Socio-environmental crises are currently transforming the conditions for life on this planet, from climate change, to resource depletion, biodiversity loss and long-term pollutants. The vast scale of these changes, affecting land, sea and air have prompted calls for the ‘ecologicalisation’ of knowledge. This book adopts a much needed ‘more-than-human’ framework to grasp these complexities and challenges. It contains multidisciplinary insights and diverse methodological approaches to question how to revise, reshape and invent methods in order to work with non-humans in participatory ways. The book offers a framework for thinking critically about the promises and potentialities of participation from within a more-than-human paradigm, and opens up trajectories for its future development. It will be of interest to those working in the environmental humanities, animal studies, science and technology studies, ecology, and anthropology.

Socio-environmental crises are currently transforming the conditions for life on this planet, from climate change, to resource depletion, biodiversity loss and long-term pollutants. The vast scale of these changes, affecting land, sea and air have prompted calls for the ‘ecologicalisation’ of knowledge. This book adopts a much needed ‘more-than-human’ framework to grasp these complexities and challenges. It contains multidisciplinary insights and diverse methodological approaches to question how to revise, reshape and invent methods in order to work with non-humans in participatory ways. The book offers a framework for thinking critically about the promises and potentialities of participation from within a more-than-human paradigm, and opens up trajectories for its future development. It will be of interest to those working in the environmental humanities, animal studies, science and technology studies, ecology, and anthropology.

This book is an in-depth analysis of participatory worlds, practices beyond the mainstream models of content production and IP management that allow audience members to contribute canonically to the expansion of storyworlds, blurring the line between the traditional roles of consumers and producers. Shifting discussions of participatory culture and cross-media production and consumption practices to more independent media contexts, the book explores the limits, borders and boundaries of participating in today’s digital media storyworlds. The text examines how audience participation works, identifying opportunities to make it a meaningful practice for audiences and an asset for IP owners, and discussing the challenges and barriers that the application of participatory culture brings along. The book defines what meaningful participation is by introducing the concept of ‘intervention’ and explains a range of factors impacting the way in which participatory worlds and relationships between producers, audiences and the world are shaped. This volume will be of great relevance to media practitioners, scholars and students interested in transmedia storytelling, fandom, literary studies and comparative literature, new media and digital culture, gaming and media studies.

This groundbreaking resource explores core issues in participatory health research (PHR) and traces its global emergence as a force for improving health and well-being, healthcare services, and quality of life. The PHR approach is defined as including community members, health practitioners, and decision-makers as co-researchers, using local knowledge to reduce disparities in care, advocate for responsive health policy, and accelerate positive change in society as a whole. The book’s first half surveys themes essential to the development of the field, including evaluating PHR projects, training professionals in conducting PHR, and the ambitious work of the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research. International perspectives showcase the varied roles of PHR in addressing urgent local health problems in their specific public health and sociocultural contexts. Among the topics covered: Demonstrating impact in participatory health research Reviewing the effectiveness of participatory health research: challenges and possible solutions Kids in Action—participatory health research with children Participatory health research: an Indian perspective Participatory health research in Latin America: scientific production on chronic diseases Participatory health research in North America: from community engagement to evidence-informed practice Participatory Health Research benefits those teaching and learning about participatory health research at institutions of higher education and in community settings, addressing diverse fields including health promotion and disease prevention, medicine and public health, quality of life, social work, and community development.

How memetic media—aggregate texts that are collectively created, circulated, and transformed—become a part of public conversations that shape broader cultural debates. Internet memes—digital snippets that can make a joke, make a point, or make a connection—are now a lingua franca of online life. They are collectively created, circulated, and transformed by countless users across vast networks. Most of us have seen the cat playing the piano, Kanye interrupting, Kanye interrupting the cat playing the piano. In The World Made Meme, Ryan Milner argues that memes, and the memetic process, are shaping public conversation. It's hard to imagine a major pop cultural or political moment that doesn't generate a constellation of memetic texts. Memetic media, Milner writes, offer participation by reappropriation, balancing the familiar and the foreign as new iterations intertwine with established ideas. New commentary is crafted by the mediated circulation and transformation of old ideas. Through memetic media, small strands weave together big conversations. Milner considers the formal and social dimensions of memetic media, and outlines five basic logics that structure them: multimodality, reappropriation, resonance, collectivism, and spread. He examines how memetic media both empower and exclude during public conversations, exploring the potential for public voice despite everyday antagonisms. Milner argues that memetic media enable the participation of many voices even in the midst of persistent inequality. This new kind of participatory conversation, he contends, complicates the traditional culture industries. When age-old gatekeepers intertwine with new ways of sharing information, the relationship between collective participation and individual expression becomes ambivalent. For better or worse—and Milner offers examples of both—memetic media have changed the nature of public conversations.

Considers (76) S.J. Res. 217.