One thought on Jenkins paper on Participatory culture

I learned of the recent Baltimore riots while watching TV in a doctor’s office.  They reported something about a riot and a baseball game.  I checked my iPhone to find out how a baseball game caused a full scale riot.  I found that it had less to do with baseball and more to do with police brutality.  I followed the story over the next couple weeks and changed my mind at least 2 times – as I learned more about the incident and read other’s opinions.  In the past, current events came from print newspapers.  Reader participation occurred if there was a published letter to the editor. There was limited print space and the letters to the editor were perhaps edited or censored by the editor.  We now have as Jenkins explains, new platform for empowerment.  The Jenkins article points to “Beta-reading as editorial feedback provided by online fan communities.”  Most online articles about the Baltimore riots had a space for comments made by people in the online community following this story.  This “affinity space” can be where informal learning takes place. To paraphrase one of the comments made by one of our colleagues (or peers) on my last blog post, Joe Lamere, “I fear that those who can get drawn into the web of one-sided opinions, and extremely hateful views.”  Some of the comments were valid (in my opinion), some were racist and not fact based.  As Jenkins states, in participatory culture we can use this affinity space to share information as peers – we must also empower students with the tools to evaluate the quality of information where informal learning takes place.