Net-Works: Collaborative Modes of Cultural Production in Web 2.0 Contexts

Butler, Martin

doi:10.14361/9783839423189-002

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Although Burgess and Green (2009) are somewhat careful not to overstate the newness of YouTube, arguing that it does not represent a "radical…break" with history, but rather, a period of "increased turbulence, becoming visible as various established practices, influences, and ideas compete with emerging ones as part of the long history of culture, media, and society" (Burgess and Green, 2009, p.14)-they, like Jenkins (2006), ultimately do not pay enough attention to the economic system undergirding the platform and Web 2.0 more generally, or the various other complex dynamics at work including important political, social, institutional and spatial elements. While the web has certainly enabled new avenues for participation in the media for ordinary users, critical scholars examining these other elements question the quality and extent of this participation on both YouTube and the web more generally (see Andrejevic, 2009;Bird, 2011;Butler, 2016;Couldry, 2011;Fuchs, 2014;Gillespie, 2010;Kelty, 2013;Mosco, 2004;Muller, 2009;Verstraete, 2011;Van Dijck, 2013;Vonderau, 2009Vonderau, , 2016Schiller, 2000).…”

Section: The Internet 'Participation' and Its Spaces And Playersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars (Butler, 2016;Kelty, 2013;van Dijck, 2013;Wasko and Erickson) point out that contrary to Jenkins' (2006) interaction vs. participation distinctionparticipation on the web is always limited and prestructured by the platform owner and in important ways is not open-ended. Others argue that contrary to Burgess and Green's (2009) and Jenkins' ( 2006) assertions regarding the relative equality of content on Web 2.0 platforms-professionally produced, higher-production quality content, associated with established traditional production studios and programs, captures more of YouTube users' attention, and is increasingly privileged in this space (Rodriguez, 2016;Fuchs, 2014;Morreale, 2014).…”

Section: The Internet 'Participation' and Its Spaces And Playersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though users feel they have control over which content to watch, their choices are heavily directed by referral systems, search functions, and ranking mechanisms… (Van Dijck, 2013, p.113) The undergirding system architecture therefore has real and significant consequences not only on what content users can view, but also on the chances of success of the content that is uploaded. Indeed, as scholars have also shown, the notion of ubiquitous participation on YouTube, and Web 2.0 platforms is largely a myth (Butler, 2016;Ding et al, 2011;Fuchs, 2014). Ding et al (2011), for example, found that just four percent of YouTube users provide nearly three quarters of the content.…”

Section: The Internet 'Participation' and Its Spaces And Playersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The web is then explored through the lens of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006), and the limits of this view are exposed through critical scholarship in the area which demonstrates that despite the appearance of freedom, online participation is highly determined by corporate platform owners through the ways they prestructure (Butler, 2016;Kelty, 2016;van Dijck, 2013;Wasko and Erickson) the mode of interaction in order to best serve their interests, which often revolve around maximizing profit. YouTube is then specifically examined as a site for participation, and its trajectory of professionalization and institutionalization is also explored (Cunningham, Craig and Silver, 2016;Lobato, 2016;Mann, 2014).…”

Section: Chapter 1 -Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Telling our stories on the web: Canadian English-language web series and the production of culture online

Zboralska¹

2021

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This dissertation presents the first critical scholarly analysis of the Canadian English-language scripted web series industry, its cultural practices, industrial dynamics and texts. Through in-depth interviews with 48 individuals active in the production of Canadian online scripted content, participant observation, and a benchmark quantitative analysis of gender and race in key creative roles in 175 seasons of Canadian web series, the dissertation investigates the web as an alternative space for Canadian scripted audiovisual content, and the actors and forces that have shaped and are shaping its development, including its emergent patterns of inclusion. By developing a novel theoretical framework that combines the critical political economy of communication with entrepreneurship studies, the dissertation is able to mediate effectively between structure and agency to reveal how Canadian web series creators are interpreting, internalizing and resisting larger institutional dynamics and discourses in their cultural practices and texts. Through their entrepreneuring, Canadian web creators are reacting to a variety of rigidities within the contextual dimensions in which they are embedded, including the absence of meaningful opportunities to practice their crafts, the persistence of networks of exclusion, and inaccurate or missing on-screen representations of themselves or others in mainstream media. Through their work, they desire to achieve freedom from these constraints. The challenge of disrupting the status quo is then revealed through an examination of the domestic and extra-national structural factors that act as impediments to their agency. The dissertation problematizes ideas of participation and access on the web, and introduces new conceptual terminology through the Participatory Culture Paradox, to encapsulate the contradictory set of relations that on the one hand, enables creators’ activities in the online space, and at the same time, constrains their capacity to find audiences and monetize their work. The findings here demonstrate that as much as internet-based distribution has expanded opportunities for participation for regular users, who you are, and where you are based, continue to be salient mediators of both participation and success in the development of professional scripted screen careers in the digital age. The dissertation culminates in actionable priorities for Canadian policy that aim at change.

