The Silenced Minority - How Integrated Audiences Limit Participation Across Platforms

The idea of media representing culture is not new. While an audience’s ability to both create and consume content has increased over time, “the media” was never vacuous. What has changed is access. Given the ability for diverse perspectives to be seen or heard, it is tempting to assume that participatory media platforms (i.e. reality television, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.) equalize the playing field, providing a forum for the historically disenfranchised. This dissertation posits otherwise, drawing on examples from three case studies to argue the possibility of expression does not guarantee visibility. In doing so, one can see how existing power dynamics entrenched within communities mitigate the possibility for everyone to equally participate and how integrated audiences allow communities to actively silence historically disenfranchised voices.