網路社群研究

網路社群研究

目次

2/20 課程介紹

3

2/27 和平紀念日調整放假

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3/06 網路社群分析計畫 ( 目的、對象、資料、理論、工具 )

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3/20 網路社群與使用者

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3/13 建立網路社群分析資料庫

3/27 什麼是使用者自製內容 (UGC/UCC)

13 77

4/03 世新周停課

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4/17 使用者生產的公共性

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4/10 群眾外包 (Crowdsourcing) 與集體智慧 4/24 內容策展 (content curation)

243 263

5/01 資料，及其開放 (open data)

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5/08 校運會補假停課

5/15 UGC 文本分析 - 互動模式分析與議題分析

5/22 UGC 互動關係分析 (I)- 網絡分析工具及建立關係網絡 5/29 端午節調整放假

6/05 UGC 互動關係分析 (II)- 關係網絡結構分析 6/12 UGC 互動關係分析 (III)- 影響者分析

6/19 UGC 互動關係分析 (IV)- 高互動小群體分析 1

363 365 367 369 371 373 375

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課程介紹

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網路社群研究(碩班,105 學年度下學期) 教學目標

網路社群的獨特之處，在於大部分的人際互動是藉由電腦網路傳遞的訊息內 容來完成，使用者藉由自己創作的訊息，在佈告欄系統(bulletin board systems)、 新聞群組(newsgroups)與線上論壇(online forums)上，進行資訊交流、意見交換、 情感維繫及自我與團體的認同。在網路技術進入到 Web 2.0 的概念後，這個現象 愈發的普遍，不僅有以文字為主的 wikis、部落格(blogs)、微網誌(microblogs)， 還包括了圖片(如：Flickr)與影音(如：YouTube)等，近幾年來使用人數眾多的 Facebook 更提供一個讓使用者交流各種文字、圖片以及影音的平台。這些訊息 大多由非傳播專業的使用者所創作的，因此特別將這些訊息稱為「使用者自製內 容」(user-generated content, UGC)。透過這些訊息的交流，使用者參與了網路上 的各種活動，產生各種的互動關係，最後形成了各種的社群，也就是說在網路上 交流的使用者自製訊息上，不僅包含了許多使用者關心的議題(issues)，同時在以 及電腦的記錄上，也蘊含了豐富的訊息交流模式及使用者間的互動關係。為了更 加深入了解使用者如何 從參與網路上的活動而形成社群，有必要對使用者自製 內容進行探討。 本課程一方面將從文化面及社會面切入，藉由閱讀與討論前人研究的文獻， 了解使用者自製內容的本質與批評；另一方面則是從實徵的訊息資料上，利用內 容分析及社會網絡分析(social network analysis)等方面，發現社群中的訊息交流模 式及具有影響力的使用者、互動關係較頻繁的小群體等等。 授課方式

講授、導讀、心得繳交、討論 成績評定

1.

讀書心得(50%) (1)、 每周上課請自行分配導讀同學 (2)、 未導讀者每請繳交讀書心得一篇 2. 使用者自製內容操作分析報告(50%) (1)、 請自行開設論壇主題(含噗浪 plurk、推特 twitter…)或臉書粉絲頁，蒐 集相關討論以建立分析資料庫 (2)、 分析報告內容請包含 i. 針對資料進行社會網絡分析，並建立互動模式 ii. 結合課堂討論觀點，加以解釋使用者自製內容各種議題面向

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參考書目

請參考每週進度內容下的書目資料 進度內容

2/20

課程介紹

2/27

和平紀念日調整放假

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網路社群分析計畫(目的、對象、資料、理論、工具) Haythornthwaite, C. (1996). Social network analysis: an approach and technique for study of information exchange. Library and Information Science Research, 18, 323-342.

Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-mediated discourse analysis: an approach to researching online behavior. In Barab, S. A., Kling, R., & Gray, J. H. (Ed.) Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning (chap.

12, pp. 338-376) Cambridge University Press.

3/13

建立網路社群分析資料庫

3/20

網路社群與使用者 boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer–Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.

Bruns, A. (2007). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: From production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang. Introduction, Ch1&2, p.1-36.

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什麼是使用者自製內容(UGC/UCC) OECD (2007). Participative web and user-created content: Web2.0, wikis and social networking.Ch.2-5, p.17-51. http://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/browseit/9307031E.PDF van Dijck, J. (2009). Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Media Culture Society, 31(1), 41-58.

Kim, J. (2012). The institutionalization of YouTube: From user-generated content to professionally generated content. Media Culture Society, 34(1), 53-67.

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4/3

世新周停課

4/10

群眾外包(Crowdsourcing)與集體智慧 Brabham, D. C. (2008). Crowdsourcing as a model for problem solving：An introduction and cases. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14(1), 75-90. 索羅斯基(Surowiecki, J.) (2011)。群眾的智慧(The wisdom of crowds)(楊 玉齡譯)。台北：遠流.

4/17

使用者生產的公共性 Colby, D. (2008). New media as a new mode of production? In C. McKercher & V. Mosco (Eds.), Knowledge workers in the information society (pp.193-207). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 班克勒(Benkler, Y.) (2013)。企鵝與怪獸：互聯時代的合作、共享與創新 模式(The penguin and the Leviathan)(簡學譯)。杭州：浙江人民出版 社。

4/24

內容策展(content curation) Rosenbaum, S. (2011). Curation Nation: How to win in a world where consumers are creators. New York: McGraw-Hill. 或見 黃貝玲譯 (2012)。為什麼搜尋將被淘汰。台北：麥格羅˙希爾。 Ricknert, S. (2013). Democratic communication as a strategic tool: Exploring the nation branding-initiative Curators of Sweden as a contemporary application of digital democracy. http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=380 8379&fileOId=3808385

5/1

資料，及其開放(open data) Janssen, M., & Zuiderwijk, A. (2014). Infomediary business models for connecting open data providers and users. Social Science Computer Review, 32(5), 694-711.

Khan, G. F., Hoffman, M. C, & Misztur, T. (2014). Best practices in social media at public, nonprofit, education, and health care organizations.

Social Science Computer Review, 32(5), 571-574.

5/8

校運會補假停課

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5/15

UGC 文本分析- 互動模式分析與議題分析 Herring, S.C., Scheidt, L. A., Bonus, S., & Wright, E. (2005). Weblogs as a bridging genre. Information Technology & People, 18(2), 142-171.

Sing, C. C., & Khine, M. S. (2006). An analysis of interaction and participation in onliine community. Educational Technology & Society, 9(1), 250-261.

5/22

UGC 互動關係分析(I)- 網絡分析工具及建立關係網絡 Pajek, http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/ NodeXL, http://nodexl.codeplex.com/

5/29

端午節調整放假

6/5

UGC 互動關係分析(II)- 關係網絡結構分析 Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T., & Tseng, B. (2007). Why we twitter: Understanding microblogging usage and communities. In Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 Workshop on Web Mining and Social Network Analysis. Retrieved date: Jan. 8th, 2011 from http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf.

6/12

UGC 互動關係分析(III)- 影響者分析 Liu, X., Bollen, J., Nelson, M. L., & Van de Sompel, H. (2005).

Co-authorship networks in the digital library research community.

Information Processing and Management, 41, 1462-1480.

6/19 UGC 互動關係分析(IV)- 高互動小群體分析 Jamali, M. & Abolhassani, H. (2006). Different aspects of social network analysis. In Proceedings of International Conference on Web Intelligence. Retrieved date: Jan. 8th, 2011 from http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~oschulte/socialnetwork/papers/SNA-intro-mohse n.pdf. ＊＊＊

網路社群分析報告

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和平紀念日調整放假

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網路社群分析計畫 ( 目的、對象、資料、理論、工具 )

Haythornthwaite, C. (1996). Social network analysis: an approach and technique for study of information exchange. Library and Information Science Research, 18, 323-342.

Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-mediated discourse analysis: an approach to researching online behavior. In Barab, S. A., Kling, R., & Gray, J. H. (Ed.) Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning (chap. 12, pp. 338376) Cambridge University Press.

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3/13

建立網路社群分析資料庫

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14

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3/20

網路社群與使用者

boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer– Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.

Bruns, A. (2007). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: From production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

Introduction, Ch1&2, p.1-36.

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Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship danah m. boyd School of Information University of California-Berkeley

Nicole B. Ellison Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media Michigan State University

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x

Introduction

Since their introduction, social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. As of this writing, there are hundreds of SNSs, with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices. While their key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge around SNSs are varied. Most sites support the maintenance of preexisting social networks, but others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationalitybased identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, and photo/ video-sharing.

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Scholars from disparate fields have examined SNSs in order to understand the practices, implications, culture, and meaning of the sites, as well as users’ engagement with them. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together a unique collection of articles that analyze a wide spectrum of social network sites using various methodological techniques, theoretical traditions, and analytic approaches. By collecting these articles in this issue, our goal is to showcase some of the interdisciplinary scholarship around these sites.

The purpose of this introduction is to provide a conceptual, historical, and scholarly context for the articles in this collection. We begin by defining what constitutes a social network site and then present one perspective on the historical development of SNSs, drawing from personal interviews and public accounts of sites and their changes over time. Following this, we review recent scholarship on SNSs and attempt to contextualize and highlight key works. We conclude with a description of the articles included in this special section and suggestions for future research.

Social Network Sites: A Definition

We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.

While we use the term ‘‘social network site’’ to describe this phenomenon, the term ‘‘social networking sites’’ also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We chose not to employ the term ‘‘networking’’ for two reasons: emphasis and scope. ‘‘Networking’’ emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC).

What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between ‘‘latent ties’’ (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection.

On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily ‘‘networking’’ or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. To emphasize this articulated social network as a critical organizing feature of these sites, we label them ‘‘social network sites.’’

While SNSs have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of Friends1 who are also users of the system. Profiles are unique pages where one can ‘‘type oneself into being’’ (Sunde´n, 2003, p. 3). After joining an SNS, an individual is asked to fill out Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 210–230 ª 2008 International Communication Association

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Figure 1 Timeline of the launch dates of many major SNSs and dates when community sites re-launched with SNS features 212

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forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptors such as age, location, interests, and an ‘‘about me’’ section. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo.

Some sites allow users to enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile’s look and feel. Others, such as Facebook, allow users to add modules (‘‘Applications’’) that enhance their profile.

The visibility of a profile varies by site and according to user discretion. By default, profiles on Friendster and Tribe.net are crawled by search engines, making them visible to anyone, regardless of whether or not the viewer has an account.

Alternatively, LinkedIn controls what a viewer may see based on whether she or he has a paid account. Sites like MySpace allow users to choose whether they want their profile to be public or ‘‘Friends only.’’ Facebook takes a different approach—by default, users who are part of the same ‘‘network’’ can view each other’s profiles, unless a profile owner has decided to deny permission to those in their network.

Structural variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate themselves from each other.

After joining a social network site, users are prompted to identify others in the system with whom they have a relationship. The label for these relationships differs depending on the site—popular terms include ‘‘Friends,’’ ‘‘Contacts,’’ and ‘‘Fans.’’

Most SNSs require bi-directional confirmation for Friendship, but some do not.

These one-directional ties are sometimes labeled as ‘‘Fans’’ or ‘‘Followers,’’ but many sites call these Friends as well. The term ‘‘Friends’’ can be misleading, because the connection does not necessarily mean friendship in the everyday vernacular sense, and the reasons people connect are varied (boyd, 2006a).

The public display of connections is a crucial component of SNSs. The Friends list contains links to each Friend’s profile, enabling viewers to traverse the network graph by clicking through the Friends lists. On most sites, the list of Friends is visible to anyone who is permitted to view the profile, although there are exceptions. For instance, some MySpace users have hacked their profiles to hide the Friends display, and LinkedIn allows users to opt out of displaying their network.

Most SNSs also provide a mechanism for users to leave messages on their Friends’ profiles. This feature typically involves leaving ‘‘comments,’’ although sites employ various labels for this feature. In addition, SNSs often have a private messaging feature similar to webmail. While both private messages and comments are popular on most of the major SNSs, they are not universally available.

Not all social network sites began as such. QQ started as a Chinese instant messaging service, LunarStorm as a community site, Cyworld as a Korean discussion forum tool, and Skyrock (formerly Skyblog) was a French blogging service before adding SNS features. Classmates.com, a directory of school affiliates launched in 1995, began supporting articulated lists of Friends after SNSs became popular.

AsianAvenue, MiGente, and BlackPlanet were early popular ethnic community sites with limited Friends functionality before re-launching in 2005–2006 with SNS features and structure.

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Beyond profiles, Friends, comments, and private messaging, SNSs vary greatly in their features and user base. Some have photo-sharing or video-sharing capabilities; others have built-in blogging and instant messaging technology. There are mobilespecific SNSs (e.g., Dodgeball), but some web-based SNSs also support limited mobile interactions (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, and Cyworld). Many SNSs target people from specific geographical regions or linguistic groups, although this does not always determine the site’s constituency. Orkut, for example, was launched in the United States with an English-only interface, but Portuguese-speaking Brazilians quickly became the dominant user group (Kopytoff, 2004). Some sites are designed with specific ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, political, or other identity-driven categories in mind. There are even SNSs for dogs (Dogster) and cats (Catster), although their owners must manage their profiles.

While SNSs are often designed to be widely accessible, many attract homogeneous populations initially, so it is not uncommon to find groups using sites to segregate themselves by nationality, age, educational level, or other factors that typically segment society (Hargittai, this issue), even if that was not the intention of the designers.

A History of Social Network Sites The Early Years According to the definition above, the first recognizable social network site launched in 1997. SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists. Each of these features existed in some form before SixDegrees, of course. Profiles existed on most major dating sites and many community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of Friends, although those Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also affiliated, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years later. SixDegrees was the first to combine these features.

SixDegrees promoted itself as a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others. While SixDegrees attracted millions of users, it failed to become a sustainable business and, in 2000, the service closed. Looking back, its founder believes that SixDegrees was simply ahead of its time (A. Weinreich, personal communication, July 11, 2007). While people were already flocking to the Internet, most did not have extended networks of friends who were online. Early adopters complained that there was little to do after accepting Friend requests, and most users were not interested in meeting strangers.

From 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends. AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profiles— users could identify Friends on their personal profiles without seeking approval for those connections (O. Wasow, personal communication, August 16, 2007). Likewise, 214

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shortly after its launch in 1999, LiveJournal listed one-directional connections on user pages. LiveJournal’s creator suspects that he fashioned these Friends after instant messaging buddy lists (B. Fitzpatrick, personal communication, June 15, 2007)—on LiveJournal, people mark others as Friends to follow their journals and manage privacy settings. The Korean virtual worlds site Cyworld was started in 1999 and added SNS features in 2001, independent of these other sites (see Kim & Yun, this issue). Likewise, when the Swedish web community LunarStorm refashioned itself as an SNS in 2000, it contained Friends lists, guestbooks, and diary pages (D. Skog, personal communication, September 24, 2007).

