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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.

Culture is increasingly recognized as a key component of local development, but this attention is largely focused on large cities. This paper aims to focus on the ways in which the innovative, participatory action-research (PAR) methods of IdeaLabs and community intervention workshops are used by two projects with solidarity economy enterprise (SEE) participants to activate place-based cultural resources for local development in small communities.

An in-depth reflexive analysis undertaken by researchers involved in the two projects, taking a feminist ethics of care perspective, demonstrates the ways in which these two PAR methods promote local development with the goal of fighting against the economic, social and cultural degradation of small cities and rural areas.

The PAR methods used by the two projects examined stimulate place-based local development initiatives through collaboration and knowledge co-production among participants and researchers. The projects go beyond an instrumental view of the use of culture and the arts for local development to innovate and demonstrate new methodologies for more participatory approaches.

This paper addresses a gap in social economy literature, presenting methods that can be used in PAR projects to catalyse the use of culture as a local development tool by local SEEs.

Organizational democracy is the new model of organizational design for a Democratic Age, and out of this new model grows a freedom-centered and healthy climate. Democratic management is a key to greater organization success and a necessity to gain higher levels of performance and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents and consequences of organizational democracy in an Iranian context.

Statistical population includes the employees of the Gas Company of Isfahan Province. For data analysis, 263 accurate completed questionnaires are used. Structural equation modeling is applied to investigate the relationship between the research variables.

The findings showed that some types of organizational culture (i.e. self-criticism, team, and participatory culture) (β=0.33); and some dimensions of organizational structure (i.e. decentralization, flat hierarchy, and less formalization) (β=0.55) as antecedent variables have a significant direct effect on organizational democracy. Also, organizational democracy has a significant direct effect on human resources outcomes consist of organizational commitment, self-efficacy, and improving work relationships (β=0.64); and organizational outcomes consist of organizational learning and organizational agility (β=0.96).

Despite years of encouragement from consultants and theorists, managers have generally shown little interest toward democratic process as a system of decision making and management in organizations. This study proposes a comprehensive model for identifying the antecedents and consequences of organizational democracy. Most studies in this field are theoretical rather than empirical. But, in this research, the proposed relationships are examined empirically.

Fans are proactive consumers of pop culture products, who can be seen as prosumers. Fanvideo production is one of their most widespread practices in the participatory culture scenario. Thus, the aim of the present study is to analyze how ludic prosumption is featured on plays performed in Brazilian fanvideos based on successful pop culture franchises.

Research based on the interpretive content analysis of fanvideos of plays produced by Brazilian fans based on five emblematic pop culture franchises and published on YouTube.

Results have shown six play types in the analyzed fanvideos – i.e. child's play, performing powers, cosplay, play in social rites, teaching to play and “zuêra” –, which revealed a way of having fun in different situations through different practices based on ludic consumption experiences in different spheres of social life.

CCT-based studies focused on investigating plays as ludic consumption phenomenon, as well as fan culture, remain at early research stage. Thus, the main contribution of the present study lies on associating such concepts based on the concept of prosumption.

This study combines survey research with case study analysis to explore the implications of culture and gender for governmental public affairs. The data base, developed for the IABC Research Foundation's Excellence project, establishes that participative culture is most conducive to effective public relations. Governmental agencies in the USA, Canada and the UK tend to be less participatory than two of the other three types of organisation studied: corporation and non‐profit. Women in the agency analysed in greater depth, a state lottery, formed the majority of the public affairs staff, yet encountered the ubiquitous glass ceiling in their attempts to ascend front the technical to the managerial role. Public relations in general in governmental agencies exhibits remarkably more similarity than difference across organisational types and among the three countries studied. Any factor, such as authoritarian culture or gender discrimination, that limits the effectiveness of the communication function is particularly significant there, however, given the size and scope of governmental public affairs.

