Week Five: DIY Culture

Online cultures and communities are developing everywhere, but few have taken off in popularity like DIY (Do-it-yourself) culture.  Produsers who participate in these communities by creating anything from jewelery to clothing, and then selling it in these online marketplaces have arguably turned it “into an industry in its own right” (Bruns, 2008).  That is exactly what this is, an industry where produsers take advantage of communities online, and no longer have a need for physical stores to sell their products to consumers.  One of the most famous examples of these marketplaces is the website Etsy (www.etsy.com).  Anyone can join the community by signing up and then putting their products up for sale.  Not only that but users can then use their accounts to buy other peoples products, and build relationships with them.  This is effetively an example of the users becoming produsers.

This brings up a whole plethora of issues.  What happens to popular brands and actual stores with the increase of people simply making their own products and selling them themselves?  Will stores become obsolete? Will businesses and brands migrate to online stores to take advantage of the their popularity?  As Axel Bruns states on his blog, this is an example of a growing opposition to major brands, and everyone wanting to move towards having their own brand.  This is a big issue due to the fact that it can only mean a decline in sales for major brands and businesses, unless they are willing to adapt to a growing online DIY culture.  It seems as though only flexible brands will prevail.

For example, indie film makers are taking advantage of the whole DIY phenomenon by offering their films for sale on DVD or download through websites run by themselves.  This effectively “cuts out the middle man” and allows them to take in 100% of the profit.  By offering their films for sale online through their own websites, they don’t need to bother with making deals with stores to sell their products.  As stated before, this becomes a problem for major stores because it makes them obsolete.  On the flipside though, this is a very positive thing for filmmakers.  It opens up opportunities that may not have been possible otherwise.  Some low budget film makers may not have the opporunity to sell their films through stores in the first place due to factors like their films aren’t in high demand, or may be targeted at niche markets.  Though with the ability to sell and market them themselves, there is no need to worry about that.  It all depends on how dedicated the filmmakers are to promoting and marketing their films, and ultimately, that decides how successful they will be.

There is no end in sight to the growth of  DIY cultures due to the fact that is an appealing, easy, and cheap way for people to market their products.

References:

Bruns, A. 2007. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.  New York: Peter Lang

Bruns, A. 2008. From Prosumption to DIY Culture, Snurblog.info. http://snurblog.info/node/973 (accessed May 26th, 2009)

Week Four: Folks and Experts

The notion of the Professional/Amateur divide is a very relevant topic when it comes to film making.  The popularity of using the internet as a tool for promotion and mass marketing of films, ultimately blurs the line between professionally made films, and amateur films made on a small budget.  It no longer seems to matter whether there is a lot of money going into the film and whether it’s being made by ‘folks or experts’, but similar results can be achieved through the integration of web2.0 into the marketing process.

A comparisson can be made between the hollywood blockbuster film Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008) and the recent Australian horror film Undead (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2003) (IMDB, 2009).  Both films are completely worlds apart.  Cloverfield was made on a budget of over $25 million (Sarafin, 2008), whilst Undead was made on nothing more than money donated by friends and family of the directors.  Both movies became cult sensations, even though they both came from completely different production backgrounds.  Could the reason for this be that they both used web2.0 to their advantage when marketing the films?

Cloverfield and Undead are just two examples of how web2.0 is slowly bridging the Pro/Am divide.  Through the use of viral marketing online, cult-like fanbases develop and therefore lead to the rise of popularity among these movies.  The advantage of using the internet as a tool for promotion is that anyone can do it as long as they know how to.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a student film maker or a professional Hollywood director.  Strategies may be different, but the end results are often surprisingly similar.  For example, Cloverfield chose to create an entire viral marketing scenario through different websites making it seem like the events in the movie were actually happening in real life.  Fake news report videos, fake websites, and so forth were created in order to intrigue potential viewers and get people talking about the upcoming film.  Undead on the other hand took a different approach.  Instead of creating an entire viral marketing campaign, the directors relied on word of mouth to spread about their film.  Posting home-made trailers and promoting their film on movie forums created an interest in the film, and through their hard work they got the attention of potential viewers just like Cloverfield did.

