DIY Culture and Design: Physical Goods Through the Online Rhelm

Image obtained from Threadless.com

Whether it is the desire to enjoy a hobby or the necessity of buying food and clothing, everybody has physical needs. The future, then, is not solely online. There are, however, many online platforms which deliver many various physical goods. These DIY culture and design environments have become increasingly popular over the past 5 years and are continuing this trend. Successful examples of Physical objects coming of the web include Ponoko, Etsy, SpoonFlower and Instructables.

Every product has a design – an informational product. This may be in the form of pictures, tutorials, instructions or recipes. Computer aided design (CAD) is the programming used by DIY design websites to deliver products and images to consumers. These products are often not actual objects but illustrations, such as a sewing pattern.

An interesting example of a DIY culture and design website is Stylehive. This website primarily acts as a platform for ‘social shopping’. These two facets being combined is quite a significant thing. The social atmosphere of the website and its method of bottom-up produsage both help to increase consumer loyalty.

In his blog, marketing executive John Jantsch states, “A good brand is not simply a great logo, or a beautiful brochure, or a cool website. The essence of a good brand is a great customer experience.” A great example of a company with a great customer experience is Threadless, an online T-shirt store. The T-shirts are fashionable and well-made. But more importantly, the customer experience is memorable and enjoyable. Threadless is also an example of produsage production (a top-down meets bottom-up method of production). A result of this grassroots design process is that customers feel ‘cool’. The visual design of the website is casual and sprinkled with cute graphics conveying informality and playfulness.

Like many culture and design websites Threadless started small. The founders, Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart, started the company in 2000 as a hobby and with only $1,000 in seed money. Instead of numerous products with many features, they focused on one product category: T-shirts. They spent 8 years refining the t-shirt buying experience before venturing into new product categories.

There is a huge online presence surrounding craft and hand-made goods. This continues to increase as the social environment of many websites is broadening. Craft goods companies and advertisers should be aware of this and be prepared to target this market as there are considerable prospects of further growth.

Folks and Experts – The Future of Pro/Am

In professional environments, there is a shifting phenomenon underway. Through the development of open source software development and the increased presence of folks, amateurs, fans and enthusiasts, expert knowledge is no longer going unchallenged. Today, it is far easier for amateurs to create an online presence for themselves rather than going through the conventional means of the industry. However, new business models and pro/ am strategies have the potential to combine both elements of folks and experts.

This pro/am paradigm shift allows people to come together outside of an industry framework; they are not governed by the rules of the market place. Here open source is making a significant input into the realm of online industry. Online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and social bookmarking networks such as Delicious are curated and organized by its users. They contain human knowledge that anyone can contribute to. These environments are creating a significant entry point into the field of amateurs for many. The most obvious example of the ‘rise of the folk’ is open source software development. Through such progress the world has seen open source communities, the people working outside of a particular industry, becoming increasingly popular and prevalent.

Images obtained from Doritos.com

In February 2009, Doritos took a fresh approach with their advertising when they announced that they would be handing creative control over to the Australian public. In a promotion targeting the film fanatic, the creative and even those who just love their video camera, Doritos gave amateurs a chance to make their next television commercial with the Doritos You Make It, We Play It competition. Those who don’t particularly fit the mold described above were still given the chance to be put into the driver’s seat, with the chance to vote for their favourite creation. The winning entry is still set to win 20 thousand dollars with their ad to then be played on national TV as an official Doritos commercial. This is an excellent example of how the internet is helping amateurs express themselves and their professional interests without obtaining an actual university degree.

Human knowledge is too broad and diverse to rely on experts alone. Folk experts help to cover the areas which ‘real’ experts miss. When discussing this paradigm, Bruns (2008) uses the model of an iceberg. To the plain eye, only about 10 percent of an iceberg can be seen above the water. The remaining 90 percent cannot be seen as it is below the surface. The structure of these pro/am sites is remarkably similar. Only a small percentage of what is covered in these sites can be covered by ‘real’ experts because there simply aren’t enough of them. This relates to the tip of the iceberg. The majority of this iceberg is made up of people operating in these sites as amateurs below the surface.

