(Digital) culture, media citizenship and major event narratives

Increasing academic attention has focused on the value of digital media making as a productive, creative, and even political act (Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2013). Others talk of DIY citizenship (Ratto & Boler, 2014), do-it-yourself or do-it-together (DIT) ethos made possible through digital making (and activism). This focus on everyday creative practices is reflected in others using the moniker creative citizenship to reflect on the use of cultural and creative activities where there is a social, political or civic element to the activities involved (Lockton, Green, Casey, Raby & Vicktress, 2014). However, alongside the cyber libertarian perspective on digital culture, there also exists a critique of the apparently free and democratic space of the social web (Gillespie, 2010) which gives the user the power to speak on an equal footing. In an age of platform politics (Hands, 2013; Gillespie, 2010), the rhetoric of the democratic, open and egalitarian Web (Fuchs, 2014) has been subject to significant critique for its inherent commercially oriented form and for its control of who and what is said. In this chapter, I explore the role of everyday digital media tools and technologies in enabling a diverse range of publics to tell their own stories in and around major sporting events, focusing on two practice-research project case studies.