McLuhan’s discussion of participation isn’t exactly convincing. He mentions the idea of having the audience act as the producer but at the same his idea of participation is linked to the use of different media to ‘view’ the same action.
I don’t know if I am getting this correctly but here McLuhan is focusing on a passive participation whereas what we envisaged in readings we’ve done in previous weeks was about active participation. Using his example of using an instant replay during a football match, all that the audience can do is rewind and then reviews the action. As a producer, the ideal situation would involve the actual editing of the action.
When using the web, the ‘audience’ can be involved actively in the participation process. Obviously then it depends on what web tools are being used.
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