A word about the word “produsers”

Adding the term "produsers" feels like Orwellian doublespeak emerging into my vocabulary.
The classic book 1984 (which has been used with varying amounts of accuracy to describe the Internet experience) described how the future government would control language by shortening words into hybrid terms and shifting how people described the world. Thankfully, reading the Bruns article explains the term produser is not the term shifting the world but a description of how the world has changed around language. If you consider that many of us raised with television, movies, or books, the act of consumption is one-way. Few of us immediately read or watch and then create our own art in direct response or inspired by what they experienced, especially in the context of entertainment. A produser expresses how Web 2.0 democratizes expression: on the same media, people can produce and use content at the same level. Bruns cites YouTube as one of the examples of an internet space where a user can see content and easily create content that others (including the same people the user watched) can also consume. Especially considering what platforms like YouTube were in 2008, this model seemed accessible and flat. As a light YouTube user back then, it felt like the favored influencers were your new friends and could meet you in person. In fact, the era of popular YouTuber shortly after the Bruns article was written was one where they hosted "meetups," or fan meetings that resulted in more videos and influence. What Bruns could not give context to was the current state of produser spaces like YouTube today. Those favorite YouTubers that you may have followed in the "golden age of YouTube" were managed. The complicated scheme of monetization was allowing the traditional forces that created one-way media the new monarchs and their gatekeeping now looked like algorithm manipulation drowning out smaller channels. The result is the end of the spirit of democracy that encouraged a consumer to produce has all but died. I know I abandoned my quiet dreams of being a vlogger as quickly as I had them. I was inspired by the influencers that had that meetup in London linked above (FSU alums, sadly now divorced.) Yet even overcoming my family's tendency to be extremely private meant confronting the reality that no one would see my videos. Or care enough to interact with them. Therefore, produsers still exist (YouTube thrives to this day along with its contemporary platforms) but operate significantly differently than they did earlier. This is the environment that social learning enters. With the current real and imagined barriers to becoming a produser means learners will first search and curate and consume one-way rather than consume and produce. Instructional designers have to operate with that reality: if we become produsers we could be providing no more than well-designed edutainment. What can we do with our content that will inspire learners to expand the narrative by becoming produsers themselves? Do we bring the meetup back? Reference Alexander, Julia. (2019) The golden age of YouTube is over. The Verge. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18287318/youtube-logan-paul-pewdiepie-demonetization-adpocalypse-premium-influencers-creators Bruns, Axel (2008) The Future Is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage. Fibreculture Journal(11). Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au

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