Introduction to Clay Shirky's thinking regarding the way that the internet has changed audience engagement. Shirky argues that the internet has repositioned audience members as active consumbers of the media:
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Clay Shirky was one of the first media commentators to understand the impact that Web 2.0 technologies would have on the way that audiences interact with media production. His wide ranging analysis was quick to recognise that the media industry would shift irrevocably from a broadcast model in which a relatively few senders produced work to a democratised model of engagement. Shirky suggests that this migration was driven largely by peer to peer sharing platforms and social networking.
Outline Shirky’s ideas regarding the change from passive to active audience consumption.
You should refer to:
Use a short quote from Shirky to prove your understanding.
Broadcast media, the media of passive television consumption, Shirky claims, arose as a response to the explosion of leisure time afforded by technological progress in the twentieth century. “Media in the twentieth century,” Shirky points out, “was run as a single event: consumption”. Conversely, digital media and technological convergence revolutionised the media landscape by substantially lowering barriers to ordinary users to produce and distribute media, and, in so doing, gave audiences the power to forge their own broadcast networks.
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Analyse and assess the extent to which Shirky's theory is true of the set blogs.
Some background information:
Certainly, vloggers like Zoella and Alfie seized the opportunity to create user generated content in 2008 when the then little known YouTube peer to peer video sharing service became a viable prospect after the widespread rollout of broadband in the UK. Accelerated data upload and download speeds allowed a wide spectrum of users to produce experimental content on YouTube that could be shared with like-minded users. Zoella’s first upload of just over four minutes/Alfie Deyes first upload of just over one and half minutes were, like so many other amateur videos of the period, marked by an amateur aesthetic and a nervous presentation style.
Give examples of how Shirky's ideas are valid for the online products you have studied:
Summarise your analysis of the online set products in relation to Shirky's ideas.
In this sense, the early work of both vloggers exemplify the ways in which the digital revolution enabled ordinary audience members to distribute self-constructed work rather than passively consuming the broadcast products of large scale media institutions.
Write a sentence that introduces Clay Shirky’s thinking regarding the way that the internet has enhanced connections between audiences and producers. You should refer to his idea that audiences have become consumers who ‘speak back to’ the media in various ways.
Shirky also draws our attention to the revolutionary capacity for social media and digital distribution to allow audiences to feedback to larger scale media institutions. The communication of online media, in this sense, doesn’t just flow from sender to audience, but allows the reactions of audiences to be recorded and used by media producers..
Exploring how far audiences for online media products are active rather than passive consumers.
Outline Shirky's ideas regarding the ways that online products allow audiences to 'speak back' to producers.
Allowing such connections, Shirky claims, is pivotal to the commercial success of media distributors in the digital age if they are to foster loyalty from young audiences whose expectations of interactive content are radically different from previous generations. Our expectation of web-based technology is that it allows us to comment on products or to participate in debates surrounding professional media.
Write two or three sentences that provide detailed knowledge of how Shirky's ideas are valid for the online products you have studied. Give examples to support your points.
If ideas aren't valid for a set product, offer explanations as to why - this will help you to evaluate the theory.
Feedback mechanisms are an essential component of the YouTube viewing experience, with both Zoella and Alfie prompting users to react to 'hauls' and reviews via comments.
The ability to comment on uploads by viewers facilitates the development of an audience community, whilst audience ‘likes’ enable Zoella and Alfie to gain feedback on upload content.
One might also argue that audience engagement allows both producers to tailor the content of future uploads using audience feedback.
Feedback mechanisms are also present in DesiMag and Attitude, enabled primarily through social media commentary surrounding story links. Audience engagement through core websites is limited however and is more indicative of traditional passive media consumption.
Perhaps the lack of feedback functionality in these sites might be explained by the older target audience of these products and their lack of expectation with regard to interactivity. Perhaps the lack of such facilities might also come as a result of the online magazine format’s limitations and their emulation, to some extent, of print media.
Summarise your set product analysis in relation to Shirky's ideas.
It is clear that all set products encourage an active readership and that audiences 'speak back' to the producers through the feedback functionality on the websites and associated social media.
