Participation is today central to many kinds of research and design practice in information studies and beyond. From user-generated content to crowdsourcing to peer production to fan fiction to citizen science, the concept remains both unexamined and heterogeneous in its definition. Intuitions about participation are confirmed by some examples, but scandalized by others, and it is difficult to pinpoint why participation seems to be robust in some cases and partial in others. In this paper we offer an empirically based, comparative analysis of participation that demonstrates its multidimensionality and provides a framework that allows clear distinctions and better analyses of the role of participation. We derive 7 dimensions of participations from the literature on participation and exemplify those dimensions using a set of 102 cases of contemporary participation that include uses of the Internet and new media.

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Rather than increasing competition in the market and decreasing government spending, neoliberalism has driven states to compete by appealing to transnational corporations. Direct subsidization to attract investment has become one of the most egregious normalization of this process, and Hollywood and the film industry have become some of the most active participants to this system. Indeed to have a functioning film industry, government subsidies are essential, commonly paying out up to a third of the production costs. Per employee these are some of the highest subsidy rates of any industry, and with most of the world participating, they offer little long-term benefit to anyone besides the most global Hollywood studios. Rather, this creates greater dependency on the Major film studios by local government, workers, and small production companies to attract large production spending, but end up supporting an ever expanding system of subsidization.

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