Wikipedia – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

When discussing Wikipedia in a tutorial of my media and communications degree at QUT, a consensus arose in which the majority of the class could relate to the statement: “I use Wikipedia all the time for my research – but I certainly wouldn’t cite it.”  This had me thinking. Is it right for students to be discussing, using, and citing Wikipedia?

There are definitely positive sides of Wikipedia. Firstly, the source allows for the removal of hierarchical structure as it is a collaborative environment meant for all. Secondly, Wikipedia holds current knowledge as compared to stagnant book-form encyclopaedias. Finally, as Wikipedia is globally recognised and respected by many, the wealth of knowledge from the millions of users is immense and far-ranging.

Although these things are all well and good, the question still sits: Can Wikipedia be a reputable scholarly resource?  I see four main criticisms of Wikipedia that suggest it cannot.

1. Research projects shouldn’t rely upon encyclopaedias.

Even Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, acknowledges “I still would say that an encyclopaedia is just not the kind of thing you would reference as a source in an academic paper. Particularly not an encyclopaedia that could change instantly and not have a final vetting process” (Whales in Young 2008).  Encyclopaedias contain general information about many topics or areas, rather than scholarly works which contain a level of higher thinking. Encyclopaedias can be, however, a valid starting point for research.  Wikipedia covers topics often left out of traditional reference works, such as contemporary culture and technology.

2. Since Wikipedia is constantly undergoing revisions, it is too unstable to cite.

All of what can be read on Wikipedia today might be gone tomorrow, or even in an hour.  This brings up a point of concern. If what we read and take as fact today is gone tomorrow, how credible is the source it is coming from?

3. You can’t trust Wikipedia because anyone can contribute to it anonymously.

The anonymity of Wikiepedia includes both scholars and students alike. It also includes those with strong biases, no expertise, and malicious childish intent. As Roy Rosenzweig found in a detailed analysis of Wikipedia, the quality of the collaboratively-produced entries can be uneven and the writing can have the choppy, flat quality of something composed by committee (Rosenzweig 2006). It is true that through the back and forth between ‘passionate amateurs,’ experts, and Wikipedia guardians protecting against vandals, good and reliable information often emerges, however, the fact remains that there will always be an overhanging doubt surrounding information found on Wikipedia. There is no way we will ever know how reliable it actually is.

4. Wikipedia entries lack authority because there’s no peer review.

Wikipedia articles are not reviewed by a number of experts in the field, so they may lack the scholarly authority of an article published in an academic journal.  On the other hand, articles in Wikipedia can be reviewed and corrected by the entire community, including experts, knowledgeable amateurs, and others devoted to Wikipedia’s mission to develop, collect and disseminate educational content (as well as by vandals and fools, I’ll acknowledge).  Wikipedia entries aim to achieve what Wikipedians call “verifiability”.

In summation, I find no fault whatsoever in Wikipedia as an online encyclopaedia, in fact, it’s the best one around. But research cannot rely on it as it is constantly changing, anybody can contribute to it anonymously, and there is no academic peer review. Encyclopaedias are to be used as a place to find general knowledge, not a platform of research that can be referenced.

Reference List

Rosenzweig, R. 2006. Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. The Journal of American History. 93 (1) : 117-46 http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42

Wilbanks, D. 2008. Wikipedia: Useful or Evil? http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DavidWilbanks/2008/11/wikipedia_useful_or_evil.html

Young, J. 2008. Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Wants to Make It More Useful to Academe.” Chronicle of Higher Education. 13 June. http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i40/40a01801.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.

Citizen Journalism: A Headline is Just an SMS Away

Imagine for a moment that you are reading the newspaper on a pleasant Sunday morning. All of a sudden a particular job advertisement pops out to you. It is advertising a position of a news anchor, a foreign correspondent, an editor, and a camera operator.  You think to yourself, “How can one position entail so much?”  Although it may sound bazaar, this ‘job’ actually does exist. A phenomenon known as citizen journalism is sweeping the globe. Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and distributing news and information ^[1]. The intent behind such participation is to provide independent, relevant and wide-ranging information that we as society might require.

Image sourced from Frank, J.B. 2008. (http://pindebit.blogspot.com/2008_11_23_archive.html)

Jay Rosen offers a definition of who he believes is a classified citizen journalist: “Citizen Journalists [are]… the people formerly known as the audience. They are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, and less predictable” ^[2]. Citizen journalists are, in essence, then, those at the grassroots of society.

