Intermedia International Peer Reviewed E-Journal of Communication Sciences, cilt.1, sa.2015, ss.158-180, 2015 (Hakemli Dergi)
İnternetle birlikte iletişim ortamında yaşanan değişimler sonucu yeni iletişim
formları doğmuş; medyanın üretim, dağıtım, sergileme ve saklama koşullarında
önemli dönüşümler yaşanmış ve izleyicilerin/kullanıcıların medyanın üretim
süreçlerinde daha aktif bir rol oynamaya başladığı görülmüştür. Bu durum alanda
iletişimin demokratikleştiğine ve kullanıcıların güçlendiğine dair dijital
teknolojileri olumlayıcı yaklaşımların artmasına sebep olmuştur. Olumlayıcı
yaklaşımların yanısıra kullanıcının, izleyicinin ücretsiz emeğinin sömürüsünü
ön plana çıkaran ve medya şirketlerinin katılımcı kültürden kullanıcılardan
daha çok yararlandığını öne süren eleştirel yaklaşımlar bulunmaktadır. Bu
çalışmada katılımcı kültüre dair tartışmalar üreten tüketici, aktif izleyici,
ücretsiz emek gibi kavramlar çercevesinde ele alınmaktadır. Geleneksel medyanın
üretim ve tüketim biçimlerinde yaşanan değişim ve dönüşümler televizyon
dizileri çerçevesinde gösterilmeye çalışılmaktadır. Kardeş Payı örneği üzerinden hem kanalların/yapımcıların, hem de
izleyicilerin/hayranların sosyal medya alanındaki pratikleri ele alınmaktadır.
Anahtar Sözcükler: Katılımcı Kültür, Üreten
Tüketici, Televizyon Dizileri, Ücretsiz
Emek
Extended Abstract: The increased accesibility of internet, the
increased interactivity, and the
involvement of users in the creation of content have transformed the
structure of communication. The transition in the production, distribution,
display and storage of media through digitisation and transmitting cultural
products into the digital realm has affected the culture, and also transformed
all stages of communication as well
(Manovich, 2001: 6,19).
The
increased interactivity through social networks, the contribution of the
users in the creation of the content not
only resulted in the emergence of new communication forms, but also transformed
mass media’s production and consumption process. Henry Jenkins uses the term
convergence to describe those changes. According to him “convergence represents a cultural shift as
consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among
dispersed media content (2006: 3).
Manuel Castells argues that a new interactive communication form, “mass self
communication” has emerged as a feature of communication. Mass self
comunication is a mass communication potentially as the message is spread
through the internet; and also a kind of self communication in the way an
individual sends a self produced message to self-determined receivers or
receives messages she/he prefers (2009: 54-55). Castells refers this new kind
of audience as “creative audience”, and notes that it is part of the remix
culture (2009: 130,132). Within this transformed communication environment, as
internet users are involved in the production and distribution of content and
become ‘more active’, there emerged discussions on participation, participatory culture,
democratization of communication etc.
Henry
Jenkins asserts that media convergence caused a new participatory folk culture
to occur; and submits ordinary people new tools to produce media content. This
made it possible for people to participate in media production. Besides it enables
media companies to achieve low-cost
content; use and exploit amateur content in transmedia story telling (2001:
93). In this context convergence changes the ways media content produced and
consumed, so it is both compay and consumer driven process. On the one hand
media companies learn how to increase pofit, enlarge market and accelerate the
flow of media content; and on the othe hand consumers learn to control media
content and use different media technologies to commuicate and interact with
each other (Jenkins, 2006: 16,18). The assumption of passive audience’s
transformation into prosumer and participatior of communication processes,
underlies in Jenkin’s and Castell’s approaches.
The audiences, being mere
consumers before, has gained new specialities of producing. This made consumers
become prosumers (Toffler, 2008). To define this transformation some other
hybrid conceptions are used within the litreture such as produser and co-creator
(van Dijck, 2009: 42).
Especially together with the Web 2.0 applications, supporting users to
create and share content, user genereted content (UGC) platforms have become
widespread. And accordingly the term ‘user’ started to be used by media theoreticians
(van Dijck, 2009: 41).
