Let’s get physical! -Produsage applied to products

We talk about this new age of collaboration and convergence, where individuals are forming communities in which produsage occurs.   Sharing and creating knowledge are key aspects.  Lines between professionals and amateurs are blurring.  There are themes of equipotential prevalent. The most common thread within this new media age is this theme of team work and the power within the community for people to come together and create and share knowledge.

 But how is this all relevant? Why is it important for individuals to come together and collaborate? What part does produsage really play?

 By applying the themes of produsage to commercial industries, it can be seen, in physical form, how produsage works. Communities who produse products are able to share inventions and alter them, reconceptualise products and are able to continuously evaluate products so that what it produced is the most efficient and effective product for that community. 

 Bruns’ discusses the “versatility of produsage itself, and the breadth and depth to impact on human knowledge and interaction it may come to have”.  This means that if we look outside of the informational, technological and new media realms of where we have been applying produsage, we can then examine how produsage can be adopted within the industrial and commercial industry. 

 A great benefit of applying produsage to physical products is that the community, the enthusiasts who are the most knowledgeable or are the most concerned with whatever product is in mind are the ones who eventually benefit the most.  This is because they are able to alter what they want, they know what types of changes need to be made in order to make such a product work best and they are then able to try out the product and see if it works and alter it again if need be.  Here lies the beauty of produsage, with the constant evaluating of information, the “end” result is the one that has been “extensively tested and developed by users acting as produsers themselves”.  Hippel outlines an example of kitesurfing in which produsage communities were able to design a kite that was more aerodynamic then kites that were available within the normal kitesurfing industry. Here, Hippel focuses on how the power of communites can affect innovation (Hippel’s book Democratizing Innovation should be looked at for a deeper understanding on such an important aspect of produsage and invention).

 We can see how produsage leads to the creation of a wonderful product.  Consider it being products that are for the people, by the people.  With the industrial production chain, the end party was the customer, applied to retail industries this can be considered as customer satisfaction.  Traditionally, the customer did not have much say in the production of the product, consequently their satisfaction levels may have been quite low as the product they get may not be exactly what they want.  However, if commercial businesses seek to apply elements of produsage the chian will alter. Resultantly the products they create do not need to end at the consumer, instead the chain will continue on.  The products will get batter, due to businesses sharing information and customer input, and consumers thus satisfaction levels will increase.  From this we can see now how and why businesses too need to collaborate, to converge into the community, not simply to keep up with this new age of technology and consumers who are changing too but also in the end business will benefit too.  Though they may be reluctant, businesses need to evaluate the potential benefits of produsage, just as Bruns states businesses need to “understand and accept, and embrace the principles of produsage itself. To operate by defending their traditional possession and advantages will be counterproductive”

Expert opinion vs Amateur Revolution

There is an argument, in relation to knowledge creation, about which party should be respected, the experts or the folks.  Bruns describes the experts as those who ideally develop well-behaved, universally accepted and internally consistent understandings of the world. Those apart of the folksonomic party allow for multiplicity, conflicts of interpretations and the existence of a number of alternative representations of extant knowledge which are accepted only by a subset of the entire community.  Here lie two contrasting ideals, it is the experts versus the folks. Larry Sanger heavily backs the experts in such a fight and looking at the above definitions, so do I. Well, I used to…

Sanger states many reasons of the importance of experts on a knowledge creating and sharing site,”…it is only the opinions of experts that will be trusted by most of the public as authoritative in determining whether an article is generally reliable or not”. Thus in order to be considered trustworthy, knowledge shared on sites such as Wikipedia should be provided by experts. If most of the public consider the information shared by experts as reliable then why should the information shared by amateurs be considered valuable too?

 I used to share this opinion with Sanger however; I now understand some of the benefits of the folksonomic paradigm.  Bruns explains that the lines between amateurs and professionals are blurring. Committed produsers are collaborating on information and the development and refinement of knowledge leads to information which is just as important was what is provided by experts.  For example, an article by Charles Leadbeater, from Fast Company, talks about how the “Amateur Revolution” has lead to the displacement of professionals in fields such as astronomy.  However such a movement is considered positive as these “Passionate amateurs, empowered by technology and linked to one another, are reshaping business, politics, science, and culture”.

 So, each party has the potential to make a significant contribution to the knowledge industry.  This element as described by Bruns is equipotential.  What is also reflected by the bridging between folks and experts is the flattening of hierarchies as a consequence of produsage.  It is important to acknowledge that the force behind community projects and produsage has lead to these circumstances.  It is even more important to understand how such aspects can play a relevant and helpful role in society today.

