creative industries
Teaching the Produsers:
Preparing Students for
User-Led Content Production
Dr Axel Bruns
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
a.bruns@qut.edu.au
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creative industries
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
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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
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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)?
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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
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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
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Breaking the Chains
commercial / non-profit
harnessing of usergenerated content
(e.g. The Sims)
content
development
space set up by
community or
company
commercial / non-profit
services to support
content development
(e.g. Red Hat,
SourceForge)
(e.g. Wikimedia
Foundation;
Google)
valuable, often
commercial-grade
content is created
initial IP
contributions from
public domain or
commercial sources
commercial activities by users
themselves
(e.g. support services,
consultancies, content sales)
collaborative, iterative, evolutionary, palimpsestic
user-led content development
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creative industries
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
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creative industries
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
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creative industries
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
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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?
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creative industries
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
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creative industries
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?
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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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