ProdUsers

I’ve discovered the breaking point between the relaxed academic, who might write some papers after they finish gardening on a Sunday and the viciously, sadistic academic who lives, breathes and experiences nerdiness to the nth degree. What is it you ask? Making up words.

If you read through a normal paper, there might be about four words which you don’t know the meaning of, like deontological or epistemology but you go to a trusty dictionary and the definition is there, easy to understand and useful. This is the domain of the weekend academic, who uses long, convoluted words in an attempt to confuse their reader but fail because of the humble dictionary.

However the hardcore academic isn’t put off by this problem. Rather than find more complex, obscure words (s)he instead will go one further and make up words, not found in any dictionary. Success! Try and understand me now reader, the academic brays, while spending their entire introduction defining new terms which have never been used before (and probably won’t be used again) in an attempt to ‘clarify’ (for that word read: muddy) their argument.

However, while I usually don’t have time for academics who make up obscure words because the English language isn’t good enough for them, I have found myself falling increasingly in love with Axel Bruns’ term produser (as I write that I can already hear everybody laughing, ‘that’s not a word!’).

Axel uses it as a term to describe a number of trends which typify web 2.0.

Produsage is based on the collaborative engagement of (ideally, large) communities of participants in a shared project

Users of Amazon or Google act as co-produsers of these services even without having chosen to do so, as their usage generates information which helps to further refine the performance of these sites.

He uses the term in reference to information/knowledge production systems like open-source software and Wikipedia and this article on produsers sums up his general argument. While I like the term I feel it’s almost too restrictive. In web 2.0 everybody is a produser, with the capacity to both produce and consume on a wide basis. I think the problems with restricting it to communities (and emphasising large communities) means that it denies the option for someone to be a user and producer on a small scale basis. While amazon and google encompass a large proportion of internet users who both produce and use content, Wikipedia doesn’t and I think more could be done to emphasise the capacity of everyone to be a produser.

Recent Nielsen studies show that  

84 percent of Australian and 88 percent of New Zealand internet users use Web 2.0 for sharing content such as photos, links and video and once consumers establish familiarity with CGM (Consumer Generated Media) style activities, they then typically progress to become more involved with more advanced CGM activities such as actively editing and commenting on CGM content (77% of Australians and 78% of New Zealanders) and creating online content in the form of uploading video and music (69% of Australians and 76% of New Zealanders) to the web.

This isn’t just about open-source geeks or even about web portals and services like google and amazon but networks of sharing content between people which don’t even need the avalanche of rules and communal responsibilities which Bruns suggests these practices entail. Sharing consumer created media (photos, videos and ideas) can happen over networks large and small and I think it’s important to tear this phrase away from a limited open-source, Wikipedia or Sims mindset and place it as part of the day to day experience of people using the web.