Is Participatory Culture in The Future For eBay?
I attended Beyond Broadcast at MIT yesterday. The conference theme was “From Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy.” Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT and author of “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide,” gave an outstanding keynote presentation and posed the question, what does democracy look like in the 21st century?
Jenkins discussed “bottom up” power, using an example of a teenager who created content in his bedroom that got national and international attention. I came away from the conference with ideas of how individuals, working alone and in groups, can be agents of change in politics using web tools such as videos on Youtube, pages on MySpace, meeting organizers like MeetUp.
The eBay/online-auction community has a long history of activism. People have used discussion forums and online groups, have created associations and trade groups and have attempted to create cooperatives. Companies in the industry have responded, attending and sponsoring member-organized events and sometimes changing policies in response to overwhelming feedback from users.
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