creative industries
‘Anyone Can Edit’:
Understanding the Produser
The Mojtaba Saminejad Lecture
Dr Axel Bruns
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
a.bruns@qut.edu.au
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The Produser
‒ No, it’s not a typo…
‒ Produsers are involved in:
• user-led content production – produsage
‒ In a variety of environments
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Who Is Mojtaba Saminejad?
‒ 25-year-old Iranian blogger:
• accused of insulting the prophets, and
insulting the Supreme Guide
• avoided the death penalty, but sentenced to
two years in prison
• his offence: reporting the arrests of two other
bloggers by Iranian authorities
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Produsing the News?
‒ Traditional news process:
(from Bruns, Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production, 2005)
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Against Gatekeeping
‒ Gatekeeping is outdated:
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media scarcity no longer exists
too many gates to keep
journalists’ judgment can fail
‘all the news that’s fit to print’ is patronising
Fordist production model
citizens want to be active and involved
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Towards Gatewatching
‒ New form of collaborative news produsage:
• observing what news passes through the gates of
news and other organisations
• highlighting those news items which are of relevance
to the community
• publicising rather than publishing the news
• adding commentary, analysis, and discussion to the
news
• post-Fordist production model, involving users as
produsers
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Produsing the News
‒ Gatewatcher news process:
(adapted from Bruns, Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production, 2005)
‒ Variations on the process are possible
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Gatewatching and the News
‒ Rise of alternative online news:
• in news-related blogs and collaborative online
news sites
• e.g. Indymedia, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Plastic,
OhmyNews
• often in response to perceived shortcomings
in the mainstream news media
• creating a kind of open news
• but not replacing the mainstream news media
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Gatewatching Effects
‒ Suggestion of a new role for open news:
• bottom-up rather than top-down news coverage
• multiperspectival news coverage (Herbert Gans)
• democratic, dialogic, deliberative journalism
(Dan Gillmor: move from lecture to conversation)
‒ Effects on mainstream journalism:
• bypassing journalists and editors
• offering corrective to, watchdog for mainstream news
(Herbert Gans: a second tier of news organisations)
• breaking down producer/consumer dichotomies
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Open News and Open Source
‒ Open source approach to news:
The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When
programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for
a piece of software, the Software evolves. People improve it, people
adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one
is used to the slow pace of conventional software development,
seems astonishing.
We in the open source community have learned that this rapid
evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional
closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the
source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits.
(Opensource.org)
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Produsage
‒ Examples of produser-led content creation and
collaboration:
• open news
• open source
• open content repositories –
e.g. Wikipedia, ccMixter, Flickr
• collaborative knowledge communities –
e.g. Google Earth
• produser communities around commercial products –
e.g. The Sims, Trainz
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Harnessing the Hive
‒ Implications of produsage:
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emergent community structures?
creative potential – grassroots, vernacular creativity?
(e-)democratic potential?
sustainability of voluntary labour?
commercial approaches (JC Herz: ‘harnessing the
hive’) and exploitation (i.e. hijacking the hive)?
• intellectual property issues?
• trust, authority, responsibility, liability?
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Produser Economics
‒ Economic potential:
• cheap workforce for commercial producers
• but also post-Fordist production/produsage models
• possible opposition to traditional business, and
opportunity for new businesses
• increasing focus on creativity and innovation in
international business development –
e.g. move from ‘made in China’ to ‘created in China’
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Intellectual Property
‒ Ambiguous relation of produsage to IP:
• innovative use of new IP licences (e.g. Creative
Commons)
• complex IP relationships in massively multi-produser
environments (e.g. Wikipedia)
• conflicted response from established industries
(“Rip. Mix. Burn.” vs. p2p persecution)
• potential stifling of produser innovation by heavyhanded IP legislation, with potential economic impact
– China’s growth helped by lax IP enforcement
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Political Implications
‒ Towards post-Fordist politics?
• growing effect of produser news on political process
∘ towards more dialogue and deliberation,
∘ or more argument and conflict?
• rear-guard battles by governments and news organisations against
citizen journalists (e.g. Mojtaba Saminejad) – but not only in
authoritarian regimes
• conflict between alternative and mainstream media coverage (e.g.
Howard Dean campaign)
• digital divide opening between traditional audiences and new produsercitizens?
Is it possible to harness produsage to support a move of citizens
from being a passive audience for to being active produsers of
democracy?
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