Open AccessThe Arrival of Prosumers and Produsers: Transformations of User Practices in the New Media
Author(s) -
Tadej Praprotnik
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
monitor ish
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1580-688X
pISSN - 1580-7118
DOI - 10.33700/1580-7118.17.2.47-69(2015
Subject(s) - interactivity , prosumer , new media , computer science , multimedia , phenomenon , social media , field (mathematics) , creativity , production (economics) , digital media , mass media , web 2.0 , participatory culture , world wide web , the internet , advertising , engineering , political science , epistemology , business , philosophy , mathematics , renewable energy , law , pure mathematics , electrical engineering , economics , macroeconomics
The article presents the phenomenon of new communication technologies. Focusing on the role of the social media (Web 2.0), it sketches certain global trends in the field of the new media and explains the role of software as an important ‘generator’ of everyday life. The basic characteristics of the traditional one-way mass communication and consumption of media products are contrasted with the interactive nature of the new media and a recent resulting phenomenon – user-generated media contents. The article goes on to present an important element of the new media cultures – interactivity, discussing its transforming effect on such traditional media categories as the ‘audience’, and introducing categories typical of the new media, such as ‘produser’ and ‘prosumer’. Technology is discussed as an elaborate and fluid apparatus dependent on society: an apparatus which reinforces the new and previously ignored cultural relations. The process of multimedia production is presented through different types of inclusion as promised by the technological forms. The article further investigates the World Wide Web as a multimedia form which has absorbed many other media types. The multimedia production of web pages and other cultural products has been a major channel for the democratisation of cultural production, as well as a field for the expression of individuals. The final topic to be addressed is the question of creativity, which is an important promise of the new media production.