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Section: The Internet 'Participation' and Its Spaces And Playersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Internet 'Participation' and Its Spaces And Playersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Internet 'Participation' and Its Spaces And Playersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Chapter 1 -Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Telling our stories on the web: Canadian English-language web series and the production of culture online

Zboralska¹

2021

Preprint

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“…Because so many commercial interests have adopted a rhetoric of participation, critics of the concept fear that embracing participatory culture involves accepting the inevitable cooptation of these cultural expressions into the underlying logics of neoliberal capitalism (see, e.g., Butler 2016;and Jenkins 2016a). Critical theory provides us with useful tools for understanding the various ways that corporate interests profit from our participation, from the translation of fan culture into "usergenerated content" to various forms of data-mining, central to Web 2.0 business models, but often at the cost of dismissing any prospect of meaningful participation.…”

Section: Fandom As Participatory Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit Fandom in the Fields of Theatre, Art, and Literature

Hills¹

2018

A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies

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News of the demise of the audience, much like the death of the author, has been greatly exaggerated. Recall Jay Rosen's (2006) description of "the people formerly known as the audience, " whom he characterized as "the writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak. " Rosen was certainly not alone in celebrating a not-yet-achieved emancipation of the spectator from the constraints of the mass media era. Here's Clay Shirky (2005): "Every time a new consumer joins this media landscape, a new producer joins as well, because the same equipment-phones, computers-lets you consume and produce. " Some of this anticipated shift has happened. More than 300 hours of videos are posted on YouTube every minute, many of them coming from amateur, semi-professional, non-profit, educational, activist, religious, and governmental producers producing media for noncommercial purposes but also involving content from commercial producers that has been appropriated, remixed, and recirculated, often at the hands of their most dedicated audiences.Rosen asked, "If all would speak, who shall be left to listen?" Well, so far, we are still spending much more time listening (and watching) than speaking, though we may do so across a broader range of media platforms. Prioritizing production behaviors and separating them off from the other things audiences do overlooks the ways that curating, sharing, and discussing media content are themselves active practices that create meaning and context, even if they do not necessarily "produce" new kinds of media texts. In this changing realm, broadcast networks still have an enormous capacity to set the cultural agenda, determining which stories, performers, and topics engage the public. But conversations on social network sites also have an expanding capacity to set cultural and political priorities, often reframing and critiquing, making demands upon broadcast content, and increasing the visibility of some clips as users circulate them across their range of online connections (Jenkins, Ford, and Green 2013).Those working in the media industry tend to imagine audiences primarily, if not exclusively, as markets for their products. As Ien Ang (1991) notes, the actual people watching television are "invisible" to media companies, a mass "hidden behind the millions of dispersed closed doors of private homes, virtually unmanageable and inaccessible to the outsider" (30). The industry's imagined "audience" consists of individual consumers, each making independent decisions about

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Telling our stories on the web: Canadian English-language web series and the production of culture online

Zboralska¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Net-Works: Collaborative Modes of Cultural Production in Web 2.0 Contexts

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Telling our stories on the web: Canadian English-language web series and the production of culture online

Telling our stories on the web: Canadian English-language web series and the production of culture online

Implicit Fandom in the Fields of Theatre, Art, and Literature

Telling our stories on the web: Canadian English-language web series and the production of culture online

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