Participatory culture is a community structure where users, acting as "prosumers," reach a peak in content creation, enabling them to easily and quickly produce and consume content. The concept refers to the involvement of users, viewers, consumers, fan bases, and supporters in the cultural creation process by creating content on social media platforms. The emergence of this form of culture has been facilitated by the participatory information sharing, interaction, and collaboration opportunities provided by Web 2.0 technologies. Participatory culture is also considered a digitalized form of folk culture, allowing users to express themselves on free platforms and receive instant feedback while demonstrating their creativity.
Its Formation Process and Its Relationship with New Media
Social media platforms play a role in establishing participatory culture by providing a means for the rapid and easy distribution of information and visualization. According to Henry Jenkins, the key element that makes this culture pervasive is "prosumers," who assume the roles of both producer and consumer. These users contribute to the formation of culture by finding opportunities to pursue their interests through social media.
One of the key mechanisms in the formation of participatory culture is crowdsourcing; this term is based on the idea that the "majority" is powerful and has great potential, fostering connections among participants willing to work collaboratively toward a common goal. These prosumers, who play an active role in the rapid dissemination of content, also have the potential to become commodities of consumption activities.
Application Areas and Digital Mapping Examples
Participatory culture has spread across a wide range of fields, from photography and marketing to science and the nonprofit sector (especially digital journalism and humanitarian projects). Digital maps have evolved beyond simply being visual representations of space into multimedia tools that incorporate diverse media types such as photography, video, and text, in which users act as "prosumers." This characteristic has made digital maps a new way to participate in social life.
Digital mapping activities differ between commercial platforms (Google Maps) and crowdsourcing platforms (OpenStreetMap (OSM). On commercial platforms, users are not only unpaid content producers with an indirect relationship to commercial networks, but also positioned as individuals targeted by companies in digital surveillance processes. In contrast, volunteer users on crowdsourcing platforms typically engage in public interest mapping activities.
Critical Approaches and Risks
Participatory culture is also critically evaluated as the digitalized version of the colonial system due to its ability to affect large numbers of people in a short period of time. The uncontrolled and amateurish use of "free labor," as Karl Marx termed it, and the blurring of the boundaries between work and leisure have raised concerns about its social impact. Particularly on commercial platforms, the information and added value provided voluntarily by users generates financial gain for platform-owning companies, transforming user information into a commodity. Privacy violations and surveillance on social media platforms constitute one of the most controversial topics of participatory culture. These major platforms track, analyze, and store every online activity, behavior, and personal data of users, marketing it to their advertising clients. Companies legitimize these violations by presenting the option to create content and choose privacy settings as the participants' own choice.
