Producers Vs Consumers: A new relationship

The relationship between producers and consumers is changing.

The relationship between producers and consumers is undergoing significant change. The aim of traditional relationships was to form a stable base of regular consumers, committed to particular formats of tangible production. Therefore, producers tried to attract loyal consumers who would track down content across a range of other platforms (Jenkins 2006). Stable and identified consumers in turn create a demand for products. Smythe (in Toynbee 2006, 108) claims that “the audience consumption creates demand for the advertised good.” However, Banks (2002) argues that new media technologies and the users forming around them are in the process of constructing a very different ‘interactive’ consumer.

Media applications currently play a major role in driving technological innovation within society. New media technologies combined with open source software is becoming increasingly more mobile and interactive (such as laptops and access to the internet). This allows the consumers to access and control how they want to be entertained and the level of their involvement. As Henry Jenkins (2006, 167) claims:

“New Media technologies have profoundly altered the relations between media producers and consumers... The old rhetoric of opposition and co-option assumed a world where consumers had little power to shape media content and there were enormous barriers to entry [for consumers] into the market place.”

Humphreys (2006) uses video games research to support her claim that the relationship between producers and consumers is changing. According to her research, audiences are continually seeking more active roles in their consumption of new media. “Games reorganise the relationship between authors and audiences. Authors of games create environments with rules and goals rather than stories with beginnings, middles and ends. Players co-author the action rather than absorb someone else's version of a story” (Humphreys 2006). Interactive new media (such as video games) now offer the consumer an active role with the opportunity to affect outcomes and create content rather than passively watching media.

User-led content and Co-creators using open source software in online environments now make it difficult for contemporary consumers to be categorised. Subculture membership to online communities is voluntary and members have the ability to belong to more than one community or shift from one to another freely as their interests and needs change (Jenkins 2002). Users in online communities are commonly registered to multiple applications allowing them to write and create content using vehicles of self expression such as like citizen journalism or youtube. Users maintain loyalty to their networked relationships but are constantly searching for new information and new experiences.

Consumers are capable of decoding information and drawing meaning from it in ways that are relevant to them. Consumers are evolving into “human beings who do not respond to media output passively, but who are actively involved, both emotionally and intellectually” (Sternberg 2008). This involvement now gives audiences a greater sense of achievement and belonging resulting in a sense of greater social and cultural power over the media they consume.

References

Banks, J. 2002. Gamers as Co-creators: Enlisting the Virtual Audience – A Report From the Net Face. In Mobilising the Audience, ed. M. Balnaves, T. O’Regan and J. Sternberg, 188-212. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

Humphries, S. 2006. In search of the next level. In The Australian, December 6. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20815937-25132,00.html (accessed 22 March 2008).

Jenkins, H. 2002. Interactive Audiences. In The New Media Book, ed. D. Harries. 155-170. London: BFI

Jenkins, H. 2006. Buying into American Idol: How We Are Being Sold on Reality Television. In Convergence Culture. 59-92. New York: New York University Press.

Sternberg, J. 2008. Introduction to audiences. Queensland University of Technology, KCB301. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/courses/1/KCB301_08se1/content/_1500890_1/KCB301%20Week%201%202008%20internet%20version.ppt?bsession=10472029&bsession_str=session_id=10472029,user_id_pk1=68541,user_id_sos_id_pk2=1,one_time_token=

Toynbee, J. 2006. The Media’s View of the Audience. In Media Production, ed. D. Hesmondhalgh, 91-132. Maidenhead: Open University Press.