally problematic, nevertheless, to deny any impact of technology on
society. Here, we should bear in mind Williams’s (2003: 133) remark that “While we
have to reject technological determinism, in all its forms, we must be careful not to
substitute for it the notion of a determined technology”. is argument can be taken a
step further, in order to point to the constitutive role of technology within the social,
together with a wide variety of other societal forces. Technology plays a signicant part
in the construction of humanity itself, and as Derrida (1993: 15) remarked, “the natural,
original body does not exist: technology has not simply added itself, from the outside or
aer the fact, as a foreign body”. Mackenzie (2002: 5) raises a similar point, when he says
that “[…] we can think, signify, make sense and represent who we are in part only because
of technology”. Technology is not outside discourse for Mackenzie; he emphasizes that
(like any materiality) technology resists the reduction to discourse and representation,
and simultaneously impacts upon discourse and representation. is implies also that
the dichotomization of nature and culture, human and technology, and the prioritization
of one component of the dichotomy over the other should be avoided. is idea is nicely
captured by Haraway’s (1991: 177) short sentence “One is too few, but two are too many”
in the Cyborg Manifesto. Haraway continues by arguing that high-tech culture oers a
challenge of these dualisms in intriguing ways: “It is not clear who makes and who is
made in the relation between human and machine. […] Insofar as we know ourselves in
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both formal discourse (e.g., biology) and in daily practice […] we nd ourselves to be
cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras”.
1.2 Media technologies
As is the case with any subtype of technology, media technologies are partially specic.
Arguably, the specicity of media technologies lies in their focus on (the communication
of) meaning. ey are, to varying degrees, technologies of representation and
communication, registration and distribution. Very dierent media technologies,
ranging from speech and writing to the electronic media (including the internet), are
clustered under this label, all with very dierent relationships to the material. But at the
same time, these materials and the many proto-machines are arranged to enable their
users to communicate through a variety of languages.
ese media arrangements are not merely mechanical, they are also organizational.
As was argued in the previous chapter, the mainstream media sphere is characterized by
the presence of large-scale, vertically structured media organizations that are embedded
in capitalist logics (even when they concern public broadcasting media). is impacts on
the position of the technology within the media sphere, as the proto-machines are mainly
connected to media organizations through the logics of ownership. Also, the objective
of prot and audience maximalization, combined with the culture of professionalism,
impacts on the position of technology within the media sphere. e organization of
mass communication requires technology that has a considerable complexity (oen
called high-tech) and that is expensive. It builds also on the functional divisions of
labour within the organization, where each manipulates dierent technologies or similar
technologies dierently, in combination with organizational networks, which also use
specic divisions of labour (and of technology). is, in turn, adds to the need for
professional operators of these technologies, who might be technicians, producers or
journalists. us, we see how the combination of capitalist media organizations, high-
tech and professionalism creates a self-legitimizing circle.
ese media (organizational) arrangements are not pre-given, but are the outcome
of social processes (see Lievrouw, 2002). Consequently, they could have been structured
dierently. Bertolt Brecht’s (2001) radio theory is one example of a dierent way of
thinking about the articulation of radio technology, namely as a tool of communication
instead of as a tool of distribution. Media technologies can be used eectively in dierent
arrangements. An example is alternative and community media arrangements, in which
technology is put to dierent uses. ese organizations, in which the media technology
is embedded, are dierent in that they are oen small-scale and horizontally structured,
and also have limited nancial resources. e mixture of a participatory ideology,
which favours easy-to-use technologies, and limited nancial resources – sometimes
complemented with the ideological rejection of high-tech companies and a do-it-yourself
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culture – results in the low-tech arrangements that are found, for instance, in alternative
and community radio stations or alternative zines.
ese alternative or non-mainstream arrangements also occur in social groups
organized through communities (rather than organizations). Older examples are amateur
broadcasting (or ham radio) and Citizens Band (CB) radio, which use(d) broadcasting
(and reception) technologies to organize a uid combination of one-to-one and one-
to-many communication. As Haring (2007: xi) puts it, “[…] ham radio thrived on
social interaction. It diered from amateur broadcasting such as pirate radio and from
pastimes focused on listening to commercially broadcast or shortwave radio because it
included both transmission and reception. is produced real-time conversations […]
and random meetings ‘on the air’ occasionally grew into friendships that continued by
letters and further discussions via radio”. Moreover, some media technologies moved
into the private sphere, as in the case of home photography, (home) video cameras and,
to an extent, small music recording studios. e recent broader distribution of digital
technologies has supported both processes. Easy-to-use digital technologies – through
the popularization of the PC – were brought into the home, allowing large numbers
of people, individually, or structured in communities and/or organizations, to employ
them to produce and (sometimes) publish content. In his discussion of podcasting,
Cesarini (2008: 100) mentions the opportunity for self-publishing in pointing to the
“potentially revolutionary role podcasting could play in the coming years by allowing
basically anyone to become their own radio station – free to express their own personal
or political views, free to express their own musical tastes […]”. As Kahn and Kellner
(2008: 26) emphasize, user-friendliness plays a signicant role: “Blogs, short for ‘web
logs,’ are partially successful because they are relatively easy to create and maintain –
even for web users who lack technical expertise”.
Media technologies are not only organizational (or social), but also cultural. is
implies that media technologies are embedded in discursive environments that
attribute meaning to the proto-machines, their uses (in the eld of both production and
consumption) and their place in society. ese discourses are not necessarily stable, and
can become constructed in a variety of ways. For instance, the object of the radio receiver
has evolved from being initially a male technological toy that was oen hidden, to an
aesthetic object of display that features prominently in people’s living rooms (Moores,
1996: 75) and then made its way outdoors. Many of these media proto-machines have
kept this prominent position, and remain permanently validated by this high-level
visibility in numerous homes (and other places), which generates a demand for them to
be treated respectfully.
But the usage of media technologies is especially relevant here since the media
production and consumption cultures strongly impact on how media technologies are
put to use. e production culture plays a role in dening how media technologies should
‘properly’ be used and by whom. ese denitions of the ‘good’ use of media technologies
normalize specic aesthetic and professional codes that structure the procedures of media
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production and the resulting media content. Here we can nd a complex and interacting
set of discourses on production values, genre and format conventions, and technological
mastery. ese denitions also sustain and regulate the role of media professionals,
articulated as the people capable of mastering media technologies. eir subject identities
are (partially) constructed through their professional capacities as cras(wo)men, but
simultaneously construct the ‘proper’ use of these media technologies.
A similar logic applies to media consumption culture, where a variety of cultural
processes, such as identity formation, distinction and domestication, impact on the
way media technologies are consumed. Media technologies play an important role
in everyday life, and their identities become articulated through these consumption
processes, while they simultaneously contribute to the articulation of the identities of
their users by oering them subject positions (illustrated, for instance, by the already-
mentioned example of the Sony Walkman (Du Gay et al. (1997)). Especially when media
technologies are being used as part of cultural, political or social struggles, the instability
and contestability of these meanings becomes visible. In some cases these struggles are
related to struggles with(in) the political system, sometimes even at the geopolitical level
(as the case study in this chapter will illustrate), but in other cases they are related to
the micro-politics of everyday life. An everyday example is Moores’ description of the
room of a 19-year-old baker who lives with his parents, and who has accumulated a
considerable assemblage of media technologies. Moores (2000: 62) writes, “It is possible,
I believe, to read the assembled goods as signs of a struggle to fashion some limited degree
of autonomy in the face of parental authority”. Also media technologies themselves can
sometimes become the object of struggle, as Morley’s (1986) analysis of the television
remote control nicely shows.
Finally, media technologies are meaningful objects at a societal level. ere is a long
history of media panics that construct media technologies as harmful and a threat to
society, mainly children and young people. As Drotner (1992: 44) argues, in media panics,
“the mass media are both the source and the medium of public reaction”. Also the utopian
and technological determinist hopes in media technologies such as the internet, to make
the world a better place, are discursive processes that aect and construct the meaning of
(clusters of) media technologies at the societal level. Again, we can return to Couldry’s
(2003) argument that media organizations contribute to their own societal construction
by maintaining the myth of media centrality. ese hegemonic projects are intrinsically
problematic as they fetishize and decontextualize media technologies, and overestimate
their power, but these projects also show the cultural signicance of media technologies.
1.3 Participation and media technology
Media technologies can be used to serve many purposes, including a maximalist
participatory agenda. e investigation of the limits to the deployment of media
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273
technologies for participatory ends brings us rst to the debate on the neutrality of
technology. Many have warned that (media) technologies are not neutral: One example
is Guins’s (2008: 15) statement:
Neoliberal control strategies are enacted and mediated through a range of devices,
techniques, and practices that seek to regulate media and the subject of rule through
‘empowered’ practices with media technologies. In doing so, a liberal humanist
understanding of technology is upheld that relies on an instrumentalist view of
technology that renders all technology as neutral means, or ‘tools,’ for the realization
of some human ends.
Without any desire to disagree with this analysis, the full rejection of technology as
neutral runs the risk of producing a (potentially) essentialist position, where the forces
of the social construction of technology are downplayed. Media technologies are the
objects of hegemonic projects that (aim to) xate their meanings, and aim to normalize
these always particular meanings. Here, the discourse of neutrality is a discursive tool
to serve this post-political strategy. Media technologies are rigidly embedded in societal
contexts, and in this sense they are never neutral.
But the identities of proto-machines and machines, whether or not their identities
have been rigidly xated by a hegemonic project, can always become re-articulated. As
Laclau and Moue (1985: 108) argued, the identity of an object is not embedded within
the object itself, but is generated through a process of social construction.6 is implies
that media technologies can become positioned and be used in ways that move outside
the dominant (or hegemonic) denitions. From this perspective, media technologies
are contingent and are open to re-articulation and reusage. Yet again, illustrations are
provided by alternative and community media, which show that audio-visual media
technologies can be used in ways that transcend the use made of them by mainstream
media organizations. Media technologies might not be neutral, and their signication
might be altered, pushing them into other (but still equally particular and non-neutral)
positions.
is argument brings about another risk, which is that of ignoring the materiality of
media technologies (or user practices). is could lead to the problematic belief that any
media technology can equally serve any kind of purpose. Proto-machines incorporate
specic codes that allow them to do specic things, and not to do others. ey have what
Norman (2002) calls aordances, qualities that allow for actions.7 A similar argument can
be developed following Deleuze and Guattari’s (1984: 36) denition of the machine as a
system of interruptions: Machines interrupt the ow in particular ways, allowing some
usages and disallowing others. Or from an ANT perspective (see Latour, 2005), objects
also have agency. In the Kinoautomat case study discussed below, the impossibility of
halting a lm projector severely impacts on the participatory process. If we try to combine
these dierent arguments, we can see that there is an oscillation of media technologies
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between contingency and rigidity, where the discursive context xates the identities of
(proto-)machines, but also allows them to become unxed. Similarly, the materiality
of media technologies allows many dierent (sometimes unforeseen) usages, but also
introduces a certain level of rigidity, not allowing for other particular usages.
is lengthy detour enables a more nuanced answer to the question of whether or
not media technologies are participatory. eir embeddedness in societal contexts is
a structuring element that can allow or disallow maximalist forms of participation.
Media technologies are constructed through the organizational, production and
consumption contexts in which they are situated. Mainstream media organizations,
with their professional production cultures, have allowed media technologies to be
used for participatory practices, but oen only up to a certain extent, while alternative
and community media have facilitated the use of (sometimes the very same) media
technologies for more maximalist forms of participation. Consumption cultures also
have not always favoured maximalist participation, since the more intense forms of
participation are not always enthusiastically used (even when they are made easily
available). e hyperactive user (at the level of both interaction and participation) oen
remains a rarity.
Media technologies themselves have specic aordances that allow for participation
(or not). Of course, these aordances again are not outside the process of social
construction, but hegemonic processes (such as the capitalist production process that
is built on standardization) oen xate these aordances quite strongly. In order to
see how the present-day aordances of media technology structure (maximalist forms
of) participation, I return to the AIP model developed in chapter 1. Access to media
technologies plays a key role in facilitating participation (as argued in the digital divide
discourse). One of the basic elements here is the nancial cost related to obtaining media
technologies. For instance, printing presses and television studios require considerable
investments, which structurally restricts access to participation. At the same time, we
have witnessed the development of so-called consumption technology, which is fairly
cheap, oen highly portable and can be used for media production. An early example
is photography (from the 1880s onwards) (Derry and Williams, 1970: 659), where “the
eective demand produced by a great mass of consumers [and producers] has stimulated
the development of a huge variety of photographic apparatus, ranging from simple
disposables to sophisticated digital cameras” (Volti, 2006: 44). A similar argument can
be made for the photocopying machine, the tape recorder, the camcorder, the mini-disk,
the personal computer, audio-visual editing soware, music sampling and sequencing
soware, and a wide variety of internet tools, in combination with less known low-tech
developments such as micro-broadcasting (Kogawa, 1994).
In addition, access to a content producing organization or community is a signicant
element in facilitating participation. e importance of organizations (and communities)
has been extensively emphasized before; here we should add that these organizations8
are oen the ones that control the technologies for media production. In some cases,
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these organizations, in turn, are regulated by governments in terms of the use of these
technologies (e.g., in the case of many forms of electronic broadcasting).
ese organizations (or communities) are also the sites where dierent professional and
non-professional subject positions, and production and consumption cultures, in oen
unequal power relations, meet and interact. ese interactions, and the power relations
in which they are embedded, impact on the entitlements to use the media technologies.
For instance, technological or professional expertise oen legitimizes privileged access
to the use of specic media technologies. Of course, these power relations do not remain
uncontested, and are oen the locations of struggles between minimalist and maximalist
participatory positions.
In addition to interaction with the content producing organization, interaction
with the media technology itself structures its participatory potential. Here, again, the
aordances of media technologies matter: how they allow for collaboration and sharing,
how they are rhizomatically (and less arbolically) connected to (larger) machines,
what kind of operating skills they require, and what levels of complexity they have.
Easy connections in networks of proto-machines and machines facilitate participatory
processes, especially when the number of obligatory passage points is not too limited and
connectivity is more rhizomatic and less hierarchical.9 Also high levels of technological
complexity aect the participatory potential of media technologies because they increase
the need for (sometimes professional) training in learning how to use the technological
object. As already argued, high-tech easily aligns itself to professionalism and mainstream
organizational forms.
Finally, participation is an important element in the technological policies of media
organizations and in the development of technology itself. Mainstream media organizations
and businesses in general have not proven prone to encouraging (or even allowing) these
kinds of maximalist levels of participation. Market research is oen the only means enabling
the voices of ordinary users of media technology to be heard, rendering government
regulation the most important (but also indirect) tool of participation in the eld of
technology development (Volti, 2006: 313). In other elds, such as the pharmaceutical
industry or the GM food industry, more participatory tools have been used, sometimes
enforced by activist strategies. ese tools are in part extensions of the eld of application
of participatory design, although we should also keep in mind Beck’s (1992) plea for the
establishment of forums with citizens, experts, politician and industrialists. ese tools
(such as consensus conferences) have been organized based on dierent motivations and
have achieved dierent levels of success.10 In the eld of media technology development,
these types of participatory practices remain very rare.
An important exception – assuming a broad denition of the eld of media technology
– is the free soware movement (and the related open source movement) (Soderberg,
2007), where groups of programmers collaborate in soware production on the basis
of bartering, and allow access to the soware source code. A seminal text on the free
soware movement is Stallman’s 1985 GNU Manifesto (2005: 2) in which he writes:
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I consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with
other people who like it. Soware sellers want to divide the users and conquer them,
making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other
users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a
soware license agreement.
e free soware movement is an example of the combination of open access to soware
technology and co-decision-making in its production. Stallman’s (2005: 8) denition of
free soware as “soware that users have the freedom to distribute and change” illustrates
the importance of access. Nevertheless, there are limits, which later became embedded
in the copyle principle, but were already set out in the GNU Manifesto:
GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute
GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution. at is
to say, proprietary modications will not be allowed. I want to make sure that all
versions of GNU remain free. (Stallman, 2005: 2)
ese instances of joint media technology production, however, are rare in other parts of
the media sphere. In many cases participation in media technology production remains
minimalist or non-existent. Of course, the use of media technologies for organizing
participation through the media, and participation in the use of media technologies, in
many dierent forms, still take place within the media sphere.
2. Case: Kinoautomat – One man and his house. e lack of uptake of participatory
technology11
2.1 Introduction
At the 1967 International and Universal Exposition (Expo 67), the Czechoslovak pavilion
featured the interactive lm Kinoautomat – One man and his house,12 where spectators
could inuence the storyline of the lm by voting for one of two possible storylines. In
order to enable this early form of audience participation, the lm theatre armchairs were
equipped with voting technology, and a basic computer processed the votes. Following
each round of voting, results were projected onto the screen, the decision was announced
and the lm continued.
rough these participatory technologies the audience was allowed to co-decide on
the lm’s storyline, something that so far had been (and continues to be) the privilege
of the lm producers. is process structurally altered the power relations within the
lm theatre, where traditionally interaction with the lm text is limited to the abilities of
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audience members to generate dierent readings. As Havránek (2002: 106) formulates
it, “e Kinoautomat made the passive viewer active and oered him the opportunity to
become what we might today call a lm ‘user’”.
Despite its novelty, Kinoautomat was soon forgotten. Aer the Expo 67 event,
Kinoautomat was screened at HemisFair 68 in San Antonio (US), at the specially
reconstructed Prague cinema Kino Světozor in 1971 and 1972, and at Expo 74 in Spokane
(US). Aer that there were no more screenings. One nice indication of the oblivion that
overtook this lm is a short letter to the editor of the New York Times of 28 January 1993.
In this letter, Ronald Blumer responds to a review (published on 13 January 1993) of the
20-minute interactive lm I’m Your Man (see below), which was being screened at the
New York Loews eatre:
e rst theatrical showing of a live-action interactive lm (‘When the lm audience
controls the plot,’ e Arts, Jan. 13) is not a rst. e most popular exhibit at Expo 67
in Montreal was a presentation called Kinoautomat at the Czechoslovak pavilion. It
was a totally delightful screwball comedy, directed by Radúz Činčera, in which every
ve minutes or so the audience controls the plot by pressing buttons on their chairs.
e screen was surrounded by a series of squares which would light up red or green
so that you could see your vote being tallied.
Kinoautomat experienced a revival when Czech television aired parts of the lm in 1996,
and when Radúz Činčera’s daughter, Alena Činčerová, in cooperation with Chris Hales
and Adéla Sirotková, reconstructed the lm in 2006 and 2007, screening it at several
festivals and again at Kino Světozor. en, on 10 April 2008, Kinoautomat was released
on DVD.
is case study investigates13 how the specicity of the technology that was used
impacted on the participatory potential of Kinoautomat and how it allowed for a more
maximalist form of audience participation, at least within the context of lm consumption
and production. Simultaneously, I am interested in showing how the political context
(with a project emanating from the Czechoslovak New Wave and just before the Prague
Spring), the way the technology was actually put to use, and the way that the entire event
was framed foreclosed its possibilities of a more structural impact on the participatory
process. Finally, the case study tries to broaden the question raised by Hales (2005: 58)
when describing the lm’s restoration. He asked, “why did it take until 2004 before any
real interest was paid in preserving and recording factual details of a true landmark
project of new media?” In this case study, the question becomes that of why the lm was
forgotten for so long, but also why the Kinoautomat principles were applied so rarely to
increase participation in the lm viewing experience.
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2.2 e lm
In 1965, the Oce of the General Commissioner for the Czechoslovak Expo 67
participation (Svitáček, 1966: 18) announced a tender for participation in the 1967 World
Exhibition in Montreal. e Czechoslovak (documentary) lm director Radúz Činčera
had already made a number of documentaries, including Romeo a Julie 63 (Romeo and
Juliet 63) in 1963 and Mlha (e Fog) about the Prague eatre Na zábradlí in 1965.
e latter won the Golden Medal at the Bergamo Festival in Italy. Činčera had worked
as a director and dramaturgist in the Popular Science and Educational Film Studio in
Bratislava since 1952, and was employed as scriptwriter and director at Krátký Film14
in Prague in 1956. His proposal for the World Exhibition in Montreal, the Kinoautomat
lm, was accepted and the lm went into production at the Filmové studio Barrandov
(the Barrandov Film Studio) in 1966. In 1965, Činčera applied to the Czech Oce for
Patents and Inventions for a patent on his invention, which was granted in 1967.15
Based on his “missing the contact with the audience” (Alena Činčerová 30 March
2009 interview), Radúz Činčera constructed the Kinoautomat concept, which not
only incorporates the interactions of live actors with lm, as in the Laterna Magika
performance at the Brussels Expo 58 (see Havránek, 2002), but builds mainly on the
participation of the audience in the development of the narration, as Činčera explains:
[…] the substance of Kino-Automat does not lie in the combination of lm with
live actors, as is oen mistakenly thought, and as is the case of Laterna Magika. Its
principle is based on the possibility of direct participation of the viewers in the story
development. e story stops many times during the performance and the viewers
have the possibility to inuence its progress according to their own wishes. e
viewers’ opinion is expressed by an electric voting appliance run by a computer. e
majority vote decides, on behalf of the main character, how the story will proceed.
is direct participation in the developing story substitutes the atmosphere of a
theatre performance, thus, for the rst time in the history of cinematography, breaking
through one of the basic barriers between theatre and lm. (Činčera, in Národní
Filmový Archiv, 2004: 194–195)
As this quotation indicates, Činčera wanted to articulate the lmic experience as closer to
the world of theatre, inspired – as Beranová (2007) argues – by the work of Moholy-Nagy,
who was a strong advocate of increased audience participation in theatre performance.
For instance, in 1924, Moholy-Nagy (2001: 25) wrote, “It is time to produce a kind of
stage activity which will no longer permit the masses to be silent spectators, which will
not only excite them inwardly but will let them take hold and participate – actually allow
them to fuse with the action on the stage at the peak of cathartic ecstasy”. In the 1960s,
theatre continued to experiment with these forms of audience involvement. For example,
Kinoautomat stage designer Josef Svoboda, who had already been involved in the 1958
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Laterna Magika performance and its consolidation as an experimental movement in the
Czechoslovak theatre scene, and who had a strong track record of organizing audience
interaction and participation in the 1960s, is quoted by Havránek (2002: 104), referring
to the Boston Opera Group’s 1965 production of the Luigi Nono opera Intoleranza:
During a protest song sung by a black singer, the camera lmed the theatre audience,
projecting their image on screen. People enjoyed seeing their own faces. At a certain
point we changed the picture from a positive to a negative so that the screens were
suddenly showing a black audience. Some spectators were upset. We lmed and
played that as well.
Aer acceptance of the Kinoautomat proposal, Ladislav Kalaš became the lm’s producer
and a team of directors and scriptwriters was established, with two more directors (Ján
Roháč and Vladimír Svitáček), and a scriptwriter (Pavel Juráček). e lead actor, Miroslav
Horníček, later also contributed to the script.
Roháč (1932–1980) had worked in ABC eatre, Laterna Magika16 and Semafor
eatre, and had been a Czechoslovak television scriptwriter since 1955. In 1957, he
joined the Barrandov Film Studio, where he directed (amongst others) Konec jasnovidce
(e End of the Fortune Teller, 1957), Kdyby tisíc klarinetů (If a ousand Clarinets,
1964) and Dobře placená procházka (Well-paid Walk, 1966) (Bartošková and Bartošek,
1986: 355–356).
Svitáček (1921–2002) started to shoot short documentary lms at the end of the
1950s and was eventually employed by Czechoslovak Television. He worked closely with
Roháč, co-directing Konec jasnovidce (e End of the Fortune Teller, 1957) and Kdyby
tisíc klarinetů (If a ousand Clarinets, 1964). Like Roháč, Svitáček was also involved in
Laterna Magika (Fikejz, 2008: 283–284).
Juráček (1935–1989) worked rst as a journalist before studying scriptwriting and
becoming a dramatist at the Barrandov Film Studio in 1962, where he directed and
wrote the script for Postava k podpírání (A Stature to Shoring, 1963) and Každý mladý
muž (Every Young Man, 1965). In 1965 he was the scriptwriter on Nikdo se nebude smát
(Nobody Will Laugh, 1965). His most famous scripts are Ikarie XB 1 (1963), directed by
Jindřich Polák, and Bláznova kronika (A Fool’s Chronicle, 1964), directed by Karel Zeman
(Hames, 2008: 163–173).
Horníček (1918–2003) was an actor, director, dramatist and writer, who had worked
in the Municipal eatre (Pilsen), and the Větrník eatre, National eatre and ABC
eatre. He was also one of the founders of the Semafor eatre. His rst lm was the
1949 Pan Novák (Mr Novák), and he acted in several lms including Byl jednou jeden
král (Once Upon a Time, ere Was a King, 1954), Hudba z Marsu (Music From Mars,
1954), Kam čert nemůže (When e Woman Butts In, 1959) and Táto, sežeň štěně (Dad,
Find a Puppy, 1964) (Fikejz, 2007: 426–427). He also was the host of the television talk
show Hovory H (Bren, 2010: 50).
