Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: DIY design, open source software, produsage, shared knowledge
Doing art during my senior high school years I’d consider myself to be somewhat creative, but tell me to design something on the computer and I freak. So many programmes, so many features I swear it’d be easier to design by hand. However I’ve come to feel my opinion has become a minority in today’s society where manual design has become devalued and our society has become dependent on the ability of digitalisation and design stemming across a variety fields. Find the right program and any one can be home or fashion designer.
Coerced into the mix of the concepts that have already been discussed is the idea of DIY design having evolved into the produsage environment. What Hippel (in Bruns 2008, 289) points out, is that what was once used to design ‘blue prints’ is no longer a popular choice but rather “today, designs for new products are commonly encoded in computer-aided design files”. This DIY design process today, experiments with new materials and technologies; it works as an intangible item. Bruns explains this transformation as a turn of artefacts into products or vice versa.
What produsage has done is overturned the industrial value chain. Where no longer is there a separation between production, distribution, and consumption but rather a fluid social co-creation of social artefacts. The example that Bruns (2008, 393) uses is Ebay which turns products into artefacts through the ‘exchange of goods and currency’. What we are creating here is a new economic framework, circling the possibility of giving users the economic power to explore consumer products without the significant cost price. Bruns describes this as ‘trial – and – error approach to market participation’.
This DIY culture allows people to use open source software to create new products. An example is ‘Etsy’ which is an online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade (Etsy 2009). It enables people to make a living making things and acts as global community with human relationships between buyers and sellers. What ‘Etsy’ is doing is creating is a viable alternative where users are part of a DIY craft movement. This open software environment allows a community to work together and support each other and designers through the sharing of information in a produsage environment. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales puts it as it “giving access to the sum of all human knowledge” which is similar to what ‘Etsy’ does for those in the DIY designing industry. It shares the collective knowledge of others to enhance each other’s work.
So what does the future hold for DIY design and produsage? Well, only time can decide whether produsage is a containable phenomenon that can contribute to the human market economy. Because produsage has no limitations there are no boundaries to how far and what users can do. What produsage has done for DIY design is allowed creators to participate and collectively build and share their knowledge in a mutual environment.
References:
Etsy. 2009. What is Etsy. http://www.etsy.com/about.php (accessed May 29, 2009)
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Social bookmarking websites like Wikipedia have created a new arena where users are co-producers and knowledge sharing is building a hierarchal structure by their defined contribution. Bruns discusses this in the context of Wikipedia and how users “extensive original research on a topic gets no particular respect”. This raises issues of social websites not giving regular people the opportunity to develop websites. In the instance of Wikipedia it lacks giving regular people any credit for their contributions, which unlike other blogging websites, users work through a hierarchal system to establish their credibility.
Wikipedia is too often criticised for its lack of credibility as a scholarly research. However how are users meant to get recognition for their contribution when Wikipedia has no system of allowing its community of contributors to become an expert?
This can be considered in the context of Bauwen’s (in Bruns 2008, 213) principle of equipotentiality stating “that all participants have a useful contribution to make, regardless of their level of accreditation”. Just because one user may not have a qualification does not ensure they are incapable of being an expert within a field. Choosing to write about a topic most often ensures that the author will have some form of knowledge regarding it.
The benefit of a system like Wikipedia is that each user has an equal opportunity in contribution and establishes a consistent environment for collective learning from both folks and experts. Referring back to the example of Wikipedia it provides the chance for other users to correct each other’s work. Bruns (2007) explains “communal evaluation and filtering comes to play an important role both in policing participant contribution and neutralizing any potential deleterious effects”. However those who criticise the system regard it as lacking in a balance of opportunities and it creating an anarchist environment.
The only person that knows the contribution that they one can add is the person writing. Thus we cannot undermine user’s ability to contribute whether it be a folk or expert. Wikipedia has opened the door to allow everyone the opportunity to be experts.
