This next one is called Produsage 1,2,3,4...

What do you get when you mix production and usage? If production and usage had a love-child, what would it be? The answer to both of these questions is produsage. Bruns (2007, p. 1) describes produsage as “the collaborative content creation and development practices found in contemporary informational environments”. Produsage represents a paradigm shift from the traditional industrial model of producer-distributor-consumer to the new model in which the producer and consumer are one in the same. This hybrid role of producer and consumer is prevalent in the Web 2.0 environment, so it is not hard to find an example of produsage in action.

Wikipedia, Youtube and Second Life are all environments in which user-led content is generated. All of these of websites allow open participation in that anybody can create, modify and contribute. The user-led content is not solely for distribution to a target audience, but rather a continuing cycle of refinement in which the quality of the content improves. Such refinement of content can be observed on Wikipedia where a page can be updated with additional information on a topic. Youtube and Second Life both let users access a toolkit with which to create their own content online. Youtube gives users the ability to post their own videos whilst Second Life allows users to create in-game objects which can include anything from clothes to houses. An article from InformationWeek reported that in 2007 Second Life had 34 Terabytes of pure user content, the amount of content has undoubtedly increased since then.

I have witnessed first-hand development of user-led content in the form of a modification or ‘mod’ called NTSD for a game by a small group of coders, GFX artists and sprite sheeters. A forum thread called ‘progress’ is where any new progress on the mod was posted in the form of images and videos, the project was cancelled recently. The mods that people create for games are examples of how pre-existing content can be revamped by users into new content that is circulated through a community and checked for errors such as bugs or glitches. In the case of a game mod, the refinement of content would be dependent on beta testers, people who would actively search for bugs and or glitches during gameplay.

With produsage it seems like everyone wins, those who provide the necessary tools and environments for user-based content and the users themselves. Produsers make content for whoever gave them the tools and environments to do so and for the community to enjoy. I always keep forgetting that users create content because they choose to and are not exploited by those who give them the tools to do so. My disposition towards produsage is generally positive, after all, some of the best content is user-led when it comes to entertainment.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/197800179?pgno=2&queryText=

http://ntsd.open-board.com/t19603-m-a-i-n-p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s

Bruns, A. 2007 'Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation' in Creativity and Cognition: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & Cognition (Can be found via Swinburne Library Online Journals Database under 'Creativity and Cognition Conference'.