This leads to a problem though.  Even though the Pro/Am divide may be blurring, there are still differences between the two.  In this example, there is a definite indication of who has more finances available to them, and it becomes obvious who has the advantage when it comes to marketing and promotion (Hartley, 2007).  Whilst Cloverfield has the finances to create an entire viral campaign that blends reality with the film, Undead can only afford to promote the film through more conventional means.

Though the process may be different, and may cost different amounts of money, they both seem to provide the same results.  The end result is always that the film garners a cult-like following, and through this it’s popularity rises exponentially. So even though there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between ‘folks and experts’ in this particular marketing aspect of the film industry, it is clear that whoever has more money, still has more opportunities.

References:

Hartley, S. 2007. The Pro-Am Divide: Time to build bridges. http://ukboxing.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/the-pro-am-divide-time-to-build-bridges (Accessed May 18th, 2009)

IMDB. 2009. http://www.imdb.com (Accessed May 18th, 2009)

Sarafin, J. 2008. Cloverfield Monster Attacks January Records: Mania. http://www.mania.com/cloverfield-monster-attacks-january-records_article_57201.html (Accessed May 19th, 2009)

Week Three: Wikipedia

In January 2001, Wikipedia was launched (Millard, 2008) and so began one of the largest collaborative websites in the world.  In simple terms, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and general reference site which is collaboratively maintained and written by volunteers from all over the world.  With so much interaction from millions of users each day, Wikipedia can be considered as a perfect example of Web2.0.  With such a large and open form of information sharing, there have to be pros and cons.

One of the advantages of Wikipedia is there is no single group sharing information and knowledge.  It is a variety of people from across the world.  This means that Wikipedia could be considered a form of Citizen Journalism where individuals are open to share information, and have that information passed around freely.  Furthermore, the information that is shared on the website, can then be edited by others, and their knowledge can then be added on to make each entry in the encyclopedia much more detailed.  Basically, the fact that anyone can add their own information to all the articles provides users with an infinite amount of knowledge as new information can be uploaded at any time.

Not only is Wikipedia a reference site, but it can also be used as a source for current, up-to-date news  (Dee, 2007).  The sheer volume of users and editors means that the website is constantly be updated.  Twenty four hours a day, users from all over the world are logging in and updating it with new information.  This constant flow of information means that the site is constantly up to date with things that are happening around the world.  It is also arguable that the news found on Wikipedia is much less biased than what one would find on a News network or website.

This leads to the notion of bias.  There have been many criticisms of Wikipedia , many of which claim that the system is biased and inconsistent.  In fact, this is one of the very large problems with the website.  The fact anyone with access to the internet is able to edit the website implies that a lot of the information may not be of a professional quality.  The ability for anyone to edit even leads to constant cases of vandalism.  Peoples credentials and qualifications are not considered when publishing information, instead, a form of consensus decision making is used to decide whether the information is worthy of staying on the site.

Though Wikipedia might have it’s holes, there is no denying that it is one of the most successful examples of user-generated content on the internet.  It is rare for a website to reach a point where users contstantly work together from all corners of the globe to create, maintain and edit a single source of information.  In this regard, Wikipedia really is a perfect example of Web2.0.

References:

Dee, J. 2007. All the News That’s Fit to Print Out: The New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01WIKIPEDIA-t.html (accessed May 12th, 2009)

Millard, M. 2008. Wikipediots, Who are These Devoted, Even Obsessive Contributors to Wikipedia? Salt Lake City Weekly. http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-5129-feature-wikipediots-who-are-these-devoted-even-obsessive-contributors-to-wikipedia.html (accessed May 12th, 2009)

Week Two: Citizen Journalism

There are three elements which are “critical to the rise of citizen journalism” (Flew, 2008).  Citizen Journalism is a democratic form of journalism where anyone, regardless of their status or credentials, has the ability to share and publish news in the way that they perceive it.  One of the driving factors of Citizen Journalism websites is that they allow users to publish news in almost any way that they see fit.  Due to this, the users and the public effectively choose the type of news they wish to view and share.