The next wave of SNSs began when Ryze.com was launched in 2001 to help people leverage their business networks. Ryze’s founder reports that he first introduced the site to his friends—primarily members of the San Francisco business and technology community, including the entrepreneurs and investors behind many future SNSs (A. Scott, personal communication, June 14, 2007). In particular, the people behind Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, and Friendster were tightly entwined personally and professionally. They believed that they could support each other without competing (Festa, 2003). In the end, Ryze never acquired mass popularity, Tribe.net grew to attract a passionate niche user base, LinkedIn became a powerful business service, and Friendster became the most significant, if only as ‘‘one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history’’ (Chafkin, 2007, p. 1).

Like any brief history of a major phenomenon, ours is necessarily incomplete. In the following section we discuss Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, three key SNSs that shaped the business, cultural, and research landscape.

The Rise (and Fall) of Friendster Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze. It was designed to compete with Match.com, a profitable online dating site (Cohen, 2003). While most dating sites focused on introducing people to strangers with similar interests, Friendster was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that friends-of-friends would make better romantic partners than would strangers (J. Abrams, personal communication, March 27, 2003). Friendster gained traction among three groups of early adopters who shaped the site—bloggers, attendees of the Burning Man arts festival, and gay men (boyd, 2004)—and grew to 300,000 users through word of mouth before traditional press coverage began in May 2003 (O’Shea, 2003).

As Friendster’s popularity surged, the site encountered technical and social difficulties (boyd, 2006b). Friendster’s servers and databases were ill-equipped to handle its rapid growth, and the site faltered regularly, frustrating users who replaced email with Friendster. Because organic growth had been critical to creating a coherent community, the onslaught of new users who learned about the site from media coverage upset the cultural balance. Furthermore, exponential growth meant a collapse in social contexts: Users had to face their bosses and former classmates alongside their close friends. To complicate matters, Friendster began restricting the activities of its most passionate users.

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The initial design of Friendster restricted users from viewing profiles of people who were more than four degrees away (friends-of-friends-of-friends-of-friends). In order to view additional profiles, users began adding acquaintances and interestinglooking strangers to expand their reach. Some began massively collecting Friends, an activity that was implicitly encouraged through a ‘‘most popular’’ feature. The ultimate collectors were fake profiles representing iconic fictional characters: celebrities, concepts, and other such entities. These ‘‘Fakesters’’ outraged the company, who banished fake profiles and eliminated the ‘‘most popular’’ feature (boyd, in press-b).

While few people actually created Fakesters, many more enjoyed surfing Fakesters for entertainment or using functional Fakesters (e.g., ‘‘Brown University’’) to find people they knew.

The active deletion of Fakesters (and genuine users who chose non-realistic photos) signaled to some that the company did not share users’ interests. Many early adopters left because of the combination of technical difficulties, social collisions, and a rupture of trust between users and the site (boyd, 2006b). However, at the same time that it was fading in the U.S., its popularity skyrocketed in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (Goldberg, 2007).

SNSs Hit the Mainstream From 2003 onward, many new SNSs were launched, prompting social software analyst Clay Shirky (2003) to coin the term YASNS: ‘‘Yet Another Social Networking Service.’’ Most took the form of profile-centric sites, trying to replicate the early success of Friendster or target specific demographics. While socially-organized SNSs solicit broad audiences, professional sites such as LinkedIn, Visible Path, and Xing (formerly openBC) focus on business people. ‘‘Passion-centric’’ SNSs like Dogster (T. Rheingold, personal communication, August 2, 2007) help strangers connect based on shared interests. Care2 helps activists meet, Couchsurfing connects travelers to people with couches, and MyChurch joins Christian churches and their members.

Furthermore, as the social media and user-generated content phenomena grew, websites focused on media sharing began implementing SNS features and becoming SNSs themselves. Examples include Flickr (photo sharing), Last.FM (music listening habits), and YouTube (video sharing).

With the plethora of venture-backed startups launching in Silicon Valley, few people paid attention to SNSs that gained popularity elsewhere, even those built by major corporations. For example, Google’s Orkut failed to build a sustainable U.S. user base, but a ‘‘Brazilian invasion’’ (Fragoso, 2006) made Orkut the national SNS of Brazil. Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces (a.k.a. MSN Spaces) also launched to lukewarm U.S. reception but became extremely popular elsewhere.

Few analysts or journalists noticed when MySpace launched in Santa Monica, California, hundreds of miles from Silicon Valley. MySpace was begun in 2003 to compete with sites like Friendster, Xanga, and AsianAvenue, according to cofounder Tom Anderson (personal communication, August 2, 2007); the founders wanted to attract estranged Friendster users (T. Anderson, personal communication, 216

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February 2, 2006). After rumors emerged that Friendster would adopt a fee-based system, users posted Friendster messages encouraging people to join alternate SNSs, including Tribe.net and MySpace (T. Anderson, personal communication, August 2, 2007). Because of this, MySpace was able to grow rapidly by capitalizing on Friendster’s alienation of its early adopters. One particularly notable group that encouraged others to switch were indie-rock bands who were expelled from Friendster for failing to comply with profile regulations.

While MySpace was not launched with bands in mind, they were welcomed.

Indie-rock bands from the Los Angeles region began creating profiles, and local promoters used MySpace to advertise VIP passes for popular clubs. Intrigued, MySpace contacted local musicians to see how they could support them (T. Anderson, personal communication, September 28, 2006). Bands were not the sole source of MySpace growth, but the symbiotic relationship between bands and fans helped MySpace expand beyond former Friendster users. The bands-and-fans dynamic was mutually beneficial: Bands wanted to be able to contact fans, while fans desired attention from their favorite bands and used Friend connections to signal identity and affiliation.

Futhermore, MySpace differentiated itself by regularly adding features based on user demand (boyd, 2006b) and by allowing users to personalize their pages. This ‘‘feature’’ emerged because MySpace did not restrict users from adding HTML into the forms that framed their profiles; a copy/paste code culture emerged on the web to support users in generating unique MySpace backgrounds and layouts (Perkel, in press).

Teenagers began joining MySpace en masse in 2004. Unlike older users, most teens were never on Friendster—some joined because they wanted to connect with their favorite bands; others were introduced to the site through older family members. As teens began signing up, they encouraged their friends to join. Rather than rejecting underage users, MySpace changed its user policy to allow minors. As the site grew, three distinct populations began to form: musicians/artists, teenagers, and the post-college urban social crowd. By and large, the latter two groups did not interact with one another except through bands. Because of the lack of mainstream press coverage during 2004, few others noticed the site’s growing popularity.

Then, in July 2005, News Corporation purchased MySpace for $580 million (BBC, 2005), attracting massive media attention. Afterwards, safety issues plagued MySpace. The site was implicated in a series of sexual interactions between adults and minors, prompting legal action (Consumer Affairs, 2006). A moral panic concerning sexual predators quickly spread (Bahney, 2006), although research suggests that the concerns were exaggerated.2 A Global Phenomenon While MySpace attracted the majority of media attention in the U.S. and abroad, SNSs were proliferating and growing in popularity worldwide. Friendster gained traction in the Pacific Islands, Orkut became the premier SNS in Brazil before Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 210–230 ª 2008 International Communication Association

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growing rapidly in India (Madhavan, 2007), Mixi attained widespread adoption in Japan, LunarStorm took off in Sweden, Dutch users embraced Hyves, Grono captured Poland, Hi5 was adopted in smaller countries in Latin America, South America, and Europe, and Bebo became very popular in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Additionally, previously popular communication and community services began implementing SNS features. The Chinese QQ instant messaging service instantly became the largest SNS worldwide when it added profiles and made friends visible (McLeod, 2006), while the forum tool Cyworld cornered the Korean market by introducing homepages and buddies (Ewers, 2006).

