Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: From Production to Produsage

Citation

Barker, P. (2009), "Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: From Production to Produsage", The Electronic Library, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 350-352. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470910947700

This publication makes up Volume 45 in the publisher's Digital Formations series. It describes the impact that social software, and the concepts that are embedded in Web 2.0 technologies, are having on the creation of new products, knowledge and culture. The book introduces two “new” terms in order to describe these effects: “produsage” and “produser”. These are words that the author employs to describe, respectively:

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  the processes involved in, and the outcomes from, the communal and collaborative creation of artefacts (such as Wikipedia) based on the use of an information commons; and

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  the people involved in creating these artefacts.

The material contained in the book is organised into 15 chapters and a bibliography – no index is provided. The opening (introductory) chapter sets the scene for subsequent ones by defining and explaining the significance of the terms (produsage and produser) in relation to the concept of user‐led content creation based upon the collective intelligence and knowledge of all participants (the author refers to this as a “hive”). Chapter 2 describes the key principles and characteristics of produsage (as an alternative model to production – see www.produsage.com) and explicates, in more detail, its underlying rationale – based upon a hive community of produsers. A produser is defined as someone who both produces and uses resources based upon an underlying information/knowledge/media base. In Chapter 3 the author discusses open source software development; he cites this as being “one of the earliest examples of produsage in action” (p. 37). Within this chapter the author critically compares the similarities between produsage and open source development projects ‐ using the Linux computer operating system as an example.

The next four chapters in the book illustrate some typical examples of produsage. In Chapter 4 the author discusses weblogs and their uses – his particular orientation being towards “news blogs” and citizen journalism. Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to Wikipedia (as an example of a wiki) while Chapter 7 considers folksonomies. In these chapters the author shows how the underlying principles of produsage can be successfully applied to the various knowledge artefacts involved. While weblogs and wikis are used to illustrate the application of produsage principles to information and knowledge, folksonomies are used to demonstrate their utility in relation to metadata generation through the techniques of tagging, linking and browsing – referred to by the author as “the produsage of knowledge structures” (p. 172). Some of the subsequent chapters in the book consider the produsage of other forms of content – such as music, games, TV and films.

The content presented in the second half of the book covers a range of topics related to the philosophy, application and support infrastructures for developing and promoting produsage. Building on the expert, amateur and professional/amateur (Pro/Am) classification of produsers that was introduced earlier in the book, Chapter 8 goes on to discuss the “Pro/Am divide” and what it might lead to in terms of creating, structuring and classifying knowledge – the “expert paradigm” versus the “folksonomic paradigm”. Chapter 9 then goes on to discuss “the art of produsage” by considering distributed creativity in relation to creative writing, photo‐sharing, video‐sharing and music‐sharing sites and facilities. This chapter also considers the impact of produsage on the media industries (music, publishing, film and TV); this issue is also further discussed in greater depth in the following chapter. In Chapter 11, the author turns his attention to the produsage of computer games (using The Sims, Trainz and EverQuest as examples) and sophisticated multi‐user virtual environments such as Second Life. This leads on to a discussion of the produsage of social structures and sociality; Chapter 12 (“Social produsage”) addresses some of the issues involved through a discussion of merit, reputation and trust. The educational implications of the produsage model (and the produsage of education itself) are considered in Chapter 13 while the impact of this phenomenon on politics and democracy is “mulled over” in Chapter 14. In the final chapter, the author debates produsage futures and the “fate” of humanity – which will undoubtedly depend critically on the ability of societies to generate, share and use global knowledge (and the skill‐sets that are necessary to achieve this) in a way that is not constrained by geography, ethnic or religious boundaries.

Overall, I found this book quite interesting; it is well written and provides a comprehensive treatment of online participatory culture and the growing use of collaborative content creation in a range of different contexts. In my view, the major shortcoming of this book is the absence of an index. This means, of course, that it is practically impossible to find those parts of the book wherein particular topics – such as “wikilove” (pages 115 and 142) or “karma scores” (pages 85, 150, 315, 324 and 333) ‐ are discussed. Maybe the author expects his readers to produce their own indexes – thereby becoming produsers of his book!