All thanks to produsage – case study

21 century is the produsage age. Fantasies came true, because of the development of new media like the internet. It requires “turning artefacts into products” (Bruns 2008, 389). Both digital music market and Obama’s online campaign are good examples which show the importance to apply the internet to inter

The internet and its music sales benefits music industry and musicians. First, Internet helps to spread recent music information. For example, internet users consume the product after they preview it online (Hellekson 2008). Second, it is more beneficial for artists to engage with digital music market. This is because under the new music distribution model, artists can directly approach their fans for revenue without sharing with distributors or recorded companies; this is called disintermediation (Collis 2009). A good example is Radiohead who offered their album In Rainbows on their website. Although fans could pay nothing for downloading, 38% still contributed, and Radiohead made $3 million (Hellekson 2008; Collis 2009). Additionally, the statistics show the increasing trend of the development of digital music market as well as its revenue. Until 2007, the number of legal services grew 10 times during 5 years; there were over 6 million licensed tracks around the world; digital music sales was 15% of overall music sales; and digital music sales was worth about $ 2.9 billion (IFPI 2008, 6). Accordingly, it is valuable for musicians and the music industry to undertake music business through the internet.

 

During 2008 American election, the Internet plays a significant role as a platform of political resources and Internet users’interactivity. In 2008 a significant number of voters access news resources through the Internet and many of them went to social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and MySpace. Obama’s online campaigning perfectly fit the Internet by reaching over 15 different social networking sites (Washington Post, August 2008). He and his compaign team constantly uploaded photos, videos, updated his profile and created his website – my BarackObama.com. On this site, it provided access for blogging, planning events, joining groups and volunteering. This lead that once the Obama’s logo was launched, it was everywhere and spread very quickly especially on the Internet, because various social networking sites delivered the message. Obama’s online campaign is successful because it attracted a large number of users and motivated them to interact with and support him. For example, Omaba has more than 5 million supporters by may of 2008. His videos attracted millions of views, and the campaign’s official stuff was watched for 14.5 million hours (Miller); Statistically, on my BarackObama.com, 400,000 blog posts were written, 200,000 real-world events were planned and 35,000 volunteer groups were formed. From online donations, Obama raised half billion dollars in 21 monthes.

 

I do not need to explain any more about how new media involve in business and politics. The profite brought by engaging with the internet for the business shows the significance of new media.

 

Reference List

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production To Produsage. New York: Peter Lang

Collis, C. 2009. KCB102 media and society: from the printing press to the Internet: week 10 lecture notes. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/@@B155798A19E4BE4D0B031 718E86A/courses/1/KCB102_09se1/content/_2644004_1/KCB102WeekTen-Piracy09.ppt (Accessed May 10, 2009)

Hellekson, Karen. (2009). From irrelevance to on-demand: changing models of dissemination, Flow 4(7). http://flowtv.org/?p=1140. (Accessed May 7, 2009)

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). (2008) Digital music report. http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2008.pdf (Accessed May 7, 2009)

Miller. 2008. In Examining Obama’s online campaigning. Ed B. Tidwell. Http://www.nextgengo p.com/2009/05/03/examining-obama%E2%80%99s-online-campaign/ (Accessed April 22, 2009)

Washington Post. 2008. In Examining Obama’s online campaigning. Ed B. Tidwell. Htt p://www.nextgengop.com/2009/05/03/examining-obama%E2%80%99s-online-campaign/ (Accessed April 22, 2009)

Is it the age of non-experts?

As I talked about Wikipedia in last post, under produsage era, Internet users share and exchange their knowledge. More and more projects are created successfully under this model which provides more freedom and easier access for non-experts. This thus threatens the authority of those experts, because folks can build ency. However, does it mean it is the end of expertise? Is it the age of non-experts? The answer is not simply a yes or a no, because the structure of current system is combined with the traditional model and the new model. As Bruns (2006, 219) points out, this structure is neither simply a hierarchy or a hierarchy; it is neither taxonomic model or folksonomic model; “it layers both the traditional expert accreditation system and the new model of community-based produsage on top of one another, and in the process harnesses the benefits of both”.

 

Under produsage, folks are challenging experts. For example, varieous online projects are built, including Wikipedia. Some online gaming corporations hire their consumers as contributors for their designing (Banks 2). Another example is Citizendium project built by Larry Sanger. Citizendium is basing on the same model as well as Wikipedia, but has different style. As Lih (2009, 212) points out, “Citizendium has taken on a more narrative and less clinical style, but sometimes to comical effect”. Moreover, during the development of Citizendium, Sanger is more likely to focus on expertise. Citizendium refers to the citizen’s compendium of everything. As it was created in 2007, Citizendium’s attempt is “to unset Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online” (Lih 2009, 190). On Citizendium, it is required users’ real names, no anonymous editing and the division of the editor and the author. While author could be folks, editors tend to be the experts because they are able to edit (Lih 2009, 190). Comparing with Wiki, the one-year operation of Citizendium is much less. It had about 4000 articles as the beginning from scratch (Lih 2009, 190).

