Using Your Participatory POWER!

Hey folks, welcome back to my blog post! This week, I'm going to go over the importance of participation in the digital world and how you can use it to improve your experience within digital spaces. For this week's blog, we're going to be using chapters 3 & 4 of Rheingold's Net Smart as well as Dr.Tucker Steffen's Social networks to virtual communities lecture presentation. 

The Importance of Participatory Culture & Power

Think of the last time you had the power to influence and even change your surroundings. When you clean up your room, save up money for a car, or even go vote, you(ideally) have the power to change your surroundings, for better or worse. In the same way, participating in the digital world allows you to exercise that ability to change your surroundings on a larger scale. When you participate in the digital world, you're exercising your power in the way you interact with others, the communities within a digital space, and those who create cultural media for an audience. Participatory Culture influences cultural changes and growth in both the physical and digital world due to the collaborative efforts of hundreds of people. 

In a world of digitally connected audiences, online engagement - if you know how to do it - can equate to actual power(Rheingold, 2010). One of the ways you can grow your online engagement is by joining and participating in digital communities. Digital communities are just about everywhere on the web, but it's important to find what groups interest you the most, rather than just joining one at random.

What's a Digital Community?

Digital communities are a collection of people who most likely won’t see each other in person, but who share ideas through the digital web, who have a flexible acquaintanceship, and who share specific passions(Steffen, 2023). Finding an online community of people who share the same interests as you can encourage you to interact more with those people. For me, I found a great online community on Discord, where I can play and talk about games, draw and share art, and write stories for people to read. Of course, the road you take is going to be completely different! As you navigate through a digital community, the level of your engagement might increase; you might find yourself managing projects or events with groups of other like-minded individuals. 

Your Audience

As you network and build relationships within a digital community, you might interact and engage with an audience of people who are influenced by your actions. In any digital community, learning how to appeal to this audience is necessary for building trust within a community. For example, I run the popular RPG Dungeons and Dragons in my digital community, but I had to collaborate with my players to pick a time and date that would work for everyone. Their feedback as the players, or the audience, helped me tailor and improve the game to their liking. As we come to the end of this week's blog post, what are the digital communities you're a part of, and in what ways can you increase your participation within them?

See you next week!

-MH

Works Cited:

Steffen, T. (n.d.-a). Social networks to virtual communities lecture presentation... Lecture. Retrieved May 20, 2023

Rheingold, H. (2012). Net Smart: How to Thrive Online.