Blogging services with complete SNS features also became popular. In the U.S., blogging tools with SNS features, such as Xanga, LiveJournal, and Vox, attracted broad audiences. Skyrock reigns in France, and Windows Live Spaces dominates numerous markets worldwide, including in Mexico, Italy, and Spain. Although SNSs like QQ, Orkut, and Live Spaces are just as large as, if not larger than, MySpace, they receive little coverage in U.S. and English-speaking media, making it difficult to track their trajectories.

Expanding Niche Communities Alongside these open services, other SNSs launched to support niche demographics before expanding to a broader audience. Unlike previous SNSs, Facebook was designed to support distinct college networks only. Facebook began in early 2004 as a Harvard-only SNS (Cassidy, 2006). To join, a user had to have a harvard.edu email address. As Facebook began supporting other schools, those users were also required to have university email addresses associated with those institutions, a requirement that kept the site relatively closed and contributed to users’ perceptions of the site as an intimate, private community.

Beginning in September 2005, Facebook expanded to include high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone. The change to open signup did not mean that new users could easily access users in closed networks— gaining access to corporate networks still required the appropriate .com address, while gaining access to high school networks required administrator approval. (As of this writing, only membership in regional networks requires no permission.) Unlike other SNSs, Facebook users are unable to make their full profiles public to all users. Another feature that differentiates Facebook is the ability for outside developers to build ‘‘Applications’’ which allow users to personalize their profiles and perform other tasks, such as compare movie preferences and chart travel histories.

While most SNSs focus on growing broadly and exponentially, others explicitly seek narrower audiences. Some, like aSmallWorld and BeautifulPeople, intentionally restrict access to appear selective and elite. Others—activity-centered sites like Couchsurfing, identity-driven sites like BlackPlanet, and affiliation-focused sites like MyChurch—are limited by their target demographic and thus tend to be smaller.

Finally, anyone who wishes to create a niche social network site can do so on Ning, a platform and hosting service that encourages users to create their own SNSs. 218

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Currently, there are no reliable data regarding how many people use SNSs, although marketing research indicates that SNSs are growing in popularity worldwide (comScore, 2007). This growth has prompted many corporations to invest time and money in creating, purchasing, promoting, and advertising SNSs. At the same time, other companies are blocking their employees from accessing the sites. Additionally, the U.S. military banned soldiers from accessing MySpace (Frosch, 2007) and the Canadian government prohibited employees from Facebook (Benzie, 2007), while the U.S. Congress has proposed legislation to ban youth from accessing SNSs in schools and libraries (H.R. 5319, 2006; S. 49, 2007).

The rise of SNSs indicates a shift in the organization of online communities.

While websites dedicated to communities of interest still exist and prosper, SNSs are primarily organized around people, not interests. Early public online communities such as Usenet and public discussion forums were structured by topics or according to topical hierarchies, but social network sites are structured as personal (or ‘‘egocentric’’) networks, with the individual at the center of their own community. This more accurately mirrors unmediated social structures, where ‘‘the world is composed of networks, not groups’’ (Wellman, 1988, p. 37). The introduction of SNS features has introduced a new organizational framework for online communities, and with it, a vibrant new research context.

Previous Scholarship

Scholarship concerning SNSs is emerging from diverse disciplinary and methodological traditions, addresses a range of topics, and builds on a large body of CMC research. The goal of this section is to survey research that is directly concerned with social network sites, and in so doing, to set the stage for the articles in this special issue. To date, the bulk of SNS research has focused on impression management and friendship performance, networks and network structure, online/offline connections, and privacy issues.

Impression Management and Friendship Performance Like other online contexts in which individuals are consciously able to construct an online representation of self—such as online dating profiles and MUDS—SNSs constitute an important research context for scholars investigating processes of impression management, self-presentation, and friendship performance. In one of the earliest academic articles on SNSs, boyd (2004) examined Friendster as a locus of publicly articulated social networks that allowed users to negotiate presentations of self and connect with others. Donath and boyd (2004) extended this to suggest that ‘‘public displays of connection’’ serve as important identity signals that help people navigate the networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in profiles.

While most sites encourage users to construct accurate representations of themselves, participants do this to varying degrees. Marwick (2005) found that users on Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 210–230 ª 2008 International Communication Association

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three different SNSs had complex strategies for negotiating the rigidity of a prescribed ‘‘authentic’’ profile, while boyd (in press-b) examined the phenomenon of ‘‘Fakesters’’ and argued that profiles could never be ‘‘real.’’ The extent to which portraits are authentic or playful varies across sites; both social and technological forces shape user practices. Skog (2005) found that the status feature on LunarStorm strongly influenced how people behaved and what they choose to reveal—profiles there indicate one’s status as measured by activity (e.g., sending messages) and indicators of authenticity (e.g., using a ‘‘real’’ photo instead of a drawing).

Another aspect of self-presentation is the articulation of friendship links, which serve as identity markers for the profile owner. Impression management is one of the reasons given by Friendster users for choosing particular friends (Donath & boyd, 2004). Recognizing this, Zinman and Donath (2007) noted that MySpace spammers leverage people’s willingness to connect to interesting people to find targets for their spam.

In their examination of LiveJournal ‘‘friendship,’’ Fono and Raynes-Goldie (2006) described users’ understandings regarding public displays of connections and how the Friending function can operate as a catalyst for social drama. In listing user motivations for Friending, boyd (2006a) points out that ‘‘Friends’’ on SNSs are not the same as ‘‘friends’’ in the everyday sense; instead, Friends provide context by offering users an imagined audience to guide behavioral norms. Other work in this area has examined the use of Friendster Testimonials as self-presentational devices (boyd & Heer, 2006) and the extent to which the attractiveness of one’s Friends (as indicated by Facebook’s ‘‘Wall’’ feature) impacts impression formation (Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, & Westerman, in press).

Networks and Network Structure Social network sites also provide rich sources of naturalistic behavioral data. Profile and linkage data from SNSs can be gathered either through the use of automated collection techniques or through datasets provided directly from the company, enabling network analysis researchers to explore large-scale patterns of friending, usage, and other visible indicators (Hogan, in press), and continuing an analysis trend that started with examinations of blogs and other websites. For instance, Golder, Wilkinson, and Huberman (2007) examined an anonymized dataset consisting of 362 million messages exchanged by over four million Facebook users for insight into Friending and messaging activities. Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2007) explored the relationship between profile elements and number of Facebook friends, finding that profile fields that reduce transaction costs and are harder to falsify are most likely to be associated with larger number of friendship links. These kinds of data also lend themselves well to analysis through network visualization (Adamic, Buyukkokten, & Adar, 2003; Heer & boyd, 2005; Paolillo & Wright, 2005).

SNS researchers have also studied the network structure of Friendship. Analyzing the roles people played in the growth of Flickr and Yahoo! 360’s networks, Kumar, Novak, and Tomkins (2006) argued that there are passive members, inviters, and 220

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linkers ‘‘who fully participate in the social evolution of the network’’ (p. 1). Scholarship concerning LiveJournal’s network has included a Friendship classification scheme (Hsu, Lancaster, Paradesi, & Weniger, 2007), an analysis of the role of language in the topology of Friendship (Herring et al., 2007), research into the importance of geography in Friending (Liben-Nowell, Novak, Kumar, Raghavan, and Tomkins, 2005), and studies on what motivates people to join particular communities (Backstrom, Huttenlocher, Kleinberg, & Lan, 2006). Based on Orkut data, Spertus, Sahami, and Buyukkokten (2005) identified a topology of users through their membership in certain communities; they suggest that sites can use this to recommend additional communities of interest to users. Finally, Liu, Maes, and Davenport (2006) argued that Friend connections are not the only network structure worth investigating. They examined the ways in which the performance of tastes (favorite music, books, film, etc.) constitutes an alternate network structure, which they call a ‘‘taste fabric.’’

