Produsage and Prosumption

These are terms I wind up using time to time because it appears that I’ve just wound up stuck in the landscape where those terms are relevant.

Produsage is the work of a wide, open format. Produsage is what happens when a media landscape that formerly had many barriers to entry flattens out. It’s when a media landscape goes from having a small number of elite outlets to suddenly having an enormous number of outlets where the people who consume the media also produce the media. Produsage is basically stuff like Youtube and webcomics. In wide produsage landscapes, the big problem becomes discovery, and the former elite organisations tend to reorient themselves as curators.

Prosumption is when consumers create their own media for their own consumption and other people’s, which is then shared or used to construct information for sharing. This is pretty much the Facebook or Twitter way. You control what tweets you see, you control how you tweet, and when you tweet, you’re as much tweeting because you want to be heard rather than that you want your tweet to be seen as a very important media piece. Oh, some folk do use twitter as a produsage platform, and sometimes that works, but the format is, overwhelmingly, designed where you, the user, can customise and control your own experience. Facebook is even worse for this – it wants you to curate your own space, then use that curation to predict what you want to see in the future as it best benefits them. Don’t feel bad about the mute button, because god damnit, that’s what it’s there for.

Two terms! They look silly and weird and like marketing speak. They’re not.

1 Comment

  1. These are not real words I still refuse.

Back to top