Popular culture, activism, and the double edge of participation & AI

These essays are meant as my own preparation and supplemental synopsis for my students.

In the digital age, the domain of popular culture is no longer a place where people passively consume media curated by large institutions. Instead, poplar culture has become a site of active participation -a space of cultural production, and platform for activism. for example, social median platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Twitter (now X), and Instagram allow ordinary users to generate, share, and circulate cultural texts that rival mainstream media in visibility and influence. At the same time, these platforms operate under algorithmic systems that profoundly shape which voices are amplified and which are silenced. In this week’s class we focus on 2 leading figures as our guide to unpack these phenomenon.

First, Henry Jenkins’s specifically his text, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture (2006) and secondly, Safiya Noble and her text, Algorithms of Oppression (2018) offer two vital frameworks for understanding this contemporary landscape. Jenkins highlights the potential of participatory culture as a democratic force, while Noble warns of the structural inequalities encoded into algorithmic systems that can undermine the emancipatory promise of digital participation.