Bridging Online and Offline Social Networks Although exceptions exist, the available research suggests that most SNSs primarily support pre-existing social relations. Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007) suggest that Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people. These relationships may be weak ties, but typically there is some common offline element among individuals who friend one another, such as a shared class at school. This is one of the chief dimensions that differentiate SNSs from earlier forms of public CMC such as newsgroups (Ellison et al., 2007). Research in this vein has investigated how online interactions interface with offline ones. For instance, Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2006) found that Facebook users engage in ‘‘searching’’ for people with whom they have an offline connection more than they ‘‘browse’’ for complete strangers to meet. Likewise, Pew research found that 91% of U.S. teens who use SNSs do so to connect with friends (Lenhart & Madden, 2007).

Given that SNSs enable individuals to connect with one another, it is not surprising that they have become deeply embedded in user’s lives. In Korea, Cyworld has become an integral part of everyday life—Choi (2006) found that 85% of that study’s respondents ‘‘listed the maintenance and reinforcement of pre-existing social networks as their main motive for Cyworld use’’ (p. 181). Likewise, boyd (2008) argues that MySpace and Facebook enable U.S. youth to socialize with their friends even when they are unable to gather in unmediated situations; she argues that SNSs are ‘‘networked publics’’ that support sociability, just as unmediated public spaces do.

Privacy Popular press coverage of SNSs has emphasized potential privacy concerns, primarily concerning the safety of younger users (George, 2006; Kornblum & Marklein, 2006).

Researchers have investigated the potential threats to privacy associated with SNSs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 210–230 ª 2008 International Communication Association

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In one of the first academic studies of privacy and SNSs, Gross and Acquisti (2005) analyzed 4,000 Carnegie Mellon University Facebook profiles and outlined the potential threats to privacy contained in the personal information included on the site by students, such as the potential ability to reconstruct users’ social security numbers using information often found in profiles, such as hometown and date of birth.

Acquisti and Gross (2006) argue that there is often a disconnect between students’ desire to protect privacy and their behaviors, a theme that is also explored in Stutzman’s (2006) survey of Facebook users and Barnes’s (2006) description of the ‘‘privacy paradox’’ that occurs when teens are not aware of the public nature of the Internet. In analyzing trust on social network sites, Dwyer, Hiltz, and Passerini (2007) argued that trust and usage goals may affect what people are willing to share—Facebook users expressed greater trust in Facebook than MySpace users did in MySpace and thus were more willing to share information on the site.

In another study examining security issues and SNSs, Jagatic, Johnson, Jakobsson, and Menczer (2007) used freely accessible profile data from SNSs to craft a ‘‘phishing’’ scheme that appeared to originate from a friend on the network; their targets were much more likely to give away information to this ‘‘friend’’ than to a perceived stranger. Survey data offer a more optimistic perspective on the issue, suggesting that teens are aware of potential privacy threats online and that many are proactive about taking steps to minimize certain potential risks. Pew found that 55% of online teens have profiles, 66% of whom report that their profile is not visible to all Internet users (Lenhart & Madden, 2007). Of the teens with completely open profiles, 46% reported including at least some false information.

Privacy is also implicated in users’ ability to control impressions and manage social contexts. Boyd (in press-a) asserted that Facebook’s introduction of the ‘‘News Feed’’ feature disrupted students’ sense of control, even though data exposed through the feed were previously accessible. Preibusch, Hoser, Gu¨rses, and Berendt (2007) argued that the privacy options offered by SNSs do not provide users with the flexibility they need to handle conflicts with Friends who have different conceptions of privacy; they suggest a framework for privacy in SNSs that they believe would help resolve these conflicts.

SNSs are also challenging legal conceptions of privacy. Hodge (2006) argued that the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and legal decisions concerning privacy are not equipped to address social network sites. For example, do police officers have the right to access content posted to Facebook without a warrant? The legality of this hinges on users’ expectation of privacy and whether or not Facebook profiles are considered public or private.

Other Research In addition to the themes identified above, a growing body of scholarship addresses other aspects of SNSs, their users, and the practices they enable. For example, scholarship on the ways in which race and ethnicity (Byrne, in press; Gajjala, 2007), 222

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religion (Nyland & Near, 2007), gender (Geidner, Flook, & Bell, 2007; Hjorth & Kim, 2005), and sexuality connect to, are affected by, and are enacted in social network sites raise interesting questions about how identity is shaped within these sites.

Fragoso (2006) examined the role of national identity in SNS use through an investigation into the ‘‘Brazilian invasion’’ of Orkut and the resulting culture clash between Brazilians and Americans on the site. Other scholars are beginning to do cross-cultural comparisons of SNS use—Hjorth and Yuji (in press) compare Japanese usage of Mixi and Korean usage of Cyworld, while Herring et al. (2007) examine the practices of users who bridge different languages on LiveJournal—but more work in this area is needed.

Scholars are documenting the implications of SNS use with respect to schools, universities, and libraries. For example, scholarship has examined how students feel about having professors on Facebook (Hewitt & Forte, 2006) and how faculty participation affects student-professor relations (Mazer, Murphy, & Simonds, 2007).

Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis (2007) found that librarians are overwhelmingly aware of Facebook and are against proposed U.S. legislation that would ban minors from accessing SNSs at libraries, but that most see SNSs as outside the purview of librarianship. Finally, challenging the view that there is nothing educational about SNSs, Perkel (in press) analyzed copy/paste practices on MySpace as a form of literacy involving social and technical skills.

This overview is not comprehensive due to space limitations and because much work on SNSs is still in the process of being published. Additionally, we have not included literature in languages other than English (e.g., Recuero, 2005 on social capital and Orkut), due to our own linguistic limitations.

Overview of This Special Theme Section

The articles in this section address a variety of social network sites—BlackPlanet, Cyworld, Dodgeball, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube—from multiple theoretical and methodological angles, building on previous studies of SNSs and broader theoretical traditions within CMC research, including relationship maintenance and issues of identity, performance, privacy, self-presentation, and civic engagement.

These pieces collectively provide insight into some of the ways in which online and offline experiences are deeply entwined. Using a relational dialectics approach, Kyung-Hee Kim and Haejin Yun analyze how Cyworld supports both interpersonal relations and self-relation for Korean users. They trace the subtle ways in which deeply engrained cultural beliefs and activities are integrated into online communication and behaviors on Cyworld—the online context reinforces certain aspects of users’ cultural expectations about relationship maintenance (e.g., the concept of reciprocity), while the unique affordances of Cyworld enable participants to overcome offline constraints. Dara Byrne uses content analysis to examine civic engagement in forums on BlackPlanet and finds that online discussions are still plagued with the problems offline activists have long encountered. Drawing on interview and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 210–230 ª 2008 International Communication Association

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observation data, Lee Humphreys investigates early adopters’ practices involving Dodgeball, a mobile social network service. She looks at the ways in which networked communication is reshaping offline social geography.

Other articles in this collection illustrate how innovative research methods can elucidate patterns of behavior that would be indistinguishable otherwise. For instance, Hugo Liu examines participants’ performance of tastes and interests by analyzing and modeling the preferences listed on over 127,000 MySpace profiles, resulting in unique ‘‘taste maps.’’ Likewise, through survey data collected at a college with diverse students in the U.S., Eszter Hargittai illuminates usage patterns that would otherwise be masked. She finds that adoption of particular services correlates with individuals’ race and parental education level.

Existing theory is deployed, challenged, and extended by the approaches adopted in the articles in this section. Judith Donath extends signaling theory to explain different tactics SNS users adopt to reduce social costs while managing trust and identity. She argues that the construction and maintenance of relations on SNSs is akin to ‘‘social grooming.’’ Patricia Lange complicates traditional dichotomies between ‘‘public’’ and ‘‘private’’ by analyzing how YouTube participants blur these lines in their video-sharing practices.