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Juráček wrote the literary script, and the three directors took charge of the technical
script (Svitáček, 1966: 19). e scripts were nalized on 7 September 1966 and 14
November 1966, respectively, and shooting began on 25 November 1966 (Národní
Filmový Archiv, 2004: 194–195).
e lm’s production phase was – at least to a degree – quite regular, as Kinoautomat
cameraman Jaromír Šofr explains: “It was as usual, it was the normal stu of lmmakers
in the process of realization …” (Jaromír Šofr 15 June 2009 interview). e actors had
an entire script, and it was explained that “this [was a] special lm” (Alena Činčerová
30 March 2009 interview), but at the same time (because of the fragmented shootings)
they found it dicult to picture the outcome of the lm. Alena Činčerová, for instance,
refers to Libuše Švormová, who played Marta Nováková in the lm: “She told me ‘I never
realized I was involved in doing such an amazing thing,’ because, you know, because
they never saw it. Not one of them went to Montreal” (Alena Činčerová 30 March 2009
interview). However, at the technical level (post-) production became complicated
because of continuity problems, and also because split screens and so-called dead-screens
(mrtvolka in Czech) were used. As Šofr explains, “these moments were technically very
complicated because they were based on duplicate material, duplicate stock […]. As
usual, to maintain the perfect image concept, continuity, it was more complicated than
in the case of a normal, ordinary movie” (Jaromír Šofr 15 June 2009 interview). e
lm was completed on 3 April 1967, and was transported to Montreal on 22 April 1967
(Národní Filmový Archiv, 2004: 194–195).
In the meantime, the technical component was developed by a group of companies,
which included Kinotechnika, Ústřední půjčovna lmů and Elektropřístroje. Vladimír
Smrž, former head technician at Kinotechnika, explains the constellation: “Kinotechnika
was a state company. If someone needed technical support for his or her lm, they called
us and then we would prepare all the stu for them” (Vladimír Smrž 24 August 2009
interview). Ústřední půjčovna lmů was the Czechoslovak lm distributor, which also
provided material-technical support for the cinemas (Danielis, 2007; Havel, 2008).
Elektropřístroje (2004) was a national company based in Praha-Modřany, specializing in
electronic equipment. It designed the Kinoautomat computer. Key people who worked
on the technical equipment were Václav Hosman, the vice-head of Kinotechnika’s AV
department; Zdeněk Malina, the head of the prototypical plants in Kinotechnika; Bohumil
Míka, the head of Kinotechnika’s developmental department; and Jaroslav Stejskal, a
technical deputy at Elektropřístroje (Václav Hosman 10 October 2009 interview; Jaroslav
Veselý 8 September 2009 interview; Hosman, 2005). As already mentioned, the stage was
designed by Josef Svoboda.
e lm premiered on 28 April 1967, with opening speeches in the Czechoslovak
pavilion from Miroslav Galuška (the General commissary of the Czechoslovak Expo 67)
and František Kahuda (the Czechoslovak Minister of Education and Culture) (Horníček,
1968: 14). Only a small group of Kinoautomat people, including the three directors, the
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producer, the Kinotechnika team and the stage actors, attended Expo 67. None of the
‘regular’ actors were present.
e lm was a success, as Horníček (1968: 57) records: “Day by day, week by week,
month by month interest in the performance grew. e queues were longer every
day and the auditorium for 125 people could be sold out for ve times”. In the Czech
Television magazine Retro (31 May 2009), the journalist Jaroslav Halada wrote that the
Czechoslovak pavilion received 8,350,000 visitors. is ranked it amongst the ve most
popular pavilions, aer the USSR, Canada, the US and France (“USSR, Canada, Biggest
Attractions”, 1967). Also, pictures of long queues of visitors, waiting to enter the pavilion,
conrm the success of the entire endeavour (see Figure 1). In a newspaper article in e
Telegraph Journal (13 October 1967) an anonymous journalist complained that Expo 67
had only one aw: “the chronic, characteristic long line-up outside any pavilion worth
seeing”. She or he species, “People have waited patiently – oen in driving rain or frigid
cold – for as long as ve hours to get into Labyrinth or the Czech[oslovak] pavilion”.
Horníček explains the success as follows:
First of all, it wasn’t sudden. Czechoslovakia had a great reputation since [it received
the] golden medals for the Expo 58 in Brussels. And there were the [New Wave]
lms. No one can imagine, how famous Czechoslovak lm directors are – Forman,
Menzel, Passer and others. And what about Obchod na korze? [the Oscar-winning e
Shop on Main Street]. Ms. Ida Kaminská (main actress in Kinoautomat) has already
performed in New York. Ms. Desmarais, who had judged the value of this lm during
the Cannes lm festival wants to promote and sell our lm. (Horníček, 1968: 117)
Figure 1: e Czechoslovak
pavilion at Expo 67. © Alena
Činčerová
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2.2.1 e viewing context: Expo 67
e 1967 International and Universal Exposition, approved by the Bureau of International
Exhibitions (BIE), took place from 28 April to 29 October 1967 in Montreal (Canada),
on a series of (new and already existing) islands in the St Lawrence River. e BIE (2008)
on its website refers to the participation of 62 nations and more than 50 million visitors
registered, which makes it one of the largest BIE-sanctioned expositions. e cost of
Expo 67 was nearly Cdn$432 million (it generated an income of over Cdn$221 million).
When the exhibition closed, the newspaper comments were very positive. One day
before it closed, e Globe and Mail featured an article titled In Expo Canada Came of
Age (28 October 1967). e same day, the Winnipeg Free Press published an article with
the title Expo Runs Out Of Time Sunday - But e Smell Of Success Will Linger On. And
the Calgary Herald published an upbeat article on the same day (Expo Triumph), which
opened with the words “An important page in Canada’s history will be turned tomorrow
when formal ceremonies are held to bring Expo 67 to a close. Expo has proved to be the
greatest world’s fair in history. […] But it has turned out to be much more than just a fair
for Canada. It has been a national experience”.
Figure 2: Radúz Činčera in front of the US
biosphere pavilion by Richard Buckminster
Fuller. © Alena Činčerová
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e Czechoslovak pavilion17 on the Île Notre-Dame was designed by Vladimír Pýcha
and Miroslav Řepa, and featured four restaurants, a club and a series of exhibitions,
including World of Children (with a 2000-puppets theatre), Hall of Centuries (with (copies
of) national treasures), Tradition (with glassware, china, glass sculptures and gurines),
Inspiration (with jewellery and handmade laces), Symphony (Svoboda’s diapolyekran,
with about 100 display cubes projecting images) and Metamorphosis (on problems of
pollution and overcrowding) (“Czechoslovakia”, n.d.). Horníček (1968: 117) described
the pavilion as follows:
And then, our pavilion was opened. e most restrained from the outside. It was a
kind of joke – the design was determined by certain strict requirements – it should
have an aerlife in Písek aer Expo 67. I have nothing against the architects Mr.
Pýcha and Mr. Řepa. e joke was precious. […] And it was good for harmony. is
pavilion is like a constellation of stars – with great architects Mr. Cubr, Mr. Hrubý and
Mr. Pokorný, a glass exhibition, brash spectacle by Jiří Trnka, a Christmas Crib from
Třebechovice, architect Josef Svoboda, polyvision, diapolyekran by Josef Svoboda,
directed by Emil Radok. Every one of its squares is like one part of a bigger picture or
is a small picture itself, Kybal’s laces […].
On the Expo 67 Czechoslovak pavilion section of the Library and Archives Canada
website,18 the popularity of Kinoautomat was again emphasized: “e multimedia
presentation Diapolyekran, a three-dimensional animated mosaic, features 100 display
cubes projecting images of various subjects, such as the creation of the world, and
industrial progress. A lm in which visitors tell the story is one of the most popular”.
(Library and Archives Canada, n.d.)
Figure 3: e ground oor plan of the Czechoslovak pavilion. Source: Kalin (1969)
Media and Participation
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On the ground oor was the 124-seat amphitheatre-shaped cinema (Hosman, 2005),
where Kinoautomat was screened three times a day, at 2 pm, 3.30 pm and 5 pm (Siskind,
1967: 13). Zuzana Neubauerová recalls that there were “ten or twelve lines [of seats]
and three steps between them and the screen”. (Zuzana Neubauerová 9 October 2009
interview) e tickets were free, but were only available 30 minutes before each show,
and screenings lasted for about an hour (Siskind, 1967: 13).
As Hales (2005: 60) reminds us, live moderation was a key component of the lm: “the
four essential elements of Činčera’s Kinoautomat were a ctional branching lm, live
moderation, a means for each audience member to make a choice, and a display board
to verify the authenticity of the voting”. e main stage actor was Miroslav Horníček, the
actor who also played Petr Novák in the lm. e Kinoautomat principles were applied
to a cartoon, which was also screened three times a day.19 Alena Činčerová explained in
her interview that this Kinoautomat for children was “performed by Jiří Šlitr and Sylvie
Daníčková, who also performed the Kinoautomat with Mr. Horníček” (Alena Činčerová
19 August 2009 interview). e role of the Kinoautomat stage actor was far from easy, as
the timing had to be meticulous (see below). A rather basic problem was that Horníček
could not speak English, and had to memorize his interventions phonetically (Horníček,
1968: 14). Eventually, it became clear that an additional stage host was needed. As there
was no budget for another stage actor, Ján Roháč organized an on-site casting amongst
the fourteen Montreal hostesses, selecting Zuzana Neubauerová (Zuzana Neubauerová
9 October 2009 interview). According to Horníček (1968: 60), this choice turned out to
be very successful.
Along a series of precisely dened moments, the audience could vote by pressing the
green or red buttons built into their armchairs. Each seat button was connected to a light
box in the frame around the main screen, which lit up green or red (depending on the
vote) so that individual votes were visible (and could be checked by the audience). Alena
Činčerová explains,
Figure 4: e upper oor plan of the Czechoslovak pavilion. Source: Kalin (1969)
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there was a screen surrounded by numbers […] you have to imagine this, there was
really [a cable] going from each seat to the computer room […] there was only the
computer, and many wires coming together, and the wires were connected to the
frame around the screen, so you […] you knew, you have a seat number […] and you
could really control it, [the number] is lit either red or green. (Alena Činčerová 30
March 2009 interview)
2.2.2 Storyline(s)20
e basic plot of the lm is based on the confusion caused by the presence of a female
neighbour, Věra Svobodová, in the at of the main character, Petr Novák, and the chain
of events that lead up to a re in their apartment building. Aer the opening scene of
the re and the evacuation of the residents (a device used to introduce all the main
characters) the lm switches to ashback to reconstruct events and establish Novák’s
culpability.
Already in the opening scene, Novák adopts a self-accusatory position, stating in a
close-up that he is to blame. e host then appears (onstage or on-screen21) and asks
Novák whether he is sure, and explains that ‘we’ are going to go through the story to “try
to nd his mistake”. Only during the second half of the lm do we learn that Svobodová,
who was locked out of her at because of Novák and through no fault of her own, had le
an iron plugged in, which eventually (presumably) caused the re. e lmic narration
(apparently) ends with Novák trying to get into a phone booth, to report himself to the
authorities, still convinced that he is to blame.
Figure 5: Kinoautomat at the Czechoslovak pavilion. © Fulford (1968: 90) – with on the le-hand
side the number 36 that indicates that 36 people voted for the option to obey the trac police
ocer.
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is is not the end of the lm, because the moment when Novák tries to enter the
phone booth initiates another phase in the lm, characterized by a stage/screen dialogue
between the host (in the Montreal version this was oen Miroslav Horníček, the actor
who played Novák) and the Kinoautomat voice in the lm. While the host is convinced
of Novák’s guilt, based on an empiricist position, the female voice of the Kinoautomat
uses a highly rationalist discourse to argue for the unavoidability of the events and for
Novák’s innocence. e Kinoautomat starts her argument by stating,
But one has to think logically and accurately. I have already processed all the data on
this subject. With your permission I will feed back to you the sequence of events if you
[with Novák equated to the host Horníček] had not stopped at the wrong door.
e next scene shows a second version of the key scene in the lm, showing Novák not
to be responsible for Svobodová locking herself out of her at (the person to blame is
Svobodová’s ‘real’ lover, a reman). ese events are shown in fast forward, with the
addition of graphical elements to direct the spectator’s attention to specic elements,
and emphasizing the analytical reasons for re-screening the modied scene. Two other
options (one where Novák introduces Svobodová to his family, the other where the
entire family is killed, and we then see Novák tearing down the door of the at where
the iron is about to burst into ame) are screened in slapstick mode, but again show the
unavoidability and inevitability of the re. e last scenario is introduced by the host as
follows: “You are trying to suggest that the ending would have been the same whatever
decision Mr. Novák would have made. But what if he would have simply broken down
the door and turned o the iron?” Kinoautomat then answers that it would not have
made any dierence, and the nal scenario shows Novák managing to break down the
door, only to discover that the iron is not plugged in.
e last part of the lm is based entirely on a dialogue between the human host and
the Kinoautomat computer, in which the latter employs a rationalist discourse, adopts
an Olympic overview and (thus) gains access to the ‘whole’ truth. In contrast, the human
host is misled by her or his empiricist stance. is modernist triumph of technology
is combined with a strong emphasis on determinacy and the ultimate lack of human
agency, as the outcomes of the events are represented as unavoidable and necessary.
Ironically, there is one moment of hope for humanity, where, at the very end, one of
the lm’s characters (Zemková, an elderly neighbour) interrupts the host, ‘pushes’ aside
the screen that was used to oer the audience another choice (about Novák’s guilt or
innocence), and explains that she started the re because she so much enjoys sliding
down the remen’s chute. But this reclaiming of human agency through the confession
of guilt does not aect the inevitability of the nal outcome, which the Kinoautomat
computer had explained in pointing to the complex social structure of the apartment
house and the personalities of its inhabitants.
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e human/computer tension unavoidably also aects the position of the audience.
In the last part of the lm, the host explicitly aligns her or himself with the audience,
and builds a chain of equivalence with the host, Novák, the author and the audience.
When debating with Kinoautomat whose is the guilt, the host rst states that the truth
is known only to the author, structurally contesting Kinoautomat’s access to truth. “And
who is the author”, the host then asks, only to respond immediately, “It is you, ladies and
gentlemen. is is not Mr. Novák’s story, it is your story. Mr. Novák, that is you”. Aer
another vote, the host articulates this human chain of equivalence with the notion of
collective guilt, stating that “Mr. Novák does not exist. Mr. Novák, that is you. And me
too. We are all Mr. Novák. And we are all guilty”. In addition, the audience’s participation
becomes articulated by the lm’s logic of linear causality, as the unavoidability of the nal
outcome qualies the spectator’s interventions into the narration. rough the emphasis
on determinacy, the audience’s involvement is articulated as incapable of changing the
nal outcome of the represented events. Moreover, the interventions of the audience
are mostly restricted to deciding on the strategies that Novák uses to clear out the
misunderstanding about Svobodová. Only the vote about hitting the porter or not (in
order to switch o the electricity) is directly related to preventing the re. At the end,
the audience is invited to vote on the ending of the lm with the following words: “is
is not Mr. Novák’s story, it is your story. […] And here we are again, two possibilities
and two endings. One, the happy one, bright and gay. e other, the sad one, black and
horror. Make your last choice, ladies and gentlemen. e happy one, green. Horror, red”.
But this vote has no impact on the narration, and the host continues aer the vote with
the following (parodist) statement: “Congratulations, from the 32 [sic] dierent stories
that could be told, you have picked today the nicest combination. My compliments. Well,
I don’t say this because I’m speaking to you. I say this every time. And now, the end
according to your wishes”. ere still is no spectator decision about whether or not the
re occurs because it is represented as unavoidable, xed by the opening scene of the
lm. Also one of the secondary texts, a Czechoslovak press release, points to the lack of
ability to change the nal outcome of the lm, a situation that is framed as an illustration
of “the experience of man in our modern society: life continues along the road of destiny
irrespective of Man’s decisions” (Czechoslovak press release quoted in Delaney, 1967).
From this perspective, democracy is articulated as incapable of changing the outcome
of a societal process (albeit at the micro-level), which at least approximates a critical
representation of the democratic process as a form of token-democracy.
Nevertheless, the audience does have an impact on the middle part of the lm’s narration.
e lm on six occasions uses a forked structure, allowing the spectators (collectively)
to decide between two options. e host appears and explains the two options, which
are both visible on the two halves of the screen, in freeze-frame. During the explanation,
a short fragment of both options is screened, and then the vote is organized. e host
announces the decision, and the selected option increases in size until it occupies the
whole screen. Horníček (1968: 57) summarizes the voting procedure as follows:
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the story comes to a halt six times, six times can spectators decide between two
alternatives. ey can see both of them on-screen. e picture stops and the wide
screen enables to see two dierent versions. en the le screen continues a bit and
suggests what will come. And stops again. e same principle takes place in the right
half. […] Everyone has two buttons in his or her armrest. And sees his or her number
on the luminous frame around the screen, so he or she can control the course of the
election. No one could anticipate, how would the viewer reaction would be.
e six votes during the middle part of the lm allow the spectators to have an impact on
the screened narration. Depending on the outcome of the voting, a dierent combination
of fragments is screened, resulting in 26 or 64 possible combinations.22 However, this
does not mean that the lm could have 64 dierent endings. As the overview below
(Figure 7) shows, the forked narration is always reunited. In other words, the spectator’s
collective decision has an impact on the selection of the components of the lm, but not
on its basic narration and its outcome.
When the spectators are faced with the decision about whether Novák should allow
Svobodová to enter his at, they are presented with two options (see Figure 6). ey can
decide to have Novák refuse her entry, or they can allow Novák to let her in. In the rst
case, Svobodová meets her husband (Pavel Svoboda) and is locked out of her apartment.
She then meets Marta Nováková, who thinks that her husband is having an aair with
Svobodová, resulting in Nováková leaving in anger. In the other option, the events take
Figure 6: Kinoautomat (split) screenshot on the choice of letting Svobodová in or not. © Alena
Činčerová
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place in a dierent order, but the outcome is the same: Svobodová is allowed to enter;
Nováková comes home, nds Svobodová in her at, thinks that Svobodová is having an
aair with her husband, and leaves. en Svoboda arrives at the at, nds his wife there,
they go outside and Svoboda locks his wife out of the at. e forked narration joins up
into one narration when Svobodová (re-)enters the Novák at and locks Novák out. He
then faces a dilemma (another spectator decision) about whether to follow his wife to
her mother’s house or to stay and console Svobodová.
In one of the six decision spheres, the lm demonstrates the reality of the decisive
powers of the audience. Immediately aer the spectators have decided about whether
Novák should stay and console Svobodová or follow his wife, the lmic narration is
interrupted by the host, who stops the lm and asks the spectators to reconsider their
earlier decision: “Let’s return to the previous choice. Go back Mr. Novák”. We then see a
fast rewind, bringing us back to the point of departure for the earlier vote. e host says,
“You now have an opportunity to do something that in real life wouldn’t be possible”.
With a new vote on the original decision, the spectator is oered the possibility “to decide
what has already been decided”. Simultaneously, the evidential nature of this procedure
is also emphasized by the host: “By the way, sometimes people don’t believe that our
Kinoautomat can really play what they will choose. Here is the proof”.
As the overview in Figure 7 also shows, not all votes impact on the narration. e lm
starts with a test vote, and there are two instances when the spectators are asked for their
opinions about the identity of the person ringing the doorbell (vote 6) or about Novák’s
alleged guilt (vote 9). e last vote (vote 10) oers the choice between a happy ending
and a sad ending, but the outcome is the same.
e voting procedure opens up a lmic narration for spectator interventions, and
ruptures the cultural monopoly of the Author(s)/producer(s) on the construction of a
lmic narration. From this perspective, the lm has a clear participatory-democratic
component. At the same time, the spectator’s decisions have no impact on the outcome
of the lm, and when the spectators are invited to decide on the outcome, their choice
has no eect. is explains why a number of critics have argued that this lm is a parody
and critique of democratic choice: Spectators are allowed to decide on secondary issues
but cannot change the main structure, which is seen as unavoidable and beyond human
control. From this perspective, participation is articulated as illusionary and the lm
becomes seen as a Sartrian reminder that ‘we are caught like rats’.
At the symbolic level, there are several arguments that can be proposed to contextualize
this democratic critique by re-articulating Kinoautomat as a political critique, aimed at the
global level and the communist regimes. First, there are a number of references to the Cold
War. e re in the apartment building can be read as a symbolic reference to the threat of
the Cold War setting the globe ablaze. A key sentence that supports this interpretation is
the host’s intervention during the discussion with the Kinoautomat: “We are all Mr. Novák.
And we are all guilty”. is sentence supports the reading of the lm as a global warning,
and a call for global responsibility. Moreover, the Manichean logic of the Cold War, dividing
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Figure 7: e Kinoautomat voting structure.
e host introduces the lm with a test vote (“Don’t push the red button; it will cause a re”.)
Vote 1 Test vote.
e re and the evacuation.
Flashback starts. Novák causes Svobodová to be locked out of her apartment.
Vote 2 – choice 1 Should Novák let Svobodová enter his apartment?
Svobodová locks Novák out. Novák’s wife leaves for her mother’s.
Vote 3 – choice 2 Should Novák follow his wife or comfort Svobodová?
Rewind.
Vote 4 – choice 3 Should Novák follow his wife or comfort Svobodová?
Novák leaves and meets the captain in front of the apartment building. ey decide to follow
Novák’s wife but are stopped by a police ocer.
Vote 5 – choice 4 Should they stop for the police ocer or not?
e pursuit fails and they return. e doorbell rings.
Vote 6 Is it Novák’s wife or Svobodová’s husband?
Novák’s family enters, Svobodová hides on the balcony and her husband enters the at. Novák
takes Svobodová’s husband to another witness, who refuses to let them in.
Vote 7 – choice 5 Should Novák force his way in or not?
e witnesses fail to collaborate and he returns to his apartment. e family discovers
Svobodová on the balcony. Aer she has realized that the iron is still plugged in, Novák runs
down to shut down the electricity. e porter tries to prevent this.
Vote 8 – choice 6 Should Novák hit the porter or not?
e re.
Vote 9 Should Novák give himself up or not?
Novák goes to a phone booth to report himself but cannot enter it. e dialogue between the
host starts, and three alternative explanations are shown.
Vote 10 What kind of ending does the audience want, a happy one, or a sad one?
e host congratulates the spectators for making the best choice. Zemková appears on-screen
and confesses that she started the re. She is shown sliding down the chute again.
Legend: Black indicates votes that aect the narration; grey indicates votes that do not aect it.
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the world into two blocs, is elaborated and critiqued when one of the lm’s characters, a
(former) captain, goes o into a monologue about the need for more structure: “[…] we all
live without any system. We need a proper system. A system is essential for every rational
person”. With some fanaticism in his eyes, the captain suggests that the “whole building”
could be “divided right down the middle. Let’s say we could make it an east block and a
west block. It would very denitely help us to orientate ourselves”.
Secondly, the lm contains a number of subtle references to the communist regime(s),
using Aesopian language/imaginary, and writing between the lines, as could be applied to
many dierent cultural elds operating under oppressive regimes (O’Neil, 1997: 125–126;
see also Hájek (1992: 6) on the use of allegories in Samizdat, and Heister (1999) on so-
called verdeckte Schreibweise in the context of Nazi Germany). e above reference to
the Cold War logics and the division of the world into Western and Eastern Blocs can
obviously also be read as a critique on the communist regime(s). Similarly, the statement
that “we are all guilty” can be seen as a critique of the silent majorities in the Eastern
(and Western) Bloc countries. irdly, as well as the captain, the other representatives
of authority in the lm are problematized and ridiculed. e apartment building porter
is depicted as highly bureaucratic and inhumane, adhering strictly to the rules. When
Novák is climbing from the balcony, for instance, risking his life to make his way back
into his at, the porter stands on the ground oor, shouting to Novák that he should be
careful not to scratch the paint. In one scene, aer the arrest of Novák and the captain,
the captain is shown with his head bandaged, which could be interpreted as a reference
to police violence.23 A very subtle detail perhaps is that the last name of two of the lm’s
main characters, Svoboda, means ‘freedom’ in the Czech and Slovak languages, although
it should be added that this is also a very common name in Czechoslovakia. Finally, the
lm contains a remarkable reference to privacy, individual freedom and human rights
(which is – with the luxury of hindsight – also an unforeseen but shocking reference to
the Eastern Bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968), when in one scene (and one
scenario) Novák forces his way into the apartment of the young student couple. Before
this option is put to the vote, the host points to the ethical dilemma: “e question I want
to ask is: Does one have the right to intrude on the privacy of the others? Is it permissible
to prove yourself innocent, if it means trampling on the right[s] of others?”
