10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17096
application/pdf
2038-3460
17096
1
en
Claudio Coletta
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production, Amsterdam University Press, 2011
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
4
Book Reviews
2013-07-12
2023-06-02
2013-07-12
2023-07-17
185-187
TS
Claudio Coletta
2013/07/12
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17096
185
University of Trento
2038-3460
1
en
187
Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production, Amsterdam University Press, 2011
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17096/16032
4
Book Review                                                             185
Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production
Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2011, pp. 250
!
Claudio Coletta University of Trento
   !
    The rhetoric of community and user empowerment celebrated by
popular discourse on social media tends to look at technology as a neutral
means without questioning the social, organizational and design processes
that constitute the architecture of participation. In addition, despite the
pervasive presence of technical devices and web 2.0 platforms in social
relations, many media scholars seem to underestimate the performative
role of technology in shaping participative and convergent aspects of cul-
ture and society.
    Bastard Culture! by Mirko Tobias Schäfer tackles this shortcoming in
social theory and research, exploring the role of user participation in cul-
tural production dynamics related to new media. Since the title, the book
stresses the heterogeneous nature of participatory culture that mingles
social, political, technical engagement and connects hacking practices,
leisure and business models.
    Schäfer’s work developed within the context of Dutch media scholars
community - as based at the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam
and at the Department for Media and Culture Studies, University of
Utrecht - that since the 1990s investigated and reflected into the critical
aspects of net cultures. The book, distributed with Creative Commons
License, belongs to the series “MediaMatters”, on “current debates about
media technology and practices”. The style is witty and fluent, the de-
tailed notes enrich and extend the empirical analysis, although they can
require to break the flow of reading. The two appendixes represent a use-
ful resource both for digital media scholars and people unfamiliar with
hacking and digital vocabulary.
    The volume starts outlining the theoretical framework and describing
the analytical components of the “hybrid 'dispositif' of participation”.
Schäfer’s approach combines Media Studies and Science & Technology
Studies, especially drawing on Actor-Network Theory. The author intro-
duces the concept of socio-technical ecosystem that acts as a lens to ex-
plore and disassemble the black-box of participation. The purpose is to
rethink participatory culture as built upon discourses, social uses and
technologies that simultaneously involve technical affordances, appropri-
ation and design processes.
    The subsequent chapters analyze case studies which concern global
corporations, emphasizing the relations between user communities, tech-
nological devices and business models. Participation processes are stud-
ied across the three domains of construction, accumulation and archiving
that are constituted respectively by creative, re-mix and structural prac-
186                                                          Tecnoscienza - 4(1)

tices. Here the author follows the action of different socio-technical eco-
systems involving game consoles and consumer electronic products,
where user media practices are observed as an extension of culture indus-
tries. In fact, when culture industries shift from content creators to plat-
form providers, users start populating such platform creating, modifying,
organizing cultural products. Thus, participation takes place within a
nebula of practices often interconnected although not necessarily compli-
ant with corporate and legal framework: on the one hand, such practices
are challenged by the global, emancipatory and conversational promise of
computer, software and the Internet; on the other, they cope and struggle
with the limitations, commodification and black-boxing of digital devices
and infrastructures. As a result, spheres of production and consumption,
expert and lay knowledge, professionals and amateurs, users and design-
ers, interact and overlap generating new design solutions, grey markets,
platforms for sharing knowledge, software and how-tos. The case of the
popular Microsoft game console xBox as well as the case of AIBO, the
dog-robot toy produced by Sony, are particularly emblematic of the com-
plex entanglement of organized team of hackers, user communities, busi-
ness strategies enacted by participatory media practices: whether devices
are hacked in order to play cracked or homebrew software; whether
hackers are motivated by playfulness, commercial interests or activism;
whether corporate companies repress or allow specific forms of appropri-
ation, the study shows how users are involved as agent of technological
change and innovation that affect social relations, while companies en-
gage in, learn from, and benefit of users' tinkering for further product
development.
    Having analyzed cases where participation is explicit, namely enacted
by intrinsically or extrinsically motivated practices, the study uncovers
implicit aspects where participation is delegated to technological devices,
automated by information system design, embedded in software and Web
2.0 platforms. Here information management and software design chan-
nel media practices, thriving on massive participation and allowing specif-
ic participation regimes. Focusing on common media practices such as
file sharing, social networking and tagging contents, the analysis sheds
light on the agency of system wide infrastructures and Application Pro-
gramming Interfaces (APIs) that track and learn from user generated da-
ta. Meta-information added by a plurality of users is thus organized to
improve management of information retrieval and produce tailored ad-
vertising.
    Going on with the book, the reader may notice that the more familiar
media practices appear, the more design information management works
in a complex way respect to media practices, rising relevant issues of pri-
vacy, exploitation and control. Thus, aside the explicit production and
mashup of creative content, from the culture industries’ point of view
“the most profitable user generated content is data” (p. 107). However,
the book rejects the “Orwellian” vision towards participatory culture as
Book Review                                                               187
well as the romanticized version of homebrew culture production. Rather,
participatory culture emerges from the study as a contested landscape, an
open battlefield where relations between company and consumers, lay
users and professional designers, socio-political mindset, policy frame-
work and technological engagement collide and are continuously recon-
figured.
    The author identifies different strategies at stake by culture industries.
Confrontation strategies, mostly adopted by music industry, criminalize
user production in the desperate attempt to defend old business models
through copyright enforcement, aggressive campaigns and design af-
fordances such as Digital Right Management. In a subtler manner, strate-
gies of “implementation” aim to frame media practices into graphic inter-
faces as well as end user licenses and terms of use do, in order to control
user participation: they are adopted – among others – by film producers
and popular social network providers as well as by web storage reposito-
ries. Finally, the integration strategies thrive on open participation and
are adopted by socio-technical ecosystems such as Wikipedia, employing
transparent and responsible policies and information design in order to
foster user participation.
    Bastard culture! remarkably unfolds the complexity of popular dis-
course and media practices, producing a genealogy of participatory cul-
ture as taking place in multiple socio-technical ecosystems. The author
weaves together history of computing, business strategies, common media
practices and hacking practices in a well conceived account that insists in
the controversial and ambiguous nature of participation. He offers an
original contribution unfolding the dark side of implicit participation and
taking symmetrically into account both explicit and implicit participation
as blurred and intertwined components of participatory culture. Perhaps,
the emphasis on user participation and design shades the aspects related
to the organization of work inside global companies themselves, where
practices of appropriation and design processes seem as controversial and
relevant as those occurring in the wild markets.
    To conclude, this fascinating book helps to critically reflect on the ef-
fective emancipatory potential of new media as well as on the role of de-
sign, technical affordances and appropriation in shaping collective action
and in technological change. Within the battlefield of participatory cul-
ture, the book clearly advocates for rethinking corporate policies and for
the importance of appropriation and participation in media practices, to
hold the public debate and achieve social awareness of the political di-
mension of technology.
!
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