With an increasing trend toward the use of participatory culture and networked learning in education, opportunities to explore real examples of participatory culture are invaluable. Interwoven into seemingly simple collaborations are pedagogical, cultural, knowledge management, social, temporal, technical, as well as legal issues. A further layer of complexity is added when considering international networks and collaborations. However, such issues add a level of understanding important to participatory cultures. Enabled by communities of practice, and social constructivist learning, a range of bricoleur skills are developed from technical to higher level cognitive skills amongst students. These skills map many aspects of Jenkins' Participatory Culture, and the skills essential to our 21st century students. In this chapter, we review an empirical study where the 3D technology, the virtual social world Second Life, supported learning for 21st century digital learners and how social networking and scaffolding contributed to international educational collaboration.

The relationship between overall innovation and innovation capability, and performance has been a topic of several earlier studies. However, the effects of the aspects of innovation capability on performance of a firm have stayed unfamiliar. The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between organizational innovation capability and firm performance. The study contributes to the current understanding by presenting the important aspects of organizational innovation capability that affect firm performance. The effects are studied to both financial and operational performance.

The approach of this study is quantitative. The data used to test the hypotheses were gathered from Finnish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a web-based questionnaire. The sample covered 2,400 SMEs employing 11-249 persons and having a revenue of two to 50 Meuro. The sample was randomly selected.

The findings showed that three aspects of innovation capability, namely ideation and organizing structures, participatory leadership culture, and know-how development, has some effect on different aspects of firm performance. Surprisingly, the aspects of innovation capability were found to be more influential to the financial performance than operational performance.

The paper contains suggestions for improving performance through developing innovation capability. The paper aims to support practice in two ways. First, organizations can identify aspects of innovation capability that affect operational and financial performance. In that way, organizations can benefit the results by applying these aspects in their everyday operations. Second, the results of the paper may help professionals to begin to understand that leveraging innovation capability may improve an organization's performance.

Previous research has often either concentrated on innovation capability as a one dimension without studying the relationship aspect by aspect or studying only the effects of one aspect of innovation capability. The results of the study take one step further by investigating the relationship of multiple aspects of innovation capability and firm performance.

This chapter explores the recent trend in libraries: that of the establishment of spaces specifically set aside for creative work. The rise of these dedicated creative spaces is owed to a confluence of factors that happen to be finding their expression together in recent years. This chapter examines the history of these spaces and explores the factors that gave rise to them and will fuel them moving forward.

A viewpoint piece, this chapter combines historical research and historical/comparative analyses to examine the ways by which libraries have supported creative work in the past and how they may continue to do so into the 21st century.

The key threads brought together include a societal recognition of the value of creativity and related skills and attributes; the philosophies, values, and missions of libraries in both their long-standing forms and in recent evolutions; the rise of participatory culture as a result of inexpensive technologies; improved means to build community and share results of efforts; and library experience and historical practice in matters related to creativity. The chapter concludes with advice for those interested in the establishment of such spaces, grounding those reflections in the author’s experiences in developing a new creative space at Virginia Commonwealth University.

While a number of pieces have been written that discuss the practicalities of developing certain kinds of creative spaces, very little has been written that situates these spaces in larger social and library professional contexts; this chapter begins to fill that gap.

Purpose – To offer teacher educators a multi-modal approach to include teaching digital literacy practices to pre-service teachers in order to meet the diverse needs of elementary students.

Approach – The chapter is organized by: a) describing inequities and challenges in teacher education regarding teaching digital literacies; b) presenting concrete practices that help foster digital literacy practices in class classrooms; and c) providing resources and reflective opportunities that support pre-service teachers in critically assessing technology’s affordances and constraints for literacy learning.

Findings – Evidence-based multimodal practices and artifacts used in teacher education classrooms are provided to illustrate how they can foster meaningful experiences with all students across all settings. Similarly, educational scholars in the field of incorporating digital literacies are identified.

Practical Implications – This chapter describes practical examples from the everyday literacies of pre-service teachers and elementary students, including apps, websites, tools, and approaches, that foster meaningful experiences with digital literacies. In addition, practical discussions identify strategies that pre-service teachers can use when their internship experience conflicts with methods course content.

Research limitations/implications – The strategies presented in this chapter are based on research and practice, but they focus on elementary pre-service teachers; however, secondary pre-service teacher educators could make adaptations for their learners.

Originality/value of paper – This chapter provides relevant evidence-based information about preparing pre-service teachers to enact digital literacy practices that help K-12 students to think critically, analyze content, and participate fully in 21st century digital cultures.