[iDC] Notes on Produsers and Produsage

[Trebor Scholz]

Some Exploratory Notes on Produsers and Produsage
Dr Axel Bruns      

Introduction
In recent years, various observers have pointed to the shifting paradigms of
cultural and societal participation and economic production in developed
nations. These changes are facilitated (although, importantly, not solely
driven) by the emergence of new, participatory technologies of information
access, knowledge exchange, and content production, many of whom are
associated with Internet and new media technologies. Already in the 1970s,
futurist Alvin Toffler foreshadowed such changes in his coining of the term
Œprosumer¹ (Toffler, 1971): highlighting the emergence of a more informed,
more involved consumer of goods who would need to be kept content by
allowing for a greater customisability and individualisability of products;
this indicated the shift from mass industrial production of goods to a model
of on-demand, just-in-time production of custom-made items. Going further
beyond this, Charles Leadbeater has introduced the notion of Œpro-am¹
production models (Leadbeater & Miller, 2004) ­ alluding to a joint effort
of producers and consumers in developing new and improved commercial goods.
Similarly, the industry observers behind Trendwatching.com speak of a trend
towards Œcustomer-made¹ products (2005a), while J.C. Herz has described the
same process as Œharnessing the hive¹ (2005) ­ that is, the harnessing of
promising and useful ideas, generated by expert consumers, by commercial
producers (and sometimes under ethically dubious models which appear to
exploit and thus hijack the hive as a cheap generator of ideas, rather than
merely harnessing it in a benign fashion).

Such models remain somewhat limited still, however, in their maintenance of
a traditional industrial value production chain: they retain a producer ->
distributor -> consumer dichotomy. Especially where what is produced is of
an intangible, informational nature, a further shift away from such
industrial, and towards post-industrial or informational economic models can
be observed. In such models, the production of ideas takes place in a
collaborative, participatory environment which breaks down the boundaries
between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be
users as well as producers of information and knowledge, or what I have come
to produsers (also see Bruns 2005a). These produsers engage not in a
traditional form of content production, but are instead involved in
produsage ­ the collaborative and continuous building and extending of
existing content in pursuit of further improvement. Key examples for such
produsage can be seen in the collaborative development of open source
software, the distributed multi-user spaces of the Wikipedia, or the
user-led innovation and content production in multi-user online games (some
90% of content in The Sims, for example, is prodused by its users rather
than the game publisher Maxis; see Herz 2005: p. 335). Further, we also see
produsage in collaborative online publishing, especially in news and
information sites from the technology news site Slashdot to the world-wide
network of Independent Media Centres, the renowned and influential South
Korean citizen journalism site OhmyNews, and beyond this in the more
decentralised and distributed environments of the blogosphere (Bruns 2005b).
While there are elements of boosterism in its coverage of such trends,
Trendwatching.com¹s identification of the participants behind such produsage
phenomena as a new ŒGeneration C¹ is nonetheless useful (2005b). In this
context, ŒC¹ stands in the first instance for Œcontent creation¹, as well as
for Œcreativity¹ more generally (and Generation C appears closely related to
Richard Florida¹s idea of a creative class, therefore; see Florida 2002); if
the outcomes of such creativity are popularly recognised this can also lead
to another ŒC¹-word, Œcelebrity¹. But Trendwatching.com also notes that
Generation C poses a significant challenge to established modes and models
of content production, and importantly, therefore, the ŒC¹ can also refer to
issues associated with both Œcontrol¹ and the Œcasual collapse¹ of
traditional approaches.

Some Common Characteristics of Produsage

Across the various domains in which produsage occurs, some common traits can
be observed. Necessarily, produsage takes somewhat different forms depending
on the object of the produser effort, and the community which is engaged in
that effort, but these fundamental traits are nonetheless present in varying
balance in each case.

User-Led Content Production
The core object of produsage is to involve users as producers, and these
user-produsers often take the lead in the development of new content and
ideas. Whether instigated by the operators of produsage sites, or out of
their own motivation, users create content. In many cases (including the
Wikipedia or various open news sites), the sites themselves act as tools for
content production; in several others (especially where content produsage
for computer game environments is concerned), the sites provide or point to
useful tools and offer hints, guidelines, and frameworks for effective
produsage.

