Produsage.org - Produsage: Implications

Exploring the Pro-Am Interface between Production and Produsage (Internet Turning 40, 2010)

Snurb — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:35:14 +1000

Axel Bruns. "Exploring the Pro-Am Interface between Production and Produsage." Paper presented at The Internet Turning 40 conference, Hong Kong, 19 June 2010.

The emergence of Web 2.0 and social media sites and projects has highlighted the development of new forms of social organisation that facilitate online collaboration between peers. Major projects such as Wikipedia embody the fundamental principles of an approach to distributed and communal content creation that is best described as produsage (Bruns 2008) or commons-based peer production (Benkler 2006), and these principles - which trace their origins back at least as far as the emergence of open source software development, but have antecedents in the offline world, too - are beginning to promote innovation and change in an ever growing range of intellectual practices across the content industries.

g4c2c: Enabling Citizen Engagement at Arms' Length from Government (EDEM 2010)

Snurb — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:47:16 +1000

Axel Bruns and Adam Swift. "g4c2c: Enabling Citizen Engagement at Arms' Length from Government." Paper presented at EDEM 2010, Krems, Austria, 6 May 2010.

The recognition that Web 2.0 applications and social media sites will strengthen and improve interaction between governments and citizens has resulted in a global push into new e-democracy or Government 2.0 spaces. These typically follow government-to-citizen (g2c) or citizen-to-citizen (c2c) models, but both these approaches are problematic: g2c is often concerned more with service delivery to citizens as clients, or exists to make a show of 'listening to the public' rather than to genuinely source citizen ideas for government policy, while c2c often takes place without direct government participation and therefore cannot ensure that the outcomes of citizen deliberations are accepted into the government policy-making process. Building on recent examples of Australian Government 2.0 initiatives, we suggest a new approach based on government support for citizen-to-citizen engagement, or g4c2c, as a workable compromise, and suggest that public service broadcasters should play a key role in facilitating this model of citizen engagement.

Produsage and Democracy in German(y)

Snurb — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:57:28 +1000

Looking back, my stay at the Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg during May and June this year was exceptionally productive. In addition to the various conferences at which I presented, I also conducted a range of interviews with German media - and the latest of these, for Polar, the voluminous twice-annual magazine for political philosophy and culture, has now been published. I was interviewed for the magazine by Jan Engelmann of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is aligned with the German Greens party.

Here's an extended version of the interview, slightly longer than what was published in Polar. It's in German, of course - try Google Translate for a rough translation to other languages?

"In der Open-Source-Demokratie wartet man keine Einladung ab"

Bloß zuschauen war gestern. Im Web 2.0 entwickeln Leute gemeinsam freie Software, redigieren Texte in Wikipedia oder beraten auf Blogs die Sicherheitslücken von Windows. Könnte diese Beteiligungslust auch der Politik zugute kommen? Ja, wenn man die Philosophie der Netzkulturen ernst nimmt und schrittweise in das institutionelle System integriert, sagt der in Australien arbeitende Medienforscher Axel Bruns in einem E-Mail-Interview mit Jan Engelmann.

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Produsage (and Business) in HD

Snurb — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:42:52 +1000

The next09 conference last week was very interesting (but, at one and a half days, too short!), and very well organised - one of the benefits of a PR company organising a research/industry conference, I guess. A particularly welcome addition was the participation of German video sharing platform Sevenload , who are now also beginning to post videos of presentations and interviews during the conference. For the full stream, check out Sevenload's next09 channel (or search for 'next09') - but feel free to skip right over Andrew Keen's rant...

'Produsage and Business: Sharing Your Brand with Users (next09, 2009)

Snurb — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:49:51 +1000

Axel Bruns. "Produsage and Business: Sharing Your Brand with Users." Paper presented at next09, Hamburg, 6 May 2009.

Relations between brands and their users continue to be affected by a traditional perspective that sees the producers and consumers of goods and services as inherently different animals. In the emerging information and knowledge economy, and especially in online contexts, this model is no longer sustainable. Instead, spearheaded by the Web 2.0 phenomenon, there is a trend towards the fusing of production and usage as a new, hybrid process of produsage.