The articles in this collection highlight the significance of social network sites in the lives of users and as a topic of research. Collectively, they show how networked practices mirror, support, and alter known everyday practices, especially with respect to how people present (and hide) aspects of themselves and connect with others. The fact that participation on social network sites leaves online traces offers unprecedented opportunities for researchers. The scholarship in this special theme section takes advantage of this affordance, resulting in work that helps explain practices online and offline, as well as those that blend the two environments.

Future Research

The work described above and included in this special theme section contributes to an on-going dialogue about the importance of social network sites, both for practitioners and researchers. Vast, uncharted waters still remain to be explored. Methodologically, SNS researchers’ ability to make causal claims is limited by a lack of experimental or longitudinal studies. Although the situation is rapidly changing, scholars still have a limited understanding of who is and who is not using these sites, why, and for what purposes, especially outside the U.S. Such questions will require large-scale quantitative and qualitative research. Richer, ethnographic research on populations more difficult to access (including non-users) would further aid scholars’ ability to understand the long-term implications of these tools. We hope that the work described here and included in this collection will help build a foundation for future investigations of these and other important issues surrounding social network sites.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the external reviewers who volunteered their time and expertise to review papers and contribute valuable feedback and to those practitioners and analysts who provided information to help shape the history section. Thank you also to Susan Herring, whose patience and support appeared infinite.

Notes 1 To differentiate the articulated list of Friends on SNSs from the colloquial term ‘‘friends,’’ we capitalize the former.

2 Although one out of seven teenagers received unwanted sexual solicitations online, only 9% came from people over the age of 25 (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006). Research suggests that popular narratives around sexual predators on SNSs are misleading— cases of unsuspecting teens being lured by sexual predators are rare (Finkelhor, Ybarra, Lenhart, boyd, & Lordan, 2007). Furthermore, only .08% of students surveyed by the National School Boards Association (2007) met someone in person from an online encounter without permission from a parent.

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H. R. 5319. (2006, May 9). Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006. H.R. 5319, 109th Congress.

Retrieved July 21, 2007 from http://www.govtrack.us/congress/ billtext.xpd?bill=h109-5319 Hsu, W. H., Lancaster, J., Paradesi, M. S. R., & Weninger, T. (2007). Structural link analysis from user profiles and friends networks: A feature construction approach. Proceedings of ICWSM-2007 (pp. 75–80). Boulder, CO. Jagatic, T., Johnson, N., Jakobsson, M., & Menczer, F. (2007). Social phishing.

Communications of the ACM, 5(10), 94–100.

Kopytoff, V. (2004, November 29). Google’s orkut puzzles experts. San Francisco Chronicle.

Retrieved July 30, 2007 from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/ 29/BUGU9A0BH441.DTL Kornblum, J., & Marklein, M. B. (2006, March 8). What you say online could haunt you.

USA Today. Retrieved August 29, 2007 from http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/ internetprivacy/2006-03-08-facebook-myspace_x.htm Kumar, R., Novak, J., & Tomkins, A. (2006). Structure and evolution of online social networks. Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data Mining (pp. 611–617). New York: ACM Press.

Lampe, C., Ellison, N., & Steinfield, C. (2006). A Face(book) in the crowd: Social searching vs. social browsing. Proceedings of CSCW-2006 (pp. 167–170). New York: ACM Press.

Lampe, C., Ellison, N., & Steinfeld, C. (2007). A familiar Face(book): Profile elements as signals in an online social network. Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 435–444). New York: ACM Press.

Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2007, April 18). Teens, privacy, & online social networks.

Pew Internet and American Life Project Report. Retrieved July 30, 2007 from http:// www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Privacy_SNS_Report_Final.pdf Liben-Nowell, D., Novak, J., Kumar, R., Raghavan, P., & Tomkins, A. (2005) Geographic routing in social networks. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, 102(33) 11,623–11,628.

Liu, H., Maes, P., & Davenport, G. (2006). Unraveling the taste fabric of social networks.

International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, 2(1), 42–71.

Madhavan, N. (2007, July 6). India gets more Net Cool. Hindustan Times. Retrieved July 30, 2007 from http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/ StoryPage.aspx?id=f2565bb8-663e-48c1-94ee-d99567577bdd Marwick, A. (2005, October). ‘‘I’m a lot more interesting than a Friendster profile:’’ Identity presentation, authenticity, and power in social networking services. Paper presented at Internet Research 6.0, Chicago, IL. Mazer, J. P., Murphy, R. E., & Simonds, C. J. (2007). I’ll see you on ‘‘Facebook:’’ The effects of computer-mediated teacher self-disclosure on student motivation, affective learning, and classroom climate. Communication Education, 56(1), 1–17.

McLeod, D. (2006, October 6). QQ Attracting eyeballs. Financial Mail (South Africa), p. 36.

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National School Boards Association. (2007, July). Creating and connecting: Research and guidelines on online social—and educational—networking. Alexandria, VA. Retrieved September 23, 2007 from http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf

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Nyland, R., & Near, C. (2007, February). Jesus is my friend: Religiosity as a mediating factor in Internet social networking use. Paper presented at AEJMC Midwinter Conference, Reno, NV. O’Shea, W. (2003, July 4-10). Six Degrees of sexual frustration: Connecting the dates with Friendster.com. Village Voice. Retrieved July 21, 2007 from http://www.villagevoice.com/ news/0323,oshea, 44576, 1.html Paolillo, J. C., & Wright, E. (2005). Social network analysis on the semantic web: Techniques and challenges for visualizing FOAF. In V. Geroimenko & C. Chen (Eds.), Visualizing the Semantic Web (pp. 229–242). Berlin: Springer.

Perkel, D. (in press). Copy and paste literacy? Literacy practices in the production of a MySpace profile. In K. Drotner, H. S. Jensen, & K. Schroeder (Eds.), Informal Learning and Digital Media: Constructions, Contexts, Consequences. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.

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About the Authors

danah m. boyd is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on how people negotiate mediated contexts like social network sites for sociable purposes.

Address: 102 South Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720–4600, USA Nicole B. Ellison is an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. Her research explores issues of self-presentation, relationship development, and identity in online environments such as weblogs, online dating sites, and social network sites.

Address: 403 Communication Arts and Sciences, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

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BLOGS, WIKIPEDIA, SECOND LIFE, and BEYOND From Production to Produsage

AXEL BRUNS

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his book begins with a simple, yet fundamental proposition: the proposition that to describe the creative, collaborative, and ad hoc engagement with content for which user-led spaces such as the Wikipedia act as examples, the term ‘production’ is no longer accurate. This, I argue, is true even where we re-imagine the concept of production as ‘user-led production,’ ‘commons-based peer production,’ or more prosaicly as the production of ‘customer-made’ products: not the adjectives and qualifiers which we may attach to the term ‘production’ are the problem, but the very noun itself.

Users who participate in the development of open source software, in the collaborative extension and editing of the Wikipedia, in the communal world-building of Second Life, or processes of massively parallelized and decentralized creativity and innovation in myriads of enthusiast communities do no longer produce content, ideas, and knowledge in a way that resembles traditional, industrial modes of production; the outcomes of their work similarly retain only few of the features of conventional products, even though frequently they are able to substitute for the outputs of commercial production processes. User-led content ‘production’ is instead built on iterative, evolutionary development models in which often very large communities of participants make a number of usually very small, incremental changes to the established knowledge base, thereby enabling a gradual improvement in quality which— under the right conditions—can nonetheless outpace the speed of product development in the conventional, industrial model.

