Reference’s
Posted by: n6905633 on: May 25, 2009
Now that you have read all my wonderful blogs, I bet you are thinking “gee where did she get all this AWESOME information from???” So here is my reference list, enjoy:
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Flew, T. 2008. New Media an Introduction. 3rd ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press
Harrington, S. 2009b. KCB102 Media and Society: From Printing Press to Internet: Week 8 lecture notes. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/ (accessed April 25, 2009)
Hertz, J.C. 2005. Harnessing the Hive. In Creative Industries, ed. J. Hartley, 327-341. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Jenkins, H., K. Clinton, R. Purushotma, A. J. Robison, M. Weigel. 2006. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF (accessed April 4, 2009)
Leadbeater, C. and K. Oakley. 2005. Creative Practices. In Creative Industries, ed. J. Hartley, 299-311. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
McCarthy, R. 2003. Salam’s Story. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/may/30/iraq.digitalmedia (accessed May 7 2009)
Professor Wikipedia. 2008. Streaming video recording. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaADQTeZRCY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fn6905633%2Ewordpress%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded (accessed May 12, 2009)
The Australian Oxford Paperback Dictionary Second Edition.1994. Melbourne: Oxford University Press
To infinity, and beyond!
Posted by: n6905633 on: May 22, 2009
Over the past 4 weeks I have introduced you to the wonderful world of produsage. So after exploring Citizen Journalism, Wikipedia and the Pro/Am debate, sadly we have reached the final blog in this epic tale that is KCB 201. After all this there is only one more question in my mind “Are there natural limits to the applicability of the produsage approach; in particular, perhaps, is it necessarily confined to the informational, intangible, digital realm, or can it be translated also to the produsage of physical products?” (Bruns, 2008, 389). What is the future of produsage?
Charles Leadbeater and Kate Oakley state that “the independents are developing a highly collaborative, creative and networked model of production, which shows how other industries could be organised in the future” (303), however would it be possible to translate produsage to a real world model? Particpatory culture is a huge part of Produsage. Jenkins states an important part of participatory culture is that people feel they “are free to contribute when ready and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued” (Jenkins et.al, 2006, 7). This is also one of the main aspects of produsage, As we have discovered, interaction and collaboration as well as the ability to contribute from any where at any time (technology allowing) is what fuels produsage. Thus is is obvious to see the theory of participatory culture flows strongly through the veins of Produsage, they are almost one in the same. However, would this participatory culture be able to carry on into the ‘real world’? Not entirely, no. Produsage thrives online as it can involve such a broad spectrum of people from all over the world. In the case of online gaming, there have been instances where a group of people, each from a different country create a MOD for a game and a gaming company then buys this MOD (Hertz). None of these games have met, but they have created and sold a product as a unit. This collaboration could not have taken place if it weren’t for the internet. Not only would these people not have met, but the ability to instantly and constantly build and improve a product from that distance would be impractical, if not impossible.
However, could produsage take place in a hybrid real/online world forum? It already has, Bruns (2008) gives the example of kite boarding communities who design kites online and local shops make these deigns, which the kite boarders then test and report back to their online communities where necessary improvements and changes are made. So, this possibly proves that produsage can translate into the real world as far as creating a virtual creation that a separate third party can then make a tangible real world product.
Whilst there is so much more to explore in this exciting new realm that is produsage, unfortunately my time (or assignment) has come to an end! I hope you all enjoyed your time here on the aptly (and imaginatively) named Sara’s Blog. Thankyou Come again =]
PRO v.s AM
Posted by: n6905633 on: May 18, 2009
Well this seems to be the crux of every arguments against produsage, amateurism. People don’t know anything apparently, even the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, seems to be having second thoughts. Bruns states that Sanger believes “Wikipedia needs to be more elitist…which would explicitly undermine the value of the project” (Bruns 2008, 205). At first glance the professional versus amateur debate reads a bit like a boxing match. In the blue corner is the professional with their all knowing, educated opinion and in the red corner we have the “pimply teenager in their bedroom” as Harrington (2009b) puts it in his week 8 lecture. However, I don’t think it’s so black and white. Who is an expert and who is an amateur? Bruns possess the question “is and undergraduate or a post graduate student in a specific discipline of knowledge to be considered a dilettante or an expert?” (2008, 202) So as an undergraduate student I am writing this blog using numerous credible sources and my own knowledge gained through my university education thus far. Does this then make me an expert or an amateur? Furthermore, in the instance of game design or citizen journalism, is someone who is familiar with and engages ardently with the product an expert or a novice?
Leadbeater and Oakley (2005, 306) declare “to be a creative producer it helps to be an avid consumer”, I definitely believe this statement has merit. Without those consumers engaging with a product and then choosing to improve it, would not only would the internet be a boring place, but creativity would be stifled and some great demonstrations of human innovation would never have come to fruition. In my blog on produsage I gave the example of counterstrike a MOD of Half Life, made by one of it players. Countersrike is a great example of the important contribution a “novice” can make.
