The networked environment of sites like  facilitate the sharing of music. Myspace users can add bands as friends, add songs to their profile which in turn can be added to another friends site and so on. Sharing is a never ending process, constantly being built upon as more and more people join the network.

File sharing on Kazaa, Limewire and Windows live messenger allow users to share files quickly and at no cost. Even the gatekept  file sharing networks such as Itunes give people the ability to share music far more easily than the traditional model of purchasing cd’s and lending them to friends.

Citizen journalism also has a role to play in the sharing of music. Blogs such as Yelling about music, Totally Fuzzy and Indy alternative blog site Obscure sound share the latest music news that mainstream media neglect to tell us. They provide information for a niche set of music fans who can then comment and share their own thoughts and experiences. Perhaps even leading to collective intelligence.

The most brilliant part about all of these avenues is that they can then be linked together. A youtube post can appear on a myspace page, a blog site, an email or facebook, forming one huge network of shared content. I recently participated in this sharing and linking process. I loved my friend Jakie Zhang’s new film clip and wanted to share it with my friends so I copied the link from Youtube onto my blog site and provided further links to his myspace page. He just increased his potential fan base without even lifting a finger. Another example of networked collectivism is Baym’s work on fan communities where it was found that fans build their community through a network of internet sites, each with its own specialised purpose and format. Music was shared through fans spreading their knowledge throughout the network.

In DIY communities music can be shared by both the musicians, the fans and sometimes hybrid produsers. It allows for niche, grass roots experimentation for budding musicians as well as a space for fans to interact and share their passion for music with others. Music was meant to be shared. The internet has allowed more ways to share than ever before. In a world without copyright laws it’s a match made in heaven right?

References:

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production To Produsage. New York: Peter Lang

Experts vs Folks, who is the key for us to get knowlege in new media today?

In the last post, I talked about Wikipedia and  mentioned that Wikipedia provides  a chance for more people to participate in a community to edit and share information and knowledge. However, it brings an argument: in the age, folks can beyond the role of experts?    

Bruns (2008, 200) highlights “there is a struggle between two different systems of representing knowledge: one, the expert paradigm, which ultimately and ideally aims to develop well-behaved, universally accepted, and internally consistent understandings of the world, and one, the folksomic paradigm, which allows for multiplicity, conflicts of interpretation, and the existence of a number of alternative representations of extant knowledge which are accepted only by a subset of the entire community.” 

 I agree with that contribute from professionals and amateurs are both important for the new media today. From my point of view, one character of amateurs is they can update information and knowledge while share with other peers as soon as possible. But professionals need more time and more process to produce knowledge with high quality. One typical example is that when Indian Ocean tsunami erupted, Wikipedians produced some entries on the topic within hours. By contrast, World Book produced a book with DVD to record this event after a month. It may looks more great. Why can not we combine with writing form both amateurs and professionals in Wikipedia? For instance, when an amateur knows the Asian Tsunami Disaster happened, he can write some basic information about the event like when and where it happened. Then professionals like scientists can write some deep information and knowledge like to explain how the quake created a tsunami. I considered the combination of writing from both of amateurs and professional can be great.  

Furthermore, for some topics, the boundaries between professionals and amateurs are becoming unclear. ”Is an undergraduate or postgraduate student in a specific discipline of knowledge to be considered a dilettante or an expert? Is an uncredentialed enthusiast, from amateur astronomers to local historians, from committed fans of Battlestar Galactica to the volunteer developers of open source software, to be considered as inherently less knowledgeable than ‘experts’ in these fields?” (leadbeater and Miller cited in Bruns 2006, 202). This point is also proves the key theory of produsage . One key point is that in our discussion of produsage as an alternative to production, the lines between amateurs and professional, between enthusiasts and experts, are becoming not clear; ‘Pro-Ams’ and committed produsers have blurred them considerably. Except for some important disciplines which only real experts can explain it accurately and clearly(see an instance i talked about health topic for people in my first blog),  but for the vast majority of topics covered by Wikipedia they are likely to appear rather less clear-cut (Bruns 2006, 202). Therefore, in most fields,  If someone has great understanding of a topic, although may he is not a professional, I believe people can still can get some interesting points from his opinions.

