Producer, User equals Produser equals Produsage

Produsage is not a word we continually come into contact with everyday. In fact until recently I didn’t even know this word existed! So what is a Produsage and why is this word becoming more known about?

Produsage is made up of three main elements. And Produsage is a combination of a user of technology and someone who produces information available on technology to release some content. Because of technological advances in the past decades many websites have surfaced that now allows for an everyday person to become a produser, websites which allow for this is YouTube, Wikipedia and even second life.

www.produser.org describes Produsage as an environment where the boundaries between producers (people who create something) and consumers (people who intake that something) no longer exist. It is where a user and a producer become one where they release some sort of content.




Axel burns argues that 'this presence of Produsage is an endless string of users acting incrementally as content producers by gradually extending and improving the information present in the information commons'. While at first I did not understand this statement, looking and I guess unfolding this statement word by word I have realized that this statement actually makes a lot of sense. Wikipedia and YouTube can be a prime example of this. Wikipedia is site full of information, while it might start off by a scholar or a professor writing it, nowadays pretty much anyone can make an account and add to the information or change the information that is given. So therefore the user (the person who is first reading the page) can become the producer (by adding to the piece or changing it) and in result a new content is born. This works the same for YouTube, how ever it is done in a different way. People create and post YouTube videos for many reasons, to get noticed, or to mock something or to get a point across. YouTube is a classic example of what Produsage is because a consumer can watch something but then change it to make something new or an extensions what it was originally, thus supporting Burns. For example this video of Justin Beibers song is a mockery done by Sam Mac from the radio station 92.9.



As we can see he has kept the beat of the original song but changed the lyrics to make a mockery of what a lot of people are saying about him.
Produsage allows for people to get publicity either if it’s bad or good. Produsage is a type of product that is forever changing and forever evolving and the way to engage in Produsage is only going to expand, therefore supporting what Burns is trying to say that extending and improving the information already given in the information commons is endless with people trying to gain more from it.

Justin Beiber's Orignal song.