Wielding new media in Web 2.0: exploring the history of engagement with the collaborative construction of media products
Teresa M. Harrison and Brea Barthel
New Media Society 2009 11: 155
DOI: 10.1177/1461444808099580
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Abstract
This article explores what is new about Web 2.0, the contemporary cutting-edge platform for web development, differentiating between what is celebrated in the discourse of Web 2.0 and what is genuinely novel about this phenomenon, which is users' propensity to construct content in the form of information and media products for the web environment. It argues that, from the perspective of theoretical treatments of the 'active audience', audiences or media users have created media content on a long-term and consistent historical basis for purposes related to radical and community movements. The article further considers expressive and aesthetic dimensions of Web 2.0 content construction through a discussion of three historical case studies of'participatory public art' which, it is suggested, constitute a useful analogy for understanding similarly oriented Web 2.0 content construction. Finally, it proposes topics and questions that should figure prominently in research agendas addressing Web 2.0 phenomena in the future.
Conclusion
This article has considered the term Web 2.0, inquiring into its origin and meaning, and found that it is associated with a set of motivations for business advantage, pinned on what is seen as the novel idea of user-generated content. Just as users appropriated the technology of electronic mail for their own purposes in the early days of the Internet, Web 2.0 users have seized on the opportunities presented by new media technologies to create media content for their own purposes, producing an array of evocative projects and new media forms. Web entrepreneurs are most excited by the economic potential; for media technology scholars, the payoff centers on gaining more knowledge and insight into the nature of media use, together with the kinds of messages that are created. From a disciplinary perspective, it is not the active media user that is new; historically, active media users have accomplished radical and community-oriented purposes through the construction of media products organized in support of social movements and community initiatives. However, new media technologies now enable vastly more users to experiment with a wider and seemingly more varied range of collaborative creative activities.
What is the nature of the collaboration that takes place? How is the knowledge possessed by individuals pooled in collaborative efforts that appear to function without a central authority or coordinator? What are the forms and degrees of participation that bind individuals in these collaborative activities, and how do they learn these particular practices? Earlier, this article called attention to Bruns' (2008) efforts to understand the nature of what he calls 'produsage', the information and knowledge products that are its outcomes, the practices by which it is constituted and the conditions under which it flourishes. This work suggests that we should engage in more systematic efforts to identify, describe and interrogate a broader array of user-generated content, with the expectation of continued surprises in the configuration, formats and purposes reflected in these products, and seek to understand users' experiences as creators and as collaborators in their use of media. It is not too soon to glimpse the possibility of making qualitative comparisons of the processes of produsage with those that characterize 'consumption communities' and 'grassroots creativity' described by Jenkins (2006).
While waxing and waning over time, the idea of radical and community use of media technology seems to be reborn with each new media technology innovation. Across radio, television, earlier forms of computing technologies, members of community or oppositional movements - that is, lay people or hobbyists who adopt and use media technologies outside their normal employment - deploy these technologies to create their own media products, serving their own community goals and political objectives in spite of, or in opposition to, the objectives of corporate media. It is possible to see the widespread embrace of new socially enabled web applications as extensions, elaborations or perhaps exaggerations of these historic and persistent tendencies. Only time will tell whether Indymedia-type services and other lay journalistic efforts to 'be the media' for civic and political purposes will grow in popularity and access.
At the same time, Web 2.0 content construction has an especially personal expressive and aesthetic component, similar to that illustrated in the participatory public art projects presented here, which cannot be subsumed fully under either of the concepts of radical, oppositional or community media. Yet, as the Pew data on content construction indicate, these more artistic and personal purposes comprise a substantial component of Web 2.0 content construction activities. Indeed, as Web 2.0 unfolds, it is possible to expect to see even more examples of collaborative art projects, such as the recent 'Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake' (http://dziga.perrybard.net/), in which viewers are invited to upload their own video clips to a website that archives, sequences and delivers submissions to a worldwide video montage that reinterprets the original 1929 film by DzigaVertov, Man with a Movie Camera.
What new forms of messages will be expressed through Web 2.0 content construction? The invitational aspects ofWeb 2.0 may help to explain the rapid adoption of the technology by girls and young women who are, as the earlier reference to Pew data indicates, the most avid adopters of blogging. Thus, teenagers use Web 2.0 technology to speak, connect, communicate, and build a community of peers. Invitational rhetoric may be the most appropriate analytical tool for probing the development of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006) and the skills that need to be imparted for creating a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novicefs]. (2006: 4)
The Ribbon, AIDS Quilt and Clothesline Project provide a precursor to this type of participatory culture. One challenge for us as communication teachers is to find ways to help students - especially young women - to value their familiar collaborative, artistic, non-confrontational communication while learning a range of other communication approaches. Another challenge for understanding Web 2.0 is to develop models that effectively address communication which has no single author or group of authors and no easily defined message. As with these examples of participatory public art, Web 2.0 content construction negotiates a philosophical and rhetorical space somewhere between the modernist view of the independent individual and the postmodern view of the 'death' or myth of the individual. Invitational rhetoric may offer one way to understand better that space and its virtual representation in the interconnectedness supported by Web 2.0.