Rrefrences:

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production To Produsage. New York: Peter Lang

What is Wikipedia? Gillmor (2006, 148) explain that Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that covers just about any content you can think of. It was formally launched in February, 2004, created and operated by volunteers, published its 500,000 th article and today ranks amongst the top search results in Google search. Wikipedia is one of the most fascinating developments of the digital age.  

Bruns(2008, 113-118) lists that four key rules that have helped make Wikipedia being successful with almost accurate information and knowledge . These are:

1. “Neutral Point of View”: Articles are as neutral as possible, without bias
2.  “Verifiability”: Readers should be able to check articles are published by a reliable source.
3. “No original research”: Wikipedia does not publish original though and it is not the place for personal opinion.
4. “WikiLove”: This is an additional component of the Wikipedia, which try to attract more people to contribute in Wikipedia not only user but also as producer of k knowledge.

Moreover, Wikipedia as an example of produsage, the principle of produsage that Fluid Heterarchy, ad hoc meritocracy also makes Wikipedia with quality of knowledge.

 Fluid Heterarchy, AD Hoc Meritocracy. In open source contributors grow in the community through their esteem and influence on the project. There is no set dictator for the duration of the project. Leaders are fluid and ever changing according to their abilities and the merit of their contributions. In closed source the production development team is subject to traditional hierarchical structures. There is an appointed leader for the duration of the project and each employee has set individual tasks to complete (Bruns 2008, 25).

Bruns (2008, 108) explains the ad hoc groups of enthusiastic contributors are constantly disussion and editing ‘their’ pages. Bruns( 2008, 108) continues “such groups hold no inherent control over the content of the pages they focus on.” However with such a large number of established users, constantly checking back on the information, they are able to regularly updates or change any content which violates the group consensus on the topic. Jenkins (cited in Bruns 2008, 108) notes “the Wikipedia community…functions are as self-correcting adhocracy.” Therefore, anything that is posted can and most often refined and revised by other readers.

As I discussed above, Wikipedia is being controlled by its own roles and characteristics and try to deliver the reliable, trustful information and knowledge. May it still has some mistakes or inaccurate information and it may still not suitable to be references for academic purpose. However, we need to acknowledge that most of knowledge from Wikipedia is correct and it provides us a new platform to search and get knowledge in convenience.

Refrences:

Bruns, A. 2006. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: from production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

Gillmor,D. 2006. We the media. Sebastopol:O’Reilly

Gillmor (2006, xxix) states that Tomorrow’s news reporting and production will be more of a conversation, or a seminar. The lines will blur between producers and consumers, changing the role of both in ways we’re only beginning to grasp now. The communication network itself will be a medium for everyone’s voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multimillion-dollar printing press, launch satellites, or win the government’s permission to squat on the public’s airwaves.

There is a typical example: the SARS epidemic that began in the Chinese Providence of Guangdong in November 2002. The repressive government, accustomed to controlling the news, at first did not allow the medical community to tell anyone what was happening. But in early February 2003, the news began to leak out anyway not through newspapers or television or official announcements, but through citizen who delivers the information on Internet and then increasing number of people share this message and begin to discuss this hot topic. Like Flew (2008, 145) believes that “open publishing” which is one of the critical elements to the popular of citizen journalism.  Citizen journalists publish freely without limitation by editor, newspaper, or company hierarchy to alter or pass over their article. It reflects a point from Bruns(2008, 71-73), which citizen journalism beyond gatekeeping and more likely to be  gatewatching, means that “users to decide for themselves what they find interesting and worth noting and sharing with their peers”(Bruns 2008, 74). 

