From Counter-Power to Counter-Pepe: The Vagaries of Participatory Epistemology in a Digital Age

Abstract

This article reconstructs the evolution of societal and journalistic meta-discourse about the participation of ordinary citizens in the news production process. We do so through a genealogy of what we call “participatory epistemology”, defined here as a form of journalistic knowledge in which professional expertise is modified through public interaction. It is our argument that the notion of “citizen participation in news process” has not simply functioned as a normative concept but has rather carried with it a particular understanding of what journalists could reasonably know, and how their knowledge could be enhanced by engaging with the public in order to produce journalistic work. By examining four key moments in the evolution of participatory epistemology, as well as the discursive webs that have surrounded these moments, we aim to demonstrate some of the factors which led a cherished and utopian concept to become a dark and dystopian one. In this, we supplement the work of Quandt (2018) and add some historical flesh to the conceptual arguments of his article on “dark participation”.

News and Participation through and beyond Proprietary Platforms in an Age of Social Media

“…Participatory journalism has been defined and approached as a form of journalism where a specific actor, such as legacy news media (or other established institutions of journalism), open up their organization, their news work and their proprietary platforms to the public for them participate in. More generally, Anderson and Reevers (2018) discuss that the epistemology of news participation concerns how journalistic knowledge emerges on the basis of both pro-fessional expertise and public interaction (i.e., participation). A key contribution of theirs involves turning to the key epistemological question of how journalists know what they know, then moving forward with the idea that their knowledge could improve if they were to get involved with a participatory public.…”

The Midlife Crisis of the Network Society

“…(p. 42). Participation and participatory journalism are words that scratch the surface of the myriad conceptions of what it means to shift the modes and terms of engagement, as Anderson and Revers (2018) discuss here, as they try to unravel a "participatory epistemology" to describe "journalistic knowledge in which professional expertise is modified through public interaction" (p. 26). The hybridity of journalism today recalls some sort of mutant mix of journalist plus something else, or what we think of as a standard news outlet plus some other, not always desirable enhancement, as Ruotsalainen and Villi (2018) discuss.…”

“…One cannot help but think of a Hollywood X-man battle between the "good" half-journalists, half-Frog. To carry this superhero metaphor further, Pepe-the-Frog might have once been a good mutant participatory journalism leader but became, due to the toxic sludge of populism, a frog-headed, swastika wearing anti-hero, a genealogy discussed here by Anderson and Revers (2018). Surely, as Holton and Belair-Gagnon (2018) suggest, taking cues from George Simmel, there is some value to the benefit of the doubt for these new entrants into journalism; thinking of them as strangers already puts their potential contributions in a negative framework rather than a more productive one.…”

Why We Should Keep Studying Good (and Everyday) Participation: An Analogy to Political Participation

“…One does not need to look far to determine that much communication research is now trending toward "the dark sides of participation" (in this issue, see also Anderson & Revers, 2018;Lewis & Molyneux, 2018;Robinson & Wang, 2018), and this trend may be partic-ularly pronounced in the field of political participation. As Quandt (p. 44) succinctly states, "positive forms of participation now seem awfully outdated".…”