Who made who?

In today’s day and age, we are continuously seeing examples of media content being re-produced and re-distributed, and so it would be naïve to think that all media is original content. What does this mean? You see, thanks to the ever evolving advances in technology we are all able to manipulate media content and produce “intellectual content”, known simply as “Produsage”.

The interactive nature of the internet, means that anyone may partake in distributing the media, whether it be via applications such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and thus become “Produser”, a term coined by Dr. Axel Bruns to describe those who are actively involved in user-led content production.


Dr. Axel Bruns

Steve Dangle is a “produser” using the Internet, and more specifically YouTube, as a medium to produce and distribute content to subscribers of his channel. Dangle “produses” video blogs, or vlogs, whereby he reviews matches played by his favourite hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. This is a perfect example of how easy it is to become a “produser”; Dangle produces vlogs by using existing media reports about the matches, and thus creating his own version of events to be viewed by his subscribers.

Practising “producing” can be profitable; people like Seth MacFarlane who produces the cartoon comedy Family Guy, have made a living re-producing existing media content and re-distributing it through TV as a medium, albeit with a comedic twist. Family Guy constantly recycles past media content and almost re-educates its audience on the happenings of the past.

More recently Seth MacFarlane used “producage” to re-enact Star Wars using his popular Family Guy characters. By doing this MacFarlane is almost re-introducing Star Wars to new fans of the franchise, who were too young to have even seen the original movies when they had come out, thus creating a new craze for Star Wars amongst another generation.

Produsage is not exclusive to animators and vloggers, it is a method which is commonly used by credible news stations such as Channel 7, who rely heavily on media content to report the news. Most viewers would think that all of the content found on the news is original content produced and distributed by the news team, but a large majority of the content is media content which the TV station redistributes.

Advances in technology mean that the public may take an active role in the produsage of news. For example applications such as Twitter and Facebook on mobile phones, provide people with the opportunity to report on events as they happen. They are forms of live coverage, with which anyone can follow and interact. TV stations unable to get reporters onto the scene of the incident, are able to report facts about the incident thanks to the content gained from the "produser".