Citizen journalist often has a viewpoint different to the mainstream media.  Hallin (in Flew 2008, 154) believes that citizen journalism often expresses with strong personal opinion in a new fashion for political issue. Moreover, the voice and judgement of citizen journalism is more honestly acknowledged. However, the professional journalists always try to being neutrality and impartiality (Deuze in Flew 2008, 152). Therefore, overall, citizen journalism more likely to be a positive factor in the development of social capital. Gillmor (2006, xxix) also believes the rise of the citizen-journalist will help us listen. The ability of anyone to make the news will give new voice to people who’ve felt voiceless-and whose words we need to hear. They are showing all of us-citizen, journalist, newsmaker- new ways of talking, of learning.

Additionally, because the “unfinished artefacet, continuing process” (Bruns 2008, 81-83) of citizen journalism, when people read a story, they can also give comments. Like Rusty Foster (cited in Bruns 2008, 81) says the story itself is a point that people start to show and exchange own opinions rather than the endings. So, the interactivity in the citizen journalism also provides a chance for people  get good ideas form others.

To sum up, citizen Journalism presents somewhat of a threat to traditional industrial journalism as everyday users to commentate and report on news and journalistic material. In general, citizen journalism represents the people and enables a democratic voice on social, economic, and political issues. It provides an outlet for debate, collaboration, contribution, opinion, updating and general public conversation on the most important and useful information affecting the world, different societies or specific communities.

Refrences:

Bruns, A. 2006. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: from production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

Flew, T. 2008. New media an introduction. 3^rd ed. Melbourne: OXFORD University Press.

Gillmor,D. 2006. We the media. Sebastopol: O’reilly

Baidu zhidao is a good example of produsage. This is a community-driven knowledge market website launched by Baidu which is a leading Chinese search engine.  The principle of Baidu zhidao is like Yahoo answers. Baidu zhidao provides a community that allows users to both submit a question to be answered while also can answer question asked by others. In this process, the user can be seen as both of the content of creator and also the receiver. This reflects the point in Alex Bruns’s reading: In the produsage,   the boundary of producer and consumer is indistinct.

One of the biggest characters of produsage is that open participation. Baidu zhidao as “Information communities”: “communities or networks of individuals and/or organizations that rendezvous around an information commons, a collection of information that is open to all on equal terms”(Bruns 2008, 15). It makes people get, and share information and knowledge easily. In the Baidu zhidao, when someone asks a question, everyone can participate and answer it. It shows the principles of collective intelligence that collective pool of social knowledge by simultaneously expanding the extent of human interactions enabled by communications networks that can generate new knowledge, and the greatly enhanced capacity to codify, store, and retrieve such knowledge thorough collective access to networked databases.

On the other hand, the open participation in the Baidu zhidao also reflects a problem of produsage which should be considered and try to solve it. In the Baidu zhidao, there are some questions about some serious topics. For instance, some questions are about health problem of humans. Although some users give some answers and comments for this kind of questions, I can find some errors or feel that some answers which not look with a professional tone.  This may causes a serious result, because the user who asks the question may will follow the advice from these answers. This aspect of produsage can relate to what Jenkins describes as a participatory, convergence culture: “this is what happens when consumers take media into their own hands. … Within convergence culture, everyone’s a participant-although participants may have different degrees of status and influence.”

So it leaves a question: how can we evaluate the information and try to get knowledge from experts in the produsage. According to the example of Baidu zhidao, I think about a way which may help users to evaluate the answers from others. I think that we can give a grade to every participant in this community according to the quality of his answers to questions in the history.  People who always answer questions with high quality will get higher grade. Therefore, the grade can help users to evaluate the answers and get knowledge which is more trustful and reliable.

Refrences:

Bruns, A. 2006. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: from production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

Jekins, H. 2006.  Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Welcome to convergence culture.http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/06/welcome_to_convergence_culture.html 

(accessed April 20, 2009)