 Community lead content creation needs to be considered as reliable.  However instead of placing “blind trust” in such a phenomenon there needs to be special requirements put into place which “galvanise community involvement around a common aim”.  The acceptance that both folks and experts are important aspects of this knowledge environment is vital. Both parties need to co-exist rather then fight each other.  As a consequence of this, compromises need to be made.  The acceptance of amateur opinion needs to occur. And the acceptance that experts are not necessarily the be all and end all of information needs to occur. 

 The conclusion is thus, in the past expert opinion was the only opinion considered to be trustworthy and reliable. However with the developments of new media and the entire social, cultural, technological and political elements that coincide with it, there must be a move forward into an understanding and open acceptance of the Pro-Am revolution.

The Fear

Wikipedia- A Source of Fear

I was always told never to refer to Wikipedia when writing in an academic context.  I was told by teachers and educators to consider Wikipedia as a “bad” resource.  I was told that the information found on Wikipedia was not to be trusted.

Teachers, guiders, academics, people who knew about information, the people I looked to for knowledge were strongly recommending that I should not step foot into the Wikipedia world.  For this world was full of danger.  The danger of Wikipedia was that misinformation was rife; unqualified, thus untrustworthy, people were the editors of information and the information itself was subject to constant updating-apparently a no-no at the time.  Yes, here I was, happily willing to accept the negative propaganda being sold to me, adopting a belief that Wikipedia was an academic’s enemy.

However, half way into my university degree, which is a dual degree of Business and Creative Industries, I am now being told of the wonderful uses of Wikipedia.  Wikipedia has the potential to inform, the potential to build communities, the potential to play a vital role in the world today. From the Creative Industries side of my degree I am being told to embrace Wikipedia, from the Business side, even the slightest mention of Wikipedia is treated with despise. 

The problem I have here is not of conflicting ideals in regards to one subject, as clearly such an issue can be applied to more then just Wikipedia. No, the problem is that the negative beliefs of Wikipedia were planted within me at an early stage of my education.  Educators who did not like nor understand Wikipedia encouraged me to adopt their negative viewpoints. As a result I am now I am finding it difficult to overcome my negative predispositions and accepting Wikipedia to be this exceptional tool that my educators are now raving about is not easy.

Bruns explains why Wikipedia is a source of contempt amongs educatiors.  He explains that academics do not know enough about Wikipedia and thus they fear it.  This is a common theme within society today-if it is not understood then it should be rejected.  Bruns believes that academics do not understand the potential of Wikipedia.  It can be a resource far more relevant then printed and published encyclopaedias “Britannica tells you what dead white men agreed upon, Wikipedia tells you what live internet users are fighting over”.  There are also arguments that academics fear Wikipedia because, just like produsage, it has the potential to flatten hierarchies, thus diminishing the power of a qualified educator. Bruns explains that banning the use of Wikipedia, as practiced in academic institutions and in my case within my own degree, is “medieval…the “problem” of Wikipedia is not going to be made to disappear by shunning it”.

Instead of pointing out the negatives of Wikipedia, educators need to in fact educate students on both the limitations and potential of any research tool. 

 Information on Wikipedia can be interactive, live and much more relevant then information offered in texts.  From a marketing perspective, Wikipedia needs to be sold to academics.  To increase awareness, increase the knowledge and emphasise the potential of Wikipedia will consequently facilitate the acceptance of Wikipedia as another effective research tool. Educators need to understand this potential. They need to overcome their fear by learning about this resource.  Most importantly they need to stop passing their fear of Wikipedia onto innocent students who do not know any better.

Citizen Journalism- The Gates and Filters of Citizen Journalism

A key theme of citizen journalism is hyperlocal coverage.  Discussed by Bruns, hyperlocal coverage allows people to report on issues ignored by the mainstream. An advantage of this is that those reporting on specific places or events may be reporting from their niche areas of expertise.  Thus information provided by citizen journalists may possibly be of higher quality then what mainstream media would have presented.

The trends of citizen journalism and hyperlocal coverage show how the public are now empowered to report on any news which they find relevant.  However, a key issue arises, as a consequence of citizen journalism and hyperlocal coverage, there is now an infinite amount of news and information prevalent. How can all this information be filtered? This is where gatewatching plays a role. 

