Prompt: Select a pre-web technology and compare it to one of your favourite websites, apps, or games.
As a child being dragged to the supermarket with my mother, I found salvation in the magazine aisle. Flipping from one bright coloured picture of glamorous celebrities to the trends and beauty wonders of today. Now I rarely even glance at this aisle, rather I feed into another medium that does all that these magazines did, and more.
YouTube was founded in 2005 with the “mission to give everyone a voice and show them the world”. YouTube is a video-sharing platform enabling users to create and distribute their content, viewed by audiences across the Web (Bruns 82).
Web 2.0 has seen the rise of user-led content creation and distribution that breaks the boundaries between “producers” and “consumers”, combining to form the “Produser” (Bruns 1). Produsage encompasses collaborative community-based networks, with created content constantly changing and holding common property (Bruns 3). YouTube is an example where produsage occurs, allowing users to create, stream and share their own content (Bruns 84). Magazines rather hold a traditional industrial production value chain, where control over content is held with producers producing the complete product and distribution to those the buying public (Bruns 2).
This discussion isn’t purely about technological change but also changes in social practice. Society doesn’t change because of technological changes; rather social behaviour influences technological change, technology mirrors society. (Bijker 3)
The rise of these spaces isn’t driven purely by user-led content creation. The emergence of a new generation in society known as “Generation C”, with skills, abilities and interest to use these spaces, are demanding control over content creation (Bruns 2). Content creation platforms, like YouTube, enables “Generation C” to produce and use content in self-expression, to communicate, collaborate, and connect with others (Dye) The creation and content sharing by this new group has led to the “casual collapse” of established media and other industry models, like those that encompass the magazine industry (Bruns 2). This personifies the constant flux of ‘new media’, and why I never look back to those magazine aisles that I adored as a child.
Works Cited:
Bijker, Wiebe E. Shaping Technology, Building Society. Cambridge, Mass. U.A., MIT Press, 1992.
Bruns, Axel. “Reconfiguring Television for A Networked, Produsage Context.” Media International Australia, vol 126, no. 1, 2008, pp. 82-94. SAGE Publications, doi:10.1177/1329878×0812600110.
Bruns, Axel. “The Future Is User-Led: The Path Towards Widespread Produsage.” Fibreculture Journal, vol 11, 2008, pp. 1-10.
Dye, Jessica. “Meet generation C: creatively connecting through content.” EContent, May 2007, p. 38+. AcademicOneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=vuw&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA165972379&it=r&asid=1d018ab40ab6507ec724b0cecf0425e7.
Image Credits:
Production Value Chains:
By Axel Bruns – http://produsage.org/produsage
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/12902/1/12902.pdf
YouTube Images:
From the Top:
1) Screenshot from YouTube, Estee Lalonde Channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/essiebutton
2)Screenshot from YouTube Home – https://www.youtube.com/
3)Screenshot from YouTube, BENI video post: “Mum Thinks Dance Ruined My Life, VLOGUMENTARY, Ep. 2 of 3″ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBWO0BsGfqY
Girlfriend Magazine
By Girlfriend Magazine New Zealand: https://nz.pinterest.com/pin/301881981246501086/
