This document discusses the relationship between producers and consumers of online content. It notes that while many see user-generated content sites as empowering audiences, research shows most people only consume content rather than create it. A case study of YouTube highlights how it began as a user-focused video sharing site but was acquired by Google and integrated into its commercial model. While some argue sites like YouTube democratize entertainment, others believe user content is still firmly within traditional commercial media dynamics and that media producers ultimately need fans as much as fans need them.

1. Producer vs. Consumer
Jake Jones & Eleanor Forder

2. Introduction
• Web 2.0
• UGC sites emerge
• ‘Audience empowered Participatory culture
forms
• ‘community and collaboration’
• ‘Many wrestling power from the few’? (43)

3. Participatory Culture
• Low barriers to artistic expression and civic
engagement
• Strong support for creating and sharing creations
• Informal mentorship – experience passed along to
novices
• Belief that contributions matter
• Feeling of social connection (at the least they care
what other people think about what they have
created)

4. Who is YOU?
• Who is the YOU in YouTube?
• For every 100 people online, only 1 will create
content, 10 with interact with it, and the other
89 will just view it. (Arthur 2006, P.44)
• 19% of Facebook and MySpace users are
‘joiners’
• 33% are passive spectators
• 52% are inactive (p. 45)

5. Case Study: YouTube
• 2005: Started by 3 students in a garage as
video sharing site
• Bought by Google the following year for $1.6b
• ‘Vertical integration of search engines with
content, social networking and advertising’
(42)
• Terms of use: ‘Remember this is your
community!’ – but what is ‘community’?

6. Online communities
• ‘Taste communities’  ‘brand communities’
• Consumer groups & entertainment platforms
• Niche marketing
• Content & data providers are still perspective
consumers
– demographic info is released
• Mediated by the media owners/publishers
– Content providers don’t have control over
distribution

7. ‘Democratizing the entertainment
process’? (52)
• Video sharing sites as mediators between the
aspiring masses and ‘old’ media moguls
• BUT- success is only tangible when picked up
by old media/ traditional mass media e.g.
print & TV
• ‘UGC is firmly locked into the commercial
dynamics of the mediascape.’ (Dijick, P. 53)

8. Democratic system of free culture
• Who is responsible for the content?
• ‘Wisdom of crowds’ causes demise of
professional system- prosumerism can be seen
both as work and play
• ‘wikinomics’: Content providers contribute
economic value to businesses

9. Case Study: Star Wars
• Jenkins’ example of Star Wars franchise participatory
culture
• 2000: LucasFilms offer free web space to fans
• Elizabeth Durack, campaign leader: ‘that’s the genius
of Lucasfilm’s offering fans web space- it lets them
both look amazingly generous and be even more
controlling than before’ (Durack)

10. Conclusion
• ‘gift economy for information
exchange’(Barbrook, 2002)
• ‘In the end, the media producers need fans
just as much as fans need them’ (Jenkins, 173)

11. References
• Jose van Dijick ‘Users like you? Theorising agency in
user-generated content’ (Media, Culture & Society
2009)
• Henry Jenkins, ‘Convergence Culture’, New York
University Press, 2006.
• Elizabeth Durack, ‘fans.starwars.con,’ Echo
Station, March
12, 2000, www.echostation.com/editorials/confans.ht
m.
• Atom Films, ‘The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards,’
atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/spotlight/collections/star
wars/submit.html.