i can make you a (net) celebrity overnight: fan production & participatory culture in online...
TRANSCRIPT
I Can Make You a (net)Celebrity Overnight: Fan Production & Participatory Culture in Online Reality Shows
Alice E. MarwickDept of Culture & CommunicationNovember 10, 2006
What is Participatory Culture?
Patterns of media consumption have been profoundly altered by a succession of new media technologies, which enable average citizens to participate in the archiving, annotation, appropriation, transformation and recirculation of media content. Participatory culture refers to the new style of consumerism that emerges in this environment… Media consumers want to become media producers, while media producers want to maintain their traditional dominance over media content.
Source: Jenkins 2003
What is Participatory Culture?
New cultural forms and products– Blogs– “User-contributed
content”– Mashups– Fan films, fic– Mods
New ways of interacting with traditional media products– Discussion– Collaboration– Influence over
media producers
Fandom
Media Effects: Fans are dupes, slavish consumers of media content. Fandom as pathologyFrankfurt school
Cultural studies: Fans are resistive, progressive, activistJenkins, Fiske
Fan production
Production is not only possible, but typical
Source: John Fiske : The Cultural Economy of Fandom
Fandom
• McGuigan (1992): Must interrogate relationship between fans and consumer culture
• Murray (2004): Must analyze the political economy of fandom – Role of corporation– Relationships between fans /
producers
Sites of StudyOnline Reality Contests
Global Media Formats
Source: YouTube
These videos were removed b/c they made the file size too large for my FTP server to handle.
They were examples of the “Idol” franchise in different countries to show how widespread and resonant these media formats have become.
Global Media Formats
• We talk about these formats in terms of profitability, franchises, decreased risk
• They also become shared resources, narratives, cultural stories
• Frameworks for creativity
Source: Magder 2004
Google Idol
WebcamMusic Video
Site also includes short films, original songs, corporate-sponsored contests
Categories: Pop, Rock, Original, Kids, Producers
Source: http://www.googleidol.com
LiveJournal’s Next Top Model
Source: Top Model franchise
Source: http://communities.livejournal.com/ljstopmodel
What do these texts show us?
• Creative!• Participatory culture > fandom• New type of hybrid media form• Wide, diverse audience• Low barrier to entry
What is Television?
• Images in circulation• Infrastructure of broadcast &
transmission• A material object
Sources: Dienst 1994; Levin Russo 2006
Limitations
• Participation is limited• No political advocacy• Interplay with commercial products
– Copyright– Big New Media– Fan Labor– Defines “people” as “consumers”
• Lack of media legitimacy • Reproduction of dominant media
narratives
Who are Audiences?
• Active, interpretive communities of practice (Radway, Mankekar)
• Taking into account realities of economic production (Dornfeld, Sotamaa)
• Discard old consumer/producer binary (McKee)
Questions?