Abstract
The concept of participation is one that emerges throughout the social. It is part of everyday and academic languages, policy, legal and activist languages, economic and cultural languages, and many more.
Especially whenever a structural power imbalance occurs, attempts are organised to redress this imbalance by increasing the level of participation of the disadvantaged actors. The debate on media participation is a good example of the omnipresence of the concept of participation: In the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, participation in and through media has been on the agenda in the debates on, and practices of, alternative and community media, the world information and communication order, talk shows, reality television, new media, and a diversity of other media-related fields.
This introductory article describes the context and content of the contributions to the special issue of Interrogating audiences - Theoretical horizons of participation.