 

The competition between folks and experts seems like the match between Wikipedia and Citizendium. In practice, it seems wiki is the winner, because its large number of users, articles and information. It is one of the top ten website (Lih 2009, 188). We should consider how we should define the expert? Can Folks be experts? Or everyone could be the expert on particular field. As Bruns (2006, 201) demonstrates, the question what enable folks qualify as experts and how to define the boundary between folks and experts. It still requires experts in an encyclopedia project or any other collaborative project (Bruns 2006, 201). Although Wikipedia is widely used, it cannot be better than other secondary resources. Because on this site, any outsider who has limited knowledge can break the expertise circle (Bruns 2006, 201). This process thus becomes threatening not only experts, but also other users. Consequently, under produsage, folks’ and experts’ participation becomes very complex.

Reference List

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production To Produsage. New York: Peter Lang

Lih, A. 2009. The Wikipedia Revolution. Hyperion: New York

Wikipedia and its moral panic

If you hear or see a new thing, what will you do firstly? I believe one of the top answers would be searching it in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is seen as a online encyclopedic, but it is more than an encyclopedic. This is because Wiki is an online collaborative project which are / can be created and used by any Internet user. Bruns (2006, ) describes that Wikipedia is about “Public participation, the rate of evolutioin of knowledge, the number of people who will be asked to learn and produce new forms of knowledge and the appearance of new tolls capable of bringing” (Bruns 2006).

 

As Wikipedia can be created and changed by ordinary citizens, it is considered to be problematic as a moral panic. During moral panics, the behavior of some social members is considered to be problematic or threatening others and it needs to be stopped or punished (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1992, 31). However, I will give you two reasons for not being panic – Wikipedia is not toxicant. Firstly, Wikipedia is not rules-free. During the process of creating content, various increasingly specific and complicated rules are set. Wikipedia uses the principle called NPOV (Neutral Point of View) which requires the content creation to be balanced and has been published (Bruns 2008, 149). There are three interesting examples to show Wikipedia’s control. Firstly, if you search a controversial topic, you can realise there is a small  lock symbol on the right hand corner. Users are not free to change the content of this type of information. Second example is about Taiwan. Taiwan is seen as an absolute part of China as Chinese. Although there has not been any world-wide official confirmation, Taiwan is seen as a country by the local as it has its own government and army. When you search “Taiwan” in Wikipedia, the information of both of the opinions can be found. Third, if you try to search John Hartley (academic), there is a note on the top of the page which says the information requires further substantiation.

 

Facing some experts who question Wiki’s reliability, one of the defender states “the problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work” (The New York Times 2009). However, the success of Wikipedia in practice which is  basing on “wisdom of crowds” or collective intelligence, threatens some academics (The New York Times 2009). As Collis (2009) believes, a moral panic occurs when some people tend to lose their power. Because of Wikipedia, some experts feel they are dangerously losing the authority. This is why they criticise projects like Wikipedia (Lih 2009, 188). Yet Wikipedia emphasizes the community which consists of the Internet users rather than adminship (Lih 2009, 95). “People who stumbled upon Wikipedia, registered, and became the new generation of editors didn’t necessarily partake of the mailing list”. Therefore, the adminship mostly rely on wiki itself rather than strict managing team. This contributes to the popularity of Wikipedia, because it allows everyone to participate.

Reference List

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production To Produsage. New York: Peter Lang

Collis, C. 2009. KCB102 media and society: from the printing press to the Internet: week 10 lecture notes. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/@@B155798A19E4BE4D0B031 718E86A/courses/1/KCB102_09se1/content/_2644004_1/KCB102WeekTen-Piracy09.ppt (Accessed May 10, 2009)

Lih, A. 2009. The Wikipedia Revolution. Hyperion: New York

The New York Times. 2009. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/ wikipedia/index.html

Some thoughts about the debate of Chanel Girl

Recently there was a debate online is about English language education in China. Chanel Girl is a university student who started this war by writing a post in her blog about blaming the English education model as ruining academic study and traditional culture. As she believed, students in China suffered from English learning from primary schools to applying master courses. This model destroyed some people’s study and life. After she posted, there were more than a million visitors and thousands of people commented (Baidu 2009). First of all, let us ignore if this girl sensationalised or not. This case can hardly happen 40 years ago without a new media form like the Internet. However, Chanel Girl did produce her personal thoughts to the publicity by using this new media form. This is described as the behaviour of citizen journalism (Bruns 2006). In the idea of citizen journalism, “everyone is or can be a journalist”, because anyone can produce news and opinions as web 2.0 has emerged (Harrington 2008, ). The forms of the production are various, such as writing blogs like Chanel Girl, discuss or comment in forums and upload videos in Youtube to broadcast news stories or ideas (Harrington 2008, ).

