By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics
Over the past few decades, we’ve seen dramatic increases in grassroots access to the means of cultural production and circulation and improvements to the infrastructure required for collective action (Jenkins, Ford, and Green, 2013). This participatory turn in culture has been mirrored by shifts in the ways citizens are collectively and individually exerting power within the political process. Young men and women who learned how to use their cameras recording skateboarding videos, to mashup images to make cute cat pictures, to edit making fan videos, are now turning their skills towards political speech and grassroots mobilization. These “creative activists” are often speaking to each other through images borrowed from commercial entertainment but remixed to communicate their own messages; they are often deploying social media tools and platforms, sometimes in ways that challenge corporate interests; and they are forging communities through acts of media circulation. The conclusion of Henry Jenkins’s 2006 book, Convergence Culture, proposed that a networked society would soon be applying what they learned through play within participatory culture towards more purposeful realms, such as education, religion, and politics. The "By Any Media Necessary" book explores new forms of political activities and identities that have emerged from the practices of participatory culture and are impacting how American youth think of their civic identities.
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