A DIY contribution

If no one else can get it right do it yourself. Do it yourself culture and design discusses how the proliferation of user generated content is evolving the traditional processes of the business model and encouraging open source software today.      

Sites such as YouTube and Instructables allow people to produce things collectively that many or few people may know. However one must question the practicality of such a site, and how material must be monitored. Some material may be explicit, culturally insensitive or encourage violence. For example YouTube is being criticised for encouraging bullying through unrestricted commenting, videos, and links all aimed at targeting victims.

Produsage predominantly relies on technologies that are interactive, intercreative, shareable, accessible and networkable – fostering a place for DIY communities. As discussed by Rushkoff (cited in Bruns 2008), the rise of interactive media provides new evidence of our ability to participate actively and inform. As a sense Rushkoff illustrates how DIY culture is based on convergence culture and collective intelligence which ultimately encourages a wide range of contributors.

A great example of this is webhostingtoplist.com, where consumers can provide feedback on advertised products, without professional biased. It is a review platform and reliable source for valuable consumer insight, unbiased advice, in-depth product evaluations and personalised recommendations.

Trendwatching.com and epinions.com are also designed to report on emerging consumer trends by providing reliable industry reports. As discussed by Bruns in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, it is the need for involvement and skepticism of underlying business motivations that has pushed consumers to rise as produsers.  

While there will be continuous debate over the ethicality of such websites, it is needless to say they are encouraging collective intelligence. As a future advertiser, I believe this will not only advantage the consumer, but myself as a campaigner. Consumer reviews like those on epinions.com, allow brand managers to evaluate the common feedback and manipulate their products to suit their audience.

As open source software becomes a way of the future, it therefore obvious how the evolution of user-led generated content is converging the traditional processes of the business world.

Bridging the Pro/Am divide

Today more than ever the distinction between amateurs and professionals is becoming extremely blurred considering the rise of new media formats. The categorisation of ‘expert’ in previous times relied on one’s professional standing rather than end contribution. In this day and age encouraging participation from ALL people is the key to collaborating information. On websites like Wikipedia for example you can see one’s credibility is now decided by consensus of communities online rather than academic professionals. And therefore the rise of the term ‘Pro-Am’ now accounts as a middle ground for those amateurs who are making professional contributions (Bruns 2008).

Of course you may argue that people tend to interpret things differently, and not ALL amateurs contribute constructively. But by disallowing their perspectives and points-of-view to be heard according to Heikki and Risto (2002), you are not analytically “defining new questions.”

Dr Axel Burns in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond, defines the continuous conflict between amateur and expert as a “struggle between two different systems of representing knowledge”. While the expert paradigm focuses on developing well-behaved universally accepted and internally consistent understandings of the world; Amateurs focus on providing alternative representations interpreted by available evidence which is accepted by a minority of the entire community (Bruns 2008) .  

Take the advertising industry for example, where the concept of produsage, is being applied to branding. Brands such as Mentos and Doritos have used competitions to generate a collaboration of amateur generated material to encourage greater consumer involvement. Not only is this a benefit for brand managers due to it’s low cost and generated publicity, it makes the consumer feel their contribution matters (Bruns 2008).  

In a sense you could say the Pro-am model allows advertisers to build their brand fame and product recall on a more cost effective basis. This is also obvious from the Skittles case study, where Twitter was used to increase product awareness. When you arrived on the Skittles homepage rather than being greeted with a boring website you found a live stream of all Twitter comments that include the word “Skittles.”  According to Siegler (2009), A web designer would have created the page better, describing it as “the candy company’s epic laziness”. While there was the problem of vandalism, it was a genious idea that encouraged a brand community of followers.

In advertising it is about making an impact that people remember. In my opinion Skittles did this well by incorporating Pro-Ams in the advertising process and the end result. As Bruns points out, experts and their expertise cover no more than the tips of the iceberg of human knowledge. Think of it this way – would millions of people have rushed to the Skittles home page, to view one academics input about the product? I don’t think so.

Wikipedia – Neutral Point of View?

It can be said that Wikipedia, since 2001 has been encouraging encyclopedic produsage. While personally I have never referenced the website in any formal reports, the source itself has directed me to extensive academic readings and personal case studies.

