From Prosumer to Produser: Understanding User-Led Content Creation

Alvin Toffler’s image of the prosumer (1970, 1980, 1990) continues to influence in a significant way our understanding of the user-led, collaborative processes of content creation which are today labelled “social media” or “Web 2.0”. A closer look at Toffler’s own description of his prosumer model reveals, however, that it remains firmly grounded in the mass media age: the prosumer is clearly not the self-motivated creative originator and developer of new content which can today be observed in projects ranging from open source software through Wikipedia to Second Life, but simply a particularly well-informed, and therefore both particularly critical and particularly active, consumer. The highly specialised, high end consumers which exist in areas such as hi-fi or car culture are far more representative of the ideal prosumer than the participants in non-commercial (or as yet non-commercial) collaborative projects. And to expect Toffler’s 1970s model of the prosumer to describe these 21st-century phenomena was always an unrealistic expectation, of course. To describe the creative and collaborative participation which today characterises user-led projects such as Wikipedia, terms such as ‘production’ and ‘consumption’ are no longer particularly useful – even in laboured constructions such as ‘commons-based peer-production’ (Benkler 2006) or ‘p2p production’ (Bauwens 2005). In the user communities participating in such forms of content creation, roles as consumers and users have long begun to be inextricably interwoven with those as producer and creator: users are always already also able to be producers of the shared information collection, regardless of whether they are aware of that fact – they have taken on a new, hybrid role which may be best described as that of a produser (Bruns 2008). Projects which build on such produsage can be found in areas from open source software development through citizen journalism to Wikipedia, and beyond this also in multi-user online computer games, filesharing, and even in communities collaborating on the design of material goods. While addressing a range of different challenges, they nonetheless build on a small number of universal key principles. This paper documents these principles and indicates the possible implications of this transition from production and prosumption to produsage.

Beyond the inner city : real and imagined places in creative place policy and practice

As the economic and social benefits of creative industries development become increasingly visible, policymakers worldwide are working to create policy drivers to ensure that certain places become or remain ‘creative places’. Richard Florida’s work has become particularly influential among policymakers, as has Landry’s. But as the first wave of creative industrial policy development and implementation wanes, important questions are emerging. It is by now clear that an ‘ideal creative place’ has arisen from creative industries policy and planning literature, and that this ideal place is located in inner cities. This article shifts its focus away from the inner city to where most Australians live: the outer suburbs. It reports on a qualitative research study into the practices of outer-suburban creative industries workers in Redcliffe, Australia. It argues that the accepted geography of creative places requires some recalibration once the material and experiential aspects of creative places are taken into account.

Using digital storytelling to capture responses to the Apology

This article discusses a pilot project that adapted the methods of digital storytelling and oral history to capture a range of personal responses to the official Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 13 February 2008. The project was an initiative of State Library of Queensland and resulted in a small collection of multimedia stories, incorporating a variety of personal and political perspectives. The article describes how the traditional digital storytelling workshop method was adapted for use in the project, and then proceeds to reflect on the outcomes and continuing life of the project. The article concludes by suggesting that aspects of the resultant model might be applied to other projects carried out by cultural institutions and community-based media organizations.

High Culture as Subculture : Brisbane's Contemporary Chamber Music Scene

The aim of the dissertation is to discover the extent to which methodologies and conceptual frameworks used to understand popular culture may also be useful in the attempt to understand contemporary high culture. The dissertation addresses this question through the application of subculture theory to Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene, drawing on a detailed case study of the contemporary chamber ensemble Topology and its audiences. The dissertation begins by establishing the logic and necessity of applying cultural studies methodologies to contemporary high culture. This argument is supported by a discussion of the conceptual relationships between cultural studies, high culture, and popular culture, and the methodological consequences of these relationships. In Chapter 2, a brief overview of interdisciplinary approaches to music reveals the central importance of subculture theory, and a detailed survey of the history of cultural studies research into music subcultures follows. Five investigative themes are identified as being crucial to all forms of contemporary subculture theory: the symbolic; the spatial; the social; the temporal; the ideological and political. Chapters 3 and 4 present the findings of the case study as they relate to these five investigative themes of contemporary subculture theory. Chapter 5 synthesises the findings of the previous two chapters, and argues that while participation in contemporary chamber music is not as intense or pervasive as is the case with the most researched street-based youth subcultures, it is nevertheless possible to describe Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene as a subculture. The dissertation closes by reflecting on the ways in which the subcultural analysis of contemporary chamber music has yielded some insight into the lived practices of high culture in contemporary urban contexts.

Between flagged borders, across gendered lands : the voiceless female space in contemporary representations of Australian beach

International and national representations of the beach perpetuate normative female concepts by maintaining dominant masculine myths, such as that of the heroic lifesaver and tanned sunbaker. Female experiences on the beach are traditionally associated with rhetorics of danger and peril, contrasted to the welcomed and protective gaze of the beach male. Conventional understandings of the gaze promote male surveillance of women, and although some resistance exists, the beach primarily remains a place to observe the female form. This article attempts to explore currents of resistance at the beach through a self-reflexive examination of Schoolies. Although the event is fixed within patriarchal codes and structures, small eddies of resistance exist amongst female participants in light of increasing awareness of masculine hegemony. The Australian beach remains a contested site of multiple constructs of gender and national identity. This article reveals the changing tides of resistance.

