After discussing how many people have been over-sharing online, one can easily see that the internet is now full of people putting up content. The introduction of the internet has brought about huge changes to our society, especially to professional content producers. Journalists now find hundreds of tweets and blog posts about the news that they are writing an article on, news channels also struggle with this. Magazines are finding it hard to keep their readership, especially when there are endless amounts of blogs on any topic which are available for free. The list of creative outlets online is now endless.
With the introduction of the internet the typical producer to audience relationship has been broken down. The audience is no longer just a consumer, but it is now a producer, participant and part of a community. Every single person can obtain the ability to go online and share their creative work with the rest of the world. It is no longer just the media professionals who provide us with entertainment. A cumulative example of this change in the relationship of producer to audience was in 2006 when Time magazine named ‘you’ as its Person of the Year. This put an emphasis on the power that was being obtained by the ordinary person and how each one of us has the ability to change the world through the new forms of digital media.
With the introduction of the internet the typical producer to audience relationship has been broken down. The audience is no longer just a consumer, but it is now a producer, participant and part of a community. Every single person can obtain the ability to go online and share their creative work with the rest of the world. It is no longer just the media professionals who provide us with entertainment. A cumulative example of this change in the relationship of producer to audience was in 2006 when Time magazine named ‘you’ as its Person of the Year. This put an emphasis on the power that was being obtained by the ordinary person and how each one of us has the ability to change the world through the new forms of digital media.
Van Dijck’s ‘emerging rule of thumb’ (2009) suggests that only one in a hundred people will be active online this simple numeric assessment does not address the nature of the interaction, which can be wildly variable. content producers, 10 of whom will ‘interact’ by commenting, and the remaining 89 are simply viewing. Ho wever, This brings me to the question, which was also mentioned by S.Bird (2011) in her academic article, “are we all producers?” My answer to this question which also corresponds to that of S.Bird is no. I do not think that every Twitter and Facebook update is an act of creativity thus not each of us should be considered a producer. I see those posts more as an expression of opinion, or an expression of the self. However, this is referring only to simple updates.
If we then move our focus onto aspects such as photography, video-making, blogging, writing, etc, then yes, I believe that the audience is also the producer. Ever since the introduction of the internet, more people have been allowed to share their work and this in turn can be viewed by millions of people anywhere in the world. Consequently this has opened up so many doors for people who may not have enough money to share their work or whatever other reason which might have been holding them back. People can now easily put up their creative work on Youtube, Instagram, Blogger and any other platform available and instantly get feedback on their work. These platforms have provided success to an endless amount of artists.
The main point which I want to make is that not every online user is a producer. Posting a status or tweet about what you’re doing or what your opinion is on a certain topic is not necessarily creative content although it gives a few seconds of entertainment to the person reading it. It is viewed more as a means of chatting but on a public platform where many users can reply back to you.
However, I do believe that the producer vs audience stance is no longer as strong as it was in the past and now they mesh together. We can share our content so easily and we can even share our thoughts and opinions about anything we see on television or newspapers that we agree or disagree with which decreases the power of the professional producers.
To conclude, below is an infographic with a few statistics about some social networking websites which I found interesting and relevant to this post.
If we then move our focus onto aspects such as photography, video-making, blogging, writing, etc, then yes, I believe that the audience is also the producer. Ever since the introduction of the internet, more people have been allowed to share their work and this in turn can be viewed by millions of people anywhere in the world. Consequently this has opened up so many doors for people who may not have enough money to share their work or whatever other reason which might have been holding them back. People can now easily put up their creative work on Youtube, Instagram, Blogger and any other platform available and instantly get feedback on their work. These platforms have provided success to an endless amount of artists.
The main point which I want to make is that not every online user is a producer. Posting a status or tweet about what you’re doing or what your opinion is on a certain topic is not necessarily creative content although it gives a few seconds of entertainment to the person reading it. It is viewed more as a means of chatting but on a public platform where many users can reply back to you.
However, I do believe that the producer vs audience stance is no longer as strong as it was in the past and now they mesh together. We can share our content so easily and we can even share our thoughts and opinions about anything we see on television or newspapers that we agree or disagree with which decreases the power of the professional producers.
To conclude, below is an infographic with a few statistics about some social networking websites which I found interesting and relevant to this post.
References and Sources Used:
BIRD, S., 2011. Are we all produsers now?
http://www.academia.edu/4247450/Are_we_all_produsers_now_Convergence_and_media_audience_practices
SHIRKY, C., 2008. Here Comes Everybody. Penguin.
https://about.twitter.com/company
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/facebook-statistics/
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/snapchat-statistics/
https://instagram.com/press/
http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpf2kh-hlN0
Infographic created via infogr.am
BIRD, S., 2011. Are we all produsers now?
http://www.academia.edu/4247450/Are_we_all_produsers_now_Convergence_and_media_audience_practices
SHIRKY, C., 2008. Here Comes Everybody. Penguin.
https://about.twitter.com/company
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/facebook-statistics/
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/snapchat-statistics/
https://instagram.com/press/
http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpf2kh-hlN0
Infographic created via infogr.am