The concept of »collaborative media« (Löwgren & Reimer 2013) promotes digital media as enabling practices that turn the passive audience into active media producers. Collaboration receives an overly positive connotation accompanied by grand claims of democratisation, equality, proactive participation and community building.

This paper adopts a critical perspective by exploring some of the problematic issues that arise with this optimistic consensus. The logic of collaborative media practices are discussed along these four major points:

1. Top-down systems are believed to be replaced by collaborative networks that neglect strict hierarchies and are built on ‘trust and long-term cooperation’ (Benkler 2011:1). Do collaborative media practices promote a Post-Fordist model of cooperation in a bureaucratic setting? Or do collaborative practices particularly thrive in project-based settings with a strong emphasis on working together for a limited, and often short, amount of time?

2. Alongside collaboration, participation (Jenkins 2009) has become a key concept of innovative media practice. Do the terms participation and collaboration express the same idea of users becoming producers (Bruns 2008)? Or do collaborative media practices with its emphasis on hacking the infrastructure promote a different logic? Can we differentiate that from participation as a skillset that describes mastering the new means of production and actively participating in the creation and distribution of artifacts?

3. Collaboration generally receives a positive connotation as a community experience. Are media collaborators embedded in a stable, coherent community? Or is networked collaboration a project-bound modus operandi that is an expression of a »liquid modernity« (Bauman 2000)?

4. Claiming collaboration is working among equals. Drawn from the notion of collective intelligence (Lévy 1997), collaboration comes with an equalitarian notion. On the other hand collaborative media practices generally refer to the appropriation of technology by highly skilled amateurs (nerds) while most people are satisfied with consuming finished media products.