Such modes of content creation—involving large communities of users, who act without an all-controlling, coordinating hierarchy—operate along lines which are fluid, flexible, heterarchical, and organized ad hoc as required by the ongoing process of development; they are more closely aligned with the emergent organizational principles in social communities than with the predetermined, supposedly optimized rigid structures of governance in the corporate sphere. User-led content creation in this new model harnesses the collected, collective intelligence of all participants, and manages— though in some cases better than in others—to direct their contributions to where they are best able to make a positive impact.

This style of content creation must be examined, then, without the baggage of ‘common sense’ assumptions and understandings about industrial processes of con-

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tent production which we have developed over the past century. Industrial modes of production, from this point of view, provide only one possible paradigm for the development of products, and ‘products’ themselves are only one possible configuration of information, knowledge, and creative work—and not necessarily the most appropriate such configuration in the emerging context of the information age.

Terminology itself, then, is part of the problem: the very term ‘product’ necessarily implies a specific form of outcome, a process of reaching that outcome, and a set of likely consumer interactions with that outcome. Microsoft Windows, to pick just one example, is clearly a product (if at its core an informational one), has been developed following an industrial process of production, and is offered to the consumer to use, but not to extend and contribute to; it is less clear, on the other hand, whether the same can truthfully be said about open source software such as the Linux operating system or the Firefox Web browser, even though they can be used as substitutes for comparable closed-source products.

To overcome the terminological dilemma which faces us as we attempt to examine processes of user-led content creation, we must introduce new terms into the debate. The concept of produsage is such a term: it highlights that within the communities which engage in the collaborative creation and extension of information and knowledge that we examine in this book, the role of ‘consumer’ and even that of ‘end user’ have long disappeared, and the distinctions between producers and users of content have faded into comparative insignificance. In many of the spaces we encounter here, users are always already necessarily also producers of the shared knowledge base, regardless of whether they are aware of this role—they have become a new, hybrid, produser.

Produsage in Context Produsage exists within a wider context of new and emerging concepts for describing the social, technological, and economic environment of user-led content creation. In particular, two terms have been used widely (and sometimes all too liberally) to describe the technological and technosocial frameworks for produsage communities: Web 2.0, and social software.

Coates provides a useful definition of social software: Social software is a particular sub-class of software-prosthesis that concerns itself with the augmentation of human, social and / or collaborative abilities through structured mediation (this mediation may be distributed or centralised, top-down or bottomup/emergent).1

Many of the collaborative spaces provided by social software have become environments for produsage, as we see throughout this book; social software alone— understood, in line with Coates, as a prosthesis for human collaboration—cannot in itself guarantee the rise of produsage as an alternative to production, however. What it

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does offer, then, is a toolkit to support the produsage processes and principles which we encounter in greater detail in the following chapters:

it removes “the real-world limitations placed on social and / or collaborative behaviour by factors such as language, geography, background, financial status, etc.” by providing the tools for widespread, equitable collaboration across large communities of users; it compensates “for human inadequacies in processing, maintaining or developing social and / or collaborative mechanisms,” especially also as they relate to the limitations imposed by geography, by providing tools and mechanisms for the development and maintenance of collaborative networks which can be organized and reconfigured ad hoc as required by the task at hand; it creates “environments or distributed tool-sets that pull useful end results out of human social and / or collaborative behaviour” by providing the means of filtering and evaluating collaborative processes and outputs and thereby harnessing and harvesting the most successful teams and content contributions.2

These affordances of social software speak directly to the core principles of produsage as we outline them in the following chapter; indeed, the technological characteristics of social software have emerged in parallel to and under mutual feedback with the social, organizational, and intellectual characteristics of produsage as we will soon encounter them.

Closely aligned to this understanding of social software as the technology to support and enable sociality and collaboration is the concept of Web 2.0, which highlights specifically the implications of such socially based content creation for the economic world. The term Web 2.0—which, it should be noted, has also been frequently criticized for its implication of a revolutionary new stage in Internet development, rather than portraying it as a gradual shift as may be more accurate—was introduced by Tim O’Reilly, who provides a useful definition: Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.3

Among these rules are the following: 1.

2.

3.

Don’t treat software as an artifact, but as a process of engagement with your users. (“The perpetual beta”) Open your data and services for re-use by others, and re-use the data and services of others whenever possible. (“Small pieces loosely joined”) Don’t think of applications that reside on either client or server, but build applications that reside in the space between devices. (“Software above the level of a single device”)4

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Although there has been significant debate about the concept of Web 2.0 and the many other derivative ‘2.0’ concepts it has spawned, focusing largely on the fact that many such terms can be seen as a blatant attempt by incumbent corporate players to cash in on the rise of collaborative content creation without embracing the core principles outlined by O’Reilly and others, the buzzword status of Web 2.0 and similar terms also indicates the significant commercial and industrial attention now paid to the new models of community and content development now emerging from the realm of social software. As we see throughout this book, the environments of what we will describe as produsage now often offer credible alternatives to and sustained competition for established industries and their products. For many corporate players who have found it impossible to contain the rise of such alternatives, the question has now shifted from containment to engagement—what models are available for them to harvest the content created by these communities, and to harness the communities themselves for their own purposes; what new business opportunities lie in helping rather than hindering the creation and distribution of content created within such communities? We return to examine such questions throughout this book.

In addition to the technological and commercial recognition of produsage as a major driver of change in these contexts, recent years have also seen an increasing popular attention on produsage environments—especially, perhaps, on some of its most visible proponents, such as blogs, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Time Magazine, for example, broke with tradition to make ‘you’—that is, all of us who participate in collaborative content creation environments—its ‘Person of the Year’ in 2006, while in the same year, Advertising Age also named the consumer as ‘Advertising Agency of the Year,’ recognizing the impact of user-led knowledge sharing on consumption patterns.

In a similar vein, Trendwatching (a key observer of new trends in corporate/user engagement) even suggests that an entire new ‘Generation C’ has emerged, creating “an avalanche of consumer generated ‘content’ that is building on the Web, adding tera-peta bytes of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis.”5 Generation C should not be misunderstood as a strictly generationally bounded grouping, of course—it is defined by attitude and aptitude, that is, by the interest and ability to participate in the online communities of produsage, more than by the age or background of participants: Trendwatching suggests that “anyone with even a tiny amount of creative talent can (and probably will) be part of this not-so-exclusive trend.”6 For Trendwatching, the ‘C’ in Generation C stands for ‘content’ only in the first place; additional themes include “Creativity, Casual Collapse, Control, and Celebrity.”7 This returns us to wider economic and legal questions which the emergence of produsage as an alternative model to production raises: does the user-led, collaborative, and at least initially often non-profit model of produsage spell the ‘casual collapse’ of traditional content and copyright industries, as well as of other entities traditionally charged with the accumulation and dissemination of information, knowledge, and creative works (including journalism, educational institutions, and the mass media)? Who owns and controls the vast communal information and knowledge

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resources which have already been created by produser communities, and are further extended in a continuous process; how do such content repositories relate to the realm of copyrighted content, and how reliant are they on appropriating, incorporating, remixing, and mashing up materials which they have no permission to use? Who are the leaders and emerging celebrities of these new communities, and what opportunity is there for them to build sustainable careers from their participation in produsage, either within the realm of produsage itself, or by transitioning into the more conventional production industries? Is there, indeed, the space for a stance of seasoned produsers as bridges between produsage and production, perhaps along the lines outlined by Leadbeater and Miller: they suggest that “in the last two decades a new breed of amateur has emerged: the Pro-Am, amateurs who work to professional standards. … The Pro-Ams are knowledgeable, educated, committed and networked, by new technology.”8 We highlight and explore such questions throughout the book.

