Produsage...? What is that and does it have any limitations?

The older model of content generation, which saw a one-way process from producer to distributor to consumer allows for a very limited feed back loop and doesn’t apply to all content generation today. Social media has allowed and facilitated many voices to be heard by enabling communication among as many individuals that want to be involved. Axel Bruns has termed this new model of content generation as ‘Produsage.’ The topic seemed a bit difficult to actually grasp so outlining its key characteristics seemed appropriate.

Produsage has four key characteristics:

-It moves away from a specific person or group of people as producers to a much broader group of individuals. There is no limit to who can create content; everyone has the potential to be involved.

- Nothing is ever finished; everything created is ongoing and continually revisited to keep the information as current and accurate as possible.

- Produsage is based on engaging various individuals who do not see ownership as the motivating factor but instead merit.

- All produsers frequently cross between leaders, participants, and users.

Visual representation of the way 'Produsage' occurs
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Wikipedia is a good example of produsage as anyone can contribute to the page and the page can constantly be updated and altered. People who do revise pages do not seek any ownership and their role may change from editing a page to actually seeking information and using the page as a source.

Henry Jenkins argues that because no one knows everything and everyone knows something, people can combine their skills and resources through a form of ‘participatory culture.’ This is very apparent in produsage as people who are leaders or have knowledge in one area are able to relay such information and share it with others. This kind of ‘collective meaning making ‘is starting to change the way religion, education, law, politics, advertising, and even the military operate’.

Medical forum
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There are limitations with produsage. The initial problem is that information may not be 100% accurate all the time. There is an issue of people who purposefully go on to sites like Wikipedia with the intention of adding information that is untrue or bogus. This could also occur on medical user generated web forums, which may have a much greater impact on the user. For example, if someone contributes information that plays down the significance of a symptom or on the other hand puts far too much emphasis on one, this could cause someone to dismiss the symptom or place a great degree of unnecessary stress and anxiety on them. On Wikipedia this would be counteracted eventually as there are always people verifying such information, but people may be less likely to alter medical scenarios unless they are fully qualified or have been in the situation themselves. Other issues lie in the area of copyrighting and ownership. If everyone is able to contribute to a never-ending pool of knowledge then who eventually takes possession of the information? Specifically on YouTube consumers are the ones producing all the content and uploading it to the site, without them the site would have no content, but it is Google who actually benefiting.