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Replies, Retweets, and Reblogs: Modes of Participation in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries Replies, Retweets, and Reblogs: Modes of Participation in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries Meredith Dabek Maynooth University, Ireland 1. Introduction In an April 2012 YouTube video that would eventually accumulate more than two million views, a 24-year-old postgraduate student named Lizzie Bennet introduced herself to the world. That video marked the opening chapter of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a year-long digital narrative which updated and reimagined Jane Austen’s beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice. Over the course of a year, Lizzie’s story world would expand to include four additional YouTube channels, numerous interconnected Twitter feeds, Tumblr blogs, Facebook profiles, and countless interactions between characters and readers on social media platforms. Austen’s original print novel was transformed into a small screen narrative that could be accessed on laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. Moreover, individual readers had the opportunity to control their preferred level of engagement with and participation in the narrative by making specific choices as they navigated the text. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries differed from previous adaptations of Austen’s novel by actively inviting readers to interact with the narrative and its characters through various participatory elements. As a transmedia narrative, different components and elements of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries were distributed across multiple digital and social media platforms in “a deliberate attempt to make media converge around shared narrative content” (Ryan 2). Consequently, during the initial release of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries in 2012 and 2013, readers were faced with multiple entry points and narrative paths, and therefore had to decide which components to consume, and in which order.1 In this sense, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries operated as a cybertext, in which the process of reading the narrative required deliberate decisions by the reader as she consumed the text (Aarseth 2). Did she choose to follow and converse with Lizzie on Twitter, but not Darcy? Did she comment on Lydia’s YouTube videos, or reblog Jane’s fashion posts 1 While The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is still freely available on its various media platforms, and the narrative does still incorporate and allow for some level of participation, for the purposes of this article, the participatory and interactive elements discussed will refer to the narrative as it unfolded in 2012 and 2013. Paradoxa, No. 29 2017 264 MEREDITH DABEK on Tumblr? Additionally, each specific media platform leveraged by the narrative had its own unique functions and affordances that helped shape a reader’s overall experience with Lizzie’s story. Those features were a crucial and integral part of a reader’s literary exchange with the text—features not present in the print format of Austen’s novel (Aarseth 1). The various functions and affordances of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ media platforms, existing as they did within the convergent digital media environment, presented different modes of participation to readers. Broadly organized into three categories, these modes enabled readers to: participate through sharing, in which readers engaged with and shared the narrative through digital social tools; participate through interactivity, in which readers could interact with the narrative’s characters to create a deeper level of immersion in the story; and participate through fan creations, in which readers produced and circulated original media creations as members of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries fan community. These various avenues of participation helped deepen readers’ overall sense of narrative immersion and reinforce readers’ engagement with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries small screen text. 2. Convergence and Participation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries exists within the convergent media environment, where a story like Pride and Prejudice can be deconstructed and distributed across multiple media channels, where the line between creator and consumer is blurred, and where audiences play an integral role in shaping the media they consume. Convergence, as defined by media scholars Graham Meikle and Sherman Young, represents “the coming together of things that were previously separate” and allows information and content to flow freely within media environments (2). The lack of boundaries within the convergent media environment also makes it possible for consumers, readers, and fans to connect across great distances. Indeed, consumers, readers, and fans are, in large part, the active drivers behind the convergent media environment. These individuals’ engagement and participation “across different media systems, competing media economies and national borders” helps propel the creation of texts such as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (Jenkins, Convergence Culture 3). Consumers, readers, and fans in the convergent media environment are not at all passive; rather, as media scholar Henry Jenkins points out, they “refuse to simply accept what they are given” and “insist on the right to become full participants” (Convergence Culture 131). Consequently, participation is a defining feature of the convergent REPLIES, RETWEETS AND REBLOGS 265 media environment, particularly since the continued development of digital technologies and tools has removed obstacles often found in traditional media. Within the context of the convergent media environment, “participation” refers to a user’s active involvement in some task and/or the sharing of an action by a user acting as a part of a group or community (“Participation”). Participation in digital spaces can also be loosely categorized in three different, though overlapping, ways: as the specific behaviors of users in these digital spaces; as the characteristics of digital communities and groups; and as the affordances and features of social and digital media platforms. Users in digital spaces, for example, can be classified by how they participate and the types of behavior they exhibit. According to the American research firm Forrester Research and its Social Technographics ladder, users might participate by being creators, critics, conversationalists, collectors, joiners, or spectators (Fleming; van Dijck “Users like you?”). Moreover, many users often participate in a variety of ways, depending on the situation and circumstances and therefore may be both creators and spectators, collectors and critics, or any other combination. During The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ initial release in 2012 and 2013, for instance, readers of the narrative were also creators who uploaded fan remix and reaction videos, conversationalists who communicated with characters and fellow readers on social media, and above all, spectators who watched, read, listened, and observed. Each of these participatory behaviors helped form an important part of the audience for digital media content. Participation in digital spaces may also take the form of community or group characteristics. In his 1992 book, Textual Poachers, media scholar Henry Jenkins coined the term “participatory culture” to refer to groups of users who have leveraged digital technologies to form online communities where anyone can contribute to the creation of media objects and texts (Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers). Jenkins defines participatory cultures as groups or communities with “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement [and] strong support for creating and sharing creations with others” as well as ones whose members “believe that their contributions matter” (Jenkins et al 7). Jenkins, along with fellow researchers Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson, propose that these participatory cultures can be further defined by their purpose; consequently, a participatory online community might be an affiliation culture, an expression culture, a collaborative problem-solving culture, a circulation culture, a consensus culture, a creative culture, or a discussion culture (Jenkins et al; Delwiche and Henderson). In applying Jenkins’ definition toThe Lizzie Bennet Diaries, it is easy 266 MEREDITH DABEK to see how this digital narrative also operated as a participatory culture. The various elements of Lizzie’s story were (and still are) freely available on a variety of social media sites and readers did not need accounts on those sites to read or consume the content. Those with accounts could comment, ask questions, or share their opinions, activities that were supported by other readers and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries production team, and thus also contributed to readers feeling like their contributions mattered to the overall story. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries fan community still exists years after the narrative’s initial release, and fans continue to participate. Lizzie’s videos on YouTube, for example, still receive comments on a consistent basis, while readers continue to share fan fictions, artwork, and other fan creations on Tumblr. Essentially, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as a narrative led to the creation of a much larger, more enduring participatory culture. Lastly, participation in digital spaces is also enabled by the specific and sometimes unique features and functions of digital media platforms, features that often trigger social behavior on the part of users. These features provide opportunities for users to interact with others and, in the case of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, participate in a digital narrative. In a 1977 article titled “The Theory of Affordances,” psychologist James Gibson introduced the idea of an affordance,
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