Teaching the Produsers: Preparing Students for User-Led Content Production

Teaching the Produsers: Preparing Students for User-Led Content Production Dr Axel Bruns Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology [email_address]

User-Led Content Production
emerging in various domains:
open source software development
online publishing:
blogs
open news – e.g. Slashdot , Indymedia , OhmyNews
knowledge management
wikis – e.g. Wikipedia
Google Earth
multi-user gaming:
e.g. The Sims , Everquest , Second Life , Spore
creative practice
e.g. Flickr , ccMixter , YouTube , Jumpcut , Current.tv
viral marketing

Common Characteristics
shared across these environments:
users are productive – they create new content, and make this available to others directly
engagement is collaborative – users work together in creating content
artefacts are unfinished – they are constantly being updated in minor or major revisions
this palimpsestic development requires the use of alternatives to traditional copyright licences

What’s Happening Here?
emergence of:
the prosumer (Alvin Toffler)?
the citizen-consumer (John Hartley)?
pro-am production (Charles Leadbeater & Paul Miller)?
customer-made products ( Trendwatching.com )?
corporations harnessing the hive (J.C. Herz)?

Beyond Production
such models retain a traditional value chain:
producer  distributor  consumer
producer advised by consumer  distributor  consumer
customer-made  back to producer  distributor  consumer

Beyond Production
such traditional value chains rely on key assumptions:
products exist in discrete versions, and producers decide when these are to be released
the distribution of products is controlled (and controllable) by producers and distributors, not by consumers
consumers are relatively isolated – only producers have access to the whole community
the core business lies in the sale of copyrighted products
but in a user-led environment, this is no longer true:
the latest update is always immediately available – e.g. open source, Wikipedia
content is available for direct access online – users become producers, and the Net replaces the distributor
consumers join together in enthusiast groups, interest groups, developer groups
the core business lies in providing value-added services around freely available content

Breaking the Chains content development space set up by community or company (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation; Google) commercial / non-profit harnessing of user-generated content (e.g. The Sims ) commercial / non-profit services to support content development (e.g. Red Hat, SourceForge) commercial activities by users themselves (e.g. support services, consultancies, content sales) initial IP contributions from public domain or commercial sources collaborative, iterative, evolutionary, palimpsestic user-led content development valuable, often commercial-grade content is created

Produsage
beyond production:
‘ anyone can edit’ – users become producers of content
usage and production are increasingly, inextricably intertwined
strict distinctions between producers, distributors, and consumers no longer apply
this is produsage

Characteristics of Produsage
users
are productive:
projects are led by users, or
involve them as key contributors
engage collaboratively:
with one another, or
with institutional partners;
in flexible roles and with varying intensity,
in self-organising, often fluid and heterarchical communities

Characteristics of Produsage
content artefacts
remain always unfinished:
iterative, evolutionary, palimpsestic development leads to
constant revisioning, with a potential for
forking into different development directions – thus
ending the product revision cycle
are prodused under alternative copyright licences:
collaborative authorship by
volunteer contributors in collaboration with
professional developers,
building on a recognition of individual contributions while
acknowledging the need to enable further palimpsestic development

Key Questions for Produsage
Is the economic model workable?
harnessing, harbouring, harvesting, hijacking the hive
reconciling alternative IP licences and commercial exploitation
EULAs and commercial ownership of produsage spaces
Is the community model sustainable?
considerable churn within communities
long-term sustainability of volunteer-based produsage
development of workable community structures – anarchy, panarchy, heterarchy, benevolent dictatorship?

Key Questions for Produsage
Consequences of content omnivoracity?
need for better understanding of IP licencing options
problems with building on proprietary material
disregard for IP frameworks amongst produser community
Liability for prodused content?
responsibilities of the produsage space provider
responsibilities of the individual content produser
identifying liable parties in collaborative produsage
Incompleteness
need for ‘use at own risk’ disclaimers
but then, all (produced as well as prodused) artefacts contain room for improvement

Wider Implications
New paradigms:
produsage is becoming increasingly widespread, under various guises
Web2.0
social software
open collaborative environments
New generation:
Trendwatching.com : Generation C
Content Creation, Creativity, Casual Collapse, Control, Celebrity
New society:
industrial  informational  networked  produsage society?
move of citizens from consumers to produsers of democracy?

Educating the Produsers
4C Education:
need for new approaches to educating ‘Generation C’
learner capacities:
creative: knowledge creation through content creation
collaborative: iterative and palimpsestic work across distributed and diverse teams
critical: produsers evaluate, enhance, and expand their peers’ work
communicative: effective communication between stakeholders underpins the process
(4Cs developed by Jude Smith, Ross Daniels, Axel Bruns, Stephen Towers, and Rachel Cobcroft)

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Teaching the Produsers: Preparing Students for User-Led Content Production

by Axel Bruns on Jan 03, 2008

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