The other area of examination which folks and experts can relate to is the debate between citizen journalists not being real journalists. In 2007 ‘the Australian‘ news paper, attacked citizen journalist as being “sheltered academics and failed journalists who would not get a job in a real newspaper”(Slide Share present yourself 2009). Though, it is not that citizen journalists are not experts, but rather they are analysts of mainstream commentaries. The two only overlap in their contribution of providing information to the public. The concept of Wikipedia that has been addressed, links to citizen journalism as both challenge the notion of folks versus experts in produsage environments.
Reference:
Slide Share present yourself. 2009. Folks and Experts. http://www.slideshare.net/Snurb/folks-and-
experts-kcb202-week-7-podcast-presentation (accessed May 27, 2009)
Produsage.org. 2007. Folks and Experts. http://produsage.org/node/28 (accessed May 27, 2009)
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Wikipedia is similar to that of an online encyclopaedia, however its content is created collaboratively by its users. Wikipedia is based on the exposing of knowledge that is already established and recognised rather than “presenting new information or original works” (Wikipedia 2009). It incorporates the principles of produsage and citizen journalism by allowing users to freely endeavour in the process of contribution. Wikipedia is only one aspect to the ever developing Web 2.0 phenomena that includes information and knowledge sharing through social software means. It’s openness towards content contribution and editing means that there is always a ready supply of information on a wide range of topics. However, this same asset is its downfall. With the ability for anyone to contribute information, it loses all scholarly research credibility.
Wikipedia is a popular tool for primary resource however its content is not reliable enough to be included in academic writing research and does not compensate for traditional resources. Some articles may be well written and insightful, but they are not embedded in the world of scholarly discourse. As a resource it is useful for initial research to give a broad understanding of key issues within subjects, before examining scholarly sources like library books and peer-reviewed journal articles.
Without a known author, Wikipedia articles cannot be considered authoritative. This leads to the problem of users not respecting the purpose of Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia and posting content that is inaccurate. Bruns (2008 ,124) explains “Wikipedia has been voiced over what are perceived as in accuracies and mistakes in its content, especially also in the context of errors deliberately introduced by malicious contributors”. This form of manipulation has redirected the amount of control users have previously had. One example is the website limiting some pages editing to only the administrators of Wikipedia. Take the example that Roy Rosenzweig (2006) provides of Wikipedia entry on Franklin D. Roosevelt “which has emerged over four years as five hundred authors made about one thousand edits”.
This form of content production changes the traditional ideals of knowledge sharing. It incorporates extraordinary freedom to content production and review. Critics of Wikipedia fail to realise the objectivity of its contribution to the social sharing networking. It has changed the traditional concept of the encyclopaedia, whereby incorporating both social and new media idea’s of going into the online environment but also uses collective intelligence to process information. Nevertheless, its subjectivity to criticism and ridicule has not deterred a range of volunteers to maintain the site.
References:
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Rosenzweig, R. 2006. Can History be Open source? Wikipedia and the future of the past. http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/93.1/rosenzweig.html (accessed May 25, 2009).
Wikipedia. 2009. Criticism of Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Nature_of_Wikipedia (accessed May 25, 2009)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: citizen journalism, gate watching, media, produsage, user generated
Citizen journalism contributes to our media rich society, enabling users to contribute to the democratic system. It enables writers to choose and forefront stories that do not get coverage in the daily news. Bowman and Willis (in Flew 2008, 144) refers to citizen journalism as ‘the act of a citizen, or a group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information’. This form of news production is changing the way people consume information, moving away from industrial journalism. Objectivity and impartiality are key ideals of industrial journalism, but political and commercial pressures are challenging these ideals. Thus user generated content like citizen journalism is creating a new breadth in sources for news consumption. Gillmor (in Flew 2008, 144) best describes it as “a medium for everyone’s voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multi-billion dollar printing presses”. Citizen journalism enables audiences to become active engagers in the news from story selection to production it allows users to decide what they are exposed to. Like produsage it is based on user generated content and collaborative contributions.