Produsage and Emerging Talent

Snurb — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:40:45 +1100

Following up on my last post with another answer to a really sharp question from a reader of the book, in what I hope may become an occasional feature of this site: one of my LinkedIn contacts asked

Does produsage create emerging talent, or does it merely point it out? Okay, probably not a "quick" question, but my study of produsage makes me wonder if there has been any case studies on this topic. Any thoughts?
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From User to Produser: The Continuum of Participation

Snurb — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:48:47 +1100

The other day, I received a very insightful question from somebody reading Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage - pointing to a line in the book which states that

participation in these social spaces a continuum stretching evenly from active content creation by lead users ... to the mere use of content by users who perhaps do not even consider themselves as members of the community (18)

and asking, in essence, where mere usage ends and real produsage begins. In particular, what about the differences between spaces such as Second Life, where usage and content creation are necessarily part of the same process, and Wikipedia, where content creation and usage can remain separate, but individual users are free to move between the two? I thought it might be worth posting my reply here, to further explore this issue.

Blogs und Bürgerjournalismus: öffentliches Nachrichtenforum oder Startpunkt für neue politische Bewegungen? (ZMI 2008)

Snurb — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:40:46 +1100

Axel Bruns. "Blogs und Bürgerjournalismus: öffentliches Nachrichtenforum oder Startpunkt für neue politische Bewegungen?" Keynote at the conference "Das Internet zwischen egalitärer Teilhabe und ökonomischer Vermachtung", Zentrum für Medien und Interaktivität, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, 24 Oct. 2008.

Blogs, die sich mit politischen Ereignissen befassen, werden zumeist als neue, von Bürgern in Selbstverantwortung betriebene Alternativen zum traditionellen Journalismus dargestellt. Internetnutzer aktieren hier nicht mehr allein in einer Rolle als Informationsabrufer, sondern beteiligen sich in mehr oder weniger großem Umfang als Produzenten von Inhalten - insgesamt also in einer Mischrolle, die als 'Produtzer' (engl. produser) umschrieben werden kann.

All the World’s a Library: Produsage and User-Led Curation (ARLIS 2008)

Snurb — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:33:13 +1000

Axel Bruns. "All the World's a Library: Produsage and User-Led Curation." Keynote presented at the Arts Libraries Society Australia and New Zealand conference, Brisbane, 9 Oct. 2008.

With the continuing growth in user-led content creation, or produsage, comes an increase in user-led information management, organisation, tagging, classification - in short, a growing trend towards user-led curation of the digital media universe. What Mark Pesce has described as 'coolfinding' is now no longer an isolated activity conducted in small-scale networks of friends, but - through the tools of Web 2.0 - has become an organising principle for the entire Web. Specific social media spaces from del.icio.us through Flickr to the Wikipedia are leading the way, but their increased networking and interconnection is making Pierre Lévy's once utopian vision of the 'cosmopedia' appear more and more like a realisable possibility.

New Impulses for Libraries: Drawing on Second Life and Produsage

Snurb — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:24:17 +1000

(Crossposted from snurb.info.)

I'm spending the morning at the 2008 Arts Libraries Society of Australia and New Zealand conference, at the Queensland State Library. I'm afraid I'm only here for the opening keynotes (one of which I'm giving) - my hectic schedule for this week between overseas trips doesn't give me any more time to see what else is happening.

The first keynote speaker this morning is Kathryn Greenhill from Murdoch University, presenting on the possibilities of Second Life as a platform. She begins by taking us on a flight around Info Island - the central library island in Second Life - and follows this with a quick explanation of what Second Life is and how it works. The aim here, she notes, is immersion, not just information.

Upcoming ARLIS Keynote: Produsage and User-Led Curation

Snurb — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:13:21 +1000

There haven't been many updates to this site recently, but in the meantime, the book has done very well - many thanks to everyone who's bought it and/or accessed the reading samples and other articles on this site. Keep spreading the word!

Over the next few months there are quite a few produsage-related events coming up for me, in Australia and Europe - and I'll preview a number of them over the coming weeks. The first one of these is a keynote at the biennial conference of the Arts Libraries Society Australia/New Zealand (ARLIS/ANZ) here in Brisbane on 9 October 2008.

