I Wouldn't Call Myself a Prosuder…

The prevalence of digital social platforms such as Blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so forth has allowed people to be not only consumers but producers of content (Steward 2012). The simultaneous ability to use and produce content in the digital age can be defined as ‘produsage’ (Bruns 2007). While I can easily admit that I am an avid consumer of  ‘prodused’ material such as Wikipedia and blogs on a daily basis, I don’t think I could define myself as a ‘produser’ as such. This is due to the fact that produsage requires constant open participation from all people, and produsage projects are continually evolving. Although I am a consumer of the end (or current) content, I’ve never had the courage to jump in and act as a contributor, or more accurately, a producer as I do not have the required desire for status or credibility in the digital sphere (Bruns 2007).

One of the challenges I find with the consumption of material that has been prodused is a level of uncertainty as to whether what I’m consuming is actually legit or merely someone’s opinion. The fact that produsers have the ability to contribute to projects based on their own personal skills, interests and knowledge regardless of their qualifications (Bruns 2007) is definitely a key strength of the produsage process in one regard, however it often makes me question whether the resulting content can be trusted. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t get very far in my further studies if I only relied on Wikipedia as a reference point!

I’m sure that both Bruns and Jenkins would agree that produsage is the ultimate example of participatory culture, due to the gradual evolution from simply acting only as a consumer of content, to taking on a role as consumer, contributor, and producer all in one. According to Jenkins “produsage and its technologies advance processes of convergence, and are involved in a range of crucial conflicts over the shape and balance of our future technological, industrial, economic, cultural and social environments. These conflicts determine the character of our emerging human knowledge space itself” (Fashionable New Media 2014). For more insight into Jenkins’ views of participatory culture, convergence, mass participation and produsage, I highly recommend watching the following interview.

References:

Bruns, A 2007, Produsage: Necessary Preconditions, Produsage.org, viewed 15 January 2014, <http://produsage.org/node/12>.

peter zak 2009, Henry Jenkins Interview short, YouTube, viewed 20 January 2014,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGVfJVde164>.

Stewart 2012, What produsage is and why it matters, The Theory Blog, 13 July 2012, viewed 15 January 2014, <http://theory.cribchronicles.com/2012/07/03/what-produsage-is-and-why-it-matters/>.