Anyway, is being an amateur such a bad thing? The Oxford Dictonary Second Edition (1999, 20) defines amateur as “a person that does something as a pastime rather than a profession.” At no point does it mention anything about being uninformed or uneducated and yet ‘amateur’ contributors are portrayed in such a negative light. For example, a person with a passion for human rights has a blog where they report on the latest on human rights issues, they are a novice partaking in citizen journalism. Regardless of the fact that they may know someone in the UN or they studied humanities at university or they are living in the country where the violations are taking place, they are automatically considered less credible than a journalist.
As I have said many times before, information produced by an amateur should be approached with caution, but to put a blanket dislike over all amateurs isn’t wise, for the reasons I have mentioned in all my blogs, but mostly because the term ‘amateur’ encompasses too broad a demographic.
Wikipedia: By the people, for the people.
Posted by: n6905633 on: May 12, 2009
There have been many online encyclopedias over the history of the internet such as the online version of Britannica, but what makes Wikipedia different? “Traditionally produced, standard encyclopaedias…encapsulate the current state of accepted knowledge” (Bruns, 2008, 103) whilst Wikipedia creates what Bruns (2008, 103) describes as “representations of knowledge.” Put simply, Wikipedia is a “collaborative online encyclopaedia” (Bruns, 2008, 103) written by the people for the people. An obscure idea perhaps, you may be wondering where such an idea came from?
“Within the communities of the (online) world, a great deal of knowledge is inherent already, and had already been, and had already been compiled at least in part through a variety of more or less produsage based communal processes for several decades before the emergence of Wikipedia” (Bruns, 2008, 103)
The idea of Wikipedia evolved using the same concept as the online communities used to accumulate their knowledge. For example, most online forums have a FAQ’s, correct? This is basically an accumulation of knowledge, questions asked and sometimes answered by the users “produsage based communal processes” (Bruns, 2008, 103).
Basically, Wikipedia was (and continues to be) a massive success is because of “its clear embrace of produsage principles” (Bruns, 2008, 107):
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“Open participation” (Bruns, 2008, 107)
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“Communal evaluation” (Bruns, 2008, 107)
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“Fluid hierarchies organised through ad hoc meritocratic governments” (Bruns, 2008, 108)
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“Common Property” (Bruns, 2008, 111)
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“Individual rewards” (Bruns, 2008, 111)
Wikipedia allows anyone to review and edit the content of their articles or start entirely new subjects. Wikipedia also allows you to look at every editing stage, so that users can “evaluate the quality of the work of their predecessor” (Bruns,2008, 107). Communities of produsers form “set[s] of entries” where they continue to build, review and improve on their work and the work of other in the community.
However, Wikipedia is hated by almost every high school teacher that ever lived; they claim that Wikipedia is unreliable as it can be written by anyone, but does that really make it untrustworthy? This question seems to crop up a lot when we are discussing user generated content.
In my opinion the most convincing argument in support of Wikipedia is that “Wikipedia, though built on open participation … has developed a set of increasingly specific and complex policies for content creation and community collaboration” (Bruns, 2008, 113). Wikipedia has three fundamental rules that basically require that “Wikipedia, be and remain, an encyclopaedia” (Bruns, 2008, 113), which implies that Wikipedia’s content has to be reasonably reliable. However, there is no denying the “variations in content quality within the Wikipedia and lack of clarity about administrative structure within its community of users” (Bruns 2008, 118). Additionally, one of Wikipedias policies is that articles must be written NPOV (neutral point of view). This has received a lot of criticism despite the fact that this approach is “highly conventional and even old fashioned” (Bruns, 2008, 119). Critics are saying that the NPOV leads to the production of some articles with a “weak and indecisive consensus position” (Bruns, 2008, 119).
There are to many arguments to list in this one blog both for and against. Overall is there moral panic surrounding Wikipedia? Definitely, people are afraid of new and different things. Do I believe that Wikipedia articles should be approached with caution, of course. Wikipedia is a valuable source, but it should not be your only source when you are researching a topic.
This is poking a bit of fun at wikipedia.
Citizen Journalism
Posted by: n6905633 on: May 7, 2009
The name is pretty self explanitary, Terry Flew states that citizen journalism is best defined by the OhMyNews slogan “everyone is a reporter”. Citizen journalism is basically news reported by citizens and posted online. However, with readily accessable new sources written by professionals, why do we need citizen journalism. Axel Bruns (2008, 69) says that citizen journalism “acts as ac orrective and a supplement to the output of commercial, industrial journalism”. Australia has citizen journalism sites that “seek to both promote new stpries and to generate alternative means of gathering and aggregating news and opionon online” (Flew 2008, 144). In his 2009 week 8 lecture for Media and Society: Printing Press to Internet, Stephen Harrington stated that some are even refering to Citizen Journalism as the fifth estate. Just like the press (the fourth estate) keeps tabs on the first three estates, some are saying Citizen Journalism evolved to keep the press in check.