To grasp the importance of gatewatching, gatekeeping needs to be addressed.  Gatewatching is a contrasting ideal to its industrial predecessor, gatekeepeing. Gatekeeping involved selecting specific stories which were to be covered by the mainstream media, such stories were “let through the gates” by journalists and more importantly their editors. The main issue with this was that the public were subjected to stories that were considered important by the corporations who believed they were relevant.  Inevitably the public could not be informed on matters they personally considered relevant unless deemed important by the gatekeepers.  Gatewatching however allows the public to access any and all news, gatewatching, usually, does not discriminate what comes through the gates.

As Bruns explains gatewatching responds to what comes through the gates, it relies on the ability of users to decide for themselves what they find interesting. In this sense, gatewatching gives citizens power which gatekeeping did not.

Through gatewatching, communities emerge.  Those who are continually evaluating, commenting, and refining the information are assumed to be a diverse group of contributors who essentially from a community. With a community of people evaluating and filtering information it can be seen how gatewatching is a more effective means of obtaining highly relevant and informative stories compared to gatekeeping.  Communities are formed based on the information they are evaluating.  They contribute to and analyse information.  Shirky explains the actions of communities to “publish, then filter…Participants in a community…say what they have to say, and the good is sorted from the mediocore after the fact”.  This depicts how gatewatching aids in filtering the infinite amounts of information which results from citizen journalism and hyperlocal coverage.

In conclusion there are many aspects which are highly relevant to citizen journalism; two key aspects discussed here were hyperlocal coverage and gatewatching.  Citizen journalism and hyperlocal coverage allow for extensive news reports and sources. Gatewatching is essentially a filtering tool which allows the public to find important information, relevant to their interests, then evaluate and contribute to such information to improve it. 

The filtering aspect of Gatewatching is summed up by Bruns mediation is provided not by a select group of journalists and editors, but through collaborative processes by the community itself.

From Production to Produsage-the evolution of the value chain.

The Industrial Age saw the Value Chain to exist as a liner chain of power.  Producers had the most power, they could effectively control the distributors. Consequently the distributor’s actions affected the consumer.  At the end of the chain, the consumer, had no power over the other stakeholders within the equation.

The Industrial Production Value Chain

In this industrial age, power structures were very much slanted in favour or producers and distributors.  The Consumer was essentially an afterthought. Product development was not aimed towards consumer satisfaction nor were products designed to target consumer needs.  Instead, producers and distributors focused product design on production efficiency and profit.

This is where the evolution begins.  Consumers became more then just the all-absorbing Yin to mass media’s all-producing Yang.

The gradual shift of power is apparent when referring to the Limited Feedback in the Value Chain Model. Within this model the consumer is considered to have more of a say in regards to the producer’s actions.  This is possible through such tools as general market research, specific market research and more recently the e-commerce trends which has allowed producers to discover consumer preferences.  In this model, the consumer is more active then the consumer who existed in the industrial age.

Alvin Toffler’s concept of prosumption describes, not the shift of the balance of powers between producers and consumers, but merely the development of even more advanced consumption skills by consumers. This concept further evolves the Value Chain to allow for the perfection of the feedback loop from consumer to producer. This feedback loop gives consumers the power to influence the producers. Although the consumers are now in a position of power more then ever before, there still exists a high degree of segmentation between producers, distributors and consumers.  Separation between these parties exists because consumers, though they can now contribute to wealth creation, they are not able to benefit from the profits as the producers and distributors are able to.

As consumers gain more power, there is again a shift in regards to how consumers are viewed.  The evolution of consumers to users now occurs.  Rather then playing an inactive role, these consumers, turned users, are now able to play a distinct role in shaping, creating, collaborating, and building within the media realm in which they live and participate in.

Produsage, a term coined by Dr Axel Bruns describes the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further development.  Produsage significantly transforms the initial production value chain into a cyclical process that is constantly driven by content.  No longer do boundaries exist between producers and consumers, instead such parties are one in the same, roles are not specific and thus parties are free to create, collaborate and participate.

The elements of Produsage are vast and can be further examined in Bruns’ book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to produsage.

Consider the way in which markets are run today.  Marketing professionals live by the mantra that products need to target consumer’s needs otherwise there will be no inherent success for whatever product that is to be offered.  This ideal is completely contrasting to the ideals held in the industrial age.  The power held by the producer during the industrial age has shifted very much towards the consumer.

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