A fundamental aspect to citizen journalism is ‘gatewatching’ which is the practise of observing and commenting on other sites news. It functions as a ‘watchdog’ for websites and depends on the ‘discussion, debate, and deliberation in the community’ (Bruns 2008, 75). This can be discussed in the context of politics and the idea of the fourth estate – media which works to protect, inform and ensure the public is receiving unbiased information. Like such is the function of ‘gatewatchers’. It depends on the input of stories and the output of collaborative response. This aspect of citizen journalism empowers the democratic system by providing people with a variety of sources to refer to for information. It provides people with the ability to seek information else with the knowledge that information content is not monitored to the control of producers in traditional mediums but to the point of authenticity and reliability in facts. Bruns correlates with this by stating that citizen journalism ‘enables its communities to comment on stories and thereby build up a more detailed, communal understanding of their background, context and impact as well as evaluating the information contained’. Traditional media has had to keep up with the ideas of ‘gatewatching’ and citizen journalism by allowing them be active participates of the content they are consuming. Thus we are seeing a competitive nature in news production to keep up with what the audiences what, in some instances current affairs programmes are asking their audiences to go online and tell them what stories they would like to hear about.
Citizen journalism is not affected by market forces and based on principles of produsage of open participation and collaborative community creation. The idea of citizen journalism empowers our democratic system of freedom of speech by it being based on the principle of ‘for the people, by the people’.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: collaborative environment, consumers, produsage, users
The internet has blurred the boundaries between producers and consumers as users have become contributors to the creation of content. This collaborative environment has created the concept of produsage where users and producers are ‘continuously building and extending existing content in pursuit of further improvement’ (Bruns 2008, 21). Produsage changes traditional and conventional ideals of user and producer roles, which no longer counter-act each other as separate entities. Users of media have become active participants in their choices of consumption. Produsage develops a way for individuals to contribute ideas and knowledge rather than consuming what producers are presenting. It empowers individuals and creates new perspectives for them to consider. The idea of produsage is centralised on the point of control for users.
Produsgae is based on the open participation and is dependent on user contribution. Bruns (2008, 24) explains that “the assumption in the produsage community is that the more participants are able to examine, evaluate and add to the contributions…the more likely an outcome of strong and increasing quality will be”. This can be interpreted as community members sharing an equal knowledge on the basics of topic discussions and reliant on users to diversify and collaborate on the growth of the community. Examples of collaborative websites are ‘wikipedia’ or ‘second life’ which both grow with user sign-up and demand. These websites demonstrate produsage as users are the ones creating the content and expanding its network. It is possible to correlate the role of producers to the idea of ‘if you plant it they will grow’. Producers in the collaborative online environment, function as mediators rather than contributors, they monitor content in order to protect and incorporate what users want. These environments work on the basic ‘principle of inclusivity, not exclusivity’ (Bruns 2008 24).
Websites like ‘facebook and myspace’ for example demonstrate the idea of produsage, however there network environment is of a closed membership. Whereby only those within the group have accessibility to content and interaction, which means users are controlled within the proprietor enclosure. However this could relate to Bruns’s idea of communal evaluation idea of “power is distributed… across the organisation, and sharing of resources often includes peer organisations, even potential rivals”. These ideas link together through the idea that the priorioter is often a member of the group and that working with its users can establish better communication techniques which can only enhance the possibilities available in the collaborative environment. In a way, Mark Zuckerburg (co-founder of facebook) is a “con-tributor…which is able to see and evaluate everyone else’s contributions, also acts as a driver for a continuing process of socialisation” (Bruns 2008, 25).
Produsage is the idea of users becoming producers of content, blurring the boundaries between the two parties. The concept is reliant on participation from users, thus being reliant on you!
Reference:
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Filed under: Uncategorized
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