The question that then stems from this is, is citizen journallism useful or is it simply “valourising idiots” (Harrington, 2009)?
Bruns believes citizen journalism is neccessary for “restoring access to the public institution of journalism…citizens-turned-produsers” (Bruns 2008, 96). Remember the last blog, the one on produsage? Well this where it comes into play. Citizen journalism is a collaborative building process, where citizens create, report and comment on “news”.
One of the greatest benefits of citizen journalism, in my opinion, is the “oppurtunities to express alternative views in countries with state-controlled media” (Flew 2008, 157). There have been numerous examples of this, one such example Salam Pax and his blog Where is Raed. Salam Pax wrote about the war from an Iraqi’s perspective, something most westerners hadn’t even thought about. He was the first of many citizen journalists to rise from the rubble of Bagdad. The things Pax wrote about were something reporters from our culture could never experiance and something Iraqi reporters perhaps could not express. Additionall,y the reach of the internet is phenomaonal, not as limited as news or print and this allowed Pax to communicate with the world. This really leads me to believe that citizen journalism is quite valid and should be regarded as important in todays society.
So…is citizen journalism just deligitimising expertise (Harrington, 2009)? No i don’t think so. I think we have to give the people of this world some credit, people are intelligent, they are informed and they are opinionated. Just because someone has not had formal training as a journalist does not mean they don’t have something valid to discuss. If a doctor wrote about the state of the health system in QLD, we would all accept what they say to be informed, and yet they are not a journalist. It also comes down to what you define as news. The Oxford dictionary defines news as ”information about recent events,” a Sundasese businessman could blog about the situation in Darfur, this would be information about recent events, so…news, and they aren’t a journalist either! Some citizen journalists, such as Perez Hilton, are now being used by traditional news programs as a source, perhaps this is a sign of things to come?
Produsage
Posted by: n6905633 on: April 28, 2009
Since the internet has really taken off and web 2.0 was born, we have seen a shift in the traditional producer consumer relationship. Back in the ‘olden days’ the producer consumer relationship was fixed. As Axel Bruns (2008) discusses, shortly before the industrial revolution, industrial production emerged. Basically, the industrial production models are producer to distributer to consumer. However, since the development of the internet we have seen this staunch relationship evolve into one that is far more interactive. This new relationship is what Bruns (2008) calls ‘Produsage’: “the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement.” (Bruns 2008, 21)
“Produser [is] where usage is also necessarily productive” (Bruns, 2008, 21) such as in online gaming where the players create new maps and new levels. An example of this is the successful computer game Counter-Strike, which was a MOD (modification) of a computer game called Half Life (Hertz, 2005, 332). This game took the online gaming world by storm, however it was not created by a company but instead a user. A key benefit of produsage, is that people do not have to be expert programmers to become a produser. Hertz states that with the tools available “most of the players who tinker with games aren’t programmers. They don’t have to be” (Hertz, 2005, 334). This is great news for the consumer as they become more involved in online forums, such as wikipedia, and even wordpress, it is so simple to create content that anyone with access can do it.
It is important to stress that produsage never stops, as previously mentioned, it is a continuous process. Produsers collaborate and build on an original idea and continue to build, branching off in different directions. They do reach dead-ends, but then they just go back and build in a new direction (Bruns 2008, 21).
Produser communities do not have a typical leadership regime but instead, “project leaders … emerge from the community based on the quality of their contributions” (Bruns, 2008, 25), allowing for the leaders to be the cream of the crop – something that can’t always be said for our leaders. The leadership “remains in constant flux” (2008, 26) depending on the kind of project the community is undertaking and a particular produser’s skills. As Bruns (2008) discusses, produsers don’t always act as a whole community, instead they break down into smaller teams or work as individuals, when this is necessary “produsage communities organise their processes through ad hoc forms of governance”(Bruns 2008, 26). However, it is important to remember these are adhocracies not anarchies, there are leadership structures within produsage communities, both for the overall projects and the different sections of afore mentioned projects.
Produsage is a vital part of todays online society as I have discussed, it opens a door to a whole new relationship between consumers and producers, in fact some may even argue we are seeing the “death of the consumer” (Bruns 2008, 17). I have used this blog to outline the principles of produsage so as you read on in coming weeks you will be armed and ready with this knowledge to face anything I through at you; next week it’s citizen journalism ninja star.
photo by: ChrisL_AK
Apparently the produsage revolution is spreading…
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- shannon201: Hi Sara I enjoyed reading your blog. You have a very personable style of writing and have used good real life examples of produsage in your content
- rogger53: Hey Sara! Great post about produsage, you really broke it down into easy to understand bite sized pieces. Not only that, you consistently managed t
- amygray: Thank you for bringing up a point that often gets forgotten. Amateur, I agree is not synonymous with unreliable, bad or otherwise negative. Amateur is
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