Rushkoff (2007) states that “the rise of interactive media does provide us with the beginnings of new metaphors for cooperation, new faith in the power of networked activity and new evidence of our ability to participate actively in the authorship of our collective destiny”. It is the rise of interactive media that a model such as this has emerged and these manufacturing businesses have embraced this new model, as well as the new technology that is evolving.

Many of these businesses have been created buy, make, and sell websites to cater for the needs of their consumers. An example of this is Ponoko.com which allows consumers to design the product they want, or alter another, then the manufactures at Ponoko will produce them for you, as well as deliver it for you. The site also provides helpful tips through their design software, where they help you to design your own products as well as giving you a reasonable price before producing it for you. Examples of other sites that use this model include spoonflower.com which allows consumer to customize fabrics, and emachineshop.com where consumers use similar strategies as Ponoko, except they design machinery items such as doorknobs and car parts.

The advantages of these new models are that they focus on the consumer and their individual needs. Companies are allowing for criticism and offer a wide range of support and feedback related to the products. With all of these advantages to Produsage based sites, it is now easier than ever for industries to sell the right amount of products to consumers, and for consumers to get everything they want in a product. With these new emergences it is crucial that other businesses look at the alternatives to manufacturing products and follow this new trend.

Reference List

Rushkoff, Douglas, “On ‘Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism’ by Jaron Lanier,” Edge: The Reality Club, 2006, http://www.demons.co.uk/publications/opensourcedemocracy2 (accessed 12 July 2007)

Experts are considered to be people with an education and a wide range of knowledge or abilities in a subject or area, which enables them to provide highly credible and reliable information about a particular field of interest. Amateurs on the other hand are people who have little or no knowledge of a subject, and are considered to be inexperienced or unskilled in an area, and can therefore not complete the task in a credible way. Sites such as Wikipedia are an example of amateur content as users are able to create their own work which tends to be very personalized and is often bias.

Traditionally, experts where held highly by society, as they provided us with credible and reliable information that society could trust and understand. Today however with the emergence of user created content with sites such as Wikipedia, there has been a dramatic shift from experts to amateurs. Co founder of Wikipedia Larry Sanger stated that “someone whose expertise rests on having done extensive original research on a topic gets no particular respect” and it was this denigration that eventually led to Larry’s departure from the Wikipedia project (Bruns 2008). Jaron Lanier also shares Sanger’s criticism as he says that “the problem is in the way the Wikipedia…has been elevated to such importance so quickly” (Lanier, 2007). This dramatic shift from experts to amateurs has taken its toll on industries such as Journalism as it has allowed the public to share their opinions openly without any question of bias; however it has led to the serious questioning of the opinions of professional Journalists. The flip side of this shift is evident in campaigns for businesses such as Doritos. It came up with a campaign that allowed amateurs to come up with a TV ad for their company, and if they liked it they would use it, which helps in creating a more democratic society.

Questions have arisen over the idea of Wikipedia, as the divide between professionals and amateurs continue to grow; so as this gap gets wider – what will become of Wikipedia?

References

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Jaron Lanier, “Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism,: Edge: The Third Culture 183, 30 May 2006, http://www.edge.org/documents/achirve/edge183.html (accessed 27 Feb. 2007)

There are some positive aspects of Wikipedia, as it is an encyclopedia that includes current knowledge instead of the heavy content that is usually found in a book-form encyclopedia. Wikipedia also allows for the removal of a hierarchical structure which is what its collaborative environment was meant for. Wikipedia is a site that doesn’t contain work from scholarly authors; instead it contains very general yet interesting facts and information about various topics. Although this is a negative aspect of the site, it can also be seen as a positive for some, as Wikipedia is mostly used as a place for start up research, where you can find the facts of topic, but not use it as a reference in your scholarly work.

Although there are positives to Wikipedia, there are a vast number of negative aspects to this collaborative, online encyclopedia. Throughout High School and now in my second year of University, I have never been allowed to use Wikipedia as a reference in any of my academic work. This was always said to be because the content of the site was not reliable or of any quality. It is this reliability that has always been a topic for discussion, as many have questioned whether the information on it can be considered to be truthful. Wikipedia provides a world of open participation and is a site that is a form of Citizen Journalism as it allows anyone to produce their own work and edit others. Wikipedia is however constantly monitored in order to get rid of any content that is false or not necessary, and means that something you may have read one day can be erased the next. This then raises the question that if a site is going to use methods such as these, how can it be classed as a credible source?

Wikipedia has definitely copped a lot of criticism during its time; however there is no denying the positive sides to it. Wikipedia is the most successful online encyclopedia and the best example of user-generated content.

Reference

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

The traditional stages of conventional news production is the process of input, output and response, where news is gathered by Journalists, it is closed by an editorial hierarchy, where a selection is made by editors, and calls to the public are made (Bruns 2008 p71). These traditional stages have begun to fade, as they no longer exist in Citizen Journalism, because it has opened up a whole new world of producing news. With this emerging concept it also questions journalism as a professional ideology and in Terry Flew’s 2008 book ‘New Media: an introduction’ he states that “the technological development associated with the rise of citizen journalism have occurred at a time when claims to the uniqueness of journalism as a profession have been contested”. It has been questioned as to whether or not citizen journalism can be seen as a form of journalism, as today people are able to write their own stories, and post blogs on issues without having to have any qualifications. However as Gans (322) states: ‘the news may be too important to leave to the journalists alone’. Traditional journalistic content is usually “reproposed, reappropriated, and remixed” (Bruns 2008, p93). The shift here from traditional journalists to citizen journalists has allowed citizens to break through the commercial journalism industry to become an alternative to the commercial spaces of this industry.

Citizen journalism has allowed numerous amounts of audience participation as citizens are able to express opinions and criticise content with no question of copy right doesn’t require the high costs included in traditional journalism. This emergence has ultimately allowed citizens to define what content they believe should be available to the public, allowing a more independent public sphere.

Reference List

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, VIC: Oxford University Press.

Through this emergence it has allowed users to generate their own content, and has meant that traditional roles such as the consumer and end user have started to disappear. This emergence can also be described as ‘collective intelligence’ which according to Terry Flew (2008) is the term that refers to enhancing the collective pool of social knowledge by expanding the extent of human interactions through communications networks. The line that used to divide these two has now been blurred, but has allowed an online revolution, as there is a whole new world of concepts such as new media and social networking sites available to users. These sites have provided users with the ability to produce content and release it to the general public.

There has been speculation as to the reason for introducing these concepts, as there are certain negative aspects such as the producing of false and inaccurate information that is unreliable, such as Wikipedia, as there are no restrictions on the site, and it allows anyone to edit anybody’s work. There are however, many positive aspects of this emergence which I have personally found to be useful in my studies as a University student at QUT. I have found that there is a wider variety of technology to use and more communication sites for me to access, which has contributed to my knowledge of these concepts. Large Businesses and Corporations have embraced the concept of Produsage in order to improve and build a more secure relationship with consumers. Examples of this include Coke and Mentos using Youtube as a way of encouraging consumers to produce their own video in order to re launch their current website.

References

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, VIC: Oxford University Press.