The Empowerment of Media 'Audiences'
Media audiences today are not like they used to be. Traditionally, media producers could release their intended message, and audiences readily and wholly accepted what they were told. In today’s society, the audience is not even considered the audience anymore. As Rosen (2006) identified, “the people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable.” We appropriate and interpret media based on our experiences, understanding, backgrounds, and context. Ultimately, we have the power to create new meanings.
As such, this newfound authority empowers the public to create online communities with diverse opinions and two-way communication. As new media and our relationship with it evolves, so do our economies. Where commercial economies build value with money; and sharing economies build value, ignoring money; a new hybrid economy has emerged, dominating the architecture for online commerce (Lessig, 2010). This new economy can be either a commercial entity that aims to leverage value from a sharing economy; or a sharing economy that builds a commercial entity to better support its sharing aims (Lessig, 2010). Lessig (2010) describes hybrids as a model for getting others to innovate in ways that benefit the company. But in a way, it exploits the willingness of others to contribute something for free and making profit. However, as it does rely on the willingness of contributors, the community loyalty must be maintained.
There are two types of hybrids identified by Lessig (2010). Community spaces, which contain people interacting for sharing-economy reasons; the terms in which they communicate are commerce free, though the motivations may tie to commerce (Lessig, 2010). Contrastingly, there are collaboration spaces, where users believe they are there to build something together; the community is visible. It’s the focus of the work (Lessig, 2010). Take Reddit for example, the self-proclaimed front page of the Internet. The social news site has an open source community, allowing users to upload content that other users can vote and comment on. It is an instigator of bottom up information sharing, with a majority of the site harbouring user-created content. Often, news websites will even use content from Reddit to create news stories. While Reddit exists as a free-to-use forum, it has recently implemented paid services in order to make a profit. It has become a sharing community that has built a commercial entity to better support its sharing aims. By allowing users to pay money for access to a wider range of services, creating its own buy and sell subreddit, and introducing paid advertisements, Reddit is becoming more and more reliant on its’ users contributions in order to become profitable.
Lessig (2010) asserts that communities get built explicitly and upfront. You create value by giving people what they want; their value comes from giving members of the community what they want in a way that also gives the community something it needs (Lessig, 2010). Ultimately, it empowers audience to create whichever kind of community they want. Reddit thrives on its content being created, shared, and spread by its users. Yet it also relies on commercial features to maintain its community. This hybrid economy recognises a wider range of wants, and urges its contributors, now recognised as an authority in content creation, to continue to engage in the community for its commercial success.
Reference List
Isaacson, Betsey. 2013. "19 Weird Subreddits That Have No Reason To Exist (But We Love Anyway)." The Huffington Post, March 12. Accessed March 18, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/weird-subreddits_n_2812780.html#slide=2179122
Lessig, Lawrence. 2008. “Hybrid Economies.” In Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy, 177-224. New York: Penguin. Accessed March 18, 2014. https://qutvirtual3.qut.edu.au/qv/olt_material_search_p?p_unit_code=KCB206.
Rosen, Jay. 2006. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” Press Think: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine, June 27. Accessed March 18, 2014. http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html.