There is a wide array blogs and resource centres dedicated to citizen journalism. A massive player in all of this is The Independent Media Centre, or Indymedia. Indymedia is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. They stress that the corporation works out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world. This may or may not be true, however, it should be said that Indymedia is a wonderful resource and is globally recognised.

Photos typically don’t lie, and part of the success of a photographer is being at the right place at the right time. For Example, Charles Porter, then a 25-year-old loan specialist, won the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic shot of a fire-fighter cradling the body of a dead baby after the Oklahoma City bombing ^[3]. Porter and his photo would have never reached the public sphere and been awarded prizes if not for a simple at of citizen journalism.

Copyright © 1995, Charles H. Porter IV

In 2006 Reuters, one of the world’s largest international multimedia news agencies, partnered with Yahoo to create You Witness News. This website acts as a base where amateur photojournalists can upload their work for display on Reuters.com and Yahoo News. All photographic works are being sifted through by Reuter’s editors, and anything of value to mainstream media might be purchased and reprinted. This can be viewed as an interesting case study as Reuters and Yahoo News, channels which have previously opposed public news participation, are now embracing citizen journalism and actually making money from it. In terms of citizen journalism on a wider scale, this adoption is quite significant.

So what is to become of this citizen journalism? Is it here to stay? A study from the Public Journalism Network answers with a resounding “yes” [4]. The secret of the success of citizen journalism is the way in which it links traditional news with forms of civic participation. As technological advances progress and the evolution of media continues, citizen journalism is something that will not be abandoned for quite some time.

[1] The Media Centre at the American Press Institute Article – ‘How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information’

[2] Rosen, J. 2006 – ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’

[3] LA Times Article – ‘Reporting’s Mass Appeal’

[4] Public Journalism Network Article – ‘Citizen Media is Here to Stay’

Produsage | user and producer

In collaborative online communities a significant conceptual shift is taking place. The rise of Web2.0 environments is continuing to have a considerable impact on social practices, the media, and society itself. The boundary between producers and consumers is being blurred as the creation of shared content is taking place in a networked participatory environment. This stirring movement enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information and knowledge. Producers of content engage not in a traditional form of content production, but are instead involved in produsage – the term coined by Dr Axel Bruns describing the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement. As a picture paints a thousand words, I will kindly exceed my word limit in bringing you this:

Image adapted from Bruns 2007: (http://produsage.org/)

Web 2.0 is based on technological innovation, but provides largely a different approach to online collaboration; users invest a substantial amount of labour into their participation processes, but without expecting major monetary rewards from doing so. The produsage process is fundamentally built on the regular framework of a networked environment and connects user communities through their networking through many-to-many communications media. This ‘access from anywhere’ principle enables each participant to contribute to produsage at exceedingly regular intervals.

Past years have seen the rapid growth of a many different user-led social networking applications and tools. These include sites such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and many other cultural and societal groups. Despite their global popularity, there is an ever-increasing challenge for these social networking websites to maintain their users and not become yesterday’s fashion trend. Brian Turner discusses social network decline in an internet business forum and when he says: “Facebook has reached a Tipping Point and is now dying – and like Myspace was a fad for most users who moved to Facebook, they are now flocking to Twitter… until the ‘next cool thing’ arrives”. Social networking environments are also further augmented in the form of more specific tools including social bookmarking systems such as del.icio.us, online satellite mapping tools such as Google Maps, and the wide array of personal blog sites.

With more and more data being produced online and an endless supply of blogs, how is anybody supposed to sort and distinguish the relevant from the unrelated? The social, collaborative basis of the content creation communities engaged in produsage relates to the Data Information Knowledge and Wisdom, or DIKW Hierarchy. The process of DIKW refers to the way in which we (society) are able to transform basic data into knowledge and wisdom. This has been key to the growth and success of online communities and will continue to be.

Image sourced from Cleveland, H. 1982. “Information as Resource”

So when all is said and done what is our response to this? If you are reading this blog than odds are you are familiar with online environments. Therefore, even though you may not have thought of it before, you are, most likely, contributing to the model of produsage. The real question is: how far will produsage go in bringing about a shift in everyday social practices, media, and society itself?

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!