The participatory culture of UTM Buy/Sell/Trade

by Samuel Lee [1000216296]

What is UTM Textbook Exchange?
UTM Student Book Exchange is a closed Facebook group that is 10,000 members strong today, and quickly growing. There are only two admins in the group (who’s names will be kept anonymous) that do not seem active in the group. Since it is a closed group on Facebook, the only way to be apart of this community, is by being invited by a current member- no requests. This Facebook group only has simple instructions:

''“This group is an online market to buy, sell, or exchange textbooks. Simply post your book as a discussion topic on the discussion board and make the subject as the title of your book or the course code of the course it is needed for. We are not limited to only UTM feel free to join if you're at UTSC or St George as well. Add your friends so we can expand!”'' (UTM Bookshare)

What makes this Important?
1) The aim is to examine the power of participatory media culture

2) How the group runs smoothly with minimal instructions and regulations

3) What kind of rules of participation evolve, & how are they created subjectively

It’s amazing how a group that originaly started with two admins, has grown to a self-growing enigma of 10,000+ members without any control or management. There are countless buy/sell/trade groups on Facebook, but there are curiosities to why this one stands out the most. How are students successfully completing a transaction, and more so when did students start highlighting the conditions of their book to enforce a sale.

What will be Explored?
The aim is to use the concept of participation taken from Nico Carpentier, to analyze how UTM students of 'UTM Textbook Exchange' Facebook group, participates in the use of buying and selling textbooks with little to no instructions. What type of collaboration does platform bring to the table? This is similar to ‘open source’ phenomena, where Internet citizens are willing to contribute their time and effort into something community based, without being paid for it. Similarly to the Facebook group, there are a group of individuals that band together to continue its existence. Regardless of members being active or not, the act of checking up on the group and posting textbooks may be naturally for one’s own gain, but a by-product of that selflessness is a market worth capitalizing on. The original goal of the group was to create a space where UTM students can buy/sell textbooks, but the question is how that has evolved and circulated to this day. How do students know how to communicate with one another, and what are the perpetuated norms that co-exists with this institution within itself.

Why is Participation Important?
Participation is an intersectional topic that involves a number of discourses at play- but a key character to participation is power. It’s clear that “the balance between people’s inclusion in the implicit and explicit decision-making processes within these fields, and their exclusion through the delegation of power” (Carpentier 170). This power is apparent in social relations within the UTM Bookshare club, on it’s strict invite only policy. Thus to have access to this service depends on who you know, and if they want to add you or not. Participation also depends on particular specific actors that are “part of one societal elite … that hold stronger power positions compared to individuals not part of these elite clusters” (Carpentier 171). In this case, the strong social elite is the members that are apart of the group itself; with non-members being unable to make the decision to join, or know of it’s existence. Within that dynamic, current members are not able to make admin decisions to remove members if there are any conflicts. The fact that the group in invitation only, implies that the “enforcement of participation is defined as contradictory to the logics of participation, and that the right not to participate should be respected” (Carpentier 172). These are face value observations of the group without the collection of options and experiences of other students that participate in the facilitation of the group.

Research Method
6 students (3 males/3 females) that are active users in 'UTM Textbook Exchange,' will be specifically handpicked to explore participatory culture in reflection to their experience. For the privacy of the participants, they will be referred to as subject(s). Each member have either asked, or have been invited by a friend or family member, on the basis of wanting school textbooks at a more affordable cost. Interviews will be the most effective to record the experiences from both men & women. At the end of the day, everyone’s experiences may be different in reflection to class, gender, socioeconomic status, profile photo, education, etc. This is a topic that is multi-faceted, thus the complex nature of this issue should be explored on a one-on-one basis with each subject.