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The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework for applying Web 2.0 technologies and design principles to the development of participatory cultures within libraries. A participatory culture is one that focusses on facilitating interaction and the creation of content by users rather than the consumption of content created or compiled by experts.

This study is a literature-based theoretical analysis that explores the role of libraries as agents of cultural hegemony and techniques for developing socially responsible library praxis. It combines insights from a variety of discourses including Western Marxist theories of hegemony, critical theories of library and information science, professional literature regarding “Library 2.0” service models, and media studies theories of participatory culture.

Libraries do not just organize knowledge; they construct it. Furthermore, these constructions tend to reinforce dominant discourses while marginalizing others. By adopting participatory technologies and design principles, libraries can support greater diversity of expression and create spaces for marginalized discourses.

This paper offers suggestions for applying principles of participatory culture to the design of library services such as collection development, cataloging and classification, reference, instruction, and institutional repositories.

This paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating the significance of Web 2.0 for library and information science by applying theoretical perspectives from other disciplines.

This paper aims to explore the experience of working with different conceptualisations of participation and participatory practice. This is done through an examination of the involvement of a technology company within a multinational, 3-years participatory research project involving 13 partners and over 200 disabled people.

This paper provides a case study, narrative account of a range of activities undertaken within the project, presenting a rare and much-needed explicit insight into the emergence of participatory ways of working and the reasoning and tensions behind them.

Through the case study gaze of one of the technology companies involved, it explicates the underpinning processes of the participatory approach and how these challenged the notions of various partners.

This paper shows how engaging in meaningfully participatory research creates profound institutional challenges for technology developers. The subsequent need to make hard decisions and compromises throughout disrupts traditional ways of working and anticipated outcomes. However, it also reveals opportunities for delivering unanticipated and transformative outcomes, highlighting the need for greater flexibility in funding research that aims to be participatory.

The purpose of this study is to investigate members’ reactions to the forced closure of a narrative video game brand community and its participatory culture.

The BioWare Social Network forums closure was announced in a thread, which attracted 8,891 posts. These were analysed using thematic analysis, facilitated by the software program Leximancer and non-participatory netnography.

The brand community and participatory culture members were predominantly distressed because they would lose their relationships with each other and access to the participatory culture’s creative output.

Previous research suggested that video game players cannot be fans and that player-generated content is exploitative. However, members, self-identified as fans, encouraged BioWare’s use of their player-created content for financial gain and articulated the community’s marketing benefits, all of which have implications for Fan and Game Studies’ researchers. Research using primary data could identify brand communities and participatory cultures’ specific benefits and their members’ attitudes about brands’ commercial use of their outputs. Further research is required to identify other products and brands not suitable for establishing brand communities on social media to determine the best ways to manage them.

Addressing narrative brand communities’ complaints quickly can prevent negative financial outcomes and using social media sites for brand communities may not be suitable structurally or because of members’ privacy concerns. Furthermore, consumers often have intense emotional bonds with narrative brands, their communities and participatory cultures, which marketers may underestimate or misunderstand.

This study of the unique phenomenon of the forced closure of a narrative brand community and its participatory culture increased understandings about them.

This paper aims to demonstrate how participatory design methodologies can be used for the design of interactive learning tools for children.

This paper presents the methodology employed for the design of a multimedia tool for teaching Greek to young children aged 6 to 12. The preliminary data collection included interviews, questionnaires and observations, whereas the actual design of the tool was carried out using a Participatory Design methodology which advocates a design approach that focuses on the intended user of the service or product, emphasising the active involvement of users throughout the design process.

The paper provides detailed information from each of the data collection techniques used. It also highlights the successes and difficulties in implementing participatory design in an e‐learning context.

Although participatory design has been used in the design of other systems, it is rarely used as the design framework of learning applications. So the paper expands one's knowledge of implementing participatory design methodologies in learning.

The aim of this paper is to present the effectiveness of participatory information and communication technology (ICT) tools for urban planning, in particular, supporting bottom-up decision-making in urban management and governance.

This work begins with a presentation on the state of the art literature on the existing participatory approaches and their contribution to urban planning and the policymaking process. Furthermore, a case study, namely, the UrbanAPI project, is selected to identify new visualisation and simulation tools applied at different urban scales. These tools are applied in four different European cities – Vienna, Bologna, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Ruse – with the objective to identify the data needs for application development, commonalities in requirements of such participatory tools and their expected impact in policy and decision-making processes.

The case study presents three planning applications: three-dimensional Virtual Reality at neighbourhood scale, Public Motion Explorer at city-wide scale and Urban Growth Simulation at city-region scale. UrbanAPI applications indicate both active and passive participation secured by applying these tools at different urban scales and hence facilitate evidence-based urban planning decision-making. Structured engagement with the city administrations indicates commonalities in user needs and application requirements creating the potential for the development of generic features in these ICT tools which can be applied to many other cities throughout Europe.

