Participatory media enable widespread active participation in production of culture, power, community, and wealth.

Participatory media include (but aren't limited to) blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging and social bookmarking, music-photo-voice-video sharing, mashups, podcasts, and videoblogs. Although these are distinctly different media, they all share three characteristics:

* Many-to-many media now make it possible for the first time in history for every node in the network to broadcast and receive text, audio, video, software, data, discussions, transactions, computations, tags, or links to and from every other node. The distinction between broadcaster and audience has changed radically. This is a technical-structural characteristic.

* Participatory media are social media whose value and power derives from the active participation of many people. This is a psychological, social, economic, and political characteristic.

* Social networks amplified by information and communication networks enable broader, faster, and lower cost coordination of activities. This is an economic and political characteristic.

The technical power of many-to-many networks serves as a powerful amplifier for human social networking capabilities. Communities, movements, markets, societies, and civilizations are the products of the human talent for accomplishing complex tasks together. The technical networks that carry bits from node to node enable the humans at those nodes to learn, persuade, educate, transact, and organize on scales and at paces that were never before possible. Like the alphabet and the printing press, the Internet grants new powers of collective action to those who master its literacy. The Participatory Media Learning Program is about mastering the new literacies by understanding their significance as well as by learning their use through direct practice.

This wiki-based curriculum combines texts covering the social, political, economic, cultural aspects of participatory media with practical instruction in their use. Exercises combine theory and practice. Bloggers learn to develop a public voice and contribute to critical discourse about issues. Wiki workers learn the basics of collaborative peer-production as well as the mechanics of online group authoring.

A wiki repository of resources related to the meaning and practice of participatory media. Contact howard at rheingold dot com if you want to add to it.