What The Museum Sell Out Game (Re)Taught Me About Participation Inequality

Last week on this blog, I tried an experiment. I wanted to open up conversation about how we judge the relative ethics of various sources of museum revenue--all of which have sopan santun grey areas. Instead of writing a post and soliciting comments (my typical approach), I used an online polling tool to create a simple game where you could read short provocations about questionable revenue sources and give each source an ethical thumbs-up or down.

The outcome taught me a few things about ethics... but it taught me even more about online interaction.

In the last week:

• 10,000ish people saw the blog post on the web or as an email. 
• 3,125 people viewed the game. 
• 610 people played the game.
• 20 people commented on it. 

This is a beautiful demonstration of participation inequality online. The vast majority of folks consume most content online passively. Some people actively play, share, collect, or gather online content. A small percentage comment on it. An even smaller percentage create it.

When people talk about participation inequality, we often focus on the disparity among levels of participation. We ask: how can we motivate more people to contribute?

But another way to look at participation inequality is via the diversity of types of participation available. We ask: how can we create different pathways to participation for people with different motivations? 

On platforms with many participatory options, more people are more active. On Facebook, you can post, like, comment, add photos, play games... but you don't have to do all of those things to be an active contributor. Watching friends change their profile shots to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage reminded me how Facebook is constantly experimenting with new ways to participate.

I think this diversification is key to inviting broad audiences to feel meaningfully involved in participatory projects. So often we stick with one or two basic strategies, ignoring the fact that those forms may be welcoming to some and off-putting to others.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I write blog posts on a platform where you can comment. I assume that commenting is the way people want to participate. But the barriers to commenting--both technical and psychological--can be huge.

When I decided to make this little game about museum ethics, I hoped that more people would participate than typically comment on a blog post. I was astounded by the difference. 0.6% of game viewers commented. 20% of game viewers played. Clearly it was an effective alternative form of participation.

I learned from what these 610 players contributed. It challenged some of my preconceptions about how people feel about the ethics of grants, attendance, facility rental, and corporate sponsorship. It gave me (and hopefully them) a whole lot more food for thought than the post alone.

Games aren't right for every circumstance. But this experiment made me question: what am I doing to make it easy and meaningful for people to participate in the work we do? How can we offer more diverse ways for people to get involved?

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