The first of the three elements is ‘open publishing’.  Open publishing, as the name suggests, is a very open form of sharing news and content which allows readers to filter through content with much more ease.  In fact, the readers have the ability to change and edit the news if they have more information or more opinions on whatever is published.  Even though there are many websites already that share some of the principles of Open Publishing, like a non-heirarchal system and public participation, only websites dedicated to Open Publishing have the ability to filter out problematic content as there are so many users contributing at any time.

Second, ‘collaborative editing’ is another element that is critical for Citizen Journalism.  The rise of the internet has made this a possibility more than ever before.  The biggest, and most well known example of this is the website Wikipedia.  When groups, as well as individual contributors work together to share information and knowledge, they are all accessing the same website, but uploading their own information.  Therefore, allowing users to add to each others information creates a more varied source of knowledge and information.  In principle, this is more or less the same as Citizen Journalism.  A varied group of individual contributors, all working together, editing each others information in order to make it as relevant as possible.  The comment system available on almost all Citizen Journalism websites is perhaps the most useful.  Comments allow readers to finish, add on to, and discuss in more depth anything that the original publisher started.

Finally, ‘distributed content’ is the third of Terry Flew’s elements.  This is the idea that “content should not be consumed exclusively in the service in which it is created” (Wilson, 2007).  It is about creating content, and distributing it in as many ways as possible.  Many Citizen Journalism websites provide RSS feeds, links to blogs and so forth.  With tools like these, posts and forms of news can be accessed by readers in a variety of ways that suits them best.  This allows the information to be much more accessible.  This way, readers don’t have to go to the website every day just to check for new information.  Instead, they can choose to have the most relevant information sent to them, either directly to their email inbox, or through applications like Google Reader.

References:

Flew, T. 2008. New Media: An Introduction. 3rd ed. South Melbourne: Oxford UP.

Wilson, F. 2007. Distributed Media and Comments. http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2007/08/distributed-med.html (accessed 5th May, 2009)

Week One: Produsage

The act of produsage is a collaborative process which effectively allows a networked enviroment to create or produce information while simultaneously being consumers as well.  “As a concept, [it] stands in direct contrast to traditional modes of industrial production (Bruns, 2007)”.  In the traditional industrial sense, there is a significant distinction between a produser and a consumer, yet this simply does not apply with produsage.  Both terms are no longer relevant, as in these collaborative, networked communities, users take on a mixed role where usage often leads to more production.  Users build and create communities by networking with people to be able to create information and work on projects together in a collaborative environment with other industry professionals.

When someone is simply creating a product (or sharing knowledge or information) they are creating content themselves and then distributing it, though with produsage, users are able to contribute, and collaborate on this process in a never ending cycle.  Users are constantly adding and contributing to the shared knowledge and information.  This basically means that communities can be coordinated and organized in accordance to their own protocols as opposed to having one single authority in charge.

A rise in online networking technologies has made produsage a much easier, day-to-day thing.  The functionality they provide allows users to collaborate in ways they never could have before, and not only that but the simple fact that it has become so much easier for online networks and communities to form is a significant factor in the history of produsage.  Even this website, WordPress, is in a way an example of produsage in effect.  By creating a blog, and linking to other blogs through the blogroll feature, users are effectively creating a giant network of blogs which all contain and contribute similar information.  The constant growth and adding of other blogs creates a community which is linked together through a shared interest.

Axel Bruns mentions that the collaborative basis of the content creation communities engaged in produsage indicates that in these projects, the object of communal effort is almost always as much about the development of social structures as it is about the development of the project itself.  So not only is produsage an effective way to create content and information within a community, but it is also a way for people to build communities and networks that can be used in other ways.  Professional and social networks are both formed in these communities which leads to the construction of social relationships among participants.  Instead of just producing a social network, it is constantly built upon, extended and maintained.  Maintenance and construction are ongoing things in these networks, just like in the produsage projects they collaborate on.  Like I mentioned before, information is not simply created and distributed like in the traditional sense.  The people involved constantly build on that information, and improve it.

Reference:

Bruns, A. 2007. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.  New York: Peter Lang