Collaborative Engagement
Produsers tend to collaborate rather than work by themselves as individual
content producers; indeed, in order to be a produser (rather than producer)
it is necessary also to be a user of other participants¹ content. Use often
leads to the identification of opportunities for further extension and
improvement of existing material. Produsage environments frequently
encourage collaborative engagement by providing tools or informational
structures which are preconfigured for collaboration between individual
produsers; this can be seen for example in the distributed discussion
functionality present across the blogosphere, or the placemark sharing and
discussion tools available within Google Earth.

Palimpsestic, Iterative, Evolutionary Development
Engagement with existing content provides produsers with a motivation to
further improve upon it; this evolutionary development may lead to a new
iteration of existing versions (for example, the generation of a new
revision of an open source software package) or the remixing of content in
the development of a new branch species (whether in the form of a new
remixed version of artistic material, or the forking of an open source
project in different directions of development). Many produsage spaces also
are their own archives, enabling users to trace the evolution of content
through its various stages, so that the continuous development of new
versions of content leads to the creation of a palimpsest: a repeatedly
over-written, multi-layered document. This is evident for example in the
Wikipedia with its elaborate page history tools, or the ability to trace the
genesis of a music track in the ccMixter produsage site.

Alternative Approaches to Intellectual Property
Iterative engagement with content in a continuous process of evolutionary
development require new approaches to the recognition and enforcement of
intellectual property rights. A strict enforcement of such rights will tend
to stifle the ability of later produsers to build on the work of their
predecessors, and many produsage environments utilise open source- or
creative commons-style licencing frameworks. At the same time, a complete
release of content into the public domain, amounting to produsers giving up
their legal and moral rights to be recognised and acknowledged as the
creators of intellectual property, would often turn out to be
counterproductive, since one of the motivations for produsers still remains
the ability to be seen as a contributor to distributed produsage efforts.
Produsage sites therefore must negotiate a middle path between IP regimes
which enable as far as possible their participants¹ engagement with one
another¹s content, and approaches which maintain individuals¹ rights to be
acknowledged as content contributors.

Heterarchical, Permeable Community Structures
Sites of produsage flourish if they can attract a large number of engaged
and experienced participants who adhere to the ideals of the site. This
requires a balance between openness and structure ­ if sites are seen as
being controlled by a closed in-group of participants, they are unlikely to
attract new produsers into the fold, as these are likely to feel alienated;
on the other hand, if anyone can participate without any sense of oversight
by individuals or the established community as a whole, then cohesion is
likely to be lost. Many produser sites have therefore instituted
heterarchical regimes of one form or another ­ in many open news sites, for
example, community members are chosen at random or based on seniority and
given the right to moderate their peers¹ contributions; in some of the
Wikimedia Foundation projects, groups of administrators have been created by
vote of the overall community; while some open source development projects
are led by a group of Œbenevolent dictators¹ who have emerged from the
community (and have limited powers, as development can always be forked into
new projects if there is disagreement). Each of these models can be
described as heterarchical: showing neither purely hierarchical
organisational traits, nor operating simply as a leaderless anarchy.

Emerging Questions for the Produsage Model

The success of open source software development and other collaborative
produsage spaces, such as the Wikipedia, point to the fact that produsage
models are in the process of being more widely adopted across a number of
content production domains. As this mainstreaming of produsage takes place,
the model must also encounter a number of significant questions ­ especially
as it attempts to find points of connection and coexistence with existing,
production/consumption-based approaches. Answers to these questions have not
yet been fully formulated, and may vary depending on a number of other
factors, but it is important to foreshadow some of the areas of contestation
already.

Economics
As the emergence of software companies formulated around an open source
software development model has already shown, produsage and the commercial
exploitation of the intellectual property generated through it are not
necessarily mutually exclusive. Open source software firms often operate
along either one of two related models ­ Œselling bottled water¹, that is,
selling a convenient package and framework for what is otherwise a freely
available resource (such as, for example, Red Hat¹s ready-to-install CD-ROMs
of open source software packages), or offering expertise and consultancy
around that resource. Either model has completed a move from selling product
to selling service which is characteristic of a post-industrial economy.
However, both models rely on and exploit the continued free availability of
the core resource around which services are offered; to ensure this
availability, it is important that a portion of the proceeds generated from
service provision is fed back into the protection and maintenance of that
resource (and many open source software providers do in fact allow and
encourage their staff to be active participants in and produsers of open
source software projects on company time).
At the same time, computer game publishers like Maxis (producer of The Sims)
do appear to profit more directly from selling the produser-generated
resource itself, rather than offering ancillary services. Where Red Hat, for
example, sells a useful but not crucial service to open source users (who
are always able to directly access the open source package itself from its
development site), the Sims game package is an indispensable prerequisite
for entering the game universe of The Sims. In essence, then, Sims users pay
Maxis for the privilege of being granted the ability to become produsers of
game content, and as produsers subsequently continue to generate games
assets which through their richness will attract further potential users and
produsers to the game. In some cases of such proprietary spaces for
produsage, end-user licence agreements (EULAs) even grant the games
publisher ownership of and rights to incorporate any content generated by
the user during their engagement with the game. Such models could be
described more as hijacking than harnessing the hive, as they lock produser
creativity into proprietary environments and deny users any ability to
profit from the outcomes of produsage other than as sanctioned by the
commercial operator of the environment. (It is therefore incumbent on
produsers to become more aware of the rights granted to them as a condition
of their participation within specific produsage environments.)

