Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A Summary of "The Key Characteristics of Produsage" from "Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond - From Production to Produsage"

Citation
Bruns, Axel. "The Key Characteristics of Produsage." Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond - From Production to Produsage. New York, NY.: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2008-2009. 9-36.

Summary / Assessment
In the second chapter of “Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond”, Axel Bruns discusses the idea of Produsage. He begins the chapter by giving background information on the traditional model of production. The traditional model contains three clearly defined, separate tasks: the producer, the distributor, and the consumer. One side effect of the traditional model is consumers are not active in product development. Highly competitive producers shield product development thereby making consumer involvement impossible. The traditional model gradually changed to involve consumers in a limited manner through focus groups and general market research. The consumer became more than just an end user of fixed products. Through feedback, the consumer was able to alter products based on his/her needs. (The term “prosumer” is used to describe such consumers.)

Bruns then discusses how the Internet shifts information consumption to information usage, and how it challenges the traditional stance on information production. He demonstrates this shift through the following points: With the internet, information access is on a pull-basis, rather than a traditional push-basis. Access to producing and distributing information is readily available and is not as limited as it once was. With technology, users can communicate and engage directly with one another, bypassing the traditional model. Digital information can be shared quickly and can be remixed to create new artifacts.

By means of the Internet, producers are able to move from the traditional hierarchical model to the distributed and communal network model. The term “hive-mind” is used to describe such a model. Here, users are intercreative and there is a “collective intelligence” that emerges. Four attributes of the collective model are identified: 1) Problem solving is probabilistic, not directed. Users can take a more holistic view of the system, leading to contributions in areas outside of those they may have been bounded to within a more traditional approach. 2) Equipotentiallity, not hierarchy. Equipotentiallity is the assumption that each participant can make constructive contributions to the system. 3) Granular tasks. Tasks should not be too complex to require significant administrative overhead. The size of each task must support probabilistic problem solving and Equipotentiallity of contributors. 4) Content is shared, not owned. Sharing content is fundamental to collaboration and supports the three previous points.

With a communal/network model, the idea of Produsage is possible. The cogently terse definition of Produsage given by the author is “the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in the pursuit of further improvement.” The four principles of Produsage are: 1) Open Participation, Communal Evaluation. The basic idea here is that all users are able to participate in achieving the goal, and the more users participating, the more probability there is of identifying the most appropriate/correct solution. 2) Fluid Hierarchy, AD Hoc Meritocracy. “Ad-hocracies” are fluidly built based on the ideas of Equipotentiallity and communal evaluation. Users who actively contribute relevant material to the group have a higher standing, conversely, the user’s standing within the group can diminish if the quality of their contributions decline. 3) Unfinished Artifacts, Continuing process. The idea is that Produsage does not work towards the completion of products, but rather through iteration, creates successfully better products (i.e. - artifacts). 4) Common Property, Individual Rewards. Instead of focusing on monetary rewards, participation in Produsage is motivated by contributing to a communal purpose. These non-monetary rewards grow a community by encouraging individuals to make continual contributions to the overall goal.

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