Participatory media production and individualised media consumption
are two different but complementary tendencies. Mark Deuze notes that these
tendencies are the identifying characteristics of the new media ecology, in
which media consumption encompasses media production - even a little. Within
this communication environment media consumption behaviour changes by involving
people’s participation, co-creation, cooperation (Deuze, 2007: 247). And media
companies became able to use new media’s particularities like participation,
openness, interactivity etc; and also audience, consumer or users’
participation, comments, crations, ideas etc in a way to maximize profit.
The involment of consumers in production of media content makes media
companies gain profit. And this plus value depends on prosumers’ free labour in
improving, distributing, marketing of the media content and products. For this
reason, understanding consumers’ or audiences’ participation as ‘enpowerment’
will be an undervaluetion. Following Dallas Smith’s approach, scholars such as Tiziana
Terranova and Christian Fuchs, are sceptical about production depending on free
labour.
Free labour has become one of
the most discussed concepts of new media, as internet users increasingly
participate technocultural production actively and voluntarily by creating
content, helping to improve software, participating in mail lists, writing
comments, constructing virtual realms, creating web pages, sharing content etc
(Terranova, 2004: 73-74, 91).
Practices of
watching / reading / listening / using the internet involve a value producing
labour. This is how the audience commodity and the prosumer commodity is
produced. So these media usage practices
based on free labor does include exploitation of labour. From this point of
view, Fuchs criticizes the affirmative approaches to participatory culture. For
him, social media and web 2.0 applications feeds the ideologies supporting new
models of capital accumulation within new media economy; in stead of
democratisation of media culture. The exploitation of prosumer as a commodity
is a new stage of capitalism, in which the borders between play, entertainment,
fun and labour are blurred (Fuchs, 2014a: 130-133). Fuchs’ critics are
important for understanding the problems behind the participatory culture and
the capital’s increasing domination on internet.
Not only new
media companies utilise users’ free labour; but also traditional media targets
the online labour and cultural practices of audiences. As television companies
have to catch up with the transforming communication environment, they try to
exist in internet with their media content and products. Within this context,
in this paper we tried to discuss interaction of television audiences, fans,
and media companies through internet with some examples from TV dramas.
Jenkins(1998)
argues that the participatory culture offers the fans routes to recreate the
texts for themselves, and emphasises the creativity of fans in popular culture.
According to him fans do not only reread the texts, they also rewrite them in a
way to respond to their needs and gratify their desires (Jenkins, 1988). The
changing structure of the communication environment has also affected the
production, distribution and consumption methods of traditional mass media. In
relation to this, the traditional media has been trying to exist in internet
domain in the name of keeping up with the changing structure of communication.
Thus, in United States of America, special web sites have been created for
television programmes since the beginning of 1990s. The channels are
increasingly preparing content appropriate for multiplatforms and trying to
lead online actions of the audience/consumers for increasing audience loyalty
as well as pulling the audience into the fictional world that has been created. On the other hand, the
audience joins this process by sharing the media content in social media
platforms, commenting on them and interacting with the other audiences. Aside
from this, the watching experience is changing; trends like time shift in the
consumption of television content, multi screen watching experience are
becoming widespread. Considering these subjects over the example of Kardeş Payı
TV Series which is very popular in social media; both the production company
and the TV channel broadcasting the series circulate various content like
interviews, normal and uncensored episodes, special scenes, etc on internet,
sharing them with the fans of the series. The fans support this circulation by
both following the series in the official social media accounts and by creating
separate accounts about the series. The audiences/fans are involved with the
creative cultural practices by comics, caps etc. even though these are still
not very common. Considering the fact that the main purpose for the producers
or the channels to share the content of the series in social media is
increasing the popularity of the series, practices like sharing of the content,
commenting and writing in hashtags in Twitter by the audience or users have
commercial value as well as nurturing the culture that evolve around the
series. The relation between the audience and the series through social media which is generally
encouraged by the channels/producers should be assessed within the context of
“free labour”.
One of our observations
during our study is that the internet users try to benefit commercially from
the media content and their social media popularity. Professional caricaturists
or illustrators sharing their own work in the official account of the TV series,
some users sharing popular TV series content in ther profiles to gain
followers, software developers creating applications related to the series are
all examples of this case. Although digital optimists suggest that the
participatory culture empowers the user,
and contribute a great deal to democratization ; it is clear that new media provide much
more freedom to the corporations than the users, and most of the time, the
companies are more privileged in adapting to the progress.
Key Words: Participatory Culture, Prosumer, TV Dramas, Free Labour