CULTURES OF PARTICIPATION IN THE NEW MEDIA AS A PHENOMENON OF MODERN CULTURAL CREATION

Abstract

The article is devoted to the cultures of participation, highlighting their place in the processes of modern cultural creation. It is shown that the development of information technologies and the emergence of new media have radically changed the methods of cultural production. It is determined that the culture of participation in a broad sense means a set of cultural practices aimed at interaction with the subject for the joint creation of something new, and if the concept is used in the plural as “cultures of participation”, then we are talking about various communities of fans that are united regarding attachment to certain products of mass culture operating in the space of new media. Members of participatory cultures create new cultural products thematically related to a certain plot of a popular mass culture product. It has been studied that the culture of participation is one of the characteristics of digital culture, thanks to which the boundary between the creator and the consumer is blurred. It is found that the concept of “culture of participation” in Anglo-American Fan Studies is being replaced by the concept of “subculture”, which was associated with youth communities, including fans, in the last century. It is shown that the culture of complicity involves the involvement of a person who was previously only a consumer of cultural and social meanings, to the state of a producer, which corresponds to the concept of “prosumerism”. Common and distinctive features of cultures of participation with prosumers and media prosumers are given. It has been established that the common feature of media prosumers with cultures of participation is that both communities function in the media environment, the difference is that the concept of “culture of participation” is broader in its content, because it involves consumer activity not only in communications with mass media, but creative interaction with all mass culture products. The main features of cultures of participation are formulated: they appear in the era of new media, creatively rethink the products of cultural industries, present the space of amateur production, have a collective nature of activity, engage in creativity for their own development and satisfaction.