Introduction : the global flow of creative ideas

In the era of late modernism, various pressures play a decisive role in shaping the texture and meaning of the world around us. Population, work, transportation, new technologies of information and communication, lifestyle cultures and other forces are increasingly mobile, and this in turn helps make for a new set of public and personal surroundings. Social life everywhere now appears to share more and more in an international (if not a global) order, even if inequality and stratification remain common inside territories and across territories. Still, the perception is that a particular cultural life is increasingly universal. More and more consumers come to share in its practices and products, with those products becoming more and more homogeneous. This standardization argument finds much support in the apparent internationalization of many elements of media, entertainment, leisure and lifestyle cultures, with cultural conglomerates determined to maximize their global market reach. Once upon a time, in order to understand the economic, political and cultural forces affecting citizens and society, it was mostly deemed sufficient to look within the boundaries of the nation-state. Over the past two decades, these same pressures of globalization have impacted on critical research, highlighting the methodological need to adopt an optic that is more cross-border and transcultural as a means of gaining greater understanding of cultural life.

'When everything old is new again' : class, consumerism and masculinity in Alasdair Duncan's Metro

Alasdair Duncan’s narrative Metro, set in Brisbane in the early twenty-first century, focuses on Liam, an unapologetically self-styled ‘white, upper middle-class brat’ whose sense of place and identity is firmly mapped by spatial and economic co-ordinates. This article considers the linkages between spatiality and identity in Duncan’s narrative, as well as the ways in which traditional, hegemonic (heterosexual) forms of masculinity are re-invigorated in the enactment of an upper-middle-class script of success, privilege and consumerism. It argues that the safeguarding of these hegemonic forms of masculine identity involves strategies of spatial and bodily expression underpinned by conspicuous consumption, relegating other forms of sexual identity to an exploitable periphery

The Dystopian Mirror and the Female Body

Women’s experience of the change room mirror is not a particularly affirmative one. The pleasure in looking at the self is dissipated by the ideal feminine ‘I’ that hovers in the shadows of their image of self and others constructing dystopian surveillance and entrapment. This article considers the responses of a number of women bloggers who describe their negative experiences in front of change room mirrors. It also argues that the mirror has been used in positive and creative ways by women artists to assert a self that is not subject to a critical gaze.

Making connections : creative industries networks in outer suburban locations

The role of networks and their contribution to sustaining and developing creative industries is well documented (Wittel 2001; Kong 2005; Pratt 2007). This article argues that although networks operate across geographical boundaries, particularly through the use of communication technologies, the majority of studies have focussed on the ways in which networks operate in a) specific inner-urban metropolitan regions or b) specific industries. Such studies are informed by the geographical mindset of creative city proponents such as Florida (2002) and Landry (2000) in which inner-urban precincts are seen as the prime location for creative industries activity, business development and opportunity. But what of those creative industries situated beyond the inner city? Evidence in Australia suggests there is increasing creative industries activity beyond the inner city, in outer-suburban and ex-urban areas (Gibson & Brennan-Horley 2006). This article identifies characteristics of creative industries networks in outer-suburban locations in Melbourne and Brisbane. It argues that supporting and sustaining creative industries networks in these locations may require different strategies than those applied to inner-city networks. The article thus contributes to the growing understanding of the cultural economic geography of creative industries.

Medienvermittelte transnationale Öffentlichkeiten im Zeitalter praktischer Hybridisierung (English title: Mediated transnational publics in environments of practical hybridisation)

This article is concerned with the repercussions of societal change on transnational media. It offers a new understanding of multilingual programming strategies by examining “Radio MultiKulti” (RM), a public service radio station discontinued from 1/1/2009 by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg. In its fourteen years of existence, “RM” had to implement a well-intended and politically-motivated logic of ‘multiethnic, intercultural service station’. However, as we demonstrate, such a direction, despite some achievements, has resulted in the constraints to RM’s journalistic activities and language policy, drawing criticism for the station’s economic viability. This paper proposes that multilingual media services are to be framed by the concept of practical hybridity that allows a necessary responsiveness towards an ever-changing media environment, at the moment within digital culture. Our approach draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s and Yuri Lotman’s theoretical approaches to hybridity, as well as in-depth interviews conducted with “RM” staff from 2005 onwards, further interviews with key agents outside RM and a continuous monitoring of the public debate which culminated at the end of 2008 in the controversial decision to close the radio station. Against this background, the concluding remarks are meant to contribute to the scholarly debate on hybridization as well as to inform multilingual media policy in the 21st century.

Creative Industries

We are experiencing a period of profound social and economic transformation. This is a shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy (or a “creative economy”; or an “economy of the imagination”.) This new, emerging economic system is fundamentally organised around people (not machines or buildings); and around place. We heard Richard Florida argue that creative, talented people won’t go to where the job is, but vice versa, the job will come to them. So according to Florida, where we live is becoming the primary factor in global economic development. (Incidentally, it is worth contrasting this idea with the alternative proposition - put by speakers at this Forum - of “new nomadism”, that is, that creativity is nomadic and not bound by place.)

Challenging cohesion

Cohesion as a term connotes attraction, unity, and commonness amongst discrete entities. Considering cohesion as a concept is timely with the recent rise of network culture, which comes with both subtle and radical changes in how people connect with, position themselves in relation to, and understand other constituents of society (cf. Varnelis; Castells; Jenkins et al.). Such dis- and inter-connections signify an imminent and immanent epistemological challenge we must confront: how can we understand inherently multi-faceted subjects, components of which are in constant transformation? For researchers, disciplinary complexity is one of the main implications of this situation. While disciplinary integration may be an effective or vital component in pursuit of knowledge (cf. Nicolescu) it may also impart significant conceptual and pragmatic conflicts. What are possible ways to coalesce multiple dimensions of reality that can lead to conceptually cohesive and useful knowledge production? This issue of M/C Journal attempts to answer this question by looking at different perspectives on the notion of cohesion across topical and disciplinary boundaries.