Welcome to the MedemUp video on participation and media. In this video we will guide you through the meaning of participation, how participation connects to the media and why it is vital for democracy. We will also explain that participation is a contested idea, a contested notion, where some actors in society defend more limited versions of participation, leaving for instance politics to politicians and media to media professionals as much as possible. There are, however, other actors in society who defend more what we could say maximalist versions of participation, arguing that the voice of ordinary citizens should be heard in media and in politics as much as possible. We will have two of our Medema professors explain this more in detail and I'm happy to give them the floor. Enjoy! Well, I think that participation is a word that a lot of people use. It's a common sense term, but I think we need to unpack it. We often, when we use the verb to participate we actually mean to take part, sometimes even to go somewhere, to be somewhere and I think that's a very treacherous meaning because that means everything. Every kind of social interaction becomes participation. I think we use participation in a much more specific meaning, which actually refers to the redistribution of power. It's about sharing power. It's about being part of a process where people are equals when it comes to power relationships, where people from very different positions, whether they are managers, media professionals, or ordinary audience members, where they have an equal say. That's the core idea. Well, participation can be at every possible level of social reality. You can participate in politics, you can participate in the media, so for instance, be part of a community media broadcaster, but you can also participate by using media through these media in other fields like in politics and that's actually quite often part of a discussion how do people engage in media but actually do something political and that's also called participation and that's participation through the media. It actually gets more complicated because if you can take control over the production of a documentary, you're participating in the media. But by creating that documentary, you also create a whole set of representations, you communicate a whole set of ideas that might actually impact on other societal fields. So it becomes participation through the media at the same time, and that is one of the arguments that people that defend stronger versions of participation, that they use. It's not just about who controls the media, who controls media production, who controls media structures, it's also about who controls the representations that are generated, who controls the broadcasts, who controls the infrastructure. For the Medemap project we are actually Za mediametrično projekto imamo resnično razvijajo. V akademiji imamo medijsko repertuar, ki znači, kaj ljudje z medijami v svojem dnevnem življenju. with the media in their daily life and also the political connotations to that. So far what we are seeing is the fact that there is not much presence in what people do and even if people consider doable consider possible of the strong of the strong version of participation that Nico was talking about and then it's easier for the people to to let's say to consume news or to get in touch with some institutions through the media. Then the very proactive use of media for building an alternative perspective, which as Nico was saying, it means that the author is different. It's me as a single user rather than an institution. This also means that the representation of reality might be different. This is a serious struggle and obviously this is more rare because people have many endless things to do because of time limitations and we perfect... This even more than media literacy which is a well known issue. The participation in and through the media is important because it allows ordinary citizens to exercise what is called their right to communicate. Democracy thrives through a plurality of voices, by having a diversity of aspects of our life worlds visible, by bringing in that diversity of ideas, experiences, perspectives into the public sphere. But participation is also important, and this is called a protective argument, because it protects us against a too strong centralization of power. It protects us against ordinary people being reduced to mere objects of decision by a diversity of societal elites. And here we should keep John Dalbert Acton's wise words in mind, who wrote a long time ago in a letter that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There are also limits to participation. As we already said in the introduction, participation is a contested notion. That means that they're simply different positions on how much participation is good for democracy, how much voice we need. And this is where ideology comes in, because there are different ideological perspectives on how to appreciate participation, diversity and voice. At the same time, we should also keep in mind that the control over the means of production, over the means of communication, over the infrastructures is in the hands of a limited number of companies. In the case of social media we see that the big tech companies have very strong power positions but also governments can exercise a significant amount of power. Another limitation is the unequal distribution of knowledges, of skills, of talents in society. And this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be integrated into participatory processes. And to use a cliche example, to have the passengers vote over who shall fly the plane might not be the best idea, even though I'm pretty confident that the passengers would vote for the pilot. And that brings me to the last limitation. For democracy to work, citizens need to use it responsibly, wisely and ethically. And in particular, ethics is crucial for democracy. And that is because if we have the abuse of participatory tools to lie, to cheat, to harm, to exploit others, to spread rumors and to gossip or simply to troll, that can do serious harm to our societies. In conclusion we would need to emphasize that one of the main debates in democracies is about how much participation is needed or how much participation works well in a specific society. This balance is also one of the key issues for this citizen parliament to decide and we wish you fruitful deliberations about this. Thank you.