The shift from traditional production to the world of produsage

Produsage (Bruns 2007)

The relationship between media producers and audiences has significantly evolved and converged in recent years. This hybrid convergence has been coined produser by Axel Bruns, where usage is also productive (Bruns 2007). The shift in the relationship between the two now provides audiences with an increasing amount of social and culture power than ever before over the media they consume on a daily basis (Banks 2002, 190; Jenkins 2002, 168; Ross and Nightingale 2002, 40).

The boundaries between the producers and audiences have been distorted and crossed (Banks 2002, 190). Participants in collaborative activities are not producers in a convention sense because that term suggests a distinction between producers and consumers which no longer exists (Bruns 2007). Audiences are now adopting the more traditional roles of producers including creating, producing, continuously collaborating and circulating media content via Blogs, Del.icio.us, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube (Banks 2002, 190) and becoming produsers.

Produsage is beyond products, producers and production. It is an ongoing collaborative process and deeply embedded within every single individual human being, waiting to be unleashed every time we interact with a Web 2.0 or similar environment. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps and Wikipedia demonstrate the increasing number of virtual audiences contributing to the World Wide Web by creating, editing and sharing content with others.

The removal of barriers between producers and consumers permits all participants to be users as well as producers (Bruns 2007). This is often in a hybrid role of produser where usage is also productive (Bruns 2007). Produsage is the process of collaborating and continuously building on content in pursuit of new improvements (Bruns 2007). “The produsage process itself is fundamentally built on the affordances of the technosocial framework of the networked environment, then, and here especially on the harnessing of user communities that is made possible by their networking through many-to-many communications media,” (Bruns 2007).

Jenkins (2002, 168) discusses the shift from active audiences to interactive audiences due to the introduction of new media technologies, convergence and participatory culture. The participatory culture refers to audiences participating actively and contributing to the culture of creation (Jenkins 2002, 168). There is a need to document the interactions that occur between consumers and media producers. The new participatory culture which is taking form at the centre of new media technologies and tools enable audiences to create, annotate and recirculate content.

In video games, audiences are often able to produce their own content and it is ultimately more satisfying to them. Development costs to the media producers are significantly reduce because they no longer have to create all of the content in the game as this is now the empowered audiences’ role (Banks 2006, 202). Benkler (2006) argues that non-market peer production is just as efficient as media producers and firms and also suggests that new media interactivity provides a platform for more democratic participation in creative and productive practice. “Peer cooperative production networks enhance capacity for creativity in loose collaborations without being limited to organise the activity through the constraints of the marketplace, price system or traditional industrial & hierarchical models of social and economic organisation,” (Benkler 2006).

It is critically important for the media producers to listen to the audiences because it significantly contributes to the commercial success of the media itself (Banks 2002, 189). Auran’s ‘Trainz – A railroad simulator’ relied heavily on user-generated content and on a pool of fan labour as a critical component of the project itself (Banks 2002, 204). The fan feedback in the design process had considerable influence on the design direction, production and development (Banks 2002, 204). Producers must listen carefully to their audiences and adapt to their needs, wants and desires in order to survive in the marketplace (Banks 2002, 189).

References

Banks, J. 2002. Chapter 8: Gamers as co-creators: Enlisting the virtual audience - A report from the net face. In Mobilising the audience, ed. M. Balnaves, T. O'Regan and J. Sternberg, 188-212. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.

Benkler, Y. 2006. The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Bruns, A. 2007. Produsage: A working definition. http://produsage.org/produsage (accessed 20 April 2008).

Castells, M. 2001. The Internet galaxy: Reflection on the Internet, business and society. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, H. 2002. Interactive audiences. In The new media book, D. Harries, 157-170. London: BFI Publishing.

Ross, Karen and Nightingale, Virginia. 2003. Audiences in historical perspective. In Media and audiences: New perspectives, K. Ross and V. Nightingale, 12-41. Maidenhead: Open University Press.