Only access. The end of participatory culture?

Only access. The end of participatory culture? - Radosław Bomba, Sławomir Czarnecki, Grzegorz D. Stunża

Culture 2.0: an un/finished project - Mirosław Filiciak, Alek Tarkowski

The article is devoted to the notion of „culture 2.0”, treated as a concept describing new forms of participation in culture and as an element of a debate about the shape of cultural policy in the new technological reality. The text presents changes in the notion and the related project, especially in terms of verifying the utopian vision of democratization of cultural output. This change of emphasis and the „problems” with culture 2.0 prove to be an element of a shift in the way of thinking about the internet and a part of debates within the field of media studies regarding e.g. the criticism of the „mediocentric” approach. Most importantly, however, culture 2.0 became a part of the increasingly internalized perspective on culture in cultural institutions, which views it as a tool of social inclusion. The authors provide examples of this shift, pointing out that it fits in a broader context of a discussion about the Polish modernization and the role played by the state and citizens in this process.

Medialab initiatives in Poland. Towards new cultural institutions – research report - Andrzej Klimczuk

How the system of media education in Poland can use medialabs - Karol Piekarski

Medialabs operating in Poland have assumed a clearly educational role as the „engines of a new literacy” in the digital culture. The same can be said about Medialab Katowice, though its founders have research plans as well. Project work and quick prototyping methods allow medialab participants exploring the urban tissue and creating new narratives for the city. Experience shows that medialabs will not replace all other forms of media education, but they can become an efficient tool of supplementing skills regarding team work and implementing interdisciplinary projects.

Only access? Only circulation? Artistic activity online - Natalia Brylowska

The article presents artists’ strategies regarding the internet reality. Once again,it discusses such phenomena connected with participatory culture as: democratization of art, blurring the lines between the artist and the public, and new art contexts, attempting to find out what really changes in the contemporary Art World. By looking at the online activity of artists and audiences, it emphasizes the value of the circulation of art as a dialogue essential to its existence.

Comics as a participatory medium - Tomasz Żaglewski

Discussions about the current media often cite the thesis that the „novelty” of the current technologies lies in their ability to offer recipients a unique experience. The recurrent buzzwords used to describe these „new media”, such as interactivity, hypertextuality or immersivity, lead to the conclusion that an innovative category of media messages which engage recipients in a multi- and transmedial way, has really existed only for a dozen or so years. However, when we consider more classic media, it quickly becomes clear that some of the solutions commonly ascribed to their digital counterpart are in fact only the next stages in the evolution of the traditional, analogue media which exhibit very modern and „new” properties. This study presents an analysis of comics, which – despite being commonly included in the realm of the „old” media – feature a number of solutions that definitely make it an interactive and hipertextual medium.

Actors-networks in hacker communities. A report form an ethnographic study - Marcin Zaród

Media competence as cultural competence. Cultural studies and media education - Marta Kosińska

The article poses a question about the status of media education as cultural education in the context of the growing role of new media populisms. It analyses the methods of concept operationalisation in the discourse of new media as media of access and socialization typical of cultural studies. A special emphasis is put on the concept of participation in culture – its meaning is reconstructed as lying between cultural populism and egalitarianism. The text presents the discourse of convergence culture as specific to approaches within the cultural populism perspective. It points to the origins of viewing media as a socialisation tool in the concepts of the culture of resistance, especially in cultural studies of subcultures from the 1970s. They are portrayed as the source of the encoding-decoding model in the media reception theory and as the process of its simplification and reduction to the concept of resistance through consumerism. The article discusses the consequences of threating this theory as an assumption instead of a conclusion from empirical analyses. It also signals the need to confront such concepts as media competence, cultural competence and participation in culture in the field of cultural studies with empirical data from exploratory ethnographic research conducted by the author, regarding historical, cultural and social factors which impact the development of media and cultural competences of a generation of Polish students born in the 1990s.

Permits culture vs. accessibility culture. Between private and public business - Joanna Kocemba

The article deals with the topic of restrictions regarding copyrights, created to neutralize the conflict between private and public business. The text discusses two situations from August 2015, important in the context of social reception of the law: a ban on performing a play called Taren bade: Jeżycjada (directed by W. Szczawińska), issued by the court at the request of Małgorzata Musierowicz, and a ban on using Tadeusz Kantor notes in the Chorea Theatre, issued by his heiress, Dorota Krakowska. The author emphasizes that we are living in a culture of bureaucracy, which means that real power is vested in the person who issues permits. She also concludes that a culture of permits creates favourable conditions for building a hierarchical society.

Free access or web quarantine? Content selection online in the face of information noise and the rule of pseudo-authorities - Wojciech Sitek

Nearly every case of historic media democratization led to their commercialization and – in keeping with the level of a model recipient – averaging the content, resulting in an intellectual regress. The article discusses the problem of the prosumer web 2.0 internet, which distanced itelf from its meritocratic foundations. The cyberspace, plagued by pathological democratization, has brought all online disputes to the same level, regardless of their credibility and constructiveness. The dawn of a culture of prosumers has initiated the process of the devaluation of the internet, where a substantive comment is less noticeable than a pointless scream of an ignoramus. The article is about the specific nature of the current WWW, which does not conduct the necessary selection of information. The expansion of „antiscience” means that important knowledge is located on the peripheries of the internet in invisible enclaves of professionalism and erudition, which are remote and difficult to access. The present work is a form of expressing concern for the positive influence of the internet in the coming decades. The process of constructing an „information society”, opposing the ignorant and amateurish disinformation community, should be initiated by qualified elites of the virtual world, who combine technical skills with an understanding of how to use internet content in a responsible manner. The determination to popularize the internet will make sense only when the fields which require specialist knowledge are reclaimed from the „ambassadors” of unreliable materials and instigators of ideological disputes.

Geographical accessibility of culture and exclusion from participation in institutional culture - Tomasz Kukołowicz, Tomasz Żółtak

The article discusses the relationship between the lack of participation in culture and the accessibility of culture in Poland. Firstly, the authors justify the need to study the lack of participation in institutional culture using quantitative methods. Next, they present the origins of the concept of accessibility of culture in cultural policies in various places in the world. They define three dimensions of accessibility: a geographic, social and individual one. Further the article features an analysis of the relationship between the lack of participation in culture and the accessibility of culture based on surveys from the period 2012–2014. A rigorous analysis leads to the conclusion that geographic diversity in accessibility of cultures is highly relevant only for groups at the risk of exclusion.