My interest was on how the boom of participation, the phenomenon of amateurism and the discussion of the process of "democratization" enabled by the web had developed in this field. Media Scholars have definitely discussed the same topics that now start emerging in the field of Design Studies since many years. We could draw a parallelism between the popularization of digital cameras and the development of accessible digital fabrication tools and their implications for amateur (connected) production to illustrate this relationship. Besides meeting interesting Research Master and PhD students of several nationalities from several Universities of the Netherlands, I accessed a number of very relevant articles that could shape a theoretical framework also applicable to understand Open Design. Some of them are:
Beer,
D. (2009). ‘Power through the algorithm?
Participatory web cultures and the technological unconsciousness’. New Media
& Society 11 (6): 985-1002.
Carpentier, N. (2012). ‘The
concept of participation, if they have access and interact, do they really
participate?’ Communication Management
Quarterly, 21, 13–36.
Hargittai , E. W. Russell
Neuman & O. Curry (2012). ‘Taming the Information Tide: Perceptions of
Information Overload in the American Home’. The
Information Society: An International Journal, 28:3, 161-173
Livingstone, S. (2013). ‘The
Participation Paradigm in Audience Research’. The
Communication Review,
16:1-2, 21-30
Van Dijck , J. (2009). ‘Users Like You: Theorizing
Agency in User-Generated Content’. Media, Culture and Society 31
(1): 41-58.
A couple of useful papers on methodology:
Markham, Annette N. [2012]: ‘Fabrication as ethical practice: Qualitative inquiry in ambiguous internet contexts’. Information, Communication and Society 15 (3): 334-353.
Novek, S., Morris-Oswald, T., & Menec, V. (2012). ‘Using photovoice with older adults: some methodological strengths and issues’. Ageing and Society, 32(3): 451-470.