Abstract
Both of these texts explore the practice of user-generated content (UGC). Ordinary People and the Media approaches UGC from multiple angles, discussing the status of the ‘produser’ in both traditional broadcast media and new media. Good Faith Collaboration investigates the culture of a single user-generated content (UGC) site, Wikipedia.
Ordinary People and the Media questions not just claims about authentic demotic participation in traditional media, but also whether Web 2.0 necessarily leads to strengthening the voice of ‘the masses’ or more egalitarian access to the media. Turner seeks to provide a ‘reality check’ for the ‘digital optimism’ that unduly reifies participatory culture and a persuasive counterpoint to ‘activist advocacy, geeky enthusiasm and industry spin’ (p. 5). He asks: What is the value of participatory culture on the user-generating content for commercial media? What types of capital are available to ordinary people contributing to reality TV, talk radio or political blogs? What level of decision-making is available to contributors?
Demotic means ‘of or for the common people’ and Turner introduced the phrase ‘the demotic turn’ in his earlier book Understanding Celebrity (2004) to refer to the ‘increasing visibility of the “ordinary person” as they have turned themselves into media content through celebrity culture’ (p. 2). Turner’s approach is to test claims of democratization in the context of three English-speaking mediascapes: reality TV, political blogs and talk radio. In political blogs and talk radio, there is a central, often extraordinary, celebrity host that frenzies audiences into active engagement. However, individual audience members and readers, though providing ‘content’ once engaged, are actually designed to remain, for the most part, indistinguishable.
With reality TV, on the other hand, ordinary people are in fact distinguished and celebrated for their performance of everyday authenticity. Their very ‘performance of ordinariness’ is celebrated (p. 43, citing Bonner, 2003). Reality TV participants − housemates, survivors, idols − are disposable celebrities ‘manufactured’ into a ‘replaceable celebrity commodity’ (p. 14). One of the emerging functions of the media then, Turner argues, is to cut these celebrities newly from whole cloth. Turner reflects that media studies historically ‘tended not to look at the media as a primary motivating force – as themselves, the authors rather than the mediators of cultural identity’ (p. 21). But with the participation of the ordinary person as central to the success of the reality TV format, Turner sees the medium as fashioning cultural identity, arguably a new function for media overall: ‘where the media might once have operated as a mediator or perhaps a broadcaster of cultural identities, its contemporary function is closer to that of a translator or even an author of identities’ (p. 3). Turner describes how reality TV identities are modified and translated to fit cultural values across borders, so that access by audiences and therefore commercial profits can be increased (pp. 57−9, 68). Entertainment has become increasingly important to media programmers, and this intensification has gone hand-in-hand with the ‘increasingly market-oriented regulatory regime’ (p. 112) we find in the media. In spite of the short-term financial motivations of media corporations, there are long-term, unanticipated social, cultural and political impacts.
Reality TV participation has been described as an empowering avenue of self-expression, but Turner points out that the ‘meaningful participation in decision making’ − participation that could impact the structures and systems of media itself − is not yet available to media audiences (p. 46). Turner argues that ‘media industries still remain in control of the symbolic economy, and that they still strive to operate this economy in the service of their own interests’ (p. 16). Turner’s book debunks additional myths driving digital optimists’ claims about the democratizing power of Web 2.0 technologies. Simply put, Turner refutes the claim that the internet is replacing TV; that ‘everyone’ is producing content; that the ordinary person’s access to media as a vehicle of individual voice has been increased; and he even takes aim at Anderson’s theory of the ‘long tail’ (pp. 134–7). Turner sees these myths as discourses perpetuating digital democracy specifically, and digital optimism generally. Turner details the rise of opinion − tied closely to both the intensification of commercial interests in the media and the public’s desire for entertainment − that now dominates both broadcast and online journalism. In fact, he argues that the rise of opinion has seeped into academic discussions of the power of new media, often perpetuating the very myths of new media he decries.
Turner’s book, then, is also in the end a critique of academia as one of the purveyors of ‘digital optimism’. It points to significant gaps in media studies and new media research in cultural studies. Turner calls for more rigorous academic research into the realities of user-generated content, grounded in the realities of the users themselves: ‘[there is] almost nothing written about, and very little empirical research which examines, what use “actual” ordinary people might make of [technologies], and how they might reap the benefits assumed to flow from their success’ (p. 6). Academics’ own personal experiences may be driving their inability to ground their research more firmly in a broadly framed user experience (p. 131). The optimistic thread of assumptions that provides the starting point for much of the research into Web 2.0 is less critical in nature than media studies has generally been of more traditional, ‘elitist’ media outlets. Cultural studies began with a deference to the popular generally, and specifically its representation by participatory media audiences, but the field must now be more critical of even the popular audience when it analyzes the function of media in society (p. 120). Turner’s critique is aimed at the very episteme of many Web 2.0 researchers.
