Folks and Experts

With all this talk of Produsage, Citizen Journalism and Wikipedia, a question that is a growing concern and a constantly raised issue is, the role is remaining in a folksonomically organized knowledge space for the incumbents of information and knowledge organization; i.e. the experts in specific topical fields and the expert librarians and other information gatekeepers who have traditionally evaluated and organized knowledge with such subjects. Such subjects are voiced in Bruns book, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second life and Beyond. This question has been encountered in the context of a number of the produsage environments, but in particular is noticed largely through use of Wikipedia.

Before delving too deeply into the above question, as a student I would like to take this opportunity to mention, that through my senior education, including my university learning, I have always been taught never to use Wikipedia as a source for research… NEVER!

Although there is information being updated by scholarly users, there is also information added by Joe Dirt. The fact of the matter is that it does not matter if the article is written by username: Smartest Man Alive because in a school or university research situation any information from Wikipedia is deemed unreliable and will not be recognised as credible research. With that point in mind, it is my belief that many students using Wikipedia in their research do so in order to gain a broad overview of a topic, rather than basing entire arguments on the words of unidentified human encyclopedias.

In Wikipedia it appears that “someone whose expertise rests on having done extensive original research on a topic gets no particular respect.” Thus raising yet another question, of whether even bona fide experts in a field will need to once again earn their status in the internal heterarchy of contributors like all other members of the produsage site, or whether their existing status in the external hierarchy of traditional knowledge systems and disciplines should be translated into and respected by participants in the produsage project.

Once again, to give my own perspective on the above question, I do believe that the internet is taking over as the primary source for information. While libraries and databases still hold a wealth of information, Web 2.0 is much larger and can hold more information. Major literature resources are being transferred onto the internet every day. The authors, usually experts in their respective field are able to receive the recognition and respect that they may not receive in sites such as wikipedia.

Sanger’s own response to his growing disenchantment with Wikipedia has been the establishment of Citizendium, a model of collaborative encyclopedic content production which enshrines a greater respect for experts in a quasi-hierarchical structure of administration and can therefore no longer be considered to be a form of user-led produsage in its own right.

I believe the establishment of Citizendium, for students, is the next best thing after youtube. The quasi-hierarchical structure and scholarly based user community is definitely something to get excited about. In many ways creating this online source which gives professional scholars a chance to share there teachings with ‘folk’ users of the internet is taking a step backwards, whilst concurrently moving forward. In essence, produsage sites, namely Wikipedia made everyone equal and turned everyone who posted information into a ‘teacher’. However, a year 11 student ‘teaching’ a professor doesn’t quite work. Citizendium is putting the power of knowledge back into the hands of the people who are best qualified to share their knowledge.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the first major institution of the newly emergent knowledge space. Don’t believe me? Look it up on Wikipedia. Or as Will Richardson puts it, “The poster child for the collaborative construction of knowledge and truth that the new, interactive web facilitates”. Don’t know what Wikipedia is? Google search it…first result, Wikipedia.

What is Wikipedia? In short, it is a collaboratively created and edited online encyclopedia, and according to Bruns “It has become by far the most successful online encyclopedia both in terms of its user base and the breadth of its coverage. Beyond this it is also the quintessential example for the use of wiki technology in an open access, open participation context”… “Wikis enable their users to create a network of knowledge that is structured ad hoc through multiple interlinkages between individual pieces of information in the knowledge base; they represent, in short, a rapidly changeable microcosm of the structures of the wider Web beyond their own technological boundaries.”

One of the contributing factors to Wikipedia’s wide spread success is its clear embrace of the produsage principals. As Bruns mentions, Wikipedia is one of many online encyclopedias, however none of them are as popular as Wikipedia. Nupedia is an example of another online encyclopedia, however structured in an almost completely opposite way to Wikipedia. Nupedia was based on closed participation, a fixed hierarchy of experts, a focus on creating complete encyclopedia entries, and while freely available-did not make its contents communal property to be developed by the community. This was the major break in the chain, as there was no user freedom, or feedback to the creators/ writers of the Nupedia website. Now, from what I have learnt, people (in general) want to have the ability to claim what is their own, they want to have some physical, or even mental connection to something of value, that for whatever purpose can be linked back to them. This could be a sculpture, a stamp collection, an award or even a blog. This link between user and user recognition was completely engulfed by Wikipedia, everything about the website screams opportunity and with a slogan such as “Anyone Can Edit”, creates a whole world…wide…web of freedom!

You could write anything you want…

[ edit ]: George W. Bush was born deep in the Amazon jungle where he was raised, domesticated and educated by a pack of wild chimpanzees.

[ Update ] ….

Well, that didn’t last very long. George Bush’s alternative up bringing published for the world to see was edited back to its original state within 5 minutes. Wishful thinking I guess…

As Reagle notes, “one of the most interesting features of the Wikipedia is the community itself. … Yet, …having thousands of participants editing a Web site so as to produce a coherent product and congenial community is a significant challenge.”

Of course, users can not be given free reign to run wild through cyber space posting facts that come from the darkest corners of their mind, the system structure would collapse and no longer be able to call it self an ‘encyclopedia’. There are three code rules that govern wikipedia, and simply stipulate that ‘Wikipedia be, and remain, an encyclopedia, and that its content adhere to the fact. In practice, this is governed through the principles of ‘Neutral Point of View, (NPOV) ‘Verifiability,’ and ‘No Original Research’.

