Participatory Media Part 1: Resistance May Actually Be Futile
If you don’t know how to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into your business model, you aren’t prepared to compete, learn or innovate in the 21st century.
Dramatic, but true.
The impact that participatory media has had on society, culture, learning, politics and the marketplace makes the clarity of this fact astounding. Howard Rheingold makes this point saliently in the following video (July, 2009):
http://vlog.rheingold.com/index.php/site/video/21st-century-literacies/
A great deal of research has been focused on children and teens regarding computer-mediated interactions—either for capitalizing on technology-saturated youth or protecting them from media manipulations. This data can also help the rest of us 30+ folks understand the radical shifts we’re undergoing in our communications processes and guide us toward a smoother ride.
For example, the media and skills gap between underprivileged children and privileged children parallels a clear dynamic that’s occurring in the business world today. The story is familiar: children from affluent backgrounds seem to be developing new media skills on their own or with the help of siblings and parents using their home PCs. However, kids from less fortunate homes are falling behind in school as their affluent counterparts outpace them with knowledge gained from the Web and content produced with a computer.
In Confronting the Challenge of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (2006), Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, along with Clinton, Purushotma, Robison and Weigel, write:
More often than not, those youth who have developed the most comfort with the online world are the ones who dominate classroom use of computers, pushing aside less technically skilled classmates.
[Sorry folks: the link to this paper has vanished.]
Like affluent families investing in home PCs hoping to give their children a leg up, big business and new businesses run by recent, techno-savvy grads are investing in and finding lucrative advantages through the use of Web 2.0 technologies. Like less privileged children in the classroom, less wired businesses are losing ground to the advantages of their big business and new business counterparts with their experimental leeway and early-adopting budgets.
The less wired have held out from participating in new media technologies with the safe and cost-effective approach of letting others risk capital on experimental communications. However, now the results are in. Companies that have invested in participatory media are finding substantial value from their new communications practices. For those who have either remained on the sidelines or haven’t yet learned to mine the value of Web 2.0., an upgrade to 21st century communications standards—i.e. integrating participatory technologies—has become necessary.
According to McKinsey’s September 2009 survey results on How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0, companies are seeing long-term value in the following areas:
- Internal knowledge sharing
- Deepening relations with partners and outside talent/expertise
- Reducing communications, travel and operation costs
- Improving innovation, meaningful employee contribution, and employee satisfaction
- Deepening relations with potential customers
Some business leaders claim they have engaged participatory media but still haven’t seen a significant gain from their efforts. What these folks may have missed is that the long-term value of Web 2.0 technology arises from a foundational shift, rather than a surface-level shift. In order to obtain the very real benefits available from participatory media, business leaders must understand that they’re not just building a site with a blog to which they submit content now and again. Substantial long-term value comes from an upgrade to their internal and external communications processes. It’s a new way of doing business: networked business (See McKinsey on the “networked company,” ibid).
Many have blamed a lack of technological knowledge or access for resistance to participatory media. But little attention has been given to the fact that this communications upgrade requires 1) a difficult social context shift and 2) the unavoidable expense of time and effort. It’s these psychological and operational obstacles that have stopped many businesses from beginning, kept them from maintaining, and blocked them from succeeding with their participatory media projects. The next two sections of this four part series will shed light on some of the dynamics behind these obstacles. The fourth and final section will present recommendations for overcoming them.