Sustainability
Such potential commercial exploitation of produsage, without direct
rewarding of produsers as the collective originators of content, also point
to questions around the sustainability of produsage environments, then. As
produsers become aware of attempts to exploit their work without reward,
their attitudes towards the produsage environment will rapidly deteriorate,
slowing the rate of content produsage and undermining further development.
Some reported cases of dissent within massively multi-player online
role-playing games environments as players encountered overly restrictive
EULA arrangements are already instructive in this regard, and it is likely
that more are to follow. It is possible that such cases might motivate
participants to develop alternative produsage spaces operated by the
community rather than commercial entities (and some community-run online
gaming servers do in fact already exist) ­ indeed, this would mirror the
genesis of open source software itself, which also in good part emerged out
of a sense of disenchantment with the poor customer relations in the
existing software industry ­, but in the case of resource-intensive spaces
of produsage (e.g. in online gaming) the cost of community-run development
might be prohibitive.
Even where there is no overt commercial exploitation, however, the
sustainability of produser communities can be questioned. Community-led
content produsage has so far built its success on a classic model where the
value of the prodused resource is greater than the sum of its parts; on
average, any participating produser has been able to receive more value from
the collaborative project than they had invested themselves. However, the
time spent contributing to such projects must still be financed somehow, and
entirely volunteer-based produsage models may not be able to be sustained in
the longer term. The model of open source service providers
cross-subsidising the resource upon which they depend by allowing their
staff to participate in development projects on company time may be able to
be extended to other domains of produsage.
At the same time, new economic models which are built entirely around
produsage as a core practice must also be explored ­ and some of the ideas
gathered on sites such as Trendwatching.com may be instructive in this
regard (while also indicating potential avenues for further exploitation of
produser communities). It is likely that where such new models turn out to
be successful we will see a repeat of the bitter battles already being
fought between the traditional software industry and its new open-source
rivals, and that much rhetoric aimed at undermining the perceived quality of
the opponent is going to be exchanged (in a more restrained way, this is now
also taking place between supporters of the Wikipedia and the producers of
traditional encyclopedias).
Finally, a different, but related sustainability question also arises at the
earliest stages of produsage projects: as such projects emerge and
communities around them are beginning to form, how can they be guided to
gather the critical mass and momentum needed to sustain development in this
first, crucial phase? At such stages, projects often rely on a small number
of highly engaged contributors, and it is crucial for them to both convey a
sense of purpose and drive for the project as well as create an environment
which invites participation from new contributors.

Omnivoracity
Many of the core traits of produsage spaces are organised around practices
of repurposing, remixing, and redeveloping existing content. As noted, this
requires innovative internal intellectual property schemes; however, beyond
this many produsage spaces are also externally focussed and rely on an
engagement with materials from outside of their own environment. Open news
sites, for example, depend on their ability to cite and comment on news
reports which have been identified from other news sources through the
practice of gatewatching (see Bruns 2005b); the Wikipedia builds on
knowledge drawn from an even wider variety of sources; while audio- and
video-based produsage sites might also incorporate (or hope to incorporate)
external elements into their own creative output.
Operating fundamentally on a principle of iterative content evolution within
the produsage space, then, which assumes a right to incorporate available
materials in the produsing of new content, produsers are often tempted to
apply the same approach also to materials drafted from outside (and
therefore often available under significantly different licence schemes or
traditional copyright frameworks). This raises the potential of widespread
intellectual property infringements ­ and indeed, commercial news operators
would likely be able to identify a raft of infringements against their
copyright very readily, for example, were they to examine the content of the
news-related blogosphere or of many open news publications.

