Produsage As I See

In term of terminology, “produsage” is a compound word coming from “produce” and “usage”, referring to a new commercial pattern that consumption is actually transformed into production. This pattern, I think, is really beneficial for this age of social media which can perfectly embody the power of the technology and public participation. And it is a convincible pattern for this century to practice broadly. This theory was firstly put out by Mr. Axel Bruns in 2007 saying that the so-called production is, in fact, not the final version any more. (Axel Bruns, 2009) Instead, it becomes a temporary work in a constantly dynamic developing process. For this pattern, there is an original example about Wikipedia that every term is not invariable, and can be edited by any visitors under the permission of Wikipedia. Firstly, visitors must have read the relevant information about the term, enjoying service from Wikipedia. Thus, there comes the possibility of generating different understandings. Then, the more people wrote about the term, the more completed the term will be. In this process these visitors or consumers becomes the producers to help Wikipedia build up its web content and let more visitors get better service while putting out their own opinions.

 

Similarly, there is another example which is fresher but traditionally regarded as “unmoral” that we sometimes make notes on the book we borrowed from the library, because we have different opinions about the content. These notes or comments suggest our different ideas and understandings. Perhaps they are not removed by inspectors, the next reader of the book may get one more inspire. And what if this reader continues to make notes on it? From then on, every “unmoral” reader becomes a “produser” who uses the book while re-produces the book.

Anyway, there are 4 characters of produsage: open participation, fluid heterarchy and holoptism, palimpsestic, unfinished artefacts and common property. (Henry Jenkins, 2008) Firstly, open participation means to offer free entrance to the issue and service. This will lead to a large crowd of participants or users which are the base of this pattern. Then according to their various skills and interests, they can provide their own contribution to their interest content, and the content they generated will be always open to every visitor for reading, revising or complementing. As visitors contributing constantly to the content, it will keep abundant and up-to-date. That is to say, the content is and will always be under construction, because human cognition is always in the evolution. The last point to say is that the ownership of these contents belongs to the public. The platform owner is actually a management body to keep the content away from getting so far. And everybody can do adding or revising work towards the content, but no individual owns it.

Reference

Axel Bruns, 2009, Produsage and business sharing, viewed May 5, 2013, <http://video.nextconf.eu/video/923263/produsage-and-business-sharing>

Henry Jenkins, 2008, From Production to Produsage: Interview with Axel Bruns (Part One), viewed May 5, 2013,  <http://henryjenkins.org/2008/05/interview_with_axel_bruns.html>