User Generated Content:
From Information Society to Interaction Society
“We are moving from the information society
to the interaction society. Young people
no longer accept a flow of information
from above. They trust what they hear
from friends on their network.”
Ola Ahlvarsson
Chairman of Result Company, Sweden (2005)
Gregory Ferrell Lowe, Ph.D.
Senior Advisor
YLE Strategy & Development
greg.lowe@yle.fi
DIY Mediation: The Media ‘Prosumer’
The Consumer
becomes
the producer
The User
becomes
the programmer
The Audience
becomes
the designer
Teenagers are engaged with building web pages, sharing artwork, remixing old content and
creating new content. They are participating in social networks in cyberspace where they build
profiles and interact. They are “rapidly becoming some of the most nimble and prolific creators
of digital online content. This generation is redefining media on its own terms.”
Make your own podcast
Post your own photos
Publish your own blog
Produce your own video
Design your own t-shirt
Animate your own clip
You Own
Your Own
But not simply
For yourself….
Gregory Ferrell Lowe 2007
Tom Zeller Jr., International Herald Tribune (2005)
It’s Remix Culture: The Big Mash-Up
The Me
I Know

Personality as Profile
Anonymity
Identity
Private Person
Public Face
Security
Liberty
The Me
I Show

the persona
the person
“They take content from media providers and transform it, reinterpret it, republish it, and take
ownership of it.” Prof. Paulette Rothbauer, University of Toronto (2005)
TOOLS
Low cost
Unregulated
Uncensored
On demand
Available
Archivable
Video Toaster
Adobe Photoshop
Apple Garage Band
Apple Final Cut Studio
Unreal Tournament Engine
iPod
COOLS
Take
Make
Mash
Appropriate
Innovate
Celebrate
Gregory Ferrell Lowe 2007
RULES
dot Comm
Community
Communication
Communion
Latin: communitas
Meaning: Fellowship;
Life in association
with others; Caring for
the whole;
A common good.
Latin: communicatio
Meaning: Conversation;
To convey and exchange
ideas, knowledge or
information.
A process of sharing
Latin: communio
Meaning: Participation;
Action in partnership;
An association in action.
This builds two types of social capital. One type is about ‘bonding’ and the other is about ‘bridging.’
Bonding is crucial for social solidarity, unity and cohesion. It’s about why us excludes them.
Bridging, on the other hand, is crucial for diversity and plurality. It’s about why us includes them.’
Jauert & Lowe RIPE@2005, based on Robert Putnam (2000)
Democratic
Trust
Exchange
A Communitarian Ethos
Participatory
Interaction
Open
Distributed
Peer Networking
Social Policing
Amateur
Anti-elitist
Self-organized
Decentralized
Reciprocity
Gregory Ferrell Lowe 2007
Do public service media values and principles fit the communitarian ethos?
A Brave New World
Technology Treats
Expanding bandwidth
Hard drive capacity
Next generation chips
Next Box & PS3
AJAX
IPTV
MP3
RSS
TiVo
etc.
“In a world of broadband connections, 60-gigabyte MP3 players
and custom playlists, [listeners] have…more power than ever
to indulge their curiosities.”
Jeff Leeds, International Herald Tribune (2005)
As more people are involved with and accustomed to using the
Internet, their expectations about video are changing. They
expect to have increasing personal control and greatly expanded
choice options. We will see thousands of hybrid combinations
mixing video sources of all types, together with text and videostyle gaming interactivity. With IPTV, the nature of television
is likely to change.
John Markoff, New York Times (2006)
“The happy view is that this is a generation of wholesome
young people building nurturing communities and the smutty
talk is just a harmless way of demarcating an adult-free social
space. The dark view is that these prolonged adolescents are
filled with earnest desires for meaningful human contact, but
they live in a culture that has provided them with no vocabulary
to create these sorts of bonds except through cleavage and
vodka.”
David Brooks, International Herald Tribune (2006)
Viruses & worms
Smut
Trolls & Vandals
Predators
Copyright
Security
Media spend
etc.
Gregory Ferrell Lowe 2007
Environmental Threats
1.
Personalization in media is a clear trend, but a complex issue. It means the decline of
“appointment media” and the growth of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) media. But UGC will be mainly
supplemental rather than fundamental, at least for the near future. The importance of expressing
one’s self by media does not inherently mean decline in the value of receiving content of many
types and for many reasons from mainstream media. Let’s not get carried away.
2.
What electronic media have in common is being individual-centered
but community-dependent. That is as true for radio and television as
for on-line and mobile media. It is all about connecting.
3.
Remix culture is art and discourse. It will be a site of continuing resistance,
even opposition, to corporate and union efforts to strictly control property
rights. The locus of control is shifting towards people as content-makers
which means we must strike a new balance in two aspects. First, as
content-makers and, second, as content-providers.
4.
Broadcasting is a public good and an inclusive act. It is not only done in
radio and television. Its value is that it is inclusive. Being that means its
content can be taken personally but also that it isn’t personalized even
when targeted. Thus, its perceived weakness is also its inherent strength.
5.
This is not technology-driven. It is technology-enabled, but this is about
the social as much as the individual. It is fundamentally about media literacy.
This means that in the near future the user must be understood and respected as a
partner, the audience as a collaborator, and the consumer as a producer. Are we
prepared to facilitate this era of the media prosumer?
Gregory Ferrell Lowe 2007
Five Implications of UGC