This was only made possible through the combination of open, collaborative and creative information with stagnant encyclopedia knowledge that Wikipedia provides (Bruns 2008, 102). It is through this adhoc structure that wikis in general according to Bruns in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond, “create multiple interlinkages of information” (Bruns 2008, 132).

As the technological world advances, it is becoming more apparent that stagnant encyclopedic definitions are becoming redundant. For example take the definition of “Advertising” on Wikipedia in contrast to an encyclopedia definition written by Britannica academics. While on the Britannica website there is option to “suggest an edit”, final changes are only determined by academic writers. Wikipedia on the other hand, provides a wide variety of attached articles, feedback, comments and case studies for further reference. Bruns (2008) argues that the success of Wikipedia is a result of this editorial process, where only accurate contributions survive the collective review of peers.   

In other words professionals and amateurs review and maintain it’s up-to-date approach, making for real time publications, which in some cases could be more relevant than academic articles (Bruns 2008, 140).

While this idea of an “anyone can edit” approach is meant to maintain the NPOV (neutral point of view), the limitations are that most active users generally give rise to their own personal biased, by continuously reverting changes (Bruns 2008, 134).

One example of this is in the advertising industry. Skittles chose the brand’s Wikipedia site to become its home page after spending a week testing the persuasive abilities of various social media sites (Sullivan 2009).The goal in using Wikipedia was to create a buzz by appealing to Skittles’ core consumers who generally spend hours on the web especially in social and user-generated media sites (Sullivan 2009). According to Bowling CEO of Mars (skittles), many consumers look to brand communities like that on Wikipedia, for further information on products (Becker 2007).

While the Skittles campaign for many years has evolved around the single minded proposition of “randomness”, the motivation behind this was anything but. The whole idea was to build a brand relationship (Sullivan 2009). While users had the power to edit the Skittles page, brand managers regularly reviewed and deleted negatively geared comments (Sullivan 2009). While this created a somewhat biased outlook of the Skittles brand, Wikipedia took matters into their own hands by disallowing companies to edit their own pages, through IP address tracking (of company computers).

While I believe it proved an effective approach, I still argue what’s to stop an employer editing their company page from their own home computer?  

It is for this reason I found the credibility of other pages also challenged. While user credibility on Wikipedia is supposed to be attainted through past contributions, pages which are semi-protected cannot be changed. In my opinion this is evidence of a hierarchy still existing.

Take Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia’s page for example. He is the only user allowed to edit his own page while all other contributions are rejected. This somewhat challenges the idea of “gatewatching” as administrators act as mild gatekeepers deciding what pages can remain open for editing or continuation.  

So to conclude, while Wikipedia may provide further insight to topics through collaboration of content, some pages challenged this NPOV concept.  While generally the “self-correction process” of online communities is quite accurate, those users who are more active, whether expert or amateur are generally more likely to make their views more apparent at all costs (Bruns 2008, 132).

Citizen Journalism – an Outside Perspective

The person next to you madly typing on their desktop could possibly be determining next year’s blockbuster film, or the features of the new Apple IPod to hit stores. Believe it or not millions of average people around the world are exercising their enormous influence on products even without an official connection with them!

‘Citizen Journalism’ a concept analysed by Bruns, in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond,  encourages people without professional training, access to tools of modern distribution to create, supplement or fact-check media in collaboration with other users. Apart from the obvious benefit being the democratisation of publishing, citizen journalism allows for continuous editing, post publication (Bruns 2008, 82). This therefore provides more current up to date information and news. According to Flew (2008, 165), this is how the media has converted from a ‘read only’ communication style to ‘read-write’ citizen media.

Since the rise of Web 2.0,  I have become more aware of the progression of special interest community websites. While citizen journalism comes in various forms, most commonly in open news coverage (including news -related blogs) it often provides various processes, tools, and technologies across many platforms. While contribution is often  correlated with website popularity, I soon discovered even some of the most well known sites fail to embrace what Bruns describes as a vital part of citizen journalism, “borderless participation” (2008, 85). Take Backfence for example, one of the first commercial providers of information that encouraged audience participation in the production process. It was upon reviewing this website that I noticed that contribution was limited to American citizen participation. So does this somewhat attract a westernised biased? An article published by Pressthink argues yes, “The site has only attracted limited citizen contributions”.