Write a sentence that introduces Henry Jenkins' thinking regarding the way that online media texts rely on audiences to distribute products. You should focus on the idea that fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of products.
The following quotes from Henry Jenkins may be helpful:
‘This circulation of media content - across different media systems, competing media economies, and national borders - depends heavily on the active participation of the consumer.’
‘The term, participatory culture, is intended to contrast with older notions of media spectatorship. In this emerging media system, what might traditionally be understood as media producers and consumers are transformed into participants who are expected to interact with each other according to a new set of rules which none of us fully understands.’
Source: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2006/06/welcome_to_convergence_culture.html
Henry Jenkins also draws our attention to the revolutionary impact of new technology on media consumption suggesting that audience engagement creates what he calls ‘media flows’; that the very process of contemporary digital distribution and circulation is enabled by an active engagement on the audience's part.
Outline Jenkins' ideas regarding the idea that online products encourage audiences to be active partners in their distribution/circulation.
Audience activity, Jenkins argues, provides the very mechanism through which modern media is distributed. Online media relies, he tells us, on audiences sharing content across their social networks. Audiences not only consume media, but play an integral role in spreading ‘liked’ content virally via social media platforms.
Give detailed examples of how your set products encourage audiences to share their content.
Both Zoella and Alfie are acutely aware of the need to engage audience distribution if they are to garner views, both using Instagram and Twitter to prompt user distribution and engagement with their uploads, for example:
Alfie invites users to ‘LBW’ (like before watching) whilst also tweeting upload progress to encourage his followers to retweet new content as it appears.
Zoella encourages audiences to retweet vlog content, celebrating distribution milestones with Tweets to thank her audience for their help in sharing key messages.
Summarise your set product analysis in relation to Jenkins' ideas.
Where traditional media uses fixed schedules and broadcast technology, online media relies on peer to peer distribution to generate product visibility. The limitations of digital media in this sense necessitate that audiences play an active role in the distribution of products across the amorphous network that is the internet.
Write a sentence that introduces Henry Jenkins' thinking regarding the idea that fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully authorised by the media producers ('textual poaching').
Jenkins suggests that online media has the capacity to allow audiences to engage with media in a creative or subversive manner - using professional products as ‘creative scaffolding’ on which they can graft a range of uses and identities of their own making.
Outline Jenkins' ideas that online products can be subverted through a creative reworking of original content.
Audiences can react to products by producing mash ups, remixes or by writing fan fiction - using professional media, in other words, as a baseline for experimentation and product rewriting. Jenkins, like Shirky, regards the mass media of the twentieth century as an aberration - that the default cultural mode has always produced an active rather than passive engagement. The widespread remixing of culture, in Jenkin’s view at least, sees a return to the folk culture traditions that predated the passivity of traditional mass media.
Give specific examples of how/whether audiences are remixing your online set products.
Wattpad is an online reading and writing community. The official website states:
‘Wattpad takes everything you love about storytelling, and turns it into a social, on-the-go experience. The result is a one-of-a-kind adventure in creation and discovery.’
A Google search of Zoella/Alfie fanfiction reveals that significant numbers of users are using applications like Wattpad to explore a range of issues using the characters of Zoella and Alfie as step offs. Gender and sexuality are explored through the creative realignment of Zalfie’s heterosexuality, whilst other fanfiction reimagines Zoella with a weight problem.
Jenkins’ theory is not studied in relation to Attitude and DesiMag. Considering his ideas in relation to these products, however, may help you to evaluate the theory:
Interestingly, Attitude’s/DesiMag’s use as appropriated products is limited. One might imagine that applications like Pinterest would readily apply the abundance of imagery generated by Attitude and DesiMag, but there is little evidence to suggest that either product's audience is engaged in the remixing or poaching of products. Perhaps, the reapplication of such imagery is limited because both products readily forge a passive consumption dynamic. Perhaps, imagery is readily redeployed but has limited visibility.
Summarise your set product analysis in relation to Jenkins' ideas.
Jenkins and Shirky were quick to foresee the benefits that technological change might afford users in terms of engaging in audience activity. Interestingly, both theorists suggest that audiences will use their new found power to effect social change via their web activity - that audience engagement alone will effectively democratise the media by providing audiences with a voice.