Teresa M. Harrison and Brea Barthel
New Media Society 2009 11: 155
DOI: 10.1177/1461444808099580
Abstract
This article explores what is new about Web 2.0, the contemporary cutting-edge platform for web development, differentiating between what is celebrated in the discourse of Web 2.0 and what is genuinely novel about this phenomenon, which is users' propensity to construct content in the form of information and media products for the web environment. It argues that, from the perspective of theoretical treatments of the 'active audience', audiences or media users have created media content on a long-term and consistent historical basis for purposes related to radical and community movements. The article further considers expressive and aesthetic dimensions of Web 2.0 content construction through a discussion of three historical case studies of'participatory public art' which, it is suggested, constitute a useful analogy for understanding similarly oriented Web 2.0 content construction. Finally, it proposes topics and questions that should figure prominently in research agendas addressing Web 2.0 phenomena in the future.
Conclusion
This article has considered the term Web 2.0, inquiring into its origin and meaning, and found that it is associated with a set of motivations for business advantage, pinned on what is seen as the novel idea of user-generated content. Just as users appropriated the technology of electronic mail for their own purposes in the early days of the Internet, Web 2.0 users have seized on the opportunities presented by new media technologies to create media content for their own purposes, producing an array of evocative projects and new media forms. Web entrepreneurs are most excited by the economic potential; for media technology scholars, the payoff centers on gaining more knowledge and insight into the nature of media use, together with the kinds of messages that are created. From a disciplinary perspective, it is not the active media user that is new; historically, active media users have accomplished radical and community-oriented purposes through the construction of media products organized in support of social movements and community initiatives. However, new media technologies now enable vastly more users to experiment with a wider and seemingly more varied range of collaborative creative activities.
What is the nature of the collaboration that takes place? How is the knowledge possessed by individuals pooled in collaborative efforts that appear to function without a central authority or coordinator? What are the forms and degrees of participation that bind individuals in these collaborative activities, and how do they learn these particular practices? Earlier, this article called attention to Bruns' (2008) efforts to understand the nature of what he calls 'produsage', the information and knowledge products that are its outcomes, the practices by which it is constituted and the conditions under which it flourishes. This work suggests that we should engage in more systematic efforts to identify, describe and interrogate a broader array of user-generated content, with the expectation of continued surprises in the configuration, formats and purposes reflected in these products, and seek to understand users' experiences as creators and as collaborators in their use of media. It is not too soon to glimpse the possibility of making qualitative comparisons of the processes of produsage with those that characterize 'consumption communities' and 'grassroots creativity' described by Jenkins (2006).
While waxing and waning over time, the idea of radical and community use of media technology seems to be reborn with each new media technology innovation. Across radio, television, earlier forms of computing technologies, members of community or oppositional movements - that is, lay people or hobbyists who adopt and use media technologies outside their normal employment - deploy these technologies to create their own media products, serving their own community goals and political objectives in spite of, or in opposition to, the objectives of corporate media. It is possible to see the widespread embrace of new socially enabled web applications as extensions, elaborations or perhaps exaggerations of these historic and persistent tendencies. Only time will tell whether Indymedia-type services and other lay journalistic efforts to 'be the media' for civic and political purposes will grow in popularity and access.
At the same time, Web 2.0 content construction has an especially personal expressive and aesthetic component, similar to that illustrated in the participatory public art projects presented here, which cannot be subsumed fully under either of the concepts of radical, oppositional or community media. Yet, as the Pew data on content construction indicate, these more artistic and personal purposes comprise a substantial component of Web 2.0 content construction activities. Indeed, as Web 2.0 unfolds, it is possible to expect to see even more examples of collaborative art projects, such as the recent 'Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake' (http://dziga.perrybard.net/), in which viewers are invited to upload their own video clips to a website that archives, sequences and delivers submissions to a worldwide video montage that reinterprets the original 1929 film by DzigaVertov, Man with a Movie Camera.
What new forms of messages will be expressed through Web 2.0 content construction? The invitational aspects ofWeb 2.0 may help to explain the rapid adoption of the technology by girls and young women who are, as the earlier reference to Pew data indicates, the most avid adopters of blogging. Thus, teenagers use Web 2.0 technology to speak, connect, communicate, and build a community of peers. Invitational rhetoric may be the most appropriate analytical tool for probing the development of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006) and the skills that need to be imparted for creating a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novicefs]. (2006: 4)
The Ribbon, AIDS Quilt and Clothesline Project provide a precursor to this type of participatory culture. One challenge for us as communication teachers is to find ways to help students - especially young women - to value their familiar collaborative, artistic, non-confrontational communication while learning a range of other communication approaches. Another challenge for understanding Web 2.0 is to develop models that effectively address communication which has no single author or group of authors and no easily defined message. As with these examples of participatory public art, Web 2.0 content construction negotiates a philosophical and rhetorical space somewhere between the modernist view of the independent individual and the postmodern view of the 'death' or myth of the individual. Invitational rhetoric may offer one way to understand better that space and its virtual representation in the interconnectedness supported by Web 2.0.
While Web 2.0 is heralded often as a revolutionary technology, this article has described two types of historical precursors to its central focus on collaborative content construction: radical and oppositional uses of media and participatory public art. The challenges ahead are to explore the economic, political, rhetorical, aesthetic and expressive implications of these newly-constructed media products, while simultaneously developing appropriate ways to educate its practitioners.
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