Liability
This omnivoracity of participating produsers could present a significant
threat to produsage spaces, therefore, as they could be subject to
prosecution for copyright infringements. Legal responsibilities are yet to
be clarified in such cases ­ and it may be important for the sustainability
of produsage approaches to apply a legal framework not unlike that which
governs Internet service providers (ISPs) in many jurisdictions: here, the
ISP usually cannot be held responsible for content hosted on user Websites
as long as they take down infringing content as soon as it is reported.
However, this may also require specific organisational frameworks for
produsage spaces (potentially reintroducing a stronger hierarchical
organisation once again), which in turn could also affect the feasibility of
the space itself.
Such legal questions are not limited only to intellectual property, of
course; the quality and reliability of content which has been
collaboratively prodused must also be questioned. Misinformation in some of
this content (for example, in a collaboratively prodused self-help site on
medical issues) may have some very serious consequences, and it is easy to
imagine legal action from those who have been negatively affected by it ­ in
such cases, who should be held responsible?

Incompleteness
One answer to such questions would also stress that any collaboratively
produced content, or indeed any content at all, should always be taken with
a grain of salt, of course ­ indeed, that a caveat of Œuse at your own risk¹
should apply to all outcomes of produsage. This may be especially important
also because the iterative and evolutionary model of content produsage must
by its very nature lead to eternally incomplete outcomes; the point of
produsage is that it is always possible to further improve on what is
already available.
This realisation should not be seen as undermining produsage overall;
instead, it merely indicates a need to further educate participants in
produsage as well as users of produsage outcomes: all products continue to
contain room for improvement, and so it is not produsage with its
continuing, ever-incomplete development of content and artefacts, but
industrial production with its artificial separation of development outcomes
into distinct Œcomplete¹ product models and editions, which presents an
aberration from the norm. And paradoxically, by always presenting the latest
update to the artefact (and always enabling users as produsers to contribute
further updates right then and there), produsage frequently offers a more
recent, more Œcomplete¹ version of the artefact than traditional production
models are able to do.

Cultural, Social, and Political Implications of Produsage

As noted above, today we are experiencing the emergence of produsage models
across a wide range of domains of content development and exchange. This
phenomenon appears to be part of a wider paradigm shift, which is supported
in part also by the rise of new media technologies. Media play an important
part in shaping our consciousness and understanding of the world around us,
as well as our place within it, of course, and in this case the very shape
of the media as it has shifted away from mostly passive, mass reception to
more interactive, individualised modes of active engagement can be shown to
have an effect. Advancing even beyond this, especially Internet-based media
forms have begun to take on elements of intercreativity (see Berners-Lee
1999), and as this mode of collaborative, productive engagement with content
is becoming more prevalent it creates the groundwork for the expansion of
produsage environments.
While it is too early to predict the full implications of this change, it
already seems evident that one key development is likely to be the expansion
of grassroots or vernacular (see Burgess 2005) creativity; this will
necessarily have a significant effect on the existing structure and position
of the creative industries. At the same time, it must also be recognised
that the skills and socioeconomic and technological requirements for
becoming a produser in whatever domain are not distributed evenly throughout
societies, much less global society as a whole; therefore, there is also a
risk that a further digital divide ­ in this case, specifically a
participatory or creative divide ­ might open up between the more and less
privileged strata of society. Such trends must be addressed and reversed
through government and non-government intervention at as early a stage as is
possible; education at all levels also plays a crucial role here, and must
prepare its students to become effective produsers in a wide range of
environments.
Ultimately, then, if a widespread adoption of produsage approaches can be
engendered across society, this could also come to have a profound effect on
civic participation and democratic engagement as a whole. Again, we might
note that the media affect our consciousness, and our understanding of the
world as well as of the societies we live in, and the mass media traditions
from which we have emerged may have also had a significant impact on our
understanding of democracy ­ and so, in many developed countries citizens
relate to their democratic environment much as they do to the mass media:
democracy has become a spectacle produced by political parties and interest
groups and moderated and distributed by journalists and pundits, with
citizens as audiences who occasionally switch channels by voting in
elections (or generally tune out and regard politics as nothing more than
background noise).
If prodused media become a credible and wide-spread alternative to produced
media forms, however, then this might ultimately also have an effect on
citizens¹ understandings of how they relate to their local, national, and
global environments ­ and as regards democracy, it could rekindle a desire
on their part to once again become active produsers of democracy, rather
than mere passive audiences. Exactly what form this produsage approach to
democracy might take remains yet to be seen, as does whether the transition
can be a smooth one ­ but the potential for change which it enables makes
produsage an important phenomenon to follow.

Bibliography:

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