This paper presents new ICT-enabled participatory urban planning tools at different urban scales to support collaborative decision-making and urban policy development. Various technologies are used for the development of these IT tools and applied to the real environment of four European cities.

Indigenous-state relations in Chile are being reconfigured around a political rationality and productive logic of “calculative choice,” through the government-run participatory development program Programa Orígenes. Financed by the Chilean state and the Inter-American Development Bank, Orígenes is broadly designed to address productive development, bilingual education, health care, and public services in rural indigenous communities. The technologies of Orígenes include participatory planning, planning tables, and audit. I argue that bureaucrats and indigenous peoples who participate are subjected to subject-making technologies that are integral to a rationalizing and transformative neoliberal assemblage of legal and policy instruments and practices.

A questionnaire survey was carried out in the Glasgow area in Scotland amongst people over the UK age of statutory retirement participating in the community arts project Call That Singing?, with a return rate of 75 per cent. The results demonstrate that participatory singing was perceived as providing worthwhile physical, emotional, social and cultural benefits. Participants reported no overall deterioration in their perception of health over the 12‐year period since the project started: this is despite the high recorded incidence of illness and bereavement during the same period to be expected of people of this age. Participants perceived statistically significant improvements to their general quality of life, emotional wellbeing (including a marginally significant shift in self‐confidence) and understanding of singing. They also reported improvements to their social well‐being, although these were not statistically significant. The research shows that participatory singing is making a contribution to the cultural economy and fabric of the city of Glasgow, illustrated by the increased number of visits to theatres, shows and museums and the increased level of active participation in cultural life.

Drawing on the notion of “mental health policy participation”, the purpose of this paper is to describe and reflect on a regional case study of a community engagement approach that explored community perspectives on mental health and the factors that influence it. It established three expectations, that: the development of the Dumfries and Galloway Public Mental Health Strategy is informed by project outputs; services and innovations are based on what people want; active involvement of local people in decision making around mental health services and strategy is achieved.

A “participatory appraisal” approach was used to engage with communities. A three-day “Training of Trainers” exercise was undertaken. These individuals then accessed a number of community groups. Data collection was based on five key questions. A total of 443 were engaged in the process. Insights were reviewed by 20 stakeholders from a range of services to identify key actions. This led to the development of the mental health forum and, in turn, a Public Mental Health Strategy for Dumfries and Galloway. Community members were further included in processes through feedback mechanisms.

Factors of resilience, support of families and friends, social inclusion, access to social and leisure opportunities were most important. This was followed by structural issues like fear of judgement, lack of transport, discrimination and financial support. Finally, individual factors (sleep, meaningful hobbies and health) were highlighted.

This approach sought to go beyond a traditional focus to explore broader community perspectives on mental health and the factors that influence it.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the disruption to civic accountability by strategic corporate action in the form of SLAPP suits.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the discursive processes underpinning participatory and emancipatory accountability regimes through the lens of deliberative democracy and the Habermasian ideal of the public sphere.

Within this paper, it is argued that the strategic use of SLAPPs by corporations presents a danger to both mechanistic and virtuous forms of accountability regardless of what deliberative democratic theory is adopted. Habermas’ theory of communicative action and notion of the “public sphere” is utilised to demonstrate how SLAPPs can result in the colonisation of public discursive arenas to prevent others providing alternative (in form) and counter (in view) accounts of corporate behaviour and thus act to limit opportunities for corporate accountability.

This paper throws light on a practice being utilised by corporations to limit public participation in democratic and participatory accountability processes. Strategic use of SLAPPs limit the “ability” for citizens to provide an alternative “account” of corporate behaviour.

This paper is original in that it analyses the impact on accountability of strategic corporate practice of issuing SLAPP suits to “chill” public political discussion and limit protest about issues of social and civic importance. The paper extends the critical accounting literature into improving dialogic and participatory accountability regimes.

Much potential has been ascribed to the emergence and possibilities of a “global civil society,” one that takes the concept of civil society and civic activism and involvement beyond the traditional confines of the nation-state, and moves it instead into a globalized and increasingly politically integrated context. In general, the concept of global civil society has been treated as a positive development, with considerable attention being paid to the emancipatory and participatory opportunities that it presents. This essay explores the other side of the equation, i.e., the marginalization of national and European-level civil society and these participatory and emancipatory benefits in Central and Eastern Europe during a process of globalization and EU integration. Drawing from the emerging literatures on global civil society, this paper compares the normative and empirical emphases of that literature with the experiences and opinions of Central and Eastern European environmental NGOs. It examines how Central and Eastern European environmental movements have moved toward becoming more interconnected both in Europe and worldwide, yet are marginalized in favor of a style of environmental policy-making emerging from Brussels that emphasizes technocracy, scientific over public knowledge, and a top-down approach to the policy-making process. As a result, many of the democratic elements of civil society found at the national level have became neglected at the European and the global levels, replacing democratic politics (at least in the form of social movements) with the emergence of supranational technocratic institutions.