(…) this emerging power to participate serves as a strong corrective to those traditional sources of power, though they will also seek ways to turn it toward their own ends. We are just learning how to exercise that power – individually and collectively – and we are still fighting to define the terms under which we will be allowed to participate. Many fear this power; others embrace it. There are no guarantees that we will use our new power any more responsibly than nation-states or corporations have exercised theirs. (Jenkins, 2006, p.256)
Mark Deuze argues in his book ‘Media Work’ that work in the new media industry (in comparison to the traditional media) has been shifted from content production to setting the rules within which the users produce the content. This shift towards convergent culture logic emerges next to, and in a symbiotic relationship with, editorial and market logics.
This convergence is not just a technological process. Media convergence must also be seen as having a cultural logic of its own, blurring the lines between production and consumption, between making media and using media, between active or passive spectatorship of mediated culture. (Deuze, 2007, p.74)
With a case study about Bluffton Today, a newspaper entirely filled by citizen journalism, Deuze shows “how cultural convergence [indeed] instills increased levels of transparency in the media system, where producers and consumers can ‘see’ each other at work, as they both play each other’s roles.” (Deuze, 2007, p.252) Deuze takes the concept of ‘convergence’ from Henry Jenkins, who wrote extensively about it in his book ‘Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.”
Convergence is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process. Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce viewer commitments. Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other users. They are fighting for the right to participate more fully in their culture, to control the flow of media in their lives and to talk back to mass market content. Sometimes, these two forces reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding, relations between media producers and consumers. (Jenkins, 2006, p.18)
Corporate convergence coexists with grassroots convergence, also on YouTube. A perfect example of a top-down corporate driven convergence on YouTube is the introduction of the Partnership Program in May, 2007. When YouTube started to invite “several of the most popular and prolific original content creators from the YouTube community to [their] partnership program” Offering a share in monetary revenue from ads and promotional opportunities, with the purpose of stimulating commitment from the community;
“We hope that this program inspires people to keep creating original videos, building audiences and engaging with the YouTube community.”
YouTube has succeeded in looking at the active audience as potentially valuable, courting them and winning them over by advertisers. Something Jenkins calls ‘affective economics’ (Jenkins, 2006, p. 62); commodifying commitment to get a return on investment.
With this thesis I will highlight the other side of the convergence that takes place on YouTube by looking at the appropriation of the flagging software by the community and the implications of this. This grassroots driven convergence shows the need for some fundamental changes in the system, which I address in my proposal.
Both Deuze and Jenkins speak about the changing relations between media producers and consumers. But similar to this, in debates about ‘privacy’ for instance it is not only the experts talking anymore; now ordinary citizens have entered into such debates. All around us we are offered an increase in participatory possibilities. And “people will increasingly expect to be able to make choices, to be able to express themselves, to stand up and be counted in more than just a number or a vote or a tick. So how will governments relate to people who are more empowered?” In the documentary ‘Us/Now’ the speakers repeatedly speak of the ‘old model’ and questioning the role of government in our participatory society.
“The big shift that is going on is the idea that everyone is available for group-action. It does not mean that everyone will participate in group-action. It does not mean that all participation will be equal. But it does mean that everybody can get involved.”
This exemplifies that this theory of convergence between the consumer and producer, can also be applied to the relation between the citizen and government. Whereas Dutch politics start up a Hyves account to show they are web-savvy and publicly engaged. The Obama administration is already setting out the guidelines to start “unbundling and re-constituting what a government [is]” and incorporating the benefits of participatory culture:
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
The Obama administration seems to embrace the open source philosophy of openness with the promise that it will improve the democracy. Yochai Benkler states in his book ‘The Wealth of Networks’ that the “common critique of claims that the Internet improves democracy and autonomy is centered on information overload and fragmentation.” (Benkler, 2006, p. 465) But he disagrees with this critique by pointing out the positive effects that collaborative filtering and accreditation had on keeping many information environments navigable and coherent without re-creating the mass-media model. With collaborative filtering, Benkler touches upon an interesting aspect of participatory culture. Besides the benefit of knowledge aggregation, there need to be decisions made. Otherwise the critique of information overload and fragmentation would be justified.
By the end of the day communities don’t work, unless decisions get taken.
Charles Leadbeater analyses the failure of the communes in the sixties and seventies in the US to be caused by a lack of decision making. I see flagging as such a collaborative filter, a way to make collective decisions in our online convergence culture. And perhaps, as a starting point to create a participative decision making process in politics.
With this thesis I look at the changes from a software studies perspective at the role of software in the participative decision making process. By addressing the role of software, I distance myself from Jenkins’ position on the concept of participation;
Interactivity: The potential of a new media technology (or of texts produced within that medium) to respond to consumer feedback. The technological determinants of interactivity (which is most often structured or at least enabled by the designer) contrasts with the social and cultural determinants of participation (which is more open ended and more fully shaped by consumer choices). (Jenkins, 2006, p. 328)
Jenkins’ technological deterministic view underestimates the shaping power of users on software and the role this plays in convergence culture.
If we focus on the technology, the battle [between corporate convergence and grassroots convergence] will be lost before we even begin to fight. We need to confront the social, cultural and protocols that surround the technology and define how it will get used. (Jenkins, 2006, p.223)
I would position myself more towards technological constructivism, which argues that human action shapes technology and that the ways it is used cannot be understood without understanding its social context. And show that software does play a role in convergence culture.