Abstract
A video production workshop run by Our Planet-TV teaches people the language of television production and invokes a period in Japanese media history when filming was interpreted by theorists as a means of preserving the truth and capturing reality in all its mundanity. Our Planet-TV’s founder articulates her mission as being about increasing the number of “small voices” in the media landscape, for reasons that resemble those of the independent media organizations profiled earlier. This chapter expands on the book’s overall query into how participation is experienced through new technologies and shaped by ambitious actors hoping to diversify a limited Japanese mass media landscape. Based on fieldwork in both settings, this chapter contrasts the production process of major TV studios and the workshop teams.