Participatory Media: Lessons from the 1960s

In trying to puzzle through the relationship of different cultural forms to social and political contexts, I find myself repeatedly returning to the work of Raymond Williams. In Marxism and Literature, Williams famously characterizes “forms and conventions in art and literature as inalienable elements of a social material process: not by derivation from other social forms . . . but as social formation of a specific kind which may in turn be seen as the articulation (often the only fully available articulation) of structures of feeling which as living processes are much more widely experienced” (133). In his habitually dense and evocative way, Williams here attributes to cultural forms an organic and intrinsic connection with living processes—everyday life. As to method, he suggests that cultural critics must try to trace the structures of feeling articulated in these material forms while bearing in mind that there is a non-determinative relationship between social forms, aesthetic forms, and structures of feeling. Articulations specific to one particular historical moment do not last indefinitely; social and aesthetic forms are ultimately independent and may shift alignments over time.

In my work on the history of reality-based forms such as documentary, I have been intrigued by the way in which the concept of participatory media emerges as one of the key social and aesthetic formations of the 1960s’ “structure of feeling.” It can be said to be, perhaps, a representative semantic figure of the decade. No doubt this is in part a result of new technologies, but I would argue that in that period the human aspect of “communication”—another buzzword of the era—tended to take rhetorical precedence over the technological. As I will argue in what follows, this is a difference that makes a difference. In less than half a century, participation has become commodified and fetishized in the form of digital interactivity. Put simply, to have your hands on some equipment is often treated as more significant than what you plan to do with it. The result can be clichéd forms, anti-aesthetics, and, one might argue, an impoverished democratic imaginary as well. (For instance, participation on YouTube tends to take one of two forms: mash-ups of glossy corporate culture or hand-held video logs with low production value). What might it mean to return to the examples of the 1960s in order to look again at the concept of participation at a moment before the hegemony of commodified communication (what Jodi Dean calls “communicative capitalism” [2]) that we witness in today’s contemporary culture? In this brief offering, I reflect on three examples from the 1960s of media that involved ordinary people and their lives and that were meant to provoke social and political reflection. I use these texts to try to tease apart what is particular to the term “participatory media” that distinguishes it from other related ideas.

Over the years, the term “participatory media” has been heard in conjunction with a series of cognate ideas, including activist media, citizen journalism, witness video, community video, and amateur media. Each of these terms has a distinctive historical and sometimes political valence. The upshot of all of these ideas, however, is the implication that the media—whether they are characterized as mainstream, dominant, or industrial—are run by elites to serve the agendas of large corporations and therefore cannot be used to convey truly, radically democratic purposes. Even public media have long been tarred by their connections to sponsors, both corporate and state, as unable truly to represent the people in whose name they were established and are, in theory at least, maintained.

Leaving aside the fact that these criticisms may well be accurate, they seem to leave little rhetorical power to fight for public media institutions on different terms. Whether or not we are content to toss the fate of democratic communication in with desktop technologies is a question that cannot be answered here. But the current configuration of digital “participation” is a disappointing one. The Internet displays a vast outpouring of amateur snippets, the equivalent of public photo albums, and the proliferation of performative self-surveillance, very little...