In this context, Good Faith Collaboration is a text which appears at first glance to be a look through rose-colored glasses at a Web 2.0 medium. Good Faith Collaboration is described as an ethnography of the Wikipedia community − a look at the cultural norms and attitudes of the encyclopedia as a distinct and wholly articulated community. Reagle is a participant−observer, a member of the Wikipedia community since 2004, and he takes as the title of his book one of the published Wikipedia behavioral guidelines for editors: ‘Assume Good Faith’. Reagle undeniably found inspiration for the book from his own pleasure at participating in the Wikipedia community. Reagle’s thesis is that, in fact, goodwill is required for collaboration. But in the context of Turner’s criticism, a look at his methods is worthwhile.
The foundation that oversees Wikipedia remains a mystery to Reagle’s readers: its initial organization, financial realities, or board politics. Suffice it to say that this foundation is not a media industry on the surface. The information Wikipedia provides is not driven by commercial motives. It is not experiencing the same drive toward entertainment as transnational media outlets described in Turner’s book. In fact, as an open-content community, the context of Wikipedia development is diametrically opposed to the media industries driving broadcast television, commercial radio or even political blogs. In an open-content community, content is ‘intended to be widely shared’ at little or no cost (pp. 76−7). And although the difference between ‘open source’ (which refers specifically to code) and ‘open culture’ has been argued (p. 78), Wikipedia falls squarely within open-content communities, closer in nature and intent to open source than commercial media. Additionally, the ordinary users creating content on Wikipedia are a very different breed from those who appear on Survivor or call in to Rush Limbaugh. Wikipedians − the everyday, ‘anyone can edit’ editors − are in fact involved in ‘meaningful decision-making’ − one of Turner’s indices for authentic democratic involvement. Reagle presents a Wikipedia, both as process and product, that is yet, though imperfect, ‘confoundingly good’ (p. 173). Wikipedia is ‘heir to a vision’ of goodwill that is required if it is to make collaboration work (p. 13). Wikipedia’s numerous dimensions of success make it relatively difficult to argue with some of the more generous accounts of it.
Wikipedia shares many of the same qualities of other open-content communities, including a fully documented reflexivity. Such intense and articulated self-reflection provides Reagle with a wealth of data, including Wikipedia’s published wiki articles, their previous versions and the behind-the-scenes pages that document editors’ discussions of how a page is being edited; the site’s ‘meta’ pages ‘documenting the policies and norms of Wikipedia’; mailing lists including ‘discussions of the administration and policies’ of the community and the encyclopedia; online community forums and newsletters, on- and off-site; and finally physical ‘meetups’ and conferences, where Reagle held informal conversations and a ‘handful’ of formal interviews (p. 9). Throughout the book, Reagle points also to historical documents to contextualize people and events, and extensive social theory to frame his discussions of leadership and community. The book’s source material is similarly rich and comprehensive. Of over 50 pages of notes (numbering 772 endnotes), Reagle cites many primary sources, predominantly listserve messages, published Wikipedia articles, and the voice of co-founder Jimmy Wales delivered through various channels. The expectation for readers is that Reagle will represent the culture of Wikipedia by showing how the work of the encyclopedia is performed behind the scenes. Reagle does in fact represent a few moments of behind-the-scenes exchanges, including an attempt by Wikipedia to withhold information that put a journalist’s life at risk as he struggled to escape the Taliban. But these very few moments prompt the question: what more might we learn from the voices of individual, ordinary Wikipedians engaged in editing?
Visiting a Wikipedia page, it is easy for anyone to see the editing history of each page. In the article ‘Etiquette’, the page history reveals that over 1000 page edits have been made in the last decade, including at least one by Reagle himself in 2009. Browsing the editing history suggests that at the very least edits are made over understandings of link protocols, grammar and punctuation, word flow, and attention to the audience. One can only imagine the edits that are made based on the editor’s attitude, belief or interpretation, in spite of the community’s ‘neutral point of view’ (NPOV) rule. Reversions to edits abound, suggesting that editors preferred previous versions, some of which more than likely were their own. It is in the granularity of this collaborative culture that power struggles exist. Indeed, editing and blocking wars exist and are occasionally resolved. What do these power struggles look like? What are they grounded in? The development of a Wikipedia article as it travels through the edits of its many authors is an ideal source of cultural representation and revelation of norms. A series of discourse analyses might shed light on these questions. Might there be norms that are not guided by explicit etiquette and published policies? An ethnography has the power to peel away the layers of consensus and consider the socio-cultural contexts of the creation process. The published Wikipedia pages alone fail to represent the practical reality of Wikipedia culture for the users themselves. Reagle’s study focuses on the English-speaking Wikipedia, and the community itself is predominantly comprised of young males, almost half of whom have undergraduate degrees. What are the gender issues emerging in this composition? How might power struggles impact the very pages published to guide behavior?
Grounded in Reagle’s work, and taking as a call to order Turner’s critique, these are future questions worth exploring.