From media producers & audiences to produsers

(Bruns 2007)

Audiences now expect media producers to listen to their views and feedback. There is now a critical need for media producers to be responsive to their audiences because they control the majority of power these days due to the shift and re-negotiation of media power between the two. Media producers need to also engage effectively in new ways with their audiences in order to survive the competitive market. One of the reasons why produsers are becoming more powerful today is due to the introduction of new media technologies and increasing transformation of traditional audience members (Banks 2002, 190; Ross and Nightingale 2003, 159).

The traditional role of the audience has now evolved. The media producer and audience roles are now being blurred and the traditional boundaries are now being crossed. “The relationship between audiences/consumers and corporate producers is undergoing significant transformation. Entities such as "audience", “fan”, “producer”, “corporation” and “consumer” are relational and emerge from continually transforming networks of relations,” (Banks 2002, 190). The break down of barriers between producers and audiences termed produsers, is a continuous collaborative process of creating, producing and circulating new content via social networking and tagging utilities such as Blogs or YouTube. "Indeed, even those members of the networked population who choose for the moment to remain users, simply utilising the 'products' of the produsage process as substitutes for industrial products, are always already potential produsers themselves - and recent developments have made it ever more easy, and in some cases even inevitable, for such users to become produsers (for example as their very patterns of usage become direct inputs to the continuing processes of produsage)," (Bruns 2007).

Media audiences expect media producers to listen to their opinions, views and effectively respond to feedback. In order to be successful, the producers of media now need to be responsive and discuss any concerns with their audience. The producer-audience relationship is an increasingly complex and multifaceted one (Banks 2002, 212). Media audience research and practice suggest audiences are elusive and slippery entities, difficult to pin down and categorise (Banks 2002, 190). The new audience of produsers are central, interactive, powerful and involved in creating content (Banks 2002, 190). It is an important topic for those interested in media because there is a real need to understand the complex nature of audiences and the shift from active to interactive audiences.

At first glimpse, audiences appear to be simple and easy to understand however is complex and involved below the surface. Audiences are the critical link in the communication process and are often used as a figure of speech by various groups in society to support claims. The move from active to interactive audiences has sparked an increase in interest from those interested in media. Interactive audiences are those who actively involve themselves in the media and relate it and decode it to their daily lives (Livingstone 2005, 31). A disadvantage of the active audience is the ability for them to possess too much power and an advantage is that the active audience has a greater understanding of media use (Jenkins 2002, 167; Livingstone 2005, 31).

Produsers are gaining new power and greater autonomy over media producers as they enter the new knowledge economy and transform into interactive audiences (Banks 2002, 212). The World Wide Web, Web 2.0, digital technologies, convergence, new media technologies, networked computing and the Internet all present possible reasons for the significant increase in the power of the audience. It also presents potential loss of intellectual property of media producer creation when power is given to the interactive audiences for media (Banks 2002, 197).

Produsers are now unpredictable and it is becoming more difficult to understand audiences. Due to this evolution, audiences now have a greater control over media companies and this is now the routine way the new media systems operates (Jenkins 2002, 167). There is also a dependability of new media industries on the voluntary, free labour creative production of collaborative, decentralised fan networks and audiences (Castells 2001, 102). “These developments are inducing a new model of relationship between property relations and production relations in the generation and appropriation of wealth. There are areas of cooperation and common appropriation, linked to areas of competition and private appropriation. While these trends are still embryonic, they may herald a profound transformation of the social logic of innovation, productivity, and economic growth,” (Castells 2001, 102).

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.

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

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.

Livingstone, S. 2005. Media audiences, interpreters and users. In Media audiences, ed. M. Gillespie, 10-50. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Ross, Karen and Nightingale, Virginia. 2003. New media, new audience, new research? In Media and audiences: New perspectives, K. Ross and V. Nightingale, 146-165. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

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.