Together with blogs, global trends such as wikis and podcasting show that more and more people are changing from consumer passivity to producer activity, says Otto Leopold Tremetzberger in one of the essays included in ‘Understanding Community Media,’ edited by Kevin Howley (www.sagepublications.com). He finds this shift leading not only to a highly unmanageable mess of trivial information lost in cyberspace but, in fact, also to an increasing offer of high-quality content comparable with established media.
“The role of media organisation is definitely changing. Media consumers, to varying degrees, will be increasingly involved in the creative process of creating, editing, and repurposing content.” An example cited by the author is of IBM aligning its strategies to assume ‘a shift from capturing attention to managing attention,’ and foreseeing ‘a pervasive media environment.’
The media users of the future are expected to vary from ‘a passive consumer using interactive TV programming guides, a contributor bringing in active feedback and suggestions, a producer programming content and devices from various sources – such as digital playlists – all the way to authors using Web tools…’
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A section titled ‘Hunter-gatherers: Collecting, mining, and distribution’ avers that the models of citizen journalism and participatory journalism in recent years not only led to new (commercial or non-commercial) grassroots-oriented, open-media projects but also have been increasingly becoming an integral part of commercial media production itself. “From the print industry up to iReports on CNN, media companies are paying more and more attention to citizen journalism and amateur reporting tools.”
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