Rethinking Participation

As research in human-computer interaction becomes globalized, an emerging question is whether notions of participation used to describe online communities in the literature can be applied to other cultures. I compare the culture of modders---end users who develop software extensions to commercial products---in the U.S. and China. I studied modders who create mods for the popular online multiplayer game World of Warcraft. I found that core teams are a common cooperative practice for producing mods in China, which differs from the participatory modding practices prevalent in the U.S.;Grassroots culture is how a social group would develop social relations and cooperate to achieve a shared goal when this group is operating without the influence of external forces such as capitalistic interest. I reviewed authoritative publications on grassroots cultures published in the field of social science and anthropology, in particular those which examined the U.S. and China. I reviewed literature on peer production which extended the grassroots cultural frameworks to the contexts of digital media. I found parallels between grassroots cultures and modding practices. Grassroots culture is visible in modding communities because their members make many decisions based on consensus, or agreement among a majority of the group, rather than being influenced by specific, often economic, agendas as employees of software companies would.;I argue that online community research of varying localities would identify practices that parallel grassroots cultures of these localities. An understanding of the local grassroots culture helps the researcher in formulating the right research questions as well as interviewing the right actors in the local community. Apart from grassroots culture, I have also identified that the local I.T. industry, which provides certain vital resources for modding, will also affect the modding practices. As online community research becomes globalized, paying attention to the varying grassroots cultures and the I.T. industrial practices would serve us well.