UCLA

This dissertation comprises three case studies of audience participation in media, addressing in turn Web 2.0, fan culture, and video games. The overarching theoretical framework highlights the dynamics between participation ‘from above’ and ‘from below,’ emphasizing the fact that participation is managed, controlled, and commodified on the one hand, and holds the potential for autonomy, creativity, and resistance on the other. This framework represents a synthesis of existing approaches to the study of audiences, bridging accounts of ‘participatory culture’ and ‘audience autonomy’ with those emphasizing the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ and the ‘social factory.’ The first constituent chapter is a study of the ideology and practice of Web 2.0 platforms, centering on a thematic analysis of managerial literature that finds such platforms to be extensions of what Boltanski and Chiapello term the ‘new,’ ‘participatory’ spirit of capitalism. The second chapter explores the contestation that arises within brand communities between managers and consumers; more specifically, it takes up the case of professional wrestling fan culture, developing a historical analysis of how company efforts to arouse and contain fan participation within sanctioned parameters clash with fan efforts to organize via online and offline communities to alter the direction of wrestling storylines. The final chapter draws upon contemporaneous newspaper articles and interviews with gamers to understand the earliest American home video games as a historical milestone in the emergence of participatory media consumption. The conclusion considers each case study in light of the framework of participation from above and below, ultimately connecting this discussion to the problem of structure and agency in social theory.