 

There are two main differences between traditional journalism and citizen journalism which can be reflected by the case of Chanel Girl. Firstly, citizen journalism appears as “unfinished” and “continuing prodess”, because it challenges the form of traditional jounalism which is “Self-contained news stories”(Bruns 2006, ). If Chanel used a newspaper to point out her opinions, she can hardly gain readers feedback. This is because readers have to contact the newspaper company to transfer their opinion or ask to contact the journalist in a undirect way. As the newspaper is printed out, readers normally read this article, think about the problem and tell his or her family for fun. However, as readers online, many people left comments following up to express their opinions; some people including me write another post to argue if they strongly disagree with Chanel. Chanel herself also continued writing post to argue back.

 

Secondly, the features of the content in citizen journalism and traditional journalism differ. Traditional sense of news is supposed to be balanced and based on truth without subjectivity (Gray 2009). Yet, bloggers’ posts appear to be objective about personal opinion. For example, Chanel girl argues some people failed to conduct further study because of their weak English grade. This description is neither based on truth nor based on statistical data. Therefore, her argument appeared to be weak. But this is only a post of a girl’s blog which can hardly be required to be professional or reliable. On the other hand, objectivity does not necessary influence news readers negatively. The purpose of news broadcast is to encourage people to consider and talk about current news (Gray 2009). As they start to pay attention about what happens, they can explore more information in other ways (Gray 2009). For instance, they can research for details by newspaper, reading or the internet. Consequently, citizen journalism can be a good start for exploring what’s going on for Internet users.

Reference List

Baidu. 2009. http://www.hudong.com/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E5%A4%96%E9%A6%99%E6%B0%B4%E5%A5%B3%E7%94%9F (Accessed April 1st, 2009)

Bruns, A. 2006. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: from production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

 Harrington, S. 2008. Future-proofing journalism : youthful tastes and the challenge for the academy Continuum : Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 22 (3), 395-407.

 Gray, J. 2009. Is new news better than no news?, Flow4(7). http://flowtv.org/?=162 (Accessed April 1, 2009)

the relationship between consumers and producers in produsage century

The role of media consumers has changed, as they are able to act as media producers, because of the development of new media technologies. In recent years, new media technologies, such as the Internet and video games, appear to be popular for media audiences to interact with others. Comparing with old media “which could only offer passive consumption”, new media consumers are able to interact with media’s content or other users by using new media (Flew 2008, 187). As Bruns (2008, 21) argues the chain of media production process has changed. This can be seen that consumers influence and involve the media production / media producers. For example, players can play video games with others and design the content of games like Littlebigplanet (Banks 2009, 54). The Internet provides users a platform to create social networks. Meanwhile the websites, including Youtube, Myspace and Facebook encourage users to upload their photos and videos in order to share with each other.

 

On the other hand, media producers use audiences’ interactivity to sell the value of new media technologies (Marshall 2004, 87). The content of Wikipedia is from consumers whose knowledge is collected. This way of gathering various people’s ideas is called collective intelligence. Besides, Banks (2009, 54) confirms this point by using the case of The Sims. The Sims is a game in which players decorate their homes based on their salary (Banks 2009, 54). It is more important that fans can design the cloth style, appearance and furniture at home (Banks 2009, 54). This shows that The Sims “instances a trend in online producer-consumer interaction” (Banks 2009, 55). Accordingly, there is more interactivity between media audiences and producers.

 

The change in how changing role of new media audience has changed the power relationship between the producer and user. Despite audience’s increasing power, current audiences are not more powerful than media producers. First, current media audiences are more interactive and more likely to produce media content by themselves comparing in the past. For example, website communities used to exist to gather people who share particular interests and attract regular consumers; Advertisers can purchase the right to advertise their products to those audiences (Banks 2009, 54). However, current audiences prefer to join fan-produced sites, because they understand this marketing strategy (Banks 2009, 54). Moreover, media audiences are more interactive in the process of media production (Banks 2009, 54). For instance, in the game of Spore, some players design their characters, and then share them with other players (Banks 2009, 54). As a result, gamers tend to be co-creator who participates to the produce process (Banks 2009, 54). However, there is no evidence to show that a total shift of power holding by media consumers. As Jenkins (Jenkins 2009, 127) believes, “the interactive audience is not autonomous, still operating alongside powerful media industries.” For instance, audiences’ suggestions are conducted under media corporations’ management and monitoring. Yet, sometimes players provide their suggestions without considering the cost and time (Banks 2009, 54). Furthermore, the action that building or connecting with fan websites is a marketing strategy which is beneficial for the media corporation (Banks 2009, 54). Therefore, currently, audiences are more important in produsage age, but the chain between producers and audiences is very complex. 

Reference List

Flew, T. 2008. New Media: an Introduction. 3^rd ed. South Melbourne : Oxford University Press.

Bruns, A. 2006. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: from production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

 Banks, J. 2009. Gamers as Co-creators: enlisting the virtual audience – a report from the net face. In KCB301 book of readings. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology.

 Marshall, P.D. 2004. New Media Cultures. London: Arnold.

 Jenkins, H. 2009. Interactive Audiences?. In KCB301 book of readings. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology.

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