Precarious alliances : cultures of participation in print and other media Beginning with an analysis of participation practices in contemporary print and other media this volume expands historical perspectives by exploring the potential of participatory cultures to illuminate past forms of collaboration between individual and collective actors (i.e. authors editors publishers fans critics etc.). In doing so the volume sheds new light on the historically culturally and medially specific forms and functions as well as on the economic political and institutional parameters contributing to the emergence and transformation of what turn out to be precarious alliances