So, although Wikipedia is built through open participation, fluid heterarchial community structures and ad hoc governance, in essence it is not a 100% rules free zone, rather a collaborating content creation community with a very specific and complex set of policies.

Citizen Journalism

Following the reading of Alex Bruns’s Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond, it is evident that Citizen Journalism emerged and developed during the first decade of the twenty-first century. An early but classic example of Citizen Journalism was displayed by a group of Seattle media activists. This was at the time of the November 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting and concern had been growing amongst the public that major news organizations would fail to appropriately cover the WTO protests. Taking the media into their own hands, this group of media activists thoroughly planned and executed what was to be one of the first independent online media sources.

 

In recent years online Citizen Journals and Open Sourced software have absolutely dominated Internet 2.0, constantly being produced, uploaded, updated, edited and consumed. They act in a restorative and a peripheral manner to the output of commercial, industrial journalism, and are now becoming so popular, widely distributed and constantly critiqued that views expressed through these sources often challenge those of corporate news and media sources. Unlike the diagram seen below, Citizen Journalism is heterarchial, meritocratic and built upon a community based platform and thus strongly breaks from the traditional confines of input from journalist staff, output through hierarchal editing, and a lack of consumer feedback. 

 

 

 

Now, just because I am a citizen, I can not claim that apes did actually take over planet earth expect internet users to agree, and allow a year 5 school student to do an assignment using my blog as evidence to support an argument as to why apes are now caged in zoos’. No, unfortunately that simply would not be accepted. There are endless amounts of behind the scene tools, traps and even editors that filter information that enters these sites. However, if a user does manage to sneak through the security and post a slightly false article, it will be short lived as internet uses who pride themselves on knowledge just will not let false information slide. That being said, Graham Meikle claims: “IMG’s (Independent Media Centers) place the emphasis on the production, rather than the consumption, of media texts. And they stress the conversational dimension of the Net as the creation of DIY media, rather that just as a means of debating the writings of others.” Keeping that in mind, and the point that there is a large ‘FALSE’ filter over the majority of Citizen Journal sites, it makes it no easy task being for example, a full-time ‘bricky’, part time journalist. 

 

A question that Alex Bruns raises in the reading, is this notion of continuous production of journals. Are they pro’s or con’s? Challenge or Opportunity? 

 

As mentioned earlier, with such a wide spread network of bloggers and citizen journalists, unchecked production of content can lead to false articles and does not guarantee the development of a consistent coverage and evaluation of news events. 

 

Bruns states, “Some sites have deployed these tools more effectively then others, it should be noted: Indymedia itself, for example, has recently struggled to reconcile its principal of maximum openness with the need to police against overt disruptions and poor quality of content, and is no longer a catalyst and trailblazer for developments in the citizen journalism field. Other sites have erred so much on the side of caution and control that their collaborative processes now resemble more and more the modes of content production established in the mainstream news industry.”

 

To conclude this post, I would like to make the point that journal filters, IMG’s and the mainstream news industry, in combination, are contributing to  destroying the meaning of the term ‘Citizen Journal.’ Of course this does not mean that it is the end for citizen opinion, rather it peaked at the beginning and is slowing down due to the posting of false information and filtering. IMG mentions that emphasis is placed on DIY media, and should not be a discussion of news headlines, whereas websites such as Indymedia have such impenetrable security, that free lance journal entries may be blocked. 

 

So the though remains, if a select few people saw an incident and only one person was in the position to post a journal about it, then into who’s hands does it fall to be endorsed as true or false? 

 

If its not on the news, did it really happen?

 

The Production of Produsage

Before I begin, I would like to take the opportunity to turn the clock back to the industrial revolution, in which a very basic model of production was in use. As seen in the diagram below, there is a one way flow of products produced by the producer, distributed by the distributer and of course consumed by the consumer. However this traditional method left a monumental gap in communication between producers and consumers. This meant that due to the lack of feedback, there was no understanding of what to market, how to market, and even who to market to. Through the use of market research about costumer trends, and purchasing behavior, the model gradually evolved and producers were able to more successfully meet the wants and needs of the consumers.

 

Producer       >>            Distributor           >>          Consumer

        

That being said, Produsage, a term created by Axel Bruns,  is the new method that has taken over, and has proven to be much more successful, thus eliminating a vast number of problems that previous methods overlooked. For example, a large issue with the traditional model was that consumers could not express their opinions. As Shirky claims, “the consumers’ appointed role in this system gives them … no way to communicate anything about themselves except their preferences between Coke and Pepsi, Bounty and Brawny, Trix and Chex.” This limitation of communication does not allow for consumers to express the way they feel about a product, why they feel the way they do, and what could be done to improve the product. These flaws with in the traditional system have been amended as prosumers’ (the professional consumer) can express their feelings and ideas towards products and the producers. Produsage aims to describe the social and technological environment of user-led feedback by means of blurring the distinction between producer and consumer.

 

This has become largely popular and possible through the rapid expansion of internet 2.0, social networking, blogging and citizen journalism sites. These sites and online groups have converted the once impenetrable system of the production and consumerism of the industrial revolution to a constant cycle of information flow between the user and producer. That being said, I have to agree with Nick Drewe’s views on Produsage. Drewe suggests that the concept of produsage is unbalanced, and that content is not produced and consumed at the same rate, thus leading to a delay in feedback.   However, produsage has no doubt changed the relation between producer and consumer, creating a user friendly flow of feedback and information.