Book review: Media and Participation, by Nico Carpentier

In Media and Participation, work divided in two parts, Nico Carpentier discusses participation as a structuraly unstable concept and as an object of ideological debate between two kinds of participation: the minimalist and the maximalist. In the first part, Carpentier uses a set of theoretical reflections to discuss the concept of participation and its role in the media in five different fields (democracy, art and museums, development, spatial planning and communication). Through them he presents the various forms of articulation of participation and shows the common citizen’s need of the to participate, despite the structuring and limitations to which he is subject. In the second part, the author demonstrates the applicability of these theories with several case studies that attest to the different forms of participation adopted by society, using five keywords: the power operations exercised by media professionals on television are exposed in the talk show Jan Publiek and in Barometer; the question of identity and subject positions in the media sphere is debated also resorting to Jan Publiek and the reality show Temptation Island; organization is evidenced in the Video Nation show and in Radio Swap; the influence of technology on citizen participation is exemplified in the world's first interactive film, Kinoautomat; and the importance of quality as a discursive tool is illustrated again with Barometer and the social network 16plus