While in theory Backfence is of grassroots structure, it puts geographical limits on something that should through online communication – be globally available. In my opinion this is somewhat unproductive as it is restricted to limited community accountability. Rusty Foster, operator of citizen journalism site Kuro5hin, enforces this point, “More people in most cases, equals more accountability, equals better quality”. I agree. Therefore shouldn’t it be mutual interests and special interest expertise that communities across vast geographical distances come together? In my opinion there should be limits on limitations, in other words minimal barrier to participation.  

What Bruns (2008), argues citizen journalism to be is ultimately democratic, where users are judged on output rather than professional standing. While some academics may disagree with me, I believe it is an advantage to the many advertisers who are jumping on board taking what they can from the Citizen Journalism wagon. Take Dell for example, a case study involving a dissatisfied customer who then created the forum ‘Dell Hell’. This ultimately gave consumers the pull power to force the computer company to re-examine their customer-service, their policies and totally revamp their brand.

While the publication of these opinions generated negative publicity for Dell, it can be argued that it provided important insight which evolved into the brand’s improvement.

Citizen Journalism however, despite it’s title is not always represented in text-blog format. One example of this is a bad customer service experience at a fast food restaurant was recorded and uploaded to YouTube within minutes (Becker 2007). According to McConnell and Huba it is because of these entertaining one hit wonders, that brand scrutiny and praise has become so interesting (2007).

Produsage – Users as Producers

How many times have you seen a television commercial and thought “I could have done a better job at that?”

Well produsage, also known as user-led content creation is making that dream more possible. Produsage accounts for users as producers and as Dr Axel Bruns in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond, argues it accounts for the shift from traditional models of (information, knowledge, and creative) production, towards a more collaborative content creation process (Bruns 2008, 201). And with so many sites implementing the produsage model, it is becoming nearly impossible to draw a distinction between professional and amateur input.

I agree to a certain extent, in my opinion the traditional need for accreditation to provide constructive input is quite dated. While I do agree that today some amateur-generated content can be unreliable, I wonder does one’s academic standing automatically assume their dependability? Leadbeater and Miller, believe not. They argue it is inherently a combination of “publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career” (Leadbeater and Miller).

Have a look around, as audiences we are now bombarded with thousands of messages daily while constantly filtering and disregarding irrelevant information. But it is also for this reason that as message receivers we now hold the power, in other words the hierarchical producer-push process is no longer valid (Bruns 2008, 215).  

As an advertising student I have seen this theory in action. Audiences’ now pulling products through the production process have greater demand capabilities and therefore to encourage continuous purchase, brands need to build a relationship with their consumers (Becker 2007). Rather than working as passive participants, consumers are now becoming more involved online forming various brand communities to provide insight opinions and feedback on products.

Studying focus groups is also an important part of the consumer breakdown process (Stiener 1997). While traditionally focus groups allowed end users to contribute to the production process, they were often limited to geographical locations, and those who were willing to be involved. It is for this reason that companies like Apple now examine social media feedback to gain a better understanding of their worldwide consumer profiles.  

This raises the point of credibility. While the strategic planner may feel they initially understand the product, the brand and the image it aims to portray, it is only the end consumer that can communicate how the brand is perceived (Steiner 1997). Hence the sudden flow of companies encouraging amateur consumers to choreograph advertisements that appeal to them. The pay off for the produser is not only fame but the ability to creatively express their talents (Bruns 2008, 217). The pay off for the producer - the ability to observe how the consumer interacts with the product (Becker 2007).

Smiths, Doritos and Mentos, all successfully implemented the produsage model to build a brand relationship, and encourage repurchase even in the most saturated of product categories.  Smiths, not only  gave recognition to amateurs by encouraging them to ”design a flavour”, but allowed advertising professionals from Smiths, to further re-examine their product and own knowledge of the market to suit consumer needs.

Therefore I believe we should embrace amateur and professional collaborations, and see them for what they are – compliments of each other. Rather than trying to forge a divide to categorise contributions, it is important to understand that the best results usually come from the collaboration of multiple ideas; collective intelligence.