The Brownian Motion of Collective Intelligence?

Snurb — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:30:39 +1000

Some of my colleagues at QUT are involved in a new project they describe as 'cultural science' - a combination of cultural studies, economics, and other scientific methodologies, in order to arrive at a more rigorous and testable framework for the study of cultural activity. I've posted some more about this over at snurb.info, and there's now a Cultural Science Website which has more information. I've cross-posted the following blog post on the Cultural Science blog.

I was lucky enough to attend part of the Brisbane meeting which officially kickstarted the project of cultural science, and I've been trying to trace the connections from here to my own work since then. I know little about economics, but for a couple of years before switching to media studies, I trained as a physicist, and a recent blog post by Yihong Ding has made me believe that some fields of physics, too, have valuable models to contribute to cultural science. In particular, it might be worth examining the way that particle and fluid dynamics describes the transition from random interaction at a micro level to orderly and predictable behaviour at a macro level.

But first, some background: the focus of my research is on user-led collaborative content creation, or what I've come to call produsage. One of the fundamental challenges in this field is to understand the processes of collective intelligence that arise in large-scale collaborative environments, and the conditions under which they flourish best. What makes Wikipedia work, for example? What would make it work better? What enables The Wisdom of Crowds to emerge, as James Surowiecki describes it?

From Production to Produsage: Book of the Week (II)

Snurb — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:35:52 +1000

As I mentioned the other day, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage was chosen as book of the week on the P2P Foundation Website, and Michel Bauwens has kindly posted a few excerpts from the book on the P2P Foundation blog. The last two of these are now up, and I've also reposted the entire series here on this site - please feel free to leave comments here or discuss them over at the P2P Foundation Ning site.

Reading Sample 2 - Folks and Experts

Snurb — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:44:13 +1000

Below is the second of four reading samples from Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. These samples were first published as part of a series on the P2P Foundation Website, where the book was honoured as Book of the Week.

In this series:

Produsage: An Introduction

Folks and Experts

Produsage and Technology

Produsage and Democracy

2 - Folks and Experts

Wikipedia, and the environments of produsage more generally, can serve as vehicles for moves beyond established and increasingly ossified structures of knowledge and expertise; they pay respect not to abstract certificates of expert accreditation, but to the active display and embodiment of expertise through constructive participation in their communities of content and knowledge creation. At their best, therefore, they are by no means anti-elitist, but instead openly invite elites and experts to share their knowledge with the wider community so that the community overall is able to gain knowledge; they are opposed, however, to any tendency to take established expertise for granted and to use one's status as an accredited expert to refrain from answering legitimate questions and challenges, wherever they may originate. Thus, for example, in journalistic produsage the lack of special prestige accorded to experts "does not mean, however, that deliberative journalism should reduce all discussion to common sense. Rather, the perspectives of 'ordinary people' should be allowed to transform the analytical distinctions of established experts as well as define new questions." [1]

From Production to Produsage: Book of the Week

Snurb — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:58:00 +1000

Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage has been chosen as book of the week on the P2P Foundation Website, and over the next few days a number of selected excerpts will be published on Michel Bauwens's P2P Foundation blog. The first two of these have now gone up - check them out, and feel free to leave a comment on the blog or discuss them over at the P2P Foundation Ning site.

The first excerpt provides a general outline of and motivation for the produsage concept - it outlines the decline of the conventional production chain as we were familiar with it during the industrial age, and the corresponding rise of produsage as a hybrid model of content creation which involves users as producers: in other words, produsers. Necessarily, this also fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the outcomes of such processes: produsage generates only temporary artefacts which themselves remain up for further development, not fixed and finished products - even though many such artefacts (from open source software to the Wikipedia, and beyond) can be used to substitute for the products of industrial processes.

Social Networks on Ning: A Sensible Alternative to Facebook

Snurb — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:04:23 +1000

As I've said before, I'm no fan of Facebook - in fact, I think that ultimately, it is no more than a poor caricature of what social networking can be and do. Clearly, that's not stopped the site's rapid growth, but as Facebook users themselves have had more time to come to terms with the environment they're now operating in, I think it's in good part responsible for the fact that in some key territories, Facebook usage numbers have now plateaued and even declined.

