Browsing by Subject "participation"

This study aims to examine the political, economic, social and cultural characteristics of TED as alternative media. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a non-profit global conference media organizer that curates formatted brief speech called TED Talk and presents it in its offline conferences as well as publishes in online platform. TED has a global network that has spread rapidly through TEDx, a replication of TED-like conference by local communities worldwide. This social phenomenon makes TED as the contemporary illustration of the latest development of alternative media. Earlier literature studies on alternative media from Atton (2002) and Downing et al. (2001) focus on alternative media’s role as civil society that radically opposes the dominant power of the state, market and mainstream media. This civic role is important in providing alternative voices in democracy. Castells (2008) argues that the advancement of communication technology in globalization process has extended alternative media’s civic engagement to global level and empowered the community to higher access and participation in alternative media. Bailey et al. (2008) surmise these developments into four approaches that see alternative media: first, in serving the community; second, as an alternative to mainstream media; third, as part of civil society; and fourth, as a rhizome-like hybrid media. This study utilizes these literature references along with the four frameworks above to present holistic view in understanding TED as alternative media. By studying TED, I seek to expand these theoretical discussions by looking at how alternative media build sustainable civil society movement through dynamically incorporating dominant values in achieving its alternative media goals. This hybrid approach also affects alternative media’s ways in serving the community, promoting democracy and prompting social changes. The methodology of this study is ethnography. Since TED has two social settings of offline conference and online media platform, the ethnographic approach of this study is conducted in both setting. I gathered field data through participation and observation on TEDx Jakarta event and interview with the founders as well as online observation on TED.com, TED Talk videos, TED’s forums and third party documents on TED. I analyzed the data with the help of coding tools and discussed the findings within the framework of literature references. The key findings of this study show that TED’s political, economic, social and cultural characteristics are contingent, rhizome-like and transhegemonic. These characteristics project TED as alternative media that adopts dominant practices such as commercialism and controlled editorial system and maintaining elitism to reach paradoxically its civic goals of democratizing knowledge sharing and making social changes. TED also builds flexible partnership with the market and mainstream media and is not entirely counter-hegemonic. Although TED maintains a centralized authority in policy making, its relationship with its communities is based on rhizome-like network which strives towards semi-hierarchical access and participation, multiple replications by community and heterogeneity of its community across geographical and cultural borders. However this hybrid strategy of alternative media brings up threats of over-commercialization, elitism within the community, and ideological bias.

The study examines one case of students' experiences from the activity in a collaborative learning process in a networked learning environment, and explores whether or not the experiences explain the participation or lack of participation in the activities. As a research task the students' experiences in the database of the networked learning environment, participating in its construction, and the ways of working needed to build the database, were examined. To contrast the students' experiences, their actual participation in the building of the database was clarified. Based on actual participation, groups more active and more passive than average were separated, and their experiences were compared to each other. The research material was collected from the course Cognitive and Creative Processes, which was offered to studentsof the Department of Textile Teacher Education in University of Helsinki, and students of the Departments of Teacher Education Units giving textile education in Turku, Rauma and Savonlinna in the beginning of 2001. In this course, creativity was examined from a psychological and sosiocultural context with the aim of realizing a collaborative progressive inquiry process. The course was held in a network-based Future Learning Environment (Fle 2) except for the starting lecture and training the use of the learning environment. This study analyzed the learning diaries that the students had sent to the tutor once a week for four weeks, and the final thoughts written into the database of the learning environment. Content analysis was applied as the research method. The case was enriched from another point of view by examining the messages the students had written into the learning environment with the social network analysis. The theoretical base of the study looks at the research of computer-supported collaborative learning, the conceptions of learning as a process of participation and knowledge building, and the possibilities and limitations of network-based learning environments. The research results show, that both using the network-based learning environment and collaborative ways of studying were new to the students. The students were positively surprised by the feedback and support provided by the community. On the other hand, they also experienced problems with facelessness and managing the information in the learning environment. The active students seemed to be more ready for a progressive inquiry process. It can be seen from their attitudes and actions that they have strived to participate actively and invested into the process both from their own and the community's point of view. The more passive students reported their actions to get credits and they had a harder time of perceiving the thoughts presented in the net as common progression. When arranging similar courses in the future, attention should be paid to how to get the students to act in ways necessary for knowledge building, and different from more traditional ways of studying. The difficulties of students used to traditional studying methods to adapt to collaborative knowledge building were evident on the course Cognitive and Creative Processes.

The thesis at hand regards the form of performance called “professional wrestling”. A professional wrestling match is where two (or more) performers or wrestlers perform a bout with a predetermined outcome in and in the close proximity of a wrestling ring in front of a live audience. Thus, the performance is a part of a fictional combat sport in that the combatants work together in order to tell a story. This thesis concentrates on the fictionality of professional wrestling but also on the role of the live audience which is active and participatory. Lastly, professional wrestling is examined in the light of theories regarding participatory art. The primary research question of this thesis is the following: can professional wrestling realize the potentials of participatory art? Even though the primary goal of this thesis is not to offer an absolute explanation of the phenomenon of professional wrestling, it is a rather alien subject in aesthetics. Thus, the goals of chapters 1 and 2 are to explain the history of professional wrestling in the United States and to attempt to categorize it in the field of the arts. In chapter 3 professional wrestling is examined in the light of Kendall Walton’s theories on fiction formatted in his Mimesis as Make-believe (1992). The chapter states that professional wrestling presents a uniform fictional world. Chapter 3 concludes in the idea that professional wrestling has in fact historically and organically engulfed its audience as a fundamental element of the fictional world it presents. Chapter 4 is a summary of the main theories regarding participatory art, the main sources on this subject being Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells (2012) and Jacques Rancière’s The Emancipated Spectator (2011). According to Bishop’s definition, participatory art is such where people constitute the central artistic medium and material, in the manner of theater and performance. Bishop argues that the main motive of participatory art is a critique of spectacle and capitalism. According to Rancière, the ideal of participatory art is a “new theater”, where the audience’s role is to be an active and radical community audience, and even further, where the piece of art is a part of said community. The main thesis of chapter 4 is that the artworld fails to realize the ultimate goals of participatory art, for the artworld presupposes a certain power dynamic between the artist and the audience, and this dynamic leaves no room for a rancièrian “unpredictable subject”. Chapter 5 examines the role of the professional wrestling audience in the performance it is presented with. The chapter includes a thorough explanation on the participatory elements in professional wrestling and the significance of the audience regarding televised professional wrestling. The chapter especially concentrates on recent phenomena in the participation of the professional wrestling audience through case studies. The examples echo the notion that the professional wrestling audience has power that is the product of the fact that the professional wrestling audience is an element of a fictional world. Finally, chapter 5 examines professional wrestling through the ideals of participatory art formatted by Bishop and Rancière. The thesis concludes in the notion that even though professional wrestling fails to realize several ideals of participatory art, it has the potential to become an example of a rancièrian new theater. This is because unlike in participatory art where the dynamic between the artist and the audience is dictated by auxiliary contracts, in professional wrestling the audience has power which is a natural part of the fictional world presented to it. At times the professional wrestling audience can become an active and radical community audience, which is the ideal of participatory art according to Rancière. Thus, participatory art may have things to learn from professional wrestling.