A Culture of Participation

We are in a burgeoning Age of Online Participation. Burgeoning only because let's face it, who knows what tomorrow will bring and how technology will influence the extent of and enthusiasm for participation.

But for now, consider this. If Facebook and its 500 million active users were a nation, it would be the third largest behind China and India. Every minute, 24 hours worth of NEW video is posted to YouTube. And then, consider pro-democracy movements of recent years that were influenced by technology.

In Burma (Myanmar) 2007, anti-government rallies flare like wildfires, encouraged by messages and photos posted by bloggers and other online users, using foreign based web hosts, thus complicating the military government's crackdown efforts. In Iran 2009, the integrity of the presidential election is questioned publicly via Twitter Tweets in both Farsi and English, calling the attention of a global audience to ongoing government acts of injustice.

In previous years, before Tweeters, bloggers, and YouTubers, the rest of the world might have carried on without noticing that somewhere in the world, innocent people were being forcibly removed from their homes and detained without due process.

But today, we are living in a Culture of Participation, a phrase I first heard from educator Steve Hargadon. It is now the norm to email, post and read reviews on Amazon before buying online, upload images to shared photo sites such as Flickr, read Wikipedia, not to mention participate in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Even elementary students are contributing to online conversations. At Edgewood, I surveyed students in grades 3-5 last spring. 53% say they have personal email accounts. 82% participate in a social networking site such as Moshi's Monsters, Club Penguin, YouTube, and even Facebook, which technically does not allow users under the age of 13.

Still, despite all the negative publicity geared towards the use of the Internet, these resources offer each online user a voice to be heard and shared. And in a time of increasing polarization in our country, where pundits and public officials are grabbing mics and air time to point fingers and incite fear, more than ever we need to hear voices of reason, compromise, and justice for all.