The concept of produsage is intended as a means of connecting such developments in the cultural, social, commercial, intellectual, economic, and societal realms.

The task at hand is to synthesize the various available approaches to examining what happens in commons-based peer production, social software, Web 2.0, and related environments, to move beyond the commonplace assumptions associated with traditional concepts of producers, products, and production, and to develop a systematic understanding of the processes, principles, and participants of produsage.

This book will necessarily serve only as a first contribution to that task. Produsage itself continues to evolve, both on the level of specific produsage projects and environments and on the broader level of harnessing community collaboration in the service of new aims and goals, and it is likely that some of the specific projects discussed here will have been superseded by new developments even six or twelve months from now. But whether we are still speaking of MySpace, YouTube, or OurMedia at that point, or whether they have been replaced by ever more intricately designed, outlandishly named successors, the phenomenon of produsage itself as abstracted beyond its specific sites is likely to continue and develop, and we have much to learn both from success and from failure. The principles of produsage as we outline them in Chapter 2 are likely to remain prevalent for the foreseeable future, and a key task of research in this area is to investigate how best to build on these principles in order to create strong and sustainable produsage communities and projects.

It also remains possible, of course, that the continuing tendency towards harvesting the outputs of produsage communities for commercial gain, or towards hijacking the communities themselves by locking them into corporate-controlled environments, combined with stronger enforcement of commercial copyrights, will serve to fundamentally undermine participant enthusiasm for taking place in produsage projects.

Recent experience in related fields suggests that ostensibly anti-community efforts tend not to have the intended effect, however, but instead simply serve to drive communities further out of the reach of corporate intervention; this, certainly, is the lesson now grudgingly learnt by the music industry, and slowly dawning on the movie and televi-

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sion industries. By contrast, a more benign corporate embrace may produce benefits to both industry and community, as the contrasting community reactions to the closure of Napster and the establishment of iTunes indicate. Positive commercial take-up of produsage ideas and principles will similarly help to accelerate trends while maintaining industry sustainability; negative efforts to undermine produsage, on the other hand, may also accelerate the prevailing trend towards produsage, but for very different reasons.

At any rate, the rapid speed of change in online information, knowledge, and creative work which is described by produsage serves to indicate the magnitude of the continuing paradigm shift which we are currently experiencing. Written in the midst of this paradigm shift, not all the observations made in this book may be agreeable to all readers, and not all the projects highlighted here as key examples for produsage may ultimately prove to be successful and influential, despite their ability to generate significant early enthusiasm. However, as Alvin Toffler noted at the dawn of the Information Age, in writing his 1970 book Future Shock: “in dealing with the future, at least for the purposes at hand, it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be one hundred percent ‘right.’ Theories do not have to be ‘right’ to be enormously useful.”9 The concept and theory of produsage which is introduced in this book, I hope, will prove a useful tool to understand and describe the present shift away from industrial modes of production and towards collaborative, user-led content creation. In keeping with the core principles of produsage itself, where knowledge remains always in the process of development, and where information remains always unfinished, extensible, and evolving, this book is intended as the starting-point, not the closing statement, in a conversation about produsage and its implications; it should not be read as providing a final definition of produsage and its processes that must remain fixed in stone (or at least in ink on paper) forever.

That said, I realize the irony of offering this opening statement of an ongoing conversation about produsage in a form which epitomizes the very model of traditional, industrial production which produsage so thoroughly departs from—in the form of a printed book. The book format is also a useful indication, however, that, for all the enthusiasm about produsage and related forms of user-led content creation, the process of establishing produsage as a credible and reliable alternative for industrial production has only just begun; the final balance between production and produsage (none is likely to replace the other entirely, of course) remains yet to be determined.

Although this book emerges from traditional industrial models of research and publishing, I would very much like to invite interested readers to continue the conversation about produsage through the means of produsage itself—both in direct engagement with me, for example through my Website and research blog at snurb.info, and on a wider scale through the appropriate environments of collaborative knowledge management: see, for example, if there’s a Wikipedia entry on “produsage” in your language yet…

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NOTES 1. Tom Coates, “My Working Definition of Social Software…,” Plasticbag.org, 8 May 2003, http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2003/05/my_working_definition_of_social_software/ (accessed 25 Feb. 2007), n.p.

2. Coates, n.p.

3. Tim O’Reilly, “Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again,” O’Reilly Radar, 10 Dec. 2006, http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web_20_compact.html (accessed 12 July 2007), n.p.

4. O’Reilly, n.p.

5. Trendwatching.com, “Generation C,” 2005, http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/ GENERATION_C.htm (accessed 18 Feb. 2007), n.p.

6. Trendwatching.com, n.p.

7. Trendwatching.com, n.p.

8. Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller, “The Pro-Am Revolution: How Enthusiasts Are Changing Our Economy and Society,” Demos 2004, http://www.demos.co.uk/publications /proameconomy/ (accessed 25 Jan. 2007), p. 12.

9. Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 7.

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OECD (2007). Participative web and user-created content: Web2.0, wikis and social networking.Ch.2-5, p.1751. http://browse.oecdbookshop.org /oecd/pdfs/ browseit/9307031E.PDF van Dijck, J. (2009). Users like you? Theorizing agency in usergenerated content. Media Culture Society, 31(1), 41-58.

Kim, J. (2012). The institutionalization of YouTube: From usergenerated content to professionally generated content.

Media Culture Society, 34(1), 53-67.

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Participative Web and User-Created Content

WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

This study describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in worldwide communication, and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content?

What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are the new value chains and business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts?

What are the associated challenges? Is there a government role, and what form could it take?

About the authors: Graham Vickery is Head of the Information Economy Group, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD. He has published extensively on the information economy, technology strategies, sector developments and government policies, and directs the bi-annual OECD Information Technology Outlook and OECD work on digital content.

Sacha Wunsch-Vincent is a Policy Analyst in the Information Economy Group, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD. He has authored recent OECD studies on digital content, China and information technologies and e-business developments, as well as on the Internet and trade in digital products and cross-border electronic services.

The full text of this book is available on line via this link: www.sourceoecd.org/scienceIT/9789264037465 Those with access to all OECD books on line should use this link: www.sourceoecd.org/9789264037465 SourceOECD is the OECD’s online library of books, periodicals and statistical databases.

For more information about this award-winning service and free trials ask your librarian, or write to us at SourceOECD@oecd.org.

ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 93 2007 03 1 P

www.oecd.org/publishing

-:HSTCQE=UX\Y[Z:

Participative Web and User-Created Content WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

The Internet is becoming increasingly embedded in everyday life. Drawing on an expanding array of intelligent web services and applications, a growing number of people are creating, distributing and exploiting user-created content (UCC) and being part of the wider participative web.

WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING RNET S INTE

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ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT The OECD is a unique forum where the governments of 30 democracies work together to address the economic, social and environmental challenges of globalisation.

The OECD is also at the forefront of efforts to understand and to help governments respond to new developments and concerns, such as corporate governance, the information economy and the challenges of an ageing population. The Organisation provides a setting where governments can compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and work to co-ordinate domestic and international policies.

The OECD member countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Commission of the European Communities takes part in the work of the OECD. OECD Publishing disseminates widely the results of the Organisation’s statistics gathering and research on economic, social and environmental issues, as well as the conventions, guidelines and standards agreed by its members.

This work is published on the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Organisation or of the governments of its member countries.

Corrigenda to OECD publications may be found on line at: www.oecd.org/publishing/corrigenda.

© OECD 2007 No reproduction, copy, transmission or translation of this publication may be made without written permission.

Applications should be sent to OECD Publishing rights@oecd.org or by fax 33 1 45 24 99 30. Permission to photocopy a portion of this work should be addressed to the Centre français d’exploitation du droit de copie (CFC), 