The main problem here is with the thoughtlessness with which Facebook handles what should be its central asset - the social networks that its users belong to. Social networks are defined in the first place by the term 'friend', but being friends with someone on the site is no more than a binary decision: you either are, or you're not. There's no opportunity to do what we do in our lives outside of Facebook every day - to distinguish between different types and levels of friendship: work colleagues, old school friends, family members, neighbours, ex-lovers, casual acquaintances must all be classified simply as either 'friend' or 'non-friend'. What's the use of that?

On my Facebook profile page (which I hardly ever visit), there are now some 30 friend requests waiting for me - some are genuine friends, some are students and colleagues, some are casual acquaintances or friends-of-a-friend. Overall, they have nothing more in common than that they - somehow - know (of) me. In no context other than within the artificial sociality of Facebook would anyone consider all of these people to belong to the same category. And I have no means to properly qualify the level of friendship which connects me to another person - I can't distinguish between people I've known for 20 years and people whom I've never heard of, but who may have read one of my books; I can't tell family members from colleagues at work whom I occasionally exchange ideas with.

This fundamentally ignores some of the basics of how we as humans understand the social networks we're embedded in. We don't just see everyone as our 'friends', but instead have social ties with others that are more or less strong - and for most of us, there's a pretty low upper limit on the maximum number of really close friends we have. (Perhaps it's just me, but I don't know that I'd even say that I have 30 extremely close, 'through-thick-and-thin' friends - so who are those 30 who want to befriend me on Facebook?) Which highlights the absurdity of the Facebook 'friends' system: any social network that enables any of its members to claim that they have 10,000 or more friends doesn't deserve to be called 'social network'; what the tag 'friend' in Facebook really means is no more than 'here's someone I know (of)' - and what good is that if I can't also say 'but here are my very best mates'?

Beyond Broadcasting: TV as a (Deficient) Form of Streaming Media

Snurb — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:47:34 +1100

Continuing the streaming media theme on snurb.info from Wednesday: the latest issue of the journal Media International Australia has now been released - "Beyond Broadcasting", edited by Graham Meikle and Sherman Young. I've contributed an article and have received permission from the editors to re-publish it here. In the article, I try to take a fresh look at television in an increasingly Internet-driven media environment.

Traditionally, the Net's equivalents to television (mainly, streaming media) have been viewed through the lens of the older technology; to some extent, streaming media has tried to mimic television's feel and format - this is visible in the user interfaces of media players like Windows and Real, and even (though perhaps with some irony intended) in brand names such as YouTube, Current.tv, or Democracy TV, the original name for the podcast feedreader Miro. I would argue that this is a case of what we could call a paleomorphising process: the tendency to shape new media technologies in keeping with older technologies. (In much the same way, it's taken decades for the mobile phone to look and feel like a mobile media and communications device, rather than simply like a wireless handset.)

Re-Public: Who Controls the Means of Produsage?

Snurb — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:05:38 +1100

I'm very pleased to see that a new article of mine has just been published in the energetic Greek online journal Re-Public. Editor Pavlos Hatzopoulos invited me a little while ago to respond to a first wave of articles discussing and critiquing the emergent phenomena of the social Web, and the contributor list already includes a number key thinkers in the field, from Michel Bauwens to Trebor Scholz. In fact, I responded specifically to the opening discussion between Trebor and Paul Hartzog, which revisits the industrial-age question of "Who owns the means of production?" for the new, information-age context.

What was missing from this, from my point of view, was a concern not so much with the means of production, but with the next step in the chain - with the means that connect producers and users, the means that facilitate the interaction, collaboration, and ultimately the produsage that takes place when the producer/consumer dichotomy diminishes. This, I feel, should be the main starting-point for critique now - the question should be "Who controls the means of produsage?" In fact, its claim to exclusive ownership and control of the means of produsage within its gated community is one of the reasons why I am so concerned about the rise of Facebook, as I've noted previously.

Anyway - the article is now available on Re-Public, and reprinted below. A special thrill for me (having studied ancient Greek at school) is that Re-Public also published a (modern) Greek translation of the piece: Ποιος ελέγχει τα μέσα παραγωγής/κατανάλωσης; Cool...