2.3 e technology
2.3.1 A particular alliance of propaganda, art and technology
Kinoautomat required the mobilization of a wide range of people, organizations and
technologies. Aer the success of the Laterna Magika exhibition at the Brussels Expo 58,
the Czechoslovak communist regime wanted to present itself as remarkable again (Czech
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Television, 2009). Since world exhibitions were sites where the symbolic and cultural Cold
War was fought, oen by displays of sophisticated national technologies that allowed
claims of a contribution to the modernist project of progress, the high investment was
of secondary importance. When interviewed for the Czech Television Magazine Retro
(broadcast on 31 May 2009) one of the pavilion’s architects, Řepa, conrmed that there
were no nancial constraints on the construction of the pavilion. Also, in the case of
Kinoautomat, both Jan Balzer, production-assistant of Kinoautomat (9 September 2009
interview), and Alena Činčerová (19 August 2009 interview) conrmed that the budget
for the lm was generous.
Moreover, the project was fully supported by the Czechoslovak regime, in spite of
the various political preferences presented by the many authors and actors (Petr Kopal
from e Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, 25 August 2009 interview).
e Kinoautomat cameraman, Šofr, conrms the non-interventionist attitude of the
Czechoslovak regime because it served to articulate the regime as tolerant:
I think it was not problem of this project at all. […] It was accepted gratefully by all the
government leaders of the Communist Party […] For this regime, [it was necessary] to
prove a kind of liberal atmosphere, and lm creativity. So for this regime, all this was
accepted very gratefully. (Jaromír Šofr, 15 June 2009 interview)
is generates an interesting paradox: Traditional lms, with their many stereotypes
of social realism, were produced for internal distribution in Czechoslovakia, whilst
Czechoslovak directors could produce innovative projects for audiences abroad
(Svatoňová, 2009), if they upheld the regime’s cultural propaganda.
At the same time, Kinoautomat is not merely a story of incorporation into the
Czechoslovak regime’s discourses. Kinoautomat and many of the people involved in
the production of this lm were rmly embedded in the 1960s New Wave movement,
which included authors and directors such as Ivan Passer, Jan Němec, Miloš Forman,
Jiří Menzel, Jaromil Jireš, Věra Chytilová and others. In a reaction to social realism,
originally promoted in Czechoslovakia by Klement Gottwald (who was president from
1948 to 1953), the New Wave lms increased the role of form again, and highlighted a
dierent reality, by making use of non-professional actors, dark and absurd humour, and
avant-garde narratives, and by focusing on psychological detail (Iordanová, 2003: 97).
Even before the Prague Spring reforms of 1968, the New Wave lms had a political-
critical dimension but “addressed political issues in an indirect, oblique or Kaaesque
manner” (Hames, 2006: 73), similar to the Kinoautomat narration and form. Despite
these latent-critical attitudes the New Wave directors could still use the infrastructure of
a lm industry that already in 1945 had been nationalized.
Later, in 1968, when Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia, more overt critiques of the communist regime were possible,
but this situation came to an abrupt end with the Warsaw Pact invasion and the post-
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invasion policies of so-called ‘normalization’. But even before 1968, the New Wave had
taken a critical position, and was actively pleading for social change, “determined to
replace the propaganda images of Socialist Realism, the ocial aesthetic of the Soviet
bloc countries, with those of real life” (Hames, 2006: 69). A similar discursive positioning
can be found in the words of Kinoautomat cameraman Šofr:
But I think it was kind of spontaneous, new generation, and we were […] our attitude
was very critical towards the creator, towards the confections of the old lmmakers
employed in Barrandov, so we were very critical and we found it very boring […] And
besides, in these times many movies were just propaganda […] of the political leaders in
our country. For us, this was absolutely not acceptable, it was unacceptable for us, we as
young students, we were absolutely critical […]. (Jaromír Šofr, 15 June 2009 interview)
ese critical voices were found in other worlds too, and were rmly embedded within
literature and the theatre. Authors such as Milan Kundera were already producing
critical texts in the 1960s, evidence of a ourishing Czechoslovak literary scene, and
Czechoslovak theatre “mounted a stream of highly imaginative, powerfully executed
productions in both large institutional theatres and small studio environments”
(Banham, 1995: 275). In this period, Czech(oslovak) theatre “began a process of freeing
itself from ideological and political constraints and tried to reect contemporary life
with a contemporary idiom” (Císař, 2010: 350). Banham adds that two directors stood
out for their large-scale work: Otomar Krejča (whose most frequent collaborator was
Josef Svoboda) and Alfred Radok. Radok and Svoboda, in the 1950s, developed the
Laterna Magika, which consisted of technology-based formal experiments (combining
stage action and projected lm) that also moved away from the dogmas of social realism.
In his interview, Šofr bears witness to the fascination for these (so-called (dia)polyekran)
technologies, which were also used at the Expo 67:
ere were special laterna magika, and many famous creators were involved like
Evald Schorm, for example, but it was based on simultaneous screening, on multiple,
dierent screens and I remember that I was also enchanted by this when I was a
student, enchanted by the idea of multi-screening because it was, it was simultaneous,
multi-eect, it was […] I believed in the so-called polyekran […]. (Jaromír Šofr, 15
June 2009 interview)
e opposing mechanism of the propagandistic use of technology to signify the communist
regime’s superiority and the artistic fascination with these very same technologies
allowed for transgression of a series of traditional frontiers (between lm and theatre,
between human and technology, between presence and absence). is particular alliance
(in a Gramscian sense), despite the opposing political positions, provided a multitude of
opportunities for experimental designs and innovative art.
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2.3.2 e production of the proto-machines
In the case of the Kinoautomat project, a wide variety of technologies was deployed,
supported by the state companies Ústřední půjčovna lmů, Kinotechnika and
Elektropřístroje. e screening of the lm in Montreal required a complex procedure,
as lm projectors could not be stopped. is necessitated the use of two continuously
running and synchronized main projectors (see Figure 8), which each projected one of
the two storylines. When the audience was invited to make a choice, and a split screen was
used, two additional projectors were brought into play (and here the earlier-developed
polyekran technology that allowed for these kinds of split screens was incorporated
(Eigl, 2009)). A h projector was used for the black screens and for projecting the score,
and there was a sixth projector kept in reserve. All the projectors were produced by the
Czechoslovak company Meopta, which was (and still is at the time of writing) based in
Přerov.24 Jaroslav Veselý, who was responsible for the Kinoautomat performance at Kino
Světozor in the 1970s, which replicated the ve projector system, explains:
Five dierent projectors [were used] – three Meoptons IV (3 x 35mm), tailored for big
spool boxes, and two Meoptons II B (2 x 16 mm). e rst Meopton IV projected one
version of the story, the second one the other version, the third one was just for a black
screen, or ‘dead pictures’ [mrtvolka in Czech]. Two Meoptons II B were there because
of the quite short sequences during the audience’s decisions. e speaker presented
the audience with two dierent options and both options were played for a while.
en the audience had to select one possibility – the score [of the vote] was screened
with the middle Meopton IV, there was an iron box with numbers, and the decision of
the voters was shown. (Jaroslav Veselý, 8 September 2009 interview)
is implied a very energetic role for the projectionist, who had to cover the lenses of
the relevant projectors, so that the correct part of the lm was screened. As Jan Eigl (a
physicist at the Film Faculty in Prague) explained,
e great dierence between Kinoautomat and polyekran in Brussels [was that] the
polyekran presentation was fully automatized, all eight projectors were shooting at all
times and there was no place for any randomness. Kinoautomat was interactive, so it
required the presence of a projectionist, who had to react to what the people chose.
(Jan Eigl, 31 August 2009 interview)
e procedure adopted, based on the relentlessly continuous lm projection, necessitated
extremely well-timed interventions from the stage actors.
Apart from the projection, the voting required a complex technological
conguration, which was also developed by Ústřední půjčovna lmů, Kinotechnika and
Elektropřístroje. e entire cinema was wired to allow each member of the audience
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to vote by pressing one of two buttons. Veselý describes what the voting apparatus
looked like: “It was just a Bakelite box, white and brown with two buttons” (Jaroslav
Veselý, 8 September 2009 interview). ese boxes in the armchairs were connected
to a primitive computer (a ‘processing appliance’ based on a relay system), and to the
frame around the projection screen: “Every seat had its own buttons – a green one and
red one – for voting. e signals went through cables underneath the audience to a
‘pseudocomputer’ [relátková skříň in Czech] with a telephone counter and light bulbs”
(Jaroslav Veselý, 8 September 2009 interview). Most of the voting technology, like the
computer, was out of sight.
A very early dra of the setting (see Figure 9), which was part of the 1965
Czechoslovak patent application (Úřad pro Patenty a Vynálezy, 1967), contains a
schematic representation of how the switches in the armchairs (1) were connected
to the voting computer (2) (called ‘processing appliance’ in this document), which
in turn steered the two main cameras (3). e design suggests that the cameras were
connected to the voting computer, but in the Montreal screenings the projectionist
manually selected the ‘correct’ main camera.
Figure 8: A Meopton IV projector at Kinotechnika
in Prague. © Ondra Holomek
Figure 9: e basic design of the voting technology
(from the Czech patent record). Source: Úřad pro
Patenty a Vynálezy (1967: 3)
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2.3.3 Power relations embedded in the technology
Kinoautomat allowed the spectators to make their votes at specic and limited numbers of
moments. is form of participation implied a rupture with the traditional – hegemonic
– positioning of the spectators in cinema, where they were (and still are) conned to
their seats in a darkened room, and where their gaze can wander freely, fullling their
– as Mulvey (1975) puts it – scopophilic and voyeuristic fantasies. Although spectators
still have ample possibilities for interpretation and signication, the lm text is almost
always beyond the control of the spectators, as the power to generate the text that is being
screened is reserved for the lm’s authors. Even when we (have to) acknowledge that the
power dynamics of the lm’s production are complex, that a multitude of actors with
specic and sometimes diverging interests and identities is involved in this production
process, and that the authors (sometimes) take the imaginary spectator into account
when producing the lm, this still positions the spectator as passive in relation to the
decisions that involve what will be projected on the lm screen.
Kinoautomat partially altered this unequal power balance between authors and
spectators, by oering its spectators a choice between a series of lm fragments. In
total, the lm consists of 22 components, ten of which are xed and twelve belong to
the forked decision structure. rough a mechanism of collective decision-making,
spectators could generate a relatively unique combination of components, opting for
one of the 64 dierent possible stories. From this perspective, Kinoautomat broke with
the hegemony of the Author to decide about the screened text, and diverged from the
hegemonic model of cinema.
At the same time, there were quite a number of limitations to the participatory model of
Kinoautomat. Although Kinoautomat ruptured the Author’s hegemony over the screened
text, it simultaneously protected the Author’s control over the produced text because the
22 components were decided upon and produced by the producers, within the logics of
traditional lm production culture. Obviously, Kinoautomat was not a case of spectator
self-production, but still reserved a substantial role for its producers. Hales (2005: 64)
summarizes this limit as follows: “e oen raised criticism that making choices in an
interactive narrative made from pre-made segments is hardly more sophisticated than
pressing the required combination of buttons on a hot-drink vending machine”. Also,
participation was limited by the way the 22 components were arranged, and by which
components could be decided about. As the beginning and the ending of the lm were
xed, the spectators’ ability to generate structurally dierent narrations with dierent
outcomes was blocked. Moreover, as the analysis of the lm text (see above) shows,
the spectators’ interventions were mostly conned to decisions in relation to Novák’s
attempts to convince his wife that he was not having an aair, and had little inuence
over whether or not the re happened. Also the stage actor’s interventions and the
voting procedure reduced the abilities of the spectators to participate more intensely. e
interventions of the stage actor, who has the spatial authority (Carpignano et al., 1990: 48)
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in the cinema theatre, were highly scripted, and le no room for an extensive dialogue
or deliberation with the audience. e spectators were still positioned in their seats, and
the decision-making procedure reduced their role to mere voting within very small and
well-guarded time slots. In other words, we see not deliberative democracy being played
out, but representative democracy, in a version that is reminiscent of the competitive-
elitist democratic model – à la Schumpeter (1942). Horníček (1968: 58–59) frames this in
a more positive way: “is kind of activity is still tolerable. ey stay in the dark. No one
illumes them, no one let them go to the podium, no one want to know why they decided
that way. ey can exhibit without leaving their seats. Without speaking […]”
e lm text hid most of these complexities, and oered the spectators the promise of
almost unlimited impact, where the notions of causality and agency became centralized.
For instance, at the start of the lm, when the voting system is explained, the spectators
are called upon not to press the red button, as this will “cause a re”, which is of course
followed by the images of the apartment building on re. When aer vote 3 (whether
Novák should follow his wife or stay in the apartment building) the lm is stopped,
and the audience is oered the same choice again, they receive the explanation that this
is an opportunity “to decide what has already been decided”. At the end of the lm,
the spectators are oered the choice between a happy and a sad ending (vote 10). Most
importantly, the forked structure of the lm, and the impact that this structure has on
the level of participation in co-constructing the lm’s narration, is not mentioned.
ese limits on the intensity of participation lead to uncertainty, and disappointment
among spectators and analysts. For instance, Laurel (1993: 53) writes that “it is rumoured
that all roads lead to Rome – that is, all paths through the movie led to the same ending”,
clearly expressing uncertainty about the decision-making structure of Kinoautomat.
Earlier, one of the key and rare reviews on Kinoautomat, by Jan Kliment from the Rudé
právo (the ocial newspaper of the Czechoslovak Communist party), had critiqued the
lm for its lack of structural participation (a situation that is slightly ironical within
the Czechoslovak political context). Kliment (1971: 5) wrote that he had enjoyed the
performance and had pushed the buttons, but then he had realized it was not a fair-
play game, as the plot developed according to the authors’ intentions. Later, Naimark
(1997/1998: 29–30) oered a similar critique, reframing Kinoautomat as a “satire
of democracy”: “How did they do it? Deceit, of sorts. […] e artfulness, ultimately,
was not in the interaction but in the illusion of interaction. e lm's director, Radúz
Činčera, made it as a satire of democracy, where everyone votes but it doesn’t make any
dierence”.
e aordances of the lm technology played a crucial role in deciding about the
intensity of the participation that was oered. One obvious argument is that production
of a lm is a long-term process, which, in the case of Kinoautomat, started in 1965
with the tender, while its production phase occurred in 1966 and 1967. Moreover, the
use of these kinds of technologies has a strong cultural component. Not only does the
complexity of the material require the acquisition of specic skills, but the identity of the
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lmmaker (as the person who is capable of using the technology ‘properly’) is embedded
in a professional production culture, which articulates the lmmaker as creative and
artistic, which, in turn, privileges the author concept. In other words, the Kinoautomat
directors were still lmmakers, who were inspired by a number of theatre experiments,
to use the technology they were familiar with, and to add a participatory dimension to
their creative work.
Although the authors might have wanted to maximize the numbers of votes and
possible combinations, the technical impossibility of stopping projectors and changing
reels forced them to use a forked narrative structure, combined with a xed beginning
and ending. As Hales formulates it, lm is “a linear and extremely unforgiving delivery
system, and it would have been high-risk (and probably impossible) for a projectionist to
attempt to stop the current reel and lace-up the reels of each possible choice at extreme
short notice whilst maintaining continuity” (Hales, 2005: 57). It is precisely the inability
to stop the lm that positioned the stage actor and the spectators, and excluded any
likelihood of extensive deliberation, because the stage actor could intervene only during
xed timeslots, and the voting was according to an evenly and rigidly dened timing.
ese complexities related to the use of lm technology almost automatically excluded
more intense forms of audience involvement. is led Radúz Činčera to conclude later
that “Kinoautomat in 1967 represented a Stone-age of interactivity as to the technology
[…]” (Činčera quoted in Hales, 2005: 62). He did continue by saying that Kinoautomat
“is a very original and advanced presentation form, still attractive and impressive until
today – and it is easy to improve by recent computerized components”.
2.4 Post-Expo 67
2.4.1 A sleeper in Czechoslovakia
Aer the Expo 67 event, Kinoautomat was screened at a number of other (BIE-sanctioned)
world exhibitions: HemisFair 68 in San Antonio (US) and Expo 74 in Spokane (US).
Moreover, it was also screened at the specially reconstructed Prague cinema Kino
Světozor in 1971 and 1972, but aer that Kinoautomat disappeared from the screen for
more than twenty years.
ere were attempts to market the lm outside Czechoslovakia and the exhibition
circuit, but these attempts failed. Initially, US companies expressed some interest.
Alena Činčerová describes this interest in the Zašlapané projekty documentary (Czech
Television, 2009): “My father had returned from Montreal full of energy and had many
dierent oers to present the movie all over the world”. She continues, “there were many
protable oers from Universal Studios Inc. or Paramount Pictures”. In a March 2009
interview, Alena Činčerová also explains that her father was invited to work in Canada
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and the US: “So aerwards telegrams were coming ‘please come to Canada’; ‘please come
to the United States’. And if he had done so, he would have been a very rich man” (Alena
Činčerová, 30 March 2009 interview).
Within the Czechoslovak communist context, all ownership rights belonged to the
Czechoslovak state and not to the director. As Petr Kopal explains,
ere was no intellectual property, no intangible rights in that era. All lms which were
made in Czechoslovakia, belonged to the state. It was produced by Czechoslovak Film
and could be sold by the Czechoslovak Film export Company. […] e Czechoslovak
government had ordered this lm from Radúz Činčera and he did this work for them.
It was a personal misfortune for Činčera, but he was not the only one who was not
well-paid for his work. (Petr Kopal, 25 August 2009 interview)
e Czechoslovak state decided to sell the rights to Marie Desmarais from the Canadian
company Eurolm, who had already released the Oscar-winning Obchod na korze? (e
Shop on Main Street, 1965), but this did not result in a release in the US or in Canada,
in the 1960s or 1970s. Radúz Činčera also applied for copyright protection at the US
Copyright Oce, and this was granted on 18 March 1968.25 Later, when Kinoautomat
was being screened at Expo 74 in Spokane (US), Československý Filmexport registered
Kinoautomat as a trademark at the US Patent and Trademark Oce, but this was
discontinued in 1982.26
In Czechoslovakia, there were some calls for local screenings. For instance, Anton
Hykisch (1968: 114), one of the major representatives of “Generation 1966”, wrote at the
end of the 1960s, “Whoever saw the Czechoslovak pavilion, is very excited as am I. But
the main question is whether we are able to introduce the glorious fame of polyekran
or Kinoautomat to the people in Czechoslovakia, not just to the Expo ’67 visitors”. But
soon aer Expo 67, the Prague Spring began and ended, and was followed by a period of
restoration, commonly referred to as ‘normalization’. Nevertheless, in 1970 the Prague
cinema Kino Světozor was reconstructed to screen Kinoautomat, which required a
number of substantial changes to the lm theatre. As Alena Činčerová explains, “It was
necessary to rebuild the cinema for Kinoautomat – to enlarge a projector cabin and also
to lay cables under the audience” (Alena Činčerová, 19 August 2009 interview). Some
of the changes made to Kino Světozor are still visible (see Figures 10 and 11).27 In an
interview, one of the Kino Světozor’s collaborators, Habartík, referred to the changes
made to the projection cabin: “ey had to rebuild this cinema completely. Here you can
see the projectors’ cabin. ere are only two windows in normal cinemas, but you can see
six of them in Světozor” (Radim Habartík, on 13 July 2009 interview).
e Prague version of Kinoautomat premiered on 14 January 1971, experiencing a
success similar to that achieved in Montreal. One of the stage actors, Jaroslava Panýrková,
recalls this success:
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e beginnings of the Czechoslovak performances were grandiose. We had to play
two performances a day, there were a huge queues outside the cinema every evening
[…] e visitors were like a small children. And it was easy about ideology – there was
no comrade but just a Mr. Novák. (Czech Television, 2009)
e numbers of screenings and spectators for 1971 are quite impressive: Březina
(1997: 175) mentions 498 screenings and 199,983 visitors (see also Národní Filmový
Archiv, 1973a). But in 1972, the interest of audiences had waned, and only 45 screenings
were organized in the rst nine months of 1972, with a total audience of 13,568 (Národní
Filmový Archiv, 1973b). In September 1972 screenings were discontinued, as Veselý
explained:
It was very successful, one year Světozor had played Kinoautomat almost every day
and you could see queues in front of the cinema. But in the end, the interest waned.
ose people who wanted to see Kinoautomat, had already seen it and the new ones
didn’t come. (Jaroslav Veselý, 8 September 2009 interview)
Figure 10: e remains of the cabling system
at Kino Světozor. © Ondra Holomek
Figure 11: e expanded projection cabin at
Kino Světozor. © Ondra Holomek
2.4.2 Kinoautomat’s disappearance
ere are a number of possible explanations for the disappearance of Kinoautomat
from the screens. One key explanation focuses on the impact of normalization and the
resulting censorship, which might have aected the screening of Kinoautomat. ere are
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a number of arguments to support this thesis. First, there is the summation by Alena
Činčerová that
It is a little miracle that he succeeded to present a version of the lm in 1971, four
years later. And it ran, twice a day, for a year and a bit. And then it was banned, like
everything good from the so-called New Wave. And it was lost for many many years,
for generations. (Alena Činčerová, 30 March 2009 interview)
is thesis is supported by Eduard Hrubeš and Jaroslava Panýrková (Czech Television,
2009) and by Jan Balzer (albeit in a more nuanced way) (Jan Balzer, 9 September 2009
interview). Second, there is the fact that Radúz Činčera in 1967 became vice-chairman
of FITES, the Czechoslovak Film and Television Union, which was banned in January
1970, aer major animosity with the communist regime (Cysařová, 1994; Hoppe,
1997). Other key people involved in Kinoautomat saw their careers ended (or severely
curtailed) during the era of normalization. For instance, Miroslav Horníček’s television
talk show Hovort H was cancelled (Bren, 2010: 50); he also did not get many lm roles
aer 1968, although he reappeared on the television screen and “continued to be one of
the country’s most beloved entertainers” (Bren, 2010: 51). Pavel Juráček in May 1968
had been singled out by the Soviet embassy in Prague as a scriptwriter who “criticized a
socialist society in his lms” (Žuravlev, 1968). Juráček was forced to leave Czechoslovakia
in 1977 and stayed in West Germany until 1983. Also, aer his return, and until his
death in 1989, his position remained problematic. Finally, there is the argument that the
critical review of Kinoautomat in Rudé právo (on 19 January 1971) could have harmed
the lm’s reputation.
But there are a number of convincing counterarguments that nuance these
explanations. An obvious one is that Kinoautomat was screened in Prague in 1971 and
1972, when normalization was already being implemented. A second one is that although
Činčera did not direct many lms aer Kinoautomat, he remained very actively involved
in producing new audio-visual projects that achieved high visibility, partially through
the mediation of the Arts Centrum (Matějček, 2007), such as the Antipode eatre for
the British Columbia Pavilion in Expo 70 in Osaka (Japan), the Sound Game Show for
the 1971 ‘Man and His World’ Exhibition in Montreal (Canada), the Quadraphonic
Silence for the Laterna Magika in Prague (Czechoslovakia) in 1984, the Actorscope
and Selectorama for the Czechoslovak Pavilion in ‘Expo 86’ in Vancouver, (Canada),
and the Cinelabyrinth for the Flower Expo 90 in Osaka (Japan). Also the collaboration
with Kinotechnika remained intact, as Veselý explains: “We had many projects with
Radúz Činčera in 1970s. He was a kind of genius. We tried all his new inventions rst
in some small festival Agrokomplex in Nitra. e cooperation with Radúz Činčera was
unique” (Jaroslav Veselý, 8 September 2009 interview). A nal argument is that our
archive research did not produce any traces of Kinoautomat being censored or even
problematized by the communist regime.
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Alternative explanations for the disappearance of Kinoautomat can be found in
the tailing o of interest from spectators combined with the absence of any new lms
produced according to the Kinoautomat system. Kopal points to the decline in viewer
interest, and at the same time minimizes the potential impact of the critical review in
Rudé právo:
If I am right, the performances of Kinoautomat went from January 1971 to September
1972. It was a great period, a really long time, but interest started to decline aer a
time. Yes, it might have been inuenced with some negative articles in Rudé právo,
but I think that in the case of Kinoautomat, they did not play such an important role.
(Petr Kopal, 25 August 2009 interview)
Obviously, the Kinoautomat system might have been more successful in maintaining
spectator interest in Prague if the communist regime and the Barrandov Film Studio
had been willing to invest in more Kinoautomat lms.28 But here we enter the realm of
speculation, as there may have been several reasons for the unwillingness to invest.
Another line of argument is related to the technology, and the cost of both the equipment
and sta. e screenings in the Prague cinema Kino Světozor required reconstruction of
the entire cinema, cabling the theatre for the audience voting equipment, and enlarging
the projection cabin to accommodate the ve projectors. e production of the lm
also required additional investment, and a similar point can be made for the screenings,
which required stage actors and highly trained projectionists. A political economy
approach to interactive lm supports the argument that these kinds of investments
might be (considered) legitimate for high-prole exhibitions that support specic –
propagandistic – policy objectives, but that it is unlikely that the regular cinema circuit
(in East or West) would be willing to make this kind of long-term investment. is kind
of argument is oered by Jan Balzer:
e main problem with Kinoautomat was that you could not just buy the lm, you
had to rebuild the entire cinema. It was expensive and risky to buy this lm […] it was
not a normal lm. And that was the main problem: e owners of these cinemas were
afraid that interest in Kinoautomat would run out in three weeks and that only the
hall and voting equipment would remain […] Of course, they also needed a live actor
(or at least some hostess). (Jan Balzer, 9 September 2009 interview).
For the nal line of argument we need to jump ahead in time, and also consider the lack
of success of later interactive lms. Before Kinoautomat, only one lm (Mr. Sardonicus,
1961, directed by William Castle) had, unrightfully, claimed to oer spectators a
choice: At the end of the lm the option was oered to reward or to punish the villain
(the so-called ‘punishment poll’), but the choice could not aect the ending.29 Decades
aer Kinoautomat, the 20-minute lm I’m Your Man (1992) was released, claiming to
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be the rst interactive lm. Interlm had developed a similar system to Kinoautomat,
but this time using laserdisc technologies, and three-button joysticks for voting. It later
released three more lms, Mr. Payback (1995), Ride for Your Life (1995) and Bombmeister
(1995), which were screened in about 40 cinema theatres in the US (ChoicePoint Films,
1998). But in spring 1995, Interlm Technologies closed its doors. In 1998, ChoicePoint
Films released I’m Your Man on DVD. Later DVD lms and television programmes that
featured narrative choices either proved not necessarily very successful or remained
articulated as gimmicks, exceptions or art experiments.30 Attempts have been made to
bring interactive lm back into the movie theatre: For instance, in the German lm Last
Call (2010) the main character ‘calls’ a random audience member on her or his mobile
phone to ask for help.31
In contrast, gamebooks (or interactive novels) such as Choose Your Own Adventure
books, or video games (including rst-person shooters, which can have strong narrative
components,32) have proven very successful genres. us, this brings us back to the
normality of passive spectatorship (at the material level, not at the level of interpretation)
and the sacrality of the (lm) Author. Although interactive lms such as Kinoautomat
were appreciated by their spectators, they never managed to disrupt the normality of
a movie-going culture based on a combination of active interpretation and passive
immersion, and without active co-decision-making. Simultaneously, the right to create
remains rmly and exclusively in the hands of the author concerning cultural products
that are shown in the cinema theatre (in contrast to a series of other spheres – see Lietsala
and Sirkkunen, 2008; Roig Telo, 2009).
2.4.3 e lm’s aerlife
As mentioned, aer the Prague (1971–1972) screenings and the Spokane exhibition
(1974), attention on the lm decreased drastically. In the mid-1990s the renewed
attempts to screen it proved successful, as Czech public television broadcast the lm33 on
16 November 1996, at 20:00. Česká televize used two of their channels (ČT1 and ČT2)
creatively, to allow the audience to vote for one of the two scenarios.
In 2006–2007 Alena Činčerová, together with Chris Hales and Adéla Sirotková,
restored Kinoautomat. In February 2006, it featured at the National Film eatre in
London (UK), and in May and June 2007 Kino Světozor again screened the lm. Later,
Kinoautomat was shown at other festivals, such as the Motovun Film Festival (Croatia)
in July 2008, Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) in March 2009, Oscreen
in Brussels (Belgium) also in March 200934 and Filmfest DC in Washington DC (US) in
April 2009. On these occasions, a new type of wireless equipment was used to facilitate
the voting. e stage host remained a role that, in some cases (such as the Oscreen
festival in Brussels), was taken on by Alena Činčerová. She explains,
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So, until today, we’ve played in Switzerland, we then used an English version with a
German-speaking actor on stage, then we played in Croatia at the Motovun Festival,
with me [as stage actor] with the English [version of the] lm, we played in Newcastle,
in Brussels, also in Slovakia several times, and next month we are going to the United
States. (Alena Činčerová, 30 March 2009 interview)
Finally, the restoration of Kinoautomat also resulted in the release of a DVD on 7 April
2008 (Hejdová, 2008). DVD technology oers a number of advantages, which brought
Alena Činčerová to conclude,
When I was producing this DVD with Kinoautomat, an English professor [Chris
Hales] said something quite profound. ‘is lm was made especially for DVD.’ And
then I realized, my father had been ahead of his time, more than 30 years before the
invention of DVD, he had invented this interactive lm. (Alena Činčerová, 19 August
2009 interview)
In the DVD version, the stage actor is integrated into the lm, and the external voting
equipment is replaced by two on-screen buttons. Obviously, when the DVD is played
in a home setting, the viewing context is structurally altered and the cinema theatre
experience is lost. In 2009, the DVD went on sale at Kino Světozor and at a number of
e-shops. In October 2009, the total number of Kinoautomat DVDs sold was 635.35
2.5 Conclusion
One of the important conclusions from the Kinoautomat case relates to the history of
media participation, and the fact that, already in 1965–1967, the concept and praxis
of interactive lm had been developed. Kinoautomat also shows that a wide diversity
of media technologies (including lm) can be used to organize participation, and that
the participatory process is co-determined by the aordances of this technology. In the
case of Kinoautomat, its authors altered the structure of the movie-going experience by
allowing spectators to co-decide on the narrative they would receive. is shi in power
relations between author and spectator, in one of the most sacred places of (media)
authorship, was an avant-garde intervention and a participatory statement that can be
considered maximalist because it is embedded within the context of traditional lm
production where audience participation is (almost) non-existent. Ironically, this lm
emerged from an oppressive communist Czechoslovak regime, which used the lm as
part of its cultural propagandist strategies.
But at the same time, the use of lm technology severely restricted the authors’ options
to intensify spectator participation and co-decision-making. From this perspective, the
lm is a much less maximalist form of participation. e lm production logics, which
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combined high-tech equipment, highly qualied sta, extensive organizational support
structures and (thus) major investment, unavoidably kept most of the lm’s production
rmly in the hands of professionals. Within the cinema theatre, the lm projection logics
again reduced the opportunities for the spectators to intervene more, because the authors
had to use a forked structure and the lm reels could not be stopped. Because of this, the
spectators and stage performers were subject to strict time constraints, and democracy
was reduced to voting. ese restrictions also explain why some commentators framed
Kinoautomat as an ‘illusion of interaction,’ ignoring the abilities that spectators still had to
construct the narrative of the lm. Moreover, the costs related to preparing a lm theatre
for a Kinoautomat screening (in the 1970s) were high. It required the reconstruction of
the projection cabin (to accommodate more projectors), and of the actual theatre (in
terms of the cabling for the voting equipment), in combination with higher exploitation
costs caused by the necessary presence of the stage actor and a trained projectionist.
Obviously, the lack of uptake of interactive lm cannot be reduced to mere technological
(or, for that matter, economic) arguments. Even though technological innovations (such
as wireless voting equipment or DVD technology) have reduced the high structural costs
of screening interactive lms, the genre has clearly not become the dominant model
in lm production and consumption. Arguably, more cultural explanations come into
play when analysing this lack of uptake, as production cultures – both the economic
and artistic components – and reception cultures articulate a dierent (and hegemonic)
model of what lm should be. is renders Kinoautomat an extraordinary cultural object,
articulated as a historical avant-garde lm experiment (which is to be exhibited) without
any strong claims to be part of a contemporary artisticity, because of its neo-realist
inspiration. e lm also becomes articulated as an exceptional event, which is dierent
from the ‘normal’ cinema experience, and thus becomes a constitutive outside for the
regular/mainstream lm. Kinoautomat thus never could (and still cannot) benet from
being integrated into the normalized movie-going experience, which strongly reduces its
potential cultural and ideological impact. Kinoautomat does, however, remain a crucial
milestone in the history of media participation.
Notes
1. Although Aristotle used the concept of techné to refer to the goal “to create what nature nds
it impossible to achieve” (Guattari, 1993: 13).
2. James Creech’s translation of this book chapter, published in Rethinking Technologies (1993),
is preferred here to the later book publication.
3. Also in earlier publications, Guattari, together with Deleuze (1984), used the machine concept
in a much broader way. See chapter 4 for a short discussion.
4. Mumford’s (1934) argument about megamachines, which refers to the use of an organized
mass of human bodies to build the pyramids, oers a good example here.
5. I prefer to use the concept of the arrangement here.
Media and Participation
306
6. Laclau and Moue (1985: 108 – emphasis in original) formulate this idea as follows:
e fact that every object is constituted as an object of discourse has nothing to do with
whether there is a world external to thought, or with the realism/idealism opposition. […]
What is denied is not that such objects exist externally to thought, but the rather dierent
assertion that they could constitute themselves as objects outside any discursive condition
of emergence.
7. In Norman’s (2002) approach they are also seen as readily perceivable.
8. In the case of communities, individual or organizational ownership of media technologies
still plays a signicant role.
9. To illustrate this briey: owning a mini-disk oers participatory opportunities, but the
connection of the mini-disk to other proto-machines such as a microphone, editing soware
and broadcasting equipment, within, for instance, the context of a radio station, is equally
important.
10. See Abraham (1995), Joss and Durant (1995), Sclove (1995), Epstein (1998), Rowe and Frewer
(2000), Phillips (2006), Powell and Kleinman (2006), Király (2007) and Laurent (2009).
11. My warm thanks to Irena Reifová and Ondra Holomek for their much appreciated and
indispensible help with the research project. Czech citations were translated into English by
Ondra Holomek. I am also grateful to Bob Hunt and Michael Moya, who did some of the
research in Canada, and to Maria Bakardjieva for her feedback. e contributions of all the
interviewees, and especially Alena Činčerová, have been invaluable. Alena Činčerová oered
to provide feedback to a dra version of this chapter, and in a rst response she requested a
more detailed overview of the lm’s structure and narration to be removed from this chapter.
ese parts were eectively removed. A request for additional feedback did not result in a
reaction.
12. In the rest of the chapter, Kinoautomat will be used, instead of the full title (Kinoautomat –
One man and his house). When referring to the Kinoautomat system (as it was intended to
produce more than one lm), or to the voice of the Kinoautomat in the lm, I use regular
type.
13. e analysis is based on a series of interviews, combined with archival research in three
Czech archives (Moravský Zemský Archiv, Národní Archiv and Národní Filmový Archiv)
and in a series of Canadian archives and libraries (Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montreal’s
municipal archives, Bibliothèque et Archive Nationale de Québec, McGill University library,
Concordia University library and Cinémathèque Québecoise). e following Czechoslovak
newspapers and magazines were analysed for reviews: Filmové a televizní noviny (1967),
Filmový přehled (1966–1967, 1971), Mladá fronta (1971), Nová mysl (1966–1967, 1971),
Svobodné slovo (1971), Tvorba (1966–1967, 1971), Večerní Praha (1966) and Zemědělské
noviny (1966–1967). And the following Canadian newspapers were searched from 28 April
1967 through until the end of May 1967: Montreal Gazette, Montreal Star, La Presse, Le Devoir,
e Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Toronto Telegram, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Halifax
Chronicle-Herald, e Province (Vancouver) and Winnipeg Free Press.
e following interviews were conducted: Balzer Jan, Producer-assistant of Kinoautomat,
9 September 2009; Beneš Jaromír, Historian at Moravský Zemský Archiv, 15 July 2009;
Činčerová Alena, daughter of director Radúz Činčera, 30 March 2009 and 19 August 2009;
Eigl Jan, Physicist at FAMU, 31 August 2009; Habartík Radim, Kino Světozor collaborator, 13
July 2009; Horníček Jiří, Historian at Národní Filmový Archiv, 13 July 2009; Hosman Václav,
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Vice-head of Kinotechnika’s AV department, 10 October 2009 and 13 October 2009; Kopal
Petr, Historian at Ústav Pro Studium Totalitních Režimů, 25 August 2009; Matula Václav,
Constructer and later Head of Constructers in Meopta from the 1950s to the 1990s, 16 August
2009; Neubauerová Zuzana, Stage actor in Montreal and San Antonio, 9 October 2009;
Smrž Vladimír, Engineer at Kinotechnika, 24 August 2009; Šofr Jaromír, Cinematographer
Kinoautomat, 15 June 2009; Svatoňová Kateřina, Researcher Film Department, Faculty of
Arts, Charles University Prague, 8 September 2009; and Veselý Jaroslav, responsible for the
Kinoautomat performance at Kino Světozor in the 1970s, 8 September 2009.
14. Krátký Film was part of the Barrandov Film Studios.
15. e patent application is dated 26 November 1965; it was granted on 15 April 1967. e patent
number was 122758. e document explicitly mentions that all patented inventions are state
property, which renders the patent merely symbolic (Úřad pro Patenty a Vynálezy, 1967).
16. Both the Expo 58 version and the Prague Laterna Magika theatre.
17. In 1968, the Czechoslovak government donated the main part of the pavilion to Canada,
as a gesture of gratitude for the help of rescue workers and medical sta aer the crash of a
Czechoslovak airliner on 5 September 1967 at Gander International Airport. e Newfoundland
Government reconstructed the pavilion and in July 1971 it re-opened as the Grand Falls Arts
and Culture Centre (see http://grandfalls.artsandculturecentre.ca/gphistory.asp).
18. See http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/expo/index-e.html.
19. Siskind (1967: 14) gives a description of the cartoon:
Mornings the children make their own choices. A live actor draws a bird who enters the
cartoon world on the screen, and the young ones (and not-so-young, who enjoy it just as
much) decide such world-shattering questions as: ‘Should the bird be allowed to learn to y
by himself? Or should the cat be let out of its cage speed the learning up?’
20. is analysis is based on the DVD version of Kinoautomat.
21. In the live version, the host appears onstage; in the DVD version the host is integrated into
the DVD.
22. e counting of possible combinations is calculated in dierent ways, as on one occasion the
spectator is oered the same choice again. For this reason, Hales (2005: 55) reports only ve
decision points, while Horníček (1968: 57) mentions six choices. e Kinoautomat host (on
the DVD) refers explicitly to 32 possible combinations (or ve decision points).
23. In the other scenario the captain has a car accident, and then the bandage makes more sense.
From this perspective, the bandage in the other scenario (where they are arrested) could
be seen as a continuity problem. But the audience that watches the arrest version has no
knowledge of the car accident.
24. http://www.meopta.cz.
25. Both Kinoautomat and Cineautomat were mentioned in this registration (number
AF0000027719 – see http://www.copyright.gov/records/). On 11 March 1996, the copyright
protection was renewed.
26. e trademark registration application was led on 24 May 1974, and Kinoautomat was
registered on 26 August 1975, with registration number 1.1018.966. On 19 January 1982, the
registration was cancelled under section 8, which meant that the ‘declaration of continued
use or excusable nonuse’ was not led or rejected (date retrieved through the Trademark
Electronic Search System (TESS) of the United States Patent and Trademark Oce). In 2008,
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308
Alena Činčerová had the trademark Kinoautomat protected by the Czech Industry Property
Oce (Úřad Průmyslového Vlastnictví, 2008), aer a rst attempt in 2007 had failed.
27. Most of the changes related to the Kinoautomat screenings of the 1970s have disappeared, as
Radim Habartík, one of Kino Světozor’s collaborators, explains:
Nowadays, there are only few traces of Kinoautomat of that era le. e voting equipment
was trashed during the reconstruction and I really think it’s impossible to nd any traces.
ere was a voting machine in this room, but this box is also not here anymore. ere are
only a few cables le now. (Radim Habartík at Kino Světozor, on 13 July 2009 interview)
28. Činčera did attempt to have Juráček write another script (a detective story) using the
Kinoautomat system, but this plan failed (Kopal, 25 August 2009 interview). Matějček
(2007: 66) also mentions that the Iranian Empress Farah expressed her interest in bringing a
not “too sophisticated” version to Teheran, but this plan also did not materialize. At the 1981
‘Portopia’ exhibition in Kobe, the Kinoautomat principle was used for another lm, called
Kouzelná cesta aneb Dobrodružství japonské letušky v Praze a dalších metropolích (Charming
Trip or e Adventures of a Japanese Air Hostess in Prague and other Cities).
29. Also a lm like e beast must die (1974) involved the audience by asking them to consider
dierent options during a ‘Werewolf break’, but spectators did not have the ability to inuence
the narration that was screened. In addition, there is a long tradition of creating additional
sensorial experiences in the movie theatre. For instance, in the early 1900s, the attraction
Hale’s tours and scenes of the world seated spectators in a theatre that resembled a train
carriage, which (in some cases) rocked and where the sounds of railway clatter could be heard
(Musser, 1990: 429).
30. Examples on DVD are Tender loving care (1997), Point of view (2001) and Switching (2003).
Television examples are the French Salut les Homards (1988), the German Mörderische
Entscheidung (1991), the Danish D-Day (2000) and the Finnish Akvaario (2000).
31. Within the realm of fan culture and the open source movements, several lm projects based
on joint self-production have been completed (see Roig Telo, 2009), but these projects fall
outside the type of audience participation discussed here.
32. A recent example of an interactive drama video game, which has a high level of narration, is
Heavy Rain, for PlayStation 3.
33. Hales (2005: 58) suggests that this broadcast version was incomplete.
34. I was able to attend the Oscreen screening of Kinoautomat, and witnessed the enthusiastic
audience participation.
35. E-mail communication with Miroslava Nezvalová (Bontonlm production) on 23 October
2009.
Chapter 6
Keyword – Quality
1. A conceptual introduction
1.1 e concept of quality
Quality is a pervasive notion that occurs in a wide variety of societal domains. Within
the cultural domain its intrinsic articulation with aesthetics, beauty, civilization
and culture has produced a Gordian knot that is indeed virtually impossible
to untie. At the same time the quality concept, however complex and multi-layered,
unavoidably incorporates and invigorates processes of distinction, hierarchization and
judgement. While avoiding falling into the trap of the nihilist forms of cultural relativism,
this text investigates the possibilities of opening up the quality concept to more political-
democratic discourses, which on the one hand show its potential for an articulation of
quality within a democratic framework, but on the other also allow for deconstruction
of the rigidities of the concept itself.
ese rigidities of the quality concept are best exemplied by going back to nineteenth-
century (and even older) discourses on culture, where quality is equated with culture.
If we take Arnold’s famous description of culture in his 1875 preface of Culture and
Anarchy, for instance, we can see at work the process of xation combined with the hope
of salvation.
e whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our
present diculties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting
to know on all matters which concern us most, the best which has been thought
and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and
free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but
mechanically […]. (Arnold, 2004: 2)
Arnold’s emphasis on “total perfection” and “the best which has been thought and said in
the world” is an example of this nineteenth-century chain of equivalence, where aesthetics,
excellence, civilization and culture became articulated as an inseparable whole. is
chain also aects the positions of the producer of culture and the audience because the
artist-producer becomes the generator of excellence, culture and civilization, through
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his (and more rarely through her) access to and understanding of the relevant cultural
codes (see also chapter 3). e artist-producer’s excellence, culture and civilization thus
became embedded within the cultural artefact, rendering it part of society’s cultural
stock. e Aristotelian logic – “Every virtue or excellence both brings into good condition
the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well”
(Aristotle, 1976: 93) – also connects the (art) audience with the cultural artefact, the
artist-producer and the embedded cultural codes, through the generation of aesthetic
pleasure. e audience’s cultural capital that is already in place facilitates the reading of
the cultural codes embedded in the cultural artefact, further enriching the audience’s
cultural capital, and generating a civilized form of aesthetic ecstasy, which interpellates
the audience and brings it into the world of culture and civilization. In his 1914 essay
e Aesthetic Hypothesis, Bell’s (1997: 23) argument is an illustration of these forms of
interpellation and incorporation: “e forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the
same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy”.
As has been argued extensively, this chain of equivalence – articulating aesthetics,
excellence, civilization and culture (and including the quality element) – played a key
role in supporting the hegemonization of a bourgeois taste culture, through which
class (and gender) politics were organized. High culture and aesthetics – supported
by the establishment of a cultural canon and the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion
– manifested themselves as distinguishing features to legitimize social dierence.
To use Bourdieu’s (1984: 491) words, “What is at stake in aesthetic discourse, and
in the attempted imposition of a denition of the genuinely human, is nothing less
than the monopoly of humanity” (emphasis in original). is process also aected
the concepts of excellence and quality, which became instrumental in describing and
privileging the cultural product (the work of art). Part of this hegemonization process
was the normalization of quality as an internal-inherent characteristic, covering up
the workings of the canon and the external-institutional attribution of quality as a
labelling practice. (Fully) deciphering these internal-inherent characteristics required
what Fiske (1989: 130) calls the critic-priest, who could “control the meanings and
responses to the text” and assist in the “formal educational processes by which people
are taught how to appreciate ‘great’ art”. rough the intermediation of the critic-priest
and the cultural system, quality and excellence contributed to this “attempt by the
bourgeoisie to exert the equivalent control over the cultural economy that it does over
the nancial” (Fiske, 1989: 130).
Interestingly, Fiske’s critique on the bourgeois nature of the cultural system is combined
with an attempt to re-articulate the quality concept. In his analysis in Understanding
Popular Culture, he (rather obviously) strongly defends the importance and relevance of
popular culture and its audiences, and critiques high culture for its universalizing and
hegemonizing ambitions. In a critique of the high arts system, he focuses on the concepts
of diculty and complexity, to show how they are complicit in creating and supporting
the low/high cultural hierarchy:
Keyword – Quality
313
e diculty or complexity of ‘high’ art is used rst to establish its aesthetic superiority
to ‘low,’ or obvious, art, and then to naturalise the superior taste and (quality) of those
(the educated bourgeoisie) whose taste it meets. (Fiske, 1989: 122)
He then continues to argue that complexity is not the monopoly of high art, based
on a combination of audience-based and text-based perspectives. As he puts it, “e
complexity of popular texts lies as much in their uses as in the internal structures” (Fiske,
1989: 122). Quality (in popular culture) can be found, for instance, in the “densely woven
texture of relationships” (Fiske, 1989: 122) and in the intertextuality of popular culture
(Fiske, 1989: 124), but also in the structural openness of popular cultural texts and their
ability to leave gaps because they only allude to and “supercially” sketch “in the broadest
brush strokes” (Fiske, 1989: 122). ese texts that are full of gaps are very demanding of
their audiences, who are faced with the dicult and complex task of interpreting them.
For instance, “the interior feelings and motivations of a character” have to be inferred
from “a raised eyebrow, a downturn at the corner of the mouth, or the inection of
the voice as it speaks the cliché” (Fiske, 1989: 122). is necessitates a knowledgeable
and producerly reader who is able to construct a link between the popular culture text
and his or her own social experience, to attribute meaning to the text. Understanding
Popular Culture contains a warm plea to focus on the relevance that popular cultural
texts generate for their audiences, in order to understand the modus operandi of
popular culture. is already brings us close to an audience-based denition of quality,
which Schrøder (1992), for instance – building on Fiske – develops further. Schrøder
(1992: 207) argues that, “e text itself has no existence, no life, and therefore no quality
until it is deciphered by an individual and triggers the meaning potential carried by this
individual”. Schrøder immediately goes on to warn against a too strong emphasis on the
sovereignty of audiences to process their own meanings, as “in hierarchical societies
culture, and textual readings, are necessarily patterned along class (and other) lines”
(Schrøder, 1992: 207). But at the same time he (re)introduces the ecstatic dimension of
quality, reminiscent of Bell’s (1997: 23) argument about aesthetic ecstasy (see above).
In Schrøder’s case, this ecstatic dimension refers to the ways that a text speaks to the
imaginations of its audience, producing pleasure and popularity. Slightly broadening the
scope, I would argue that Schrøder defends a quality model that is audience-based.1
Returning to Fiske, we see that he combines an audience-based approach with a text-
based perspective. rough the need for an active audience, combined with textual
density and openness, embedded within an intertextual popular culture system, Fiske
builds the argument that complexity and quality cannot be limited to high art, but are
also characteristics of popular cultural texts. is migration of the quality concept to
popular culture can also be found in debates about quality television, although in these
cases the concept of quality (in contrast to Fiske’s argument) is oen conned to specic
types of popular culture products. Being somewhat vague about the concept and without
devoting too much time to the relationship between television and documentary, Robert
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ompson’s (1996: 59) opening sentence of the Hill Street Blues chapter in Television’s
Second Golden Age perfectly summarizes his use of the quality concept: “Sometime in
the 1980s, TV became Art”.
Within quality TV debates, there is oen a careful positioning towards the nature
of quality, referring to the social construction of quality and the contextualized nature
of the concept. In other cases, the quality TV concept is le undened, or the focus is
on specic programmes, and sidesteps the denition of quality. But some authors do
attempt to articulate the quality TV concept. One example is Cardwell (2007: 26), who
refers to “certain textual characteristics of content, structure, theme and tone”. Focusing
on American quality TV in particular, she writes that these programmes tend to “exhibit
high production values, naturalistic performance styles, recognised and esteemed actors,
a sense of visual style created through careful, even innovative, camerawork and editing,
and a sense of aural style created through the judicious use of appropriate, even original
music” (Cardwell, 2007: 26). Bignell and Lacey (2005: 72) – talking about television
drama – emphasize the Fiskian importance of the audiences’ interpretations, and at the
same time refer to programmes that are “aesthetically challenging, conducive to social
change, or the product of authorial creativity”. is brings us to the documentary lm
tradition, where quality is seen as a similar combination of aesthetics, creativity and
social relevance; witness Grierson’s seminal denition of the documentary as the “creative
treatment of actuality” (Grierson, 1946 – cited in Hardy’s introduction to this book).
Both the discussion on aesthetic/artistic quality and the quality TV debate lead us to
yet another denition of quality, which focuses more on crasmanship, and the skills
of the producers of cultural artefacts. Within this perspective, the quality of the artefact
is derived from the qualities of its producer. is denition overlaps with the approach
to aesthetic/artistic quality, given the link between the artist-producer and the cultural
artefact through the access to cultural codes, but this overlap is only partial. is brings
us to the dicult relationship between arts and cra, as thematized, for instance, by
Collingwood. Collingwood (1968: 18) does accept that an artist (like a poet) is “a kind of
skilled producer; he produces for consumers; and the eect of his skill is to bring about in
them certain states of mind”. At the same time he resists what he considers the reduction
of the artist to crasman, through the “technical theory of art”, which he considers a
“vulgar error, as anybody can see who looks at it with a critical eye” (Collingwood,
1968: 19). Although the debate becomes more complicated for the applied arts, and in
the age of mechanical reproduction, Collingwood argues for a dierence on the basis
of a characteristic of the cultural artefact, more specically on the basis of its level of
individualization. While “the craman’s skill is his knowledge of the means necessary to
realise a given end, and his mastery of these means” (Collingwood, 1968: 28), “the end
which a cra sets out to realise is always conceived in general terms, never individualised”
(Collingwood, 1968: 113).
Despite these dierences, the crasman is still able to generate quality. Collingwood’s
examples of the crasman (who is ‘like the physician’) illustrate the connection between
Keyword – Quality
315
quality as a characteristic of a producer, and the notion of the profession. As McQuail
(2008: 53) argues, the notion of the profession combines the possession of a core skill,
which requires a high level of education and training in a number of sub-skills (including
technical skills), with a set of other characteristics, including the ethic of service towards
clients and society, autonomy, detachment, and (potentially) the idea of vocation or
calling. ese characteristics (at least partially) distinguish profession from occupation,
protect the profession from being (totally) colonized by the economic system, emphasize
its (additional) societal relevance and status, and provide guarantees of the production of
quality outcomes. But these outcomes are (as Collingwood has argued) general and skills-
based. is distinguishes aesthetic/artistic quality from what I will call here professional
quality: Mastering the means aimed at the generation of professional quality has no
individualized ends (such as producing aesthetic ecstasy); the outcome is based on the general
qualities of the producer, which in turn, become embedded in the cultural artefacts.
In the eld of media production, the concept of professional or creative crasmanship
(Brown, 1987, quoted in Schrøder, 1992) is still used, for instance by the media industry.
Support for this statement can be found in Bignell and Lacey’s (2005: 71) statement that
explicitly links producer skills in the television industry with quality: “Within the television
industry, quality refers to the lavishness of budgets, the skills of programme makers and
performers, and the prestige accruing to programmes because of their audience prole and
seriousness of purpose.” is professional identity construction – and the way it relates
to other identities like ordinary people (see chapter 3) – of course has been thoroughly
questioned, by alternative and community media discourses and new media discourses
(both of which point to the crasmanship of ordinary people). However, professional or
creative crasmanship has not disappeared from the media sphere. Bignell and Lacey’s
statement, for example, illustrates that the notion of professional quality can transcend the
functioning of the individual crasman-media professional. One obvious illustration of
this is the concept of the quality newspaper, which allows the quality concept to span the
operations of entire media organizations. (Professional) quality continues to be produced
through the interplay of skills, ethics, autonomy, vocation and relevance, and the (mastery
of) means is still deployed towards generalized ends, but these characteristics are seen as
being held by organizations (and not by individuals).
In some denitions of quality, these production values and ethics become disconnected
from their producers in order to emphasize the relevance of the cultural artefacts for society.
Here, quality becomes grounded in the benecial societal impact the cultural artefact
produces, which can be situated at many dierent levels. For instance, what Schrøder calls
the ethic dimension of quality can be included in this category because this dimension
emphasizes the role of cultural artefacts to “[expand] the individual viewer’s vision of what
the human condition, in its multiple manifestations along lines of class, race, gender, age,
etc., is and can be” and “to have actualised the individual viewer’s meaning potential to
explore alternatives to entrenched and oppressive ways of seeing” (Schrøder, 1992: 212).
Although sometimes articulated as a characteristic of an entire media sphere (e.g., diversity),
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oen specic types of media content are seen as privileged sites for producing this type of
societal impact. For instance, the cultural signicance attached to mediatized information
in creating and sustaining an informed citizenry is oen legitimized through this type of
quality denition. (Hard) news then becomes the materialization of the Enlightenment
ideologies that structure articulations of this type of quality, although similar arguments
have been developed about popular culture. In labelling this quality model, I prefer to use
the concept of social quality, inspired by the (reasonably) recent use of this concept within
the eld of social policy and community development (despite its dierences2) (see Beck
et al., 1997, 2001; Phillips and Berman, 2003).
A nal quality concept is technological quality. Again, it is an industry-based concept,
and refers – more than professional quality – to the technologies that were/are used
to produce or distribute cultural artefacts, or to render them visible or audible. While
professional quality is grounded in the characteristics of individuals (or organizations),
technological quality tends to bracket human interventions and focus on the use of specic
proto-machines for the generation, distribution or visualization of cultural artefacts
(see chapter 5). Although a multi-dimensional and highly contextualized concept,
these specic proto-machines are considered to be quality artefacts within present-
day technology-saturated societies when they are born out of a professionalized and
standardized production process, when design objectives and actual usage opportunities
are aligned, when they do justice to the cultural artefact they distribute, and when they
can be dened as stable and reliable, state-of-the-art and innovative (without being
experimental). At the same time, technological quality cannot be detached from the
culturally dominant discourse of (technological) progress, which frames what can be
considered state-of-the-art and innovative and what should be considered outdated and
insignicant. More (but not exclusively) than is the case with other concepts of quality,
the concept of technological quality is aected by the operations of the market, which
oen results in a conation of quality with commercial success and degree of adoption.
If we compare aesthetic/artistic, audience-based, professional, social and technological
quality, and the ways that these concepts of quality are being used within the diversity of
media landscapes, there are obviously many dierences. A key distinguishing component
in these dierent variations of the quality concept is the location of quality. While
aesthetic/artistic quality focuses on the cultural artefact, celebrating the autonomy of
the artefact (without erasing the importance of the artist-producer), professional and
technological quality displace the location of quality. In the case of professional quality,
the professional producer and her or his characteristics become the locus of attention.
In the case of technological quality, the technology itself becomes the location of quality.
Here, the cultural artefact becomes disconnected from the (technological) quality
concept. Finally, audience-based and social quality also move away from the cultural
artefact, and locate quality in what the cultural artefact does or oers to its audiences
or its society. Figure 1 provides an overview of these ve models of quality and their
privileged locations.
Keyword – Quality
317
Figure 1: Models of quality.
Producer Artefact Reception
Aesthetic/
artistic
Artist-producer
with access to
cultural codes
Individualized and
culturally relevant
cultural artefact
Knowledgeable and
ecstatic audience
(through the
mediation of critic-
priest)
Professional Crasmanship and
professional skills
(individual and
organization)
Skills embedded
in general cultural
artefact
(Audience knowledge
and pleasure)
Audience-based (Serving or pleasing
the audience)
Consumed cultural
artefact
Audience pleasure
and popularity
Social (Socially responsible
producer)
Socially relevant
cultural artefact
Desirable societal
impact
Technological Focus on producer
of technology (and
not of cultural
artefacts)
Technological
artefact
Consuming
technology
Note: Italics indicate less prominent articulations.
Despite these dierences, these concepts have many similarities. In the context of this
analysis of quality, their stability and their retained focus on the artefact (directly or
displaced) are especially important. In the above-described approaches, quality is still
oen seen as stable, as taken for granted and almost universal, oen covering up the
external-institutional attribution of quality and its always particular articulations. Also,
the artefact still takes a key position. In the aesthetic/artistic quality approach, quality
remains closely connected to the cultural artefact, but in the technological quality
approach also, the artefact is privileged, although in this case the technological artefact
replaces the cultural artefact (without wanting to claim that technology is outside
culture). In the case of professional quality, the focus is diverted from the artefact. But
the artefact reappears through the crasmanship of the producers, whose professional
quality guarantees the artefact’s quality. And in the audience-based and social quality
concept, the cultural artefact is considered the trigger of the audience’s jouissance or the
instigator of desirable social impacts.
ese commonalities serve to close o other meanings of quality. e focus on
stability tends to hide the constructed and changeable nature of quality, and the focus
on the artefact reduces the signicance of process-based approaches to quality. One way
to emphasize these components is to develop a more democratic-political approach
towards quality, focusing on the democratic nature of the production process and its
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outcomes. e concept of social quality elaborated above holds particular promise of a
more democratic-political re-articulation of the quality concept, which also allows the
notion of quality to be linked to participation.
1.2 Opening up the quality concept: Democratic quality
e social quality model discussed above allows for a more political-democratic
articulation that emphasizes the importance of participatory-democratic processes (and
outcomes) as the criterion for quality, and focuses more on the (participatory nature of
the) production process. In line with its political and democratic nature, this concept
is termed democratic quality. is concept (like the quality concept in general) is not
without its complexities, mainly because the existence of minimalist and maximalist
articulations of democracy and participation aects the concept of democratic quality.
In this chapter, these complexities are bracketed in order to allow a broad overview (or
typology) of media practices that enhance democracy and participation, whether they be
more minimalist or more maximalist. Nevertheless, the preference for more maximalist
preferences, which is the key normative (phantasmatic) position in this book, persists.
is broader typology has been fed by an action research project, which evaluated a
series of Belgian mainstream media projects that aimed to democratize media content
and media production processes. is action research project was integrated into
the King Baudouin Foundation’s (KBS) ‘Media and Citizens’ campaign, and resulted
(among a series of other publications) in a bilingually published version of a typology of
democratic media practices. is rst typology was based on a literature review of the
media and democracy eld, combined with an explicit focus on a number of journalistic
reform projects, such as new journalism, human-interest journalism, peace journalism,
development journalism and public journalism (Carpentier et al., 2002). In a second
phase of this media and citizens campaign, this typology was translated into media
practice, with two juries (independent of the KBS) selecting 22 participatory media
projects,3 eleven from each language group/region, which were being subsidized by the
KBS.4 ese projects were evaluated in the third phase of the campaign (Carpentier and
Grevisse, 2004). e last two phases of the project were devoted to further enriching the
typology.
In this text, I revisit the original typology of democratic media practices as it was
published in the reader Reclaiming the Media (Carpentier, 2007a). is typology consists
of four clusters: the strictly informative cluster, the representation of the social cluster
(focusing on a community and its subgroups), the representation of the political cluster,
and the participatory cluster. Its twelve dimensions are illustrative of the variety and
breadth of the arsenal of methods and practices that are available to increase what is seen
as the democratic quality of media. Since it is aimed at supporting democratic change,
each of the typology’s components is articulated as a dimension, with two poles. us,
Keyword – Quality
319
the need to obtain a balance between the poles of each dimension, and between the
dierent dimensions, is structurally integrated into the typology. At the same time, this
typology contains a large number of options, many of which are dicult to implement at
the same time. For that reason, the typology is framed as an à la carte menu.
1.2.1 Cluster 1: Information and control
Cluster 1 focuses on the importance of specic information characteristics in order to
increase the democratic quality of mainstream media output. Obviously, one should
keep in mind that information is not a neutral concept, and that it is epistemologically
impossible to map the exact boundaries between ‘factual’ information and the
representations that information contains. Factuality builds on representational regimes
that are unavoidable in terms of their presence, are varied in nature, and at the same time
are targeted by hegemonic projects. But it still remains possible to elaborate (factual)
information characteristics that can strengthen the democratic quality of media output.
Figure 2 provides an overview of these characteristics.
e rst dimension formulates a necessary condition for all democratic
communication, namely its comprehensibility and accessibility, in order to overcome
the mechanisms of exclusion. e next three dimensions (each in its own way) are
related to empowerment of the audience. Information oriented to social (inter)action
(dimension 2) makes it possible – as armed by Puissant (2000: 28) in his comments
on the instruments of public journalism – to “systematically inform people about all
the occasions they are given to participate in discussions and civil activities [considered
relevant]”. is kind of information pays attention to initiatives from within civil
society, aimed at complementing information on the political system.
Figure 2: Cluster 1 of democratic quality.
Source: Carpentier (2007a: 168).
Media and Participation
320
Positive information (dimension 3) also encompasses an action-oriented component
in the form of giving “large and small examples of people who had made some
dierence” (Merritt, 1995: 89). is is based on the argument that an overload of negative
information would not validate, motivate or stimulate citizens’ active engagement.
Structural information (dimension 4) allows audiences to contextualize news events and
to see them as parts of long-term evolutions and social phenomena. Although structural
information is oen seen as contrasted to personalized information, underestimation
of the socio-political value of private and/or individual experiences does not serve
democratic communication. is structural information dimension is related to the h
dimension, which focuses on critical information and reveals dysfunctions within the
functioning of the state and the market.
ese ve dimensions of the strictly informative cluster are positioned within a complex
eld of tension towards each other, and towards their abilities to increase democratic
quality. As already mentioned, these dimensions (and the entire typology) should be seen,
therefore, as a scale. e signicance of more comprehensible information is not a desire
for a retreat into simplicities, nor is it trying (completely) to undermine the expert status.
Similarly, the emphasis on communication that stimulates social (inter)action should not be
interpreted as legitimization for a narrowing-down (or dumbing-down) of the information
on the political system. Finally, the importance of positive news should not be used as an
excuse to (further) reduce more critical journalism. is typology of media practices aimed
at reinforcing democratic quality structurally incorporates a permanent need for a balancing
of more traditional practices with some of the alternatives introduced here.
1.2.2 Cluster 2: Representation of the social: Community/ies and constituting social
subgroups
e second component of the democratic quality typology focuses on a representational
logic through the importance attached to fair representations of societal subgroups and
their recognition. Here, society is considered a conglomerate of all types of individuals
(including ordinary people, but also the diversity of societal elites) and subgroups, small-
and large-scale communities, criss-crossed by dierences related to class, ethnicity, age
and gender. e democratic importance of respectfully representing the citizenry within
public spaces should not remain conned, however, to the individual level. Representing
citizenship includes the creation of imaginaries of citizens organizing themselves in order
to rationally and emotionally defend their (collective) interests and develop a series of
public activities from within civil society. It is this complex combination of individuals and
collectivities, groups, communities, organizations, and societal categories that shapes the
nation as an ‘imagined’ (Anderson, 1983), or as a political community. Participation in and
through the media plays a key role in this second cluster, through the importance attributed
to self-representation in contributing to these processes of respectful representation.
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321
Cluster 2 (Figure 3) includes two very specic dimensions: on the one hand, an
orientation towards the audience and the community (dimension 6), and on the
other hand, the importance of pluriform representations (dimension 7). An increase
in media’s democratic quality can be achieved rst through a focus on their audiences
and communities, rather than a medium-oriented – one might also say a self-centred –
approach. At the same time, it is necessary to take the complex, situated and multi-layered
meaning of the signier audience into account (see chapter 1). Putting these complex
and active audiences at the centre of the media organizations’ attention allows them to
be articulated as directly concerned stakeholders, and enables media organizations to
increase their community connectedness.
e seventh dimension starts from the (representation of) specic (misrepresented)
groups. Based on the equality argument, access to, and interaction and participation
in the media landscape for/of all social groups is seen as a component of democratic
quality. Likewise, the right of these social groups to feel correctly represented is also to
be included. is seventh dimension includes the mere presence of members of dierent
social subgroups, avoiding what Tuchman (1978) refers to as their symbolic annihilation.
e next step is to focus on their active presence, avoiding their (literal) disappearance
into the background. e third component is the avoidance of stereotypes.5 Smelik
and her colleagues (1999: 45) summarize these components by contrasting forms of
stereotypical representation with the notion of what they call “pluriform representation”.
Here, members of misrecognized groups are actively present. Moreover, the duality
of the oppositions that characterize stereotypes is deconstructed, thereby enabling a
Figure 3: Cluster 2 of democratic quality.
Source: Carpentier (2007a: 168).
Media and Participation
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greater diversity of societal representations. Hall (1997a: 274) adds to the list of possible
strategies the importance of working from within the complexities and ambiguities of
representation. In other words, he is pleading for “contest[ing stereotypes] from within”.
1.2.3 Cluster 3: Representation of the political
e representation of political and democratic practices an sich is also important in this
typology on democratic quality. Chapter 1 devoted much attention to the complexity of
the political, and there is no need to reiterate these arguments in detail here. It suces
to point to the broad denition of the political, which brings to the foreground the
maximalist denitions of democracy. In this third cluster, the contribution of media
organizations to the enhancement of democracy is located at the level of representational
logics that pay attention to the broad-political and do not restrict attention to the key
component of minimalist democracy, that is, the political system. is cluster thus implies
fair and respectful representation of the political itself, without a reversion of media
organizations to the reductionism of minimalist democracy. Also, media organizations
themselves are seen as part of the political, and as crucial agents in the defence of the
general principles of democracy.
ere are three dimensions of the typology on democratic quality in Cluster 3
(Figure 4). e more general dimension, which covers the orientation towards a broad
political and decentralized societal decision-making (dimension 8), is complemented
Figure 4: Cluster 3 of democratic quality.
Source: Carpentier (2007a: 169).
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323
by two rather more specic dimensions: providing an argument-based balance
(dimension 9), and defence of the values considered universalized, here described as
pluralist neutrality6 (dimension 10). Dimension 8 refers to the importance of societal
deliberation, dialogue and debate. Democratic quality is enhanced by avoiding reduction
of the political to the political system, and of news and information to hard news. At the
same time, more solution-oriented approaches are also supportive of democratic quality.
But this text cannot be seen as an overly simplied plea for the dialogue/deliberation
model and the solution-oriented model, which again would contradict the ambition to
avoid a dichotomization of the typology. Democratic quality is served by a more balanced
approach between dialogue/deliberation and debate, between (information regarding)
social consensus and social conict, and between (information about) solutions and
problems. In a mediated context, respect for democratic quality would not lead to
banning issues from being represented as conicts, but they could only be represented
as such if these issues actually occur within the framework of a (serious) conict. And,
even in that situation, attention for and eorts made towards conict resolution remain
necessary, combined with an eective representation of a diversity of opinions, without
generating polarization (a requirement articulated in peace journalism).
e notions of dialogue/deliberation and debate can be applied also to two basic
components of the media professional’s identity, namely the striving for balance
(dimension 9) and for neutrality (dimension 10). is allows a re-articulation of these
components in a way that is supportive of social deliberation, dialogue and debate.
e ninth dimension links democratic quality to a more argument-based balance (as
opposed to a party- or person-related balance) in media representations (as is found, for
instance, in journalism). is dimension is strongly related to the theoretical reections
on deliberation, where the arguments (and not the persons) take a central position.
e application of these reections implies that the social diversity of discourses and
arguments, and the context within which they are situated, is taken into account.
e tenth dimension directs the focus towards the ideological-normative context.
Especially in journalistic reform projects, such as public journalism and development
journalism, neutrality is said to be no longer valid in situations where the values that
are considered universalized are under threat. Democratic quality then consists of the
active protection of these values. Examples of universalizable values in this context are
not completely unrestricted. e values I would mention here are democracy (and the
resistance against dictatorship and tyranny), peace (and the resistance against war and
violence), freedom (and the resistance against human rights violations), equality (and
the resistance against discrimination) and justice (and the resistance against oppression
and social inequality).
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1.2.4 Cluster 4: e participatory role
e fourth cluster of this typology is participation, which has been discussed extensively
in this book (Figure 5). e argument here is that increased levels of content-related
and structural participation in and through the media are signicant components of
democracy quality. Opening up the media sphere allows citizens greater participation
in it. is cluster is seen also as a dimension, which has maximalist participation in
the media sphere at one side, and evolves, through minimalist participation to no
participation at all.
2. Case 1: 16plus, Barometer and the rejection of participatory products
2.1 Introduction
In this case study the reception of two north Belgian participatory media products is
used to illustrate the signicance of the quality concept for debates on participation. e
rst is situated in the world of ‘new’ media, and concerns a YouTube-like online platform
called 16plus. e second is Barometer, the TV programme that was discussed in chapter
2. In both cases, the reception study shows little enthusiasm or downright rejection on the
part of their audiences, although the focus group members use a maximalist (and almost
contradictory) discourse of media democracy, and ercely critique the mainstream media
and their professionals. rough an analysis of these multi-layered audience receptions,
this case study shows that participatory practices are not unconditionally appreciated by
audience members, but are subject to specic structuring elements that are related to the
notion of quality. To dierent degrees, this case study shows the importance of quality
for the evaluation of participatory practices.
Figure 5: Cluster 4 of democratic quality.
Source: Carpentier (2007a: 169).
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2.2 e reception of participatory media products
16plus was one of VRT’s (the north Belgian public broadcaster) online platforms, which
began netcasting in March 2006, and became a clear local alternative to YouTube or
Google Video: “Aer ‘blogging’ (keeping an internet diary), ‘vlogging’ is now on the
rise: putting your own video movies on the internet. From now on Flemish youth do not
have to visit one or another English-language website like video.google.com or youtube.
com. ey can publish their work for free on a site which is designed especially for
them” (VRT 2006a – my translation). VRT’s 2006 Annual Report mentions that 16plus
shows that “Flemish alternatives for YouTube can be successful” (VRT 2006b: 51 – my
translation). Its success was relative, however, since almost two years aer its launch,
16plus had stored some 3180 items (count on 15 March 2008). e number of visitors
was higher: Nico Verplancke7 mentions 120,000 unique visitors in the rst seven months
of 16plus’s existence, although in October 2006 (when the nine groups – see below –
uploaded their Science Week projects) the number of visitors was low (1027 unique
visitors). Nevertheless, 16plus established its relevance through collaboration with one
of VRT’s radio stations, Studio Brussel, which broadcast some of the music produced
by 16plus participants. Most famously, one of these participants (Liam Chan) was
‘discovered’ by 16plus and Studio Brussel, and received a contract oer from EMI. But
these modest successes were not enough to prevent VRT from closing the 16plus website
at the end of 2009.8
Given the abundance of choice of available material and the angle taken in this
chapter, a selection was made based on material produced by clearly inexperienced
non-professionals, who were experimenting for the rst time with the participatory
opportunities being oered to them. Nine lms were selected, resulting from the work of
nine groups of youths, who received some video training at the 7th Flemish Science Week9
(which took place between 23 and 27 October 2006) within a small Institute for Broadband
Technology (IBBT) project, in collaboration with 16plus. e nine lms, which range in
length from 2 minutes 31 seconds to 12 minutes 12 seconds, are Ways of Eating, e
Shopping Ladies, Drinking, Multicultural Ledeberg,10 e Commandments of Nonsense,
Buttocks in Belgium, Colourful Ledeberg, Fashion and Everyday Life in Ghent. e formats
used in these lms are all fairly similar, and consist of a collage of interviews on the street,
and in shops, with a diversity of people, some simply refusing to be interviewed, others
patiently answering questions like “Imagine that next year, New Year’s Day would be on
a Friday, and even on Friday the 13th?” (a question in e Commandments of Nonsense,
related to superstition). e sound quality of the lms in many cases makes them rather
dicult to understand, and in at least one case (Fashion) spots of rain on the camera lens
are clearly visible. e lms do not all have an introduction, or a clear storyline, and the
relationships between the dierent parts are not always explained.
As their titles indicate, the content of the nine lms is focused very much on everyday
life. e lms allow the viewer to look at ‘normal’ scenes of everyday life, that are without
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added layers of aestheticization or narrative structure typical of more professional media
products. Instead we get to see the raw data of the everyday, without much decoration.
e camera wanders from conversation to conversation, engaging in everyday chit-
chat, shying away from the spectacular, talking about (as most people do for much of
the time11) the small things in life. In this sense, the camera becomes a little âneur
that observes (with some distance and detachment) what de Certeau (1984) calls the
discreteness or the singularities of everyday life.12
e nine lms oer us a series of perspectives on the structure of everyday life, with its
habits and repetitions embedded in culture, but they do not add much narrative structure
to these everyday life structures. Arguably (and without disregarding the importance of
conversations, narrations and myths relating to everyday life), everyday life cannot really
be restricted to the narrative. We nd support for this position in de Certeau’s (1984) e
Practice of Everyday Life, when he writes that “‘stories’ provide the decorative container
of a narrativity for everyday practices. To be sure, they describe only fragments of these
practices. ey are no more than its metaphors” (de Certeau 1984: 70 – emphasis in
original). Not only is a large part of the practices of everyday life constituted of material
ways of operating such as walking, dwelling and cooking (de Certeau 1984: xix),
these practices of everyday life also resist (discursive) representation because they are
characterized by a mobility that “adjusts them to a diversity of objectives and ‘coups,’
without their being dependent on a verbal elucidation” (de Certeau, 1984: 45).
Apart from issues related to the (de)narrativization of everyday life, these lms are
also modest attempts to address the politicization of everyday life. Hidden within the
de-narrativized representations of everyday life, we nd in the nine lms the very subtle
presence of a number of political-ideological dimensions, which show the political
nature of the everyday. e lms deal with a multicultural society and its linguistic
diversity, with resistance towards the consumerism embedded in the fashion industry,
with the sexual politics of birth control, and with the popular resistance against non-
sexist attitudes (through the telling of jokes), but also with the Foucauldian micro-
politics of the university, where it is not just students who (are invited to) talk about
their drinking, but also an individual introduced as a Ghent ‘professor’,13 resulting in the
following interview:
‘Professor’: I’m not sure if it is true that they [the students] drink this much. Actually,
I wouldn’t exaggerate it.
Interviewer: And in the days you were a student, was it like that as well?
‘Professor’: It happened that I […] yes […] went over the line, yes (drinking).
e analysis is based on a combination of interviews with three media professionals,14
and qualitative content analysis of the nine lms and een focus group discussions.
e focus group discussions15 were organized at the end of 2007 and analysed using
qualitative analysis techniques. In each of the focus groups, two or three of the nine lms
Keyword – Quality
327
were screened and then discussed, by a total of 131 respondents, whose discussions were
moderated by primary and secondary moderators.16 Internal homogeneity was based on
educational level and age, while an equal distribution was achieved (across focus groups)
on the basis of sex and region.17 Figure 6 provides an overview of the four clusters of
the focus group discussions; in each cluster (except cluster 3) four focus groups were
organized based on a young/old (Y/O) and lower education/higher education (L/H)
matrix.
Figure 6: e 16plus focus groups.
Cluster 1
(FG1-4)
Cluster 2
(FG5-8)
Cluster 3
(FG9-11)
Cluster 4
(FG12-15)
Y/L Y/H O/L O/H Y/L Y/H O/L O/H Y/L Y/H O/L Y/L Y/H O/L O/H
Everyday Life in Ghent e Shopping Ladies Ways of Eating e Commandments of
Nonsense
Multicultural Ledeberg Colourful Ledeberg Drinking Buttocks in Belgium
e Commandments of
Nonsense
Fashion
e second subcase is based on the access TV programme Barometer, which was
broadcast in 2002 on VRT’s TV1 channel, and which was introduced in chapter 2.
Again, I exploit a combination of interviews with media professionals,18 and qualitative
content analysis of programme episodes19 and focus group discussions. For the focus
groups, a selection was made (based on thematic diversity) of four episodes from the
rst series. ese four episodes were broadcast on 30 April,7 May, 14 May and 28 May
2002. Fourteen focus group discussions were organized, with a total of 122 respondents.
Similar to the 16plus case, primary and secondary moderators were involved,20 and
internal homogeneity was based on educational level and age and an equal distribution
(across focus groups) on the basis of sex and region.21 Figure 7 provides an overview of
the four clusters of the focus group discussions, again based on a young/old and lower
education/higher education matrix, in combination with the topics of the Barometer
episode that they were shown.
Media and Participation
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2.3 16plus
2.3.1 Focus group critiques on 16plus
e 16plus focus group respondents argue at length about why they disliked the
nine lms, in a number of cases describing them as banal. For instance, Yvette (F,
60y, H, 16plusFG322) summarizes her critique on the interviewing as follows: “there
was actually no single important question. ese are all banal things. ey are
banal things”. Watching the lms sometimes provoked harsh comments, such as the
following statement from Alain (M, 52y, H, 16plusFG7): “e main advantage of these
lms is that they are short”. Some even doubted the authenticity of the lms: “ey
are so amateurish. I even got the impression that they did that on purpose, it was so
over the top […] at’s my impression” (Danielle, F, 50y, H, 16plusFG7). e negative
evaluations of the focus group respondents focused on three components of the
lms: the level of the content, the reasons for making the lms and (especially) the
formal qualities of the nine lms.
At the level of content (the focus on everyday life), the respondents pointed to lack of
relevance and usefulness, which can be interpreted as a lack of social quality. Shari (F,
17y, H, 16plusFG2), for instance, says, “Yeah, I really don’t understand what the use is”.
eir irrelevance is related to the poor educational and informational level of the lms
Figure 7: e Barometer focus groups.
Cluster 1
(FG1-4)
Cluster 2
(FG5-6)
Cluster 3
(FG7-10)
Cluster 4
(FG11-14)
Y/L Y/H O/L O/H Y/L Y/H Y/L Y/H O/L O/H Y/L Y/H O/L O/H
30 April 2002 7 May 2002 14 May 2002 28 May 2002
t 1SBDUJTJOHĕSFNFO
t "ZFBSPMEIBQQZ
mother
t "QSBDUJDBMKPLF
involving a trac light
t "NVDPWJTDJEPTJT
patient receiving a pair
of new lungs
t "DPNQMBJOUBHBJOTU
rack renters
t &MEFSMZTLZEJWFST
t 0EFUPUIFQPUBUP
t "SFBDUJPOUPUIF
“complaint against
rack renters” lm
t &OKPZMJGFXJUI
measure
t 'JWFHFOFSBUJPOTPG
women
t 1IZTJDBMMZ
challenged on
horseback
t -PWFJOBIPNFGPS
the elderly
t 8PNFOJOUIF
restaurant and cafe
business
t $IJMESFOQMBZJOHNVTJD
with garbage
t #BCZXJUITMPX
growing right hand
t 'BSNFSIBTIJTDPX
consecrated
t "SFBDUJPOUPUIF
“physically challenged
on horseback” lm
t 6'0FYQFSJFODFT
t .BTUFDUPNZ
t $MFBOTUSFFUT
t 8PNFOTGPPUCBMM
t ćF-FUTTZTUFN
t "SFBDUJPOUPUIF
“cutting trees” lm
t ćFFMEFSMZCBDLUP
school
Keyword – Quality
329
shown to the respondents, illustrated by a (again ironic) fragment from one of the focus
group discussions.
Hendrik (M, 20y, L, 16plusFG1): It wasn’t that educational. I didn’t really learn
something from it, I think.
Jan (M, 17y, L, 16plusFG1): Well, I do know a new joke now.
Dries (M, 17y, L, 16plusFG1): Yes, maybe so.
Joran (M, 18y, L, 16plusFG1): Which one? I’ve already forgotten it.
Similarly, the focus of the lms on everyday life provoked comparisons with holiday
pictures, which positions these lms rmly in the realm of the private, and again can be
considered symptomatic of the perceived low social quality of the lms.
e second component of the lms that was critiqued is related to the (perceived)
motives of the producers. Here, the banality of the lms is attributed to the producers
being bored and having nothing else to do, or to their ambition to be noticed, as illustrated
by Dries’s quote (M, 17y, L, 16plusFG1): “ese are people that want to be noticed and
put something on the Internet”. e ‘killing time’ argument is used by Anneke (F, 34y,
H, 16plusFG2), when she says, “It’s dicult to have an opinion about it, because there is
really no contribution. ere was nothing in it, there was no content. ere was […] it
was just killing time”.
e aesthetic and technical quality of the lm was the third focus of major critique
from the respondents who argued either that there are no real topics or content, or that
topics are treated very supercially. At the same time they launched an avalanche of
more formal and damning critiques. e lms were described as poorly lmed (with
the raindrops on the camera lens receiving frequent mention), the framing and editing
of the lms was seen as problematic, and the poor sound quality was heavily criticized.
In general, they were judged to lack aesthetic quality. e respondents referred to the
lack of narrative structure and focus, and to the poor preparation and research of the
producers (“ey are just improvising” (An, F, 23y, H, 16plusFG6)), a criticism that was
reinforced by their condemnation of use of dialects and the sloppy appearance of the
lms’ producers. One of the respondents concluded that they were not even trying: “But
it is apparently not even their ambition to deliver something good, because they are not
making their best eort” (Dorien, F, 21y, L, 16plusFG1).
On many occasions, the perceived lack of aesthetic and technical quality is juxtaposed
with the quality of professional media productions. Here, professional quality acts as a
constitutive outside that provides the discursive framework for disapproval of amateur
productions. Max (M, 20y, L, 16plusFG10), for instance, describes what would be
necessary improve the quality of the lms: “Everything [needs to change]. e sound
and the images […] It needs to be recorded by a decent camera, and the sound should
be recorded by a sound engineer, and the editing should be done by an editor. Somebody
specialized”.
Media and Participation
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2.3.2 Focus group discourses that legitimize 16plus
Despite the consensus on the poor formal and content-related qualities of the nine lms,
a number of discourses emerged that legitimize the existence of these lms, most of
which are related to democratic quality and the importance attributed to participation.
However banal these lms are perceived to be, the respondents were quick to agree about
the democratic right of ordinary producers to create and publish lms like these. ey
pointed to the importance of the learning process for the producers, and the pleasure
it generates (for the producers though – not necessarily for their audiences). ese
legitimizing discourses also use the professional media as a constitutive outside, but this
time for critiquing mainstream media as manipulated and unreal(istic).
e discourses of pedagogics and pleasure are reasonably straightforward
legitimizations of the lms. On the one hand, the respondents refer to the learning
process and the ability of the producers to improve their skills (as part of a learning-by-
doing process, or through the feedback they receive). As Fabio (M, 26y, H, FG6) puts
it, “Who knows, they might put together a perfect one and a half hour lm in 10 years
time”. e respondents also speculated about the possibility that the lms were a school
assignment, and part of a more institutionalized learning process. It was interesting also
that some of the older focus group respondents referred to their own learning process as
‘lm amateurs’ (using 8-millimetre cameras). At the same time, the respondents point to
the pleasure that the producers had derived from making these lms, and the ability of
producers to be creative. Jos (M, 49y, H, FG7) formulates this as follows: “e question
also is whether we should always strive for the high arts […] My rst impression also
was: they are just messing about, but these people have actually been quite creative.
ey weren’t just consuming, they were having fun”. Another element of this discourse
is the pleasure generated by showing one’s lm outputs to members of one’s own social
networks.
e respondents referred also to a discourse of democracy, freedom and empowerment
as legitimation for the existence of these lms. e producers were deemed to be free to
exert their democratic right to publish the material, and infringement of that right was
oen immediately decried as censorship, and rejected. e democratic rights discourse
is combined with an emphasis on ordinary people, as these lms were seen as ways to
provide media access to ordinary people for both the youth who produced the lms and
for the people who featured in them. Despite the debates caused by the complexities of
the concept ‘ordinary people’, the respondents point to the authenticity and spontaneity
of the lms, which, in turn, are seen as a way to ‘really’ represent reality. e access of
ordinary people to the media then becomes a privileged way to achieve a realist portrayal
of everyday life, as summarized by Jos (M, 49y, H, 16plusFG7): “but I also think that […]
at the beginning it looks like nothing, but now, by talking and thinking about it […] it is
a very realist image”.
Keyword – Quality
331
e discourses of pedagogics, pleasure and democracy are complemented by a fourth
discourse that legitimizes the existence of these lms by reverting to the outside identities
of media professionals and mainstream media organizations. In contrast to the argument
set out above about professional quality (which discredits amateur producers), the
discourse of professionalization is a side-swipe at media professionals and mainstream
media organizations, through which the nine lms gain importance and legitimacy. Eva’s
(F, 25y, H, FG6) brief remark bears witness to this logic of dierence: “It’s just a forum
to show things that do not reach us through the television or newspaper […].” e nine
lms are deemed not only dierent but also more real and authentic because they are
subjective (whilst professional journalists are seen as having to be neutral), because the
ordinary people featured in the lms gain unmediated access, without “words being put
in their mouths” by “professional journalists” (Tiny, F, 83y, L, FG11), and because they
are not part of a commercialized media system focused on the spectacular, which is
ercely critiqued in the focus groups. rough these dierences, the authenticity and
realism of the non-professional lms becomes valued. In the professional media system,
ordinary people are seen as victims of media professionals: “Even if they show ordinary
people in the media, on television, they can do with them what they want to” (Muriel,
F, 17y, L, FG5).
2.4 Barometer
2.4.1 Focus group critiques on Barometer
In contrast to the reception focus groups of 16plus, the Barometer respondents’ criticisms
were less emphatic about aesthetic and technical quality problems and the problems
related to the motives of the lm-makers. ese groups focused more on lack of social
quality. Although the respondents expressed their appreciation of the programme,
they were generally unenthusiastic about Barometer, whose relevance was repeatedly
questioned. e respondents were generally neutral or indierent about the programme,
or in some cases claimed that it was useless, silly, light-weight and insignicant. Stijn (M,
21y, H, BaroFG6), for instance, describes the Barometer participants as “very subjective,
very small people that […] have something to tell. And it isn’t extremely convincing”.
Other participants refer to the lack of informational and educational value:
Jesse (M, 23y, H, BaroFG8): e educational value wasn’t that high, I think.
Menno (M, 19y, H, BaroFG8): I think there have been worse programmes on television.
Jesse (M, 23y, H, BaroFG8): Yes, that’s true, yes, yes.
Kristel (V, 24y, H, BaroFG8): [Programmes] that really make them look ridiculous.
Jesse (M, 23y, H, BaroFG8): ey keep their dignity somehow […]
Media and Participation
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In their evaluations of Barometer, the focus group respondents oen referred to the genre
of human-interest in general, and to specic north Belgian human-interest programmes
(such as Man Bites Dog, In the Gloria, Life As It Is, Exit 9 and Jambers23). ere was almost
complete unanimity that Barometer belongs to the human-interest genre cluster, because
of its focus on everyday life stories, on personal and individual experiences, and on
emotions, and because of its positive approach to the social. Although the authenticity of
the ordinary participants is seen as the programme’s main strength (see below), the lack
of relevance (and social quality) critique in Barometer became intertwined with similar
but more general critiques related to its human interest. Ria (F, 55y, H, BaroFG10), for
instance, remarks, “But if they are going to lm somebody of us (ordinary people), than
nobody is going to watch it. at is too boring, that is too monotonous”. A few seconds
later, Monique (F, 52y, H, BaroFG10) says, “at is something we’re experiencing on a
daily basis, we don’t need to get to see that on television”. An extract from another focus
group provides another example:
e idea that ‘everybody has to appear on television, and everybody has something
that is of interest to them and you should be able to share that with the world’ […] I
absolutely disagree. I wouldn’t bother people with what I am doing. It isn’t interesting
to other people. And that applies the other way around [laughs]. (Greet, F, 21y, H,
BaroFG6)
e critique about the lack of social quality of the mediated representation of everyday
life is strengthened by the perceived need for heavier professional intervention, in order
to contextualize the personal experiences and narrations provided by the Barometer
participants. e heavy emphasis on the programme’s lack of relevance in the focus
groups is not to imply that critiques related to the motivations of Barometer participants
did not emerge in the focus group discussions. However, they were interwoven with the
critiques on lack of relevance, with focus group respondents detaching themselves from
Barometer participants and from potentially interested audience members (in contrast
to the focus group respondents). is process of detachment was demonstrated rst
by the insistence that the lms produced by the Barometer participants were mainly
relevant only to the lm-makers in enabling them to appear on television, to have their
voices heard, to express themselves, to tell their stories, to “lay their egg” (as Luc (M, 54,
BaroFG4) puts it), but also to get something o their chest, to voice their frustration or
desperation, and to call for attention or for help. is distancing from the participants was
further strengthened by their articulation as strange, abnormal, marginal or – through
a more spatial logic – rural: “It is really a village, with the classic hobbies, and the story
behind them. I don’t think you’ll see city folk in there” (Jeroen, M, 21y, H, BaroFG6).
e second way focus group respondents disconnected themselves from the audience
of Barometer was in pointing to the existence of audiences that might be interested in
the programme, because they (but not the focus group respondents) could identify with
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the people on the programme, or the situations they found themselves in, or because it
perhaps helped or inspired them.
Finally, the focus group respondents used critical discourse on the quality of the
produced material. But, as already indicated, this criticism was much less vehement
than that levelled at the 16plus lms. In the Barometer focus groups, participants were
repeatedly positioned by the focus group respondents as amateurs, but at the same
time, were excused on the basis that technical problems (such as shaky cameras) were
not considered dominant and did not aect the structural content. As one focus group
respondent put it, these technical problems gave the Barometer lms ‘charm’:
Siska (V, 47y, H, BaroFG14): It’s absolutely not bad for amateurs.
Moderator: And what does make this a good lm, and what makes it bad?
Valérie (V, 37y, H, BaroFG8): ey managed to communicate their message,
eventually. If though it wasn’t professionally recorded, they still managed to show
what they were engaged in and what they wanted to tell. If they succeeded in doing
that, then the lm was successful too.
Siska (V, 47y, H, BaroFG14): It wasn’t good technically speaking, but maybe this was
its charm […]
e juxtaposition with media professionals persists, with respondents repeating that
more intense involvement of professionals would have improved the technical quality
of the lms. For instance, TJ (M, 20y, L, BaroFG11) puts it as follows: “Your camera
perspective will always be better if you have a professional crew doing it”. However
dominant and taken-for-granted these professional aesthetic and technical quality
criteria are in the focus groups, the respondents accepted the more amateurish lms
and expressed the need to avoid too much professional interference in their production
process. Even the presence of the host was debated extensively, and the editing and
selection of the Barometer video lms, although acknowledged to be necessary, was
frequently regretted.
2.4.2 Focus group discourses that legitimize Barometer
In the case of the reception of Barometer, the programme is mainly legitimized by its
capacity to oer a forum or a podium for ordinary people to narrate and represent their
personal stories, opinions and experiences. Again, we can recognize the democratic
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as one participant called it, is linked to “the democratization of television” (Bert, V,
21y, H, BaroFG6), where “it is no longer the large production companies or casting
rms that decide who gets on (television). Everybody can have a go, John Doe. But I
think that this is still more interesting for people who have the urge to say something”.
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is discourse is combined with a (communication) rights discourse that emphasizes
the rights of ordinary people to communicate and represent themselves on television,
and which values their presence in one of the key public spaces. eir presence is also
articulated as authentic: Despite some remarks about nervousness and over-preparation,
the respondents considered the representations as natural, spontaneous, real and honest.
For instance, Steven (M, 22y, L, BaroFG7) says, “[ese lms are dierent because they are]
life stories, taken from everyday life, real and not fake”. Or Stijn (M, 21y, H, BaroFG6): “It
reminded me of Man Bites Dog [a Belgian human-interest programme], but it is actually
much more honest. I found it fun the people could lm themselves, and could decide
everything themselves”.
is explains also why the respondents are sceptical about the idea of including
experts on the programme because this would aect the power balance, and potentially
would create a situation that is “patronizing if you would have an expert look over their
shoulders” (Luc, M, 54y, L, BaroFG6). But it is mainly the media professionals and the
mainstream media system that (as in 16plus) become a constitutive outside. e work
of the participants is dened as authentic and spontaneous because the interventions
of media professionals remain limited. Moreover, media professionals are articulated
as restricting of the democratic capacity of the media, partially because of their media-
centredness. Pascal (M, 49y, H, BaroFG14) provides us with this critical analysis:
Television is and remains organized deceit. And you should take that into account
that if you make a programme it is of course with just one intention, and that is to
make sure that people are sitting in front of the TV and that they have their ratings.
is generates an interesting paradox in which the mainstream media are seen to oer
a poor perspective on reality and are deemed manipulative, but are accepted because
they master the aesthetic and narrative professional standards. On the other hand, the
‘amateur’ lms have limited aesthetic and narrative qualities, but oer more realist and
authentic perspectives on everyday life.
e discussions on the motives of the lm-makers and the discourse of pleasure are
very much to the fore in the focus groups and strongly embedded in the democracy and
rights discourse. Although the focus group respondents were largely indierent about
the produced content, and the lack of relevance critique was present – “Everybody has
the right to be on television. But I would keep it for more useful things” (Isabel, V, 16y,
L, BaroFG1) – they do recognize the communicational need (and rights) that motivated
the makers to participate in the production of Barometer, the authenticity generated
and the pleasure they derived from being part of these participatory practices. Also the
audience becomes articulated within this discourse, as the symbolic power of these self-
representations is valued,24 following a line of argument characteristic of the evaluation of
the democratic capacity of human-interest programming. As Sarah (V, 25y, H, BaroFG6)
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put it, “Simply the ordinary person that gets to see ordinary people on television, instead
of news about – I don’t know – whatever has happened”.
At the same time, the respondents do see that there are limits to Barometer’s level
of participation. ey mention especially the media professionals’ interventions at
the levels of selection and editing. e host of Barometer mentions explicitly in his
introduction that he selected the contributions actually broadcast in the programme, so
the respondents identify this as one of the major interventions made by the production
team. Some respondents refer to censorship (Veronique, V, 44y, H, BaroFG14); others
talk about the consequences for those whose lms were not selected:
e ones that were le lying in the corner, that’s all the same story, they will probably
feel very unhappy. ey made as much eort, and they were as motivated, and they
thought their ideas were as good and as important (because they invested the same
energy) as the people that happened to make it to television. (Pascal, M, 49y, H,
BaroFG14)
e second professional intervention that was discussed was the editing. Here, the
discussion is less clear-cut because the respondents had little factual information about
the production team’s practices. e result was much speculation, with some respondents
expressing their opinion that it was “100% uncut” (Jan, M, 24y, L, BaroFG7), others
talking about “minimal editing” (Hugo, M, 24y, L, BaroFG5) and others framing it as
manipulation: “So it is manipulated a bit by the television (professionals)”. Although
this intervention was not problematized by the respondents, they regretted that the
participants lost control over the end product, and that the participatory process was
limited.
In some cases, the respondents distrust the (professional) production team and
(without being invited by the focus group moderators) took their speculations to
another level. During one conversation, the respondents discussed the possibility that
the production team assisted during the lming (because it is “too organized” (Carl, M,
24y, L, BaroFG7)) or prepared the shoot beforehand.
Koen (M, 27y, H, BaroFG6): I think that they visit the participants beforehand.
Kristel (V, 24y, H, BaroFG6): Yes, they rst discuss it, I think so.
Koen (M, 27y, H, BaroFG6): Giving them guidelines, ‘do this, do that, […]’
In another conversation, the respondents discussed the possibility that the production
team did not wait for videotapes to be sent in, but actively recruited participants. In this
discussion, one of the respondents (Tim, M, 25y, L, BaroFG6) expressed his opinion that
it might all be “fake”, saying he “can’t imagine that an elderly couple says, hey, let’s make
a movie of us going to our mobile phone class”. He later added that Barometer “makes it
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appear that these people have sent in the names on their own initiative”, to which another
respondent replied, “Nothing gets on television by somebody’s own initiative” (Phille, M,
21y, L, BaroFG6).
2.5 Conclusion
Given the importance oen attributed to participation (including in this book), the
negative reactions of the focus group respondents to the two media products (which
oer, at least at rst sight, these more intense and maximalist forms of participation)
are perhaps surprising. ere is an exception: At the ‘theoretical’ level, the respondents
express their appreciation of the participatory practices they get to see, and frame these
practices on the online forum and on television within what is termed here a democratic
quality discourse. ey feel strongly that ordinary people have the right to perform
online, and on television, and that access to these representational realms should not
be reserved for media professionals and members of elites. ey repeatedly criticized
the mainstream media system at several levels, for instance for its ways of representing
our realities, the abuse of the power it claims to have, the abuse of the (ordinary) people
involved, and the media-centredness and commodied nature of its objectives.
However, this is not to imply that the focus group respondents were fans of the
two programmes they got to see. e participatory nature of the production process
(and its outcome) may be ‘theoretically’ applauded in the focus groups, but the actual
materializations are met with erce critiques or with indierence. In the case of 16plus,
the use of the ‘new’ online technology does not protect the lms from severe critique. e
perceived lack of aesthetic and technical quality in particular forms the basis of a series
of harsh discussions that almost completely discredit the lms. In the case of Barometer,
the televised programme, the critiques were less harsh, but the respondents still failed
to see any social quality in what was screened for them, and remained indierent and
disconnected. ey accept the personal relevance for the lm-makers, but consider that
to be insucient to legitimize distribution on prime-time public television.
e reactions of the focus group respondents show that mediated participation
is not in itself enough for a programme to be positively valued. In order for it to be
appreciated, a number of conditions must be met. e (rather extreme) case of 16plus
shows that the basic conventions related to aesthetic and technical quality, as dened
by the professionalized mainstream media system, are deeply rooted within the taste
cultures of these (north Belgian) audience members, and that a radical – however
unintended – rejection of these conventions is considered unacceptable. e Barometer
case at the same time exemplies that these quality conventions are not absolutely rigid,
and that there is some space for ‘amateurs’ to diverge from them. Nevertheless, these
case studies also illustrate the need for (some degree of ) training, or the familiarization
with more traditional articulations of quality, as was implemented in the earlier phases
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of the Video Nation project (see chapter 4). But more importantly, the Barometer (and
the 16plus) case shows us that the respondents also use social quality as a key principle
for evaluating media output. ey critique Barometer for falling into the human-interest
trap of privileging the private and the personal without transcending it. Both reception
analyses show that the respondents experience a strong need for media to be magical, to
use (aesthetic and technical) languages that are exceptional, and to narrate stories that
are socially relevant. Just showing everyday life, or just organizing participation, is not
enough.
3. Case 2: Alternative and community media constructions of quality: Negotiated
quality
3.1 Introduction
Although the concept of democratic quality already includes a less stable articulation
of quality, through its focus on representational and participatory processes as part
of the denition of quality, we can take this discussion a step further by placing more
emphasis on the unstable and negotiated character of quality. Negotiated quality refers
to the establishment of quality as a dialogical-participatory process, in which all the
actors involved, including audience members, contribute to dening quality. is re-
articulation is grounded in research on quality denition negotiations in Swiss and
Austrian community radio stations,25 and more specically through an analysis of
interviews with community radio producers and administrators at Radio LoRa, Radio
Orange, Radio Fro and RadioFabrik.26 Obviously, this is a small selection of people, and
involves community radio stations in only two European countries. As the focus of this
text is not on discovering the complexity of quality denitions in community media
in general, but rather to show and (then) theorize about the presence of the concept of
negotiated quality, this does not pose structural methodological problems.
ese analyses attempt to provide a re-articulation of the quality discourse, where
the maximalist participatory culture and openness – characteristic of alternative and
community media organizations (see chapter 1) – result in an unxed and contestable
denition of (media) quality. is focus on alternative and community media of course
does not imply that the quality concept is completely xed in mainstream media
congurations, but I would argue that the participatory nature of alternative and
community media creates a specic context in which more rigid (oen professional-
based) quality concepts are transformed into a negotiated quality concept.
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3.2 Quality denitions in alternative and community media
e Austrian and Swiss community radio stations where the interviews with the eight
community media producers were organized are reasonably stable. As Peissl and
Tremetzberger (2010) explain, the rst legal basis for broadcasting in Switzerland was
established in 1982, which allowed the Swiss Radio LoRa to start broadcasting in Zurich
soon aer. In 1997 it became possible to use 1 per cent (raised to 4 per cent in 2007)
of the national broadcasting fee to support private broadcasters. In Austria, the legal
framework came later, in response to pressure from pirate groups, and it was not until
1995 that the rst licences were allocated. e majority of Austrian community radios
were licensed between 1998 and 2000 (Purkarthofer et al., 2008: 14). In 2009, negotiations
for an Austrian community radio fund were successful. In summary, the alternative and
community sector is now well established in both Switzerland and Austria.
e radio producers in their interviews all emphasized (albeit to varying degrees)
the maximalist participatory nature and alternative characters of their radio stations,
which position them as the third sector. As Anu Poeyskoe (Radio Orange 3 April 2009
interview) briey formulated it, “you have the jukebox on the one side, and you have
this upper-class radio on the other side”. e mixture of participation and alternativity
feeds a rejection of traditional quality concepts. To quote Anu Poeyskoe (Radio Orange
3 April 2009 interview) again, “Nobody wants to have a denition of good programming
that has some sort of universal meaning, because that is a really subjective denition”.
Nicole Niedermüller (Radio LoRa 13 August 2008 interview) takes a similar position
when talking about quality management:
is is a kind of discussion I can get really angry about. Because, I think that the
question is: ‘Who is dening quality?’ And I oen see male, white heterosexual people
that have university degrees, telling an immigrant woman about quality.
e rejection of power imbalances seen as an intrinsic part of the traditional quality
denitions, together with the maximalist-participatory and alternative nature of these
community media, leads to the deployment of three major alternative discourses on
quality. e rst discourse can be seen as a continuation of the democratic quality
concept.
3.3 Discourses on democratic quality
Nicole Niedermüller’s reference above to immigrant women immediately foregrounds
the importance of the (self-)representational dimension of democratic quality. e
quality that community media oer builds on providing access to and facilitating
participation of a wide range of societal subgroups, including the misrecognized and
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sometimes even stigmatized groups in society. rough these logics of self-representation
and participation, ordinary people are oered the opportunity to have their voices
heard, to talk about their daily lives, to express their situated knowledge and to narrate
their everyday experiences, a process that is articulated as a quality component. An
illustration here is Anu Poeyskoe’s (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview) reference to
one of the main questions Radio Orange tried to answer in its start-up phase: “How to
bring people, daily things and their opinions, how to bring them in a radio programme?
What is good material for radio?”
is notion of self-representation as (democratic) quality is not limited merely to
the process of providing access and participation, but also includes the outcome of the
process. e radio producers dene their non-mainstream and alternative content –
produced through the logics of self-representation and participation – as part of their
quality. As Adriane Borger (Radio LoRa 14 August 2008 interview) put it when talking
about the work of the radio’s programme commission, “the discussions in the programme
commission are normally about the quality of music. And there are quite clear criteria, I
would say. Because what we don’t want is mainstream […]” Or, in the words of Gerhard
Kettler (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview), “[Orange] is not a mainstream radio, we
want to bring people of these other programmes […].” His colleague, Pawel Kaminski
(Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview), continued, “I do not like the programmes […]
which try to imitate the mainstream formats, and they play like the mainstream music.
[…] Somehow you’ve achieved the opposite eect to what you wanted, because it’s
not serious, it’s not alternative […].” ese articulations of quality are grounded in the
importance of producing alternative representations that complement and sometimes
contradict the representations generated by the mainstream media. e circulation of
alternative discourses, formats and genres is seen as contributing signicantly to a more
pluralist-democratic society.
e articulation of non-mainstream content as quality is supported also by the rules-
bound approach, which distinguishes community radio from access radio (such as the
German Oener Kanal concept). Anu Poeyskoe (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview)
summarizes the radio content rules system as “the famous anti-anti-anti”, which implies
that community media are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-fascist and anti-violence (although
again some variation is possible). To use Adriane Borger’s (Radio LoRa 14 August 2008
interview) words, “We say we don’t want any racism, we don’t want any sexism, we
don’t want any kind of violence and so on”. e producers interviewed all conrm the
importance of this rule-bound protection of their non-mainstream identities, and (when
asked) oen related instances of these rules being violated, in some cases leading to the
cancellation of particular radio programmes, very rare within the eld of alternative and
community radio stations. Gerhard Kettler, Radio Orange’s programme coordinator (3
April 2009 interview), describes one case where two programme-makers broadcast racist
cabaret recordings, which led to heated discussion within the radio station. Important
here is the way that the democratic quality of the radio station was protected by the
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radio’s programme commission, but also how a dialogical conict resolution system was
applied.
Recently, there was a broadcast by two guys who normally play swing music, and
on this day they [played] some cabaret recordings from the sixties. Austrian cabaret
recordings. And they started playing them, and it was… it started like being, yeah,
somehow funny, but not really […] en it became immediately very racist, using
very racist denitions of black people, but also being very racist in the content.
[…] So there at the studio we started to have a conversation with them, which was
accidentally broadcast because at some moment they switched o the recordplayer
and the microphones went on air. I think this was quite good […] this conict going
on air. It’s not according to our statutes; you don’t play something like this here. [ey
had] quite strange ways to excuse it ‘[…] it’s not being abusive, these are only jokes’
and so on. And then there was discussion in the team: ‘Should we leave it like this
or should we communicate this case to the Program Beirat [Orange’s programme
commission]?’ is was a discussion […] because you have to know, these were […]
old time communists, let’s say, and anti-fascist of course, but also, they’re workers.
[…] en there was this meeting between them and the Program Beirat […] and now
they are obliged to attend an anti-racist workshop […] this was also an interesting
case because it involved discussion within our team.
One nal articulation of democratic quality is grounded in the structural participation
and horizontal decision-making of the radio organization, which are deemed crucial for
the democratic functioning of these media organizations, although their implementation
generates a wide range of challenges. ese diculties are part of the daily administration
of the organization, as illustrated by Simon Schaufelberger’s (Radio LoRa 14 August
2008 interview) brief anecdote: “we have our technician who calls himself some kind
of anarchist and he once got so angry that he said: ‘Well, I want to have a boss. I want to
end these endless discussions’”. But these diculties can also be found at the level of the
relationships between producers (who are oen volunteers) and sta members (who are
sometimes paid). Here one of the major diculties lies in involving the radio producers
in the democratic functioning of the community radio organization. is again aects
the denition of democratic quality, illustrated by the Radio Fro interview, in which lack
of quality is dened as “narrow-mindedness”. omas Kreiseder (Radio Fro 7 September
2008 interview) continues by describing his detached position: “I’m coming in and I’m
doing my stu and I’m not interested in what others are doing”. In contrast, quality in
community media is also seen as contributing to the “generation of more open systems,
more open groups or communities of shared interests”.
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3.4 Re-articulating the professional quality discourse
Apart from the discourse of democratic quality, the interviewed community radio
producers also refer to what was labelled earlier in this text as the professional quality
concept. But at the same time, they re-articulate this professional quality concept
because the entire ideology of alternative and community media is built on the concept
of providing access and participation to non-professionals.
Although there are some references to the skills related to the radio format (with
an appreciation of the “voices electrifying you” (Pawel Kaminiski, Radio Orange)) and
its dialogical nature, the skills required to use the technology and journalistic skills are
oen mentioned. Anu Poeyskoe (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview) summarizes the
problem of lack of technical skills as follows: “e good quality content is of no good use
if I can’t understand it”. e notion of technical quality is used by Adriane Borger (Radio
LoRa 14 August 2008 interview), again to refer to possession of the skills necessary to
operate the radio technology.
ere are people who think that technical quality is not an issue so we shouldn’t even
talk about it. But, we, let’s say, the programme commission of Radio LoRa does thinks
it is an issue and we are trying […] to see that people are making technically good
programmes. […] On the other hand, sometimes it takes years to get people to do the
technically right thing. And even aer all those years you don’t get them there. So of
course this wouldn’t be a reason to cancel a programme.
But at the same time this quote illustrates how careful the interviewees are to avoid
using the quality concept as a condition sine qua non from which to judge a programme.
Technical quality, on the other hand, is deemed important, but acquiring the skills
required to achieve it is articulated as a learning process, which could take years. Even in
the case that the radio producers never actually master all of these skills, this should not
be problematized: “Like using the telephone is really dicult for a lot of people because
sometimes, well they may receive one telephone call every two weeks, so they forget how
to do it” (Simon Schaufelberger, Radio LoRa 14 August 2008 interview).
All the interviewees emphasized strongly that these technical (and journalistic) skills
should not be imposed or enforced, but that radio producers should receive informal
or formal training. More and more formal training is being organized (e.g. by the
Zurich-based organization klip&klang), although informal training (“like the older
people instructing the younger ones and giving them tips and supporting them” (Simon
Schaufelberger, Radio LoRa 14 August 2008 interview)) still takes place too. Both formal
and informal learning are organized “so that [people] are not victims of the technology”;
the objective of training is “empowering people to use the technology the way they
want to use it”, is the way omas Kreiseder (Radio Fro 7 September 2008 interview)
formulated it. Or, in Gerhard Kettler’s (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview) words, “It’s
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like showing that it is not some kind of magic. Of course, it is magic, but you could also
do it”.
Again the participatory-emancipatory alternative and community media ideology
can be seen as the main explanatory component in this approach. It explains also why
lack of technical and journalistic skills is not seen as problematic, in contrast to more
mainstream environments where a lack of technological mastery would be dened
as “sacrilege” (Anu Poeyskoe, Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview) and where the
professionalized environment would require the utmost respect for journalistic
procedures. is argument was used by Adriane Borger (Radio LoRa 14 August 2008
interview), who said that “It’s also about participation and the way that we want to give a
radio space to people, [which is] not only dependent on the quality of their programme.”
Also, the personality and individuality of the producers were invoked as reasons not
to problematize the lack of (technical and journalistic) skills, as is illustrated by the
anecdote on “wonderful exceptions” oered by Nicole Niedermüller (Radio LoRa 13
August 2008 interview):
Because, during the last months the meetings on quality management for all the
community radios in Switzerland were held. […] ey asked us to bring some examples
so that we can talk about quality in community radios. And I brought an example
from a really, really lovely, and wonderful lesbian radio show. She’s introducing an
interview and she is doing all the things wrong that it is possible to do. You know, she
tells the listener what the person is going to say, she makes mistakes and stu like that.
But she does it in such a cute and charming way, that every, everybody says: ‘Oh great,
great! What a wonderful show’ and stu like this. And this was also interesting for me
to bring this to the meeting, to just make them, to show them, you know […] It is one
thing that there are books written about quality and there is another thing. We also
organize our own quality standards. But there are also some wonderful exceptions.
ese nuanced approaches to technical and journalistic quality are grounded also in the
re-articulation of professional quality. A recurring argument is related to the importance
of the non-professionality of radio producers, which refers to their positions as volunteers,
and also to their embeddedness in alternative production cultures. One illustration is
this quote from Anu Poeyskoe (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview):
[what] I expect from a good community radio […] is to hear things I can’t hear
somewhere else. So for me, that’s quality. What I value very much is if something is
authentic, because that’s what we lack in the radio-landscape elsewhere. And what I value
is programming that goes deep in an issue. I don’t mean in a scientic sense because that
is covered by public broadcasting, but I mean in terms of personal involvement.
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is re-articulation of professional quality is based on a combination of authenticity,
commitment, empathy and subjectivity. As Simon Schaufelberger (Radio LoRa 14 August
2008 interview) puts it, “ere is quality in this radio on a lot of things. And especially in
the personal commitment of the people doing shows. I think this is the highest quality for
a radio like [LoRa]”. Or to use omas Kreiseder’s (Radio Fro 7 September 2008 interview)
words, “it’s dicult to describe this in words because most of the time it’s just a feeling
about an enthusiasm”. ese characteristics of the producer are contrasted with those of
the media professional, who is articulated as objective but inauthentic, and with little to
communicate: “You can hear that there is a personality and that it’s not a trained speaker
who has a certain, well, who is given a list of tracks to play and commenting on that”
(Simon Schaufelberger, Radio LoRa 14 August 2008 interview). Although it is not always
easy to avoid the mainstream media cultures, community media are claimed to produce
more authentic programming: “ey have to say it from their own perspective and this
is important for community media, to say it from own standpoints, so I think this is not
professional, this is much better” (Gerhard Kettler, Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview).
It is within this debate that technological quality (as discussed above) was mentioned,
but again in a model oppositional/antagonistic to mainstream media. Nicole Niedermüller
(Radio LoRa 13 August 2008 interview) here refers to usability, simplicity and user
friendliness as an alternative criterion for technological quality.
if you go to a professional studio they have such complex and dicult to use
equipment, that you really have to be a technician to use it. And if we buy, you know,
some recorder and stu like this, then it’s really important for us to keep it simple
[…]. So that many many dierent people, also people that are not familiar with all this
technical stu, can use it and have a good result (Nicole Niedermüller, Radio LoRa 13
August 2008 interview).
3.5 A participatory denition of quality: Negotiated quality
A third major discourse on quality within community media is termed negotiated
quality. e maximalist participatory nature of alternative and community media
destabilizes the traditional (universalized and professionalized) denitions of quality.
rough their resistance to the power imbalances embedded in the concept of quality
(in which professional media are seen to produce quality content and amateur media are
discursively excluded from the quality signier), community media not only foreground
alternative models of quality (see above), but also submit the denition of quality to their
participatory processes. By opening up the denition of quality to their participatory
cultures, they unx and destabilize quality, showing its constructed nature.
One major discursive strategy is the refusal of the one-quality concept, which is
contrasted with the more relativist denition that emphasizes the diversity of quality. An
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illustration here is Adriane Borger’s (Radio LoRa 14 August 2008 interview) position: “I
think we need the whole variety of approaches and ways of doing a programme. And of
course you can […] every individual programme you can look at it and see if it’s good or
not but rst you have to decide what good means in this case. It can mean very dierent
things”.
Quality then becomes an agonistic confrontation among these dierent positions on
quality. Within the maximalist participatory tradition of alternative and community media,
this almost unavoidably implies the organization of dialogic processes to determine quality.
Anu Poeyskoe (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview) formulates this as follows: “to discuss
making programmes with other people making radio programmes is probably the only way
to achieve quality in communication media”. is is echoed by Nicole Niedermüller (Radio
LoRa 13 August 2008 interview) when she says that “ere are some rules we developed and
there are some standards we developed. But, we also have the idea of, you know, discussing
and reecting these standards all the time in an open process and to guide people”.
ese dialogic processes are organized at dierent levels of the radio stations. As most
of these community radio stations have (paid) sta members and formal decision-making
structures (i.e. boards of administrators and programme commissions – oen with radio
producer representatives), these are obvious sites for these dialogical processes to take
place. is also applies to the intake procedures for new programmes, and to the processes
involved in conict resolution (described above). At a second level, the radio producers
become involved in this dialogical process, mainly through what the interviewees call
the feedback mechanism, where sta members or more experienced producers provide
feedback to other producers, if time and resources allow. At Radio Orange, the feedback
system is combined with a self-denition of quality – “Every programme had to say
what is quality for themselves” (Gerhard Kettler, Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview) –
providing an anchoring point for future conversations about quality. Again, the feedback
system is applied with restraint, with some interviewees pleading for minimal forms
of feedback in order not to interfere with the programme makers’ intentions. Others,
however, prefer more collective forms of feedback:
Sometimes I say to them; ‘Well, I would have done it like this.’ I prefer it if there are
a couple of women at the meeting so there are dierent people with all the dierent
ways of listening to radio shows. Because this is […] then you get a broader feedback.
(Nicole Niedermüller, Radio LoRa 13 August 2008 interview)
In particular, sta members indicated that they are very careful not to impose their quality
denitions, knowing that (as sta members) their opinions might carry more weight
than is desirable. One suggestion was to adopt the strategy of positioning oneself as the
listener, not a sta member: “I don’t want to tell him what he has to do as programme
coordinator, I said it as a listener. And in this way I have some discussions, and I think
it’s constructive” (Gerhard Kettler-Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview).
Keyword – Quality
345
Apart from the more informal feedback system, most radio stations have instituted
workshop-based forms of learning, where the quality dialogue can take place in a more
organized way. In the extract below, omas Kreiseder (Radio Fro 7 September 2008
interview) explains how his station’s workshops function:
We have developed, like, serious workshops and actions over the past few months.
Where people get the chance to learn stu, to meet people and so on. And we want to
focus on that more. So we have a new person who is working exclusively in that eld.
And that’s how we think that the programmes will become high-quality. Because people
will be able to reect on their work and to compare it with other programmes.
Finally, in some cases, even listeners participate in the quality dialogue, albeit in less
organized ways. Here, we nd a (subtle) reference to audience-based quality, although it
could be argued that because of the low thresholds to, and high ambitions to, facilitate
audience participation, community media producers use the term audience-based
quality in referring to (non-)professional quality. But in some cases, audience members,
who are not involved as producers at the radio station, actively intervene to protect the
radio station’s quality. Gerhard Kettler (Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview) explains
how it was discovered that one of the station’s reggae shows “was quite homophobic”:
Nobody thought of problems, the show was running for two years or more. And then
the listeners did a direct action; a group of le-wing activists came to the show and
talked, debated on that show. And then we could say ‘thank you,’ because we hadn’t
realized what was going on in the show, and then we took action. (Gerhard Kettler,
Radio Orange 3 April 2009 interview)
3.6 Conclusion
Quality is oen seen as a rigid concept that is approached in a dichotomized way: Cultural
artefacts (such as radio programmes) are seen to be of quality or not. is essentialist approach
to quality might be part of our common sense, but it simultaneously ignores the constructed
nature of our taste. Moreover, quality serves as a discursive tool to hegemonize the media
professional’s position, in ways that are unnecessarily antagonistic. e professional/amateur
opposition is in part fed by the idea that only professionals can produce quality, at the levels
of the aesthetic, technical, professional, social and even democratic.
Of course, we should not forget the outcome of the rst case study in this chapter,
which showed that some amateurs are not capable of producing the hegemonized forms
of professional and technical quality. For that reason their products were disliked by the
people asked to watch them. But this case study should not be seen as a claim that non-
professionals do not have access to quality, in its many and various forms. Moreover,
Media and Participation
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care should be taken not to see quality as an essentialist concept that is unchangeable
and completely xated. As in the case of any signier, quality is susceptible to a variety of
re-articulations that might structurally alter its meanings over time and space.
is book does not include many case studies of alternative and community media
(with the exception of one of the chapter 4 case studies). ere are more than sucient
examples to be found, of both their fascinating maximalist participatory practices and
also of the limits to these practices (see Bailey et al., 2007 for some of our own case
studies). e case study included here oers a very specic, but important, approach
by focusing not on how quality can work against participation, but how participatory
practices can enhance and even (co-)dene quality.
e small set of community media interviews shows how within these media
organizations the sacral quality concept becomes deconstructed, by showing its problematic
past and universalist claims, while at the same time deploying it by embedding it in the
participatory tradition of alternative and community media. Negotiated quality thus
becomes a transversal concept, which potentially aects all of the previously discussed
quality concepts, positioning the concept itself in a participatory-democratic debate. Of
course, at the same time, it is necessary to be prudent. Both democratic and negotiated
quality, just like any other concept that is embedded in a democratic-participatory logic,
remain vulnerable to shis in the (informal) power balances, requiring permanent
attention and care to protect the power equilibriums that feed them.
Notes
1. Schrøder does not focus exclusively on the ecstatic dimension of quality; he also discusses
ethical and aesthetical dimensions of quality, which refer (in my interpretation) to models of
social and aesthetic/artistic quality.
2. Within this eld of social policy and community development, Beck et al. (2001: 7) dene
social quality as “the extent to which citizens are able to participate in the social and economic
life of their communities under conditions which enhance their well-being and individual
potential”. ey distinguish four components of social quality, namely socio-economic
security, social cohesion, social inclusion and empowerment/autonomy. eir emphasis on
well-being and individual potential, considered to be socially benecial, creates the link to
my use of this concept, which aims to indicate the cluster of quality concepts that attribute
importance to cultural artefacts on the basis of their societal impact.
3. e organizations involved were Belga, RTBF Radio, VRT (Radio 1 and the Equal
Opportunities Department), BEL-RTL Radio, Sud Presse Group, Internationaal Perscentrum
Vlaanderen, Fédération des Télévisions Locales, Indymedia, Divazine, TV Brussel, Télévesdre,
No Télé, TV Limburg and Antenne Centre Télévision. e newspapers involved were Gazet
van Antwerpen, Het Nieuwsblad, La Libre Belgique, Le Soir Junior, Het Belang van Limburg, Le
Ligueur and Femmes d’Aujourd’hui.
4. e KBS subsidies were euros 197,950 (Dutch-language group) and euros 217,957 (French-
language group).
5. Keeping in mind Dyer’s (1984) dierentiation between types and stereotypes.
Keyword – Quality
347
6. As Manca’s (1989) concept of pluralist objectivity is considered too broad, it is renamed
pluralist neutrality.
7. See his PowerPoint presentation, 16Plus. An Interactive Site for (Young) Creative People, at
http://v1.ibbt.be/archive/ilabWS/ppt/16 plus.pdf.
8. Personal communication with Filip Faste and Sam Ickx on 13 September 2010.
9. http://www.vlaamsewetenschapsweek.be/.
10. Ledeberg is a small, densely populated working-class district in the north Belgian city of Ghent.
11. As Heritage (1984: 239) remarked, “e social world is a pervasively conversational one in
which an overwhelming proportion of the world’s business is conducted through the medium
of spoken interaction”.
12. It would be careless to claim that the nine lms do not refer to a structure because, of course,
everyday life is highly structured (see chapter 3). If we return to Felski’s (1999/2000: 18) seminal
denition of the everyday, we see clearly the importance of structure (as habit and repetition),
since everyday life is “grounded in three key facets: time, space and modality. e temporality of
the everyday […] is that of repetition, the spatial ordering of the everyday is anchored in a sense
of home and the characteristic mode of experiencing the everyday is that of habit”. Relating
everyday life to the specic social conditions of daily life under industrial capitalism, Lefebvre
(1971) also emphasizes the temporal and repetitive characteristics of everyday life.
ćFAQSPGFTTPSJOUFSWJFXFFJTIFBEPGBEFQBSUNFOUBMTFDSFUBSJBUJOUIF6OJWFSTJUZPG(IFOU
14. For this case study, Wim Hannot interviewed Filip Fastenaekels (new media team VRT and
16plus), Lode Nachtergaele (IBBT collaborator 16plus) and Tine Deboosere (VRT moderator
16plus). All interview and programme citations are translations from Dutch by Wim Hannot
and the author.
15. A 16th focus group discussion was not used in the analysis because of quality problems.
16. I want to thank Lynn Bernaerts, Leehana Bouchat, Isabel Chairez Alfaro, Annick De Pelsemaeker,
Zita De Pooter, Niki Desmaele, Kim Goethals, Elke Lostermans, Sarah Musschebroeck, Southida
Phongprasanesak, Bart Suykens, Laura van Eeckhout, Martine Vanaken, Jellina Vanderheijden,
Carmel Vandersmissen and Elvera Weusten for their valuable help; Wim Hannot for coordinating
their eorts; and Jo Pierson for his kind support for the project.
17. e een focus groups had the following age distribution: 10–19 years: 29 respondents;
20–29: 37; 30–39: ten; 40–49: nine; 50–59: thirteen; 60–69: eleven; 70–79: 14; and 80–89: eight. e
respondents had received the following types of education: no degree: one; lower education: twelve;
secondary education: 62; and higher education: 55 (polytechnic: seventeen; university: 24;
not specied: fourteen). Sixty-one of the respondents were male and 70 were female. ey live
in the north Belgian provinces of: Antwerpen: eleven; Henegouwen (south Belgium): one;
Limburg: sixteen (and Dutch Limburg (Netherlands): ten); Oost-Vlaanderen: een; Vlaams-
Brabant: 46 (and Brussel: twelve); and West-Vlaanderen: twenty. As 16plus is not very well known,
it is no surprise that only eighteen respondents were familiar with the website.
18. I again want to thank David De Wachter, Geert Dexters, Faiza Djait, Adil Fares, Paul Lashmana,
Sabine Lemache, Tine Peeters and Yolanda Van Dorsselaer, who conducted the interviews with
Michiel Hendryckx (Presenter Barometer), Isabel Dierckx (Kanakna Barometer Producer),
Wendel Goossens (VRT Producer Barometer), Noel Swinnen (Manager Kanakna), Frank
Symoens (Production Manager TV1 VRT) and Jean-Philip De Tender (Channel Adviser TV1
VRT). Also thanks to Maaika Santana for interviewing Eva Willems and Joke Blommaerts
(Barometer researchers).
19. Here I want to thank Ann Braeckman for her help with the analysis.
Media and Participation
348
20. I want to repeat my gratitude to Annemie Geudens, Anne Van Sande, Sarah Van Looy, Nele
Schoonacker, Bart Van Bael, Eline Ledent, Ting Ting Hu, Kristien Janssens, Katrijn Rosseels,
Jolijn Swinnen, Caroline Vanschoor, Sarah Roelandts, Sara Verbeeren and Claire De Smet for
their work on the Barometer project.
21. e fourteen focus groups had the following age distributions: 10–19 years: eleven
respondents; 20–29: 56; 30–39: seven; 40–49: thirteen; 50–59: 21; 60–69: ten; and 70–79: four.
Sixty-three of the respondents were male and 59 were female. ey live in the north Belgian
provinces of Antwerpen: 56; Limburg: three; Oost-Vlaanderen: ten; and Vlaams-Brabant: 51
(and Brussel: two). Only six respondents said they knew of Barometer.
22. e rst three codes refer to the sex (Female/Male), age and educational level (High/Low) of
the focus group respondents. e 16plusFG or BarometerFG code refers to the number of the
focus group.
23. Man Bites Dog (Man Bijt Hond) focuses on ordinary people’s small stories, In the Gloria (In
De Gloria) is a satirical programme that critiques human-interest programmes, Life As It Is
(Het Leven Zoals Het Is) deals with everyday life in specic social systems (e.g., a police station
or an airport), and Exit 9 (Afrit 9) and Jambers screened human-interest documentaries. In
the focus groups the respondents distinguished In the Gloria and Jambers from Barometer by
referring to the more respectful, less ironical and less spectacular nature of Barometer, but still
saw these programmes as one genre cluster.
24. In this context, the discourse of pedagogics is also used, but (in contrast to the 16plus case)
only to refer to the opportunity for the audience to learn from these self-representations.
25. As these media organizations dene themselves as community radio stations, this label will
be used here.
26. I want to thank Nadia Bellardi for her valuable help and support with this case study.
e following is an overview of the interviews with the community media sta:
Name Date Community radio City
Nicole Niedermüller 13 August 2008 Radio LoRa Zurich
Adriane Borger 14 August 2008 Radio LoRa Zurich
Simon Schaufelberger 14 August 2008 Radio LoRa Zurich
omas Kreiseder 7 September 2008 Radio Fro Linz
Alf Altendorf 5 December 2008 RadioFabrik Salzburg
Gerhard Kettler(*) 3 April 2009 Radio Orange Vienna
Pawel Kaminski(*) 3 April 2009 Radio Orange Vienna
Anu Poeyskoe 3 April 2009 Radio Orange Vienna
(*) Joint interview
Chapter 7
A Short Conclusion1
The idea driving this book is that participation is not a xed notion, but is
deeply embedded within our political realities and thus is the object of long-
lasting and intense ideological struggles. roughout the history of the study of
participation, there have been both laments about the slippery nature of this concept and
blatant attempts to privilege one specic meaning. In the rst case, participation is seen
as a problematic concept, overused and overstretched, and therefore useless for rigid
academic analysis. Alternatively, the complexities of participation are hidden behind the
one (preferably ‘ultimate’ – and assuming that a particular one is mentioned) denition
selected, resulting in the black-boxing of the participatory struggle.
I see no reason to complain since complexity and instability are phenomena that have
always been closely connected to humanity, and conceptual contingency should not be
regretted, but studied. e search for harmonious theoretical frameworks to capture
contemporary realities might have been an important fantasy of the homo academicus,
but also it might not do the analysis of these realities any favours. is does not mean
that conceptual contingency needs to be celebrated and radicalized; aer all, “a discourse
incapable of generating any xity of meaning is the discourse of the psychotic” (Laclau
and Moue, 1985: 112). It requires careful manoeuvring to reconcile the conceptual
contingency with the necessary xity that protects the concept of participation from
signifying anything and everything.
It is exactly the notion of struggle that provides the entry point into this complex,
dynamical process of signication. Participation, with its close connection to democracy
and the political, is articulated through this struggle and its many dierent loci.
Obviously, the locus of politics has proven important because the immanent tension
between participation and representation generates an almost permanent mettre en
discours of the concept of participation through discursive and material practices. e
history of the democratic revolution is characterized by an ongoing struggle to attempt
to increase levels of participation, (rst) through establishment and reconstruction of
voting systems, (later) through increased political activity (in the more strict sense)
outside institutionalized politics, and the increase in the interconnections between
institutionalized politics and these other societal realms (e.g., via new social movements
or other civil society structures).2
If we take a closer look at other societal elds, and transcend the realm of
institutionalized politics, participation has obtained a surprisingly prominent presence.
We can nd similar struggles over the intensity of participation within these other
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societal realms. is book looked at only three – but very signicant – societal elds
(outside democracy and institutionalized politics) that provide loci for the struggle over
participation. e spheres of spatial planning, development and the arts and museums,
which are not necessarily political in the strictest sense, but are very political in the broad
sense, show the importance and long-standing nature of these debates on participation.
Not only have they generated crucial theoretical and empirical insights – for instance,
Arnstein’s (1969) famous ladder of participation – they have shown how pervasive and
ever-present the debate about participation is in society. One surprising observation that
emerged during the research for this book was that the debates on participation have
mushroomed within the social: Whenever a structural power imbalance occurs, attempts
are organized to redress this imbalance by increasing the level of participation of the
disadvantaged actors. Of course, the debate on media participation is a good example
of the omnipresence of the concept of participation: In the second half of the twentieth
century and the beginning of the twenty-rst, participation in and through media has
been on the agenda in the debates on, and practices of, alternative and community
media, the world information and communication order, talk shows, reality television,
new media, and the several other areas not discussed in this book.
e overview of these struggles related to the intensity of participation illustrates that
the democratic revolution is not progressing linearly. It is not destined to eventually
reach ‘the’ end to (participatory) history. Democracy and participation are the objects
of a struggle that is unlikely ever to be settled, since more balanced power relations
are always at risk of new imbalances. It is exactly the existence of political struggles
and the idea – to use Lefort’s (1988) metaphor – that the seat of power is empty that
guarantees the impossibility that power struggles will reach a nal closure. Democracy
and participation are always processes ‘in the making’, and never established situations,
however eager we are to believe that democratic harmony can be established in the last
instance. is impossibility of nalizing the democratic project does not contradict the
possibility of hegemonic or post-political strategies that provide particular xations
within temporarily and spatially conditioned contexts. In such contexts, particular
articulations of participation can gain dominance; in other contexts, new articulations
might arise and replace those previously dominant.
e broad overview of participatory histories shows that, in the twentieth century the
1960s and 1970s provided the context for a wave of democratization, which translated
into the development of a multitude of participatory frameworks that cherished
relatively intense forms of participation. e 1980s, in contrast, was a period of backlash
when participation featured much less prominently on societal agendas. In the 1990s
and the beginning of the twenty-rst century, participation returned to the stage, rst
through the emphasis on interaction (e.g. Bourriaud’s (2006) relational aesthetics, and
the rst generation of new media discourses), and later in a more fully edged form
(e.g. the second generation of new media discourses related to web 2.0). Here, again,
I avoid any suggestion of a linear development, even across these decades and in their
A Short Conclusion
353
more minimalist or maximalist forms of participation. Dominant articulations, whether
they concern more minimalist or maximalist forms, provoke resistance and allow for
counter-hegemonic practices. An interesting case is Bruce Nauman and his “ongoing
eorts at positioning us in radically disorienting ways” (Jones, 2010: 152). In his artwork
from the 1960s – the heyday of participation – Nauman used participation to critique
participatory art, summated by his dictum “I mistrust audience participation” (Frieling,
2008a: 34). Another example from the eld of the arts is the work of Beuys, who
developed many of his artworks in the 1980s, an era not seen as being the most receptive
to more maximalist participatory ideologies. Within the eld of media, we can see that
in the Belgian case for instance, but also in countries such as Ireland, the UK, Sweden
and France (to mention but a few), there were many alternative and community radios
established in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which have continued to exist, (later) in
parallel with a series of maximalist participatory online initiatives such as Indymedia.
e Czechoslovak Kinoautomat, a historical participatory achievement of the 1960s, was
initially nanced within a totalitarian communist regime, and was brought to Prague
when its authoritarian communist regime had been reinstated (aer the Prague Spring)
and was cruelly ‘normalizing’ its oppressive grip on Czechoslovak society.
Of course, it is oen forgotten that there is even a history of (media) participation.
One of the reasons for writing an elaborate genealogy of the participation concept in
the elds of democracy, arts, development, spatial planning and media was to show
that the theorization and organization of participation within these (and other) elds is
not new, and has a very long history. is book embeds participation rmly within the
democratic revolution, a process that has been ongoing for at least 200 years. e choice
to look at the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-rst
in this sense is misleading because the history of participation goes back much further.
One interesting example is Ostertag’s (2006) history of social justice movement media;
another is Darling’s (2008) work on participation in early Spanish-American newspapers.
Although establishing the clear historical beginnings of participatory practices is a
dicult and problematic endeavour, it is nevertheless apparent that the history of
participation did not start with the popularization of the internet. However interesting
and relevant the struggle over participation in the eld of ‘new’ media has become in
the contemporary era, the attention that it has generated has detached this particular
struggle from the many others that have been waged in other eras, and are continuing to
be waged in other elds. For instance, articulating the alternative and community media
movement as Jenkins (2006: 231) does, as the “prehistory” of contemporary participatory
culture, might not be the best way to do justice to these organizations and to the history
of participation.
ese struggles over the articulation of participation and how intensively it should be
theorized, organized and practiced cannot be analysed as completely open and totally
uid. At some point participation simply stops being participation. Participation is a
oating signier that can take on many dierent forms. Potentially and theoretically it
Media and Participation
354
can shi in any possible direction. And in practice it eectively takes on a wide range of
forms because it is an object of political struggle. Simultaneously, because participation
is embedded within a particular context, there is a discursive area that it cannot leave
without becoming disconnected from the frameworks that support its meaning. Because
of its articulation in a specic social, political and cultural reality that generates discursive
rigidity and inertia, it cannot shi to any possible meaning, at least not immediately
or without serious dislocation. Where exactly limits of meaning are placed is always
debatable; it is in part an analytical choice, and in part a theoretical choice.
e theoretical strategy used here to clarify participation’s contemporary discursive
limits is negative-relationist. In a negative-relationist strategy, concepts are dened
through their juxtaposition to other concepts. In the case of participation, it is seen
as structurally dierent from interaction and access. Access and interaction remain
important conditions of possibility of participation, but they cannot be equated with
participation. e concept of access is based on presence, in many dierent forms: For
instance, presence in an organizational structure or a community, or presence within the
operational reach of media production technologies. Interaction is a second condition of
possibility, which emphasizes the social-communicative relationship that is established,
with other humans or objects. Although these relationships have a power dimension,
this dimension is not translated into a decision-making process. My argument here is
that, through this juxtaposition to access and interaction, participation becomes dened
as a political – in the broad meaning of the concept of the political – process where the
actors involved in decision-making processes are positioned towards each other through
power relationships that are (to an extent) egalitarian.
e qualication ‘to an extent’ reintroduces the notion of struggle because the political
struggle over participation is focused precisely on the equality and balanced nature
of these power relationships. Participation is dened through these negative logics –
distinguishing it from access and interaction – which demarcates the discursive eld of
action, where the struggle for dierent participatory intensities is being waged. is is
also where the distinction between minimalist and maximalist forms of participation
emerges (see Figure 1): While minimalist participation is characterized by the existence
of strong power imbalances between the actors (without participation being completely
annihilated or reduced to interaction or access), maximalist participation is characterized
by the equalization of power relations, approximating Pateman’s (1970) concept of full
participation.
Figure 1: A simplied version of the AIP model.
A Short Conclusion
355
It is important to emphasize here the dynamical nature of this approach towards
participation. It is crucial to recognize that structural power imbalances persist and have
been normalized in many societal elds. In practice this means that in many societal
elds, including, for instance, mainstream media, the logics of power and control create
privileged positions for people whose participation has become taken-for-granted, even
to the degree that use of the concept for their practice seems awkward. Within mainstream
media organizations (framed by their hierarchical structures) media professionals
participate in the production of media content. is implies also that the involvement of
other actors, who do not have this privileged position, is less taken-for-granted. Oen,
the concept of participation is used to denominate the practices of this latter group,
but this is an unnecessary reduction that shis to the background the decision-making
process where all are (or could be) involved. Also, through these logics, participation
sometimes becomes dened in a democratic-populist fashion, resulting in complete and
antagonistic reversal of these power relations. As participation deals with equalizing (not
reversing) power relations, the notion of agonism oers an intellectual solution to think
how the dierent actors can respectfully reconcile their positions in order to organize a
more balanced decision-making process that recognizes all involved.
e dynamical nature of participation is also related to its multi-sitedness.
Participation occurs (or can occur) in a variety of societal realms, which generate a
multitude of interconnections of discursive and material practices. Since my analysis
focuses on media participation, it becomes necessary to distinguish two basic sites of
participation, termed participation in the media and participation through the media.
is analytical dierence allows (at least part of) the attention to remain on the media
sphere in order to scrutinize how people enter into balanced or unbalanced decision-
making processes within this media sphere; simultaneously, it functions as a continuous
reminder that people participate in society through their presence, interaction and/or
participation in the media sphere (even when this participation process in the media
sphere is unbalanced).
At the same time, one should be careful to presuppose an automatic and positive
relationship between participation in the media and participation through the media.
Participation in the media does not mean that the voices of the participants will
automatically and intensely impact on all other societal spheres (including the sphere
of institutionalized politics). In complex and multi-voiced societies all voices – whether
they carry more or less weight – are added to the many choirs that can be heard on a
permanent basis, where a single voice can only rarely deafen the others. In this sense the
expectation that participation in the media is a privileged channel to allow for participation
in society can only be considered a naïve fantasy that ignores the complexity of the polis.
is limitation does not mean that participation in the media and participation through
the media are irrelevant, but care should be taken that an evolution to a more balanced
society is not smothered by the disappointment over participation not living up to
expectations that can never be met.
Media and Participation
356
Moreover, especially maximalist forms of participation have shown to be dicult to
implement and sustain. It is no coincidence that the many case studies in this book are
illustrative of the diculties of organizing these more maximalist forms of participatory
practices. For instance, the reception studies of Temptation Island, Barometer and
16plus show the rejection of participatory media products because of the logics of
disidentication or rejection of the material’s (aesthetic, professional or social) quality.
Participation oen takes place in settings not necessarily geared to these maximalist
versions. Or to frame it dierently (maximalist forms of) participation is (are) subjected
to a series of structuring elements, which might work in enabling ways, but also might
be limiting. As always particular combinations of the material and the discursive, these
structuring elements (co-)construct the participatory processes and their intensities,
through their intimate relationships with the workings of power.
e rst structuring element, (the participatory nature of) identities, has a strong
discursive component, but through the logics of performativity, also gains an equally
strong material component. e subject positions of media professionals, ordinary
participants and other actors3 can, and oen do, legitimize existing power dynamics
inherent in media production, by articulating media professionals as owners of this
process, or as rst movers. In some cases (e.g., Barometer and Temptation Island) where
this traditional identity of the media professional becomes post-political and shis
beyond contestation, it can severely disrupt the participatory process. Moreover, both
the Temptation Island and Barometer analyses show the tendency of mainstream media
professionals to cloak their management and to render their power positions invisible,
which is highly problematic from a participatory perspective. But more participatory
identities, as we have seen in projects such as Video Nation, and in alternative and
community media organizations, can also facilitate a more maximalist participatory
process.
e second structuring element relates to the nature of the organizational structures
and to the existence of participatory organizations. We should not forget that many
(mainstream) media organizations still function in capitalist logics, which impacts
strongly on their objectives, and oen works against a denition of media participation
as a primary organizational objective. e Jan Publiek, Barometer, 16plus, Temptation
Island and even Video Nation case studies show how dicult it is for mainstream media
to organize these more maximalist forms of participation, given their organizational
objectives and material structures. e Temptation Island case, especially, illustrates the
dangers of participation for its participants, who become docile bodies, subjected to a
variety of management strategies and to the disconnected gaze of the audience members,
reducing their positions to almost mere ordinariness (in a Lefebvrian sense).
But at the same time, a project such as Video Nation illustrates that more maximalist
projects can be realized within the remit of a mainstream media broadcaster (despite
the fact that the Video Nation project originated from one of the BBC’s subcultural
components). In contrast, the organizational structures of alternative and community
A Short Conclusion
357
media seem still to be better equipped to deal with the organization of participation,
although this may not always transpire in ways that celebratory alternative and
community media approaches (implicitly or explicitly) claim. e RadioSwap project
shows the attempts to overcome the localism and isolationalism that oen characterize
this sphere by constructing (originally in a participatory way) a translocal network
of alternative and community media producers, but the project also still faced many
diculties, which almost led to its demise.
ird, the discursivity and materiality of technology and its aordances also impact
on the participatory process. Media technologies are not neutral, in the sense that they
are embedded within a series of material and discursive practices that structure the use
of technology. For instance, radio has oen been used as a tool of distribution, despite
Brecht’s (2001) call for radio technology to be used as a tool for communication. e
hegemonic articulation of radio technology as tool of distribution apart, Brecht’s radio
theory shows that it is possible to develop dierent articulations of this technology. Later
radio practices – again within the eld of alternative and community radio – illustrate
that more participatory practices have been enabled through radio technology. ese
examples show that the aordances of technology should not be xed in an essentialist
way, but that there are many possible re-articulations of these aordances. Moreover,
the Kinoautomat case shows that – despite the diculties that were encountered – it
was possible to use lm technology to produce a participatory process in the movie
theatre, where participation is rarely allowed for. is does not mean that ‘anything goes’,
and that the material can be put to use in an innite number of ways. Technology’s
materiality allows many applications but also creates limits to its applicability. e
Kinoautomat case shows how the materiality of the lm technology had a severe impact
on the lm’s participatory intensity, and on its future success, together with, for instance,
the resistance of dominant lm audience cultures against interactive lm.
e fourth structuring element again has a strong discursive component, as it relates
to the dierent quality discourses. But again, if we take into consideration the practices
that are produced through these quality discourses, and that perform and produce them,
quality discourses also have material components. Moreover, these quality discourses
are multi-layered and sometimes contradictory, as quality can have several components
including aesthetic, audience-based, professional, technical, social and democratic
quality. ese quality discourses play a signicant role as they allow evaluation not
only of the participatory process that is embedded within the media content, but also
of the actual media content. rough this evolution (the perceived lack of) quality
becomes a condition of possibility, as negative evaluations (can) lead to rejection of the
participatory process and the input of participants. e cases of Temptation Island, 16plus
and Barometer show, sometimes in painful ways, that the perceived absence of quality
(in the reception of these programmes) works against them and their participants.
Quality is an object of hegemonic projects, where modernist articulations of aesthetic
and professional quality continue to play prominent roles. Media content that diverges
Media and Participation
358
too much from these conventions risks critique, ridicule and ultimately rejection. e
negative responses to strong violations of the dominant quality conventions show that
organizing participatory practices (and democratic-participatory quality) does not
suce to trigger the appreciation or acceptance of media content. At the same time,
these conventions are not absolutely rigid, and the dierent components of quality
interact with each other in driving the appreciation of audiences.
e group of four structuring elements identied here (see Figure 2) of course should
not be considered an exhaustive list, and many other elements (e.g., pleasure, aect,
engagement, trust, space, knowledge, media formats and genres, …) could be added.
Nevertheless, the absence of any claim as to their exhaustiveness is not to ignore the
importance of identity, organizational structure, technology and quality discourses in
their impact on the power relations that dene media participation. In their materiality
and discursivity, each of these components structurally can impede or facilitate
participatory processes, and shi them towards more minimalist or maximalist versions,
but they also can enter into complex interactions that in some cases work in opposition,
and in other cases enhance each other.
Finally, it is important to reiterate my position in this debate since any intervention
in the debates on participation implies an ideological positioning. I value the more
maximalist forms of participation, which I see as important ways to further democratize
our democracies and extend the ongoing democratic revolution. Establishing a more
developed balance between participation and control, within a broad-political and
multidirectional framework that takes account of societal heterogeneity and conict,
and which includes all societal spheres, is seen as an important instrument to create
a more just society. is does not mean that participation should be celebrated as
the ultimate solution to all societal problems, nor that participation should become
disconnected from all of our other democratic values and transformed into the ultimate
democratic fetish. is also does not imply that the right to participate (just like the
Figure 2: Four structuring elements of participation.
A Short Conclusion
359
right to communicate) should be transformed into an obligation to participate (or to
communicate). Participation should remain an invitation – permanently on oer and
embedded in balanced power relations – to those who want to have their voices heard.
Notes
1. Here I want to thank Léonardo Custodio for his feedback on this chapter.
2. Although this is not the place to engage with Putnam’s (1995) Bowling Alone argument, I would
contend that the process of individualization can be reconciled with the increased political role
of civil society.
3. A similar argument could be made for non-media-related subject positions, e.g. related to
gender, ethnicity, age, class, etc. Although notions of class are made present through the
analysis of the subject position of ordinary people, and gender featured prominently in the
Temptation Island case study, a more elaborate analysis could be developed to study the impact
of a broader range of subject positions.
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