Participation and Collaboration in the New Media

The participation of users is one of the most important issues both in the theoretical and empirical academic studies related to the new media. The widespread notion of participatory culture defined by Henry Jenkins, a leading scholar of media studies, proved to be extensively relevant for the cultural studies’ approach as well. Through the concept of participation elaborated by these scholars new opportunities are provided to comprehensively conceptualize and interpret recent roles, activities, and several forms of cultural production regarding the new media. The notion of “new media” may suggest an entirely new system without any antecedent as well as being entirely independent of “old media”, however, there have already been many antecedents present of the participatory culture in the age of classical print and electronic media. Through the review of the related media theories and models this study will attempt to follow the transformations of the evaluations of audience roles. Furthermore, the paper will comprehensively discuss the viewpoint and interests of the school that is labelled as the forerunner of the participatory paradigm. Investigations of the antecedents can be based on various interpretations of media studies of the period, but it is important to emphasize that the changing models do not only reflect different approaches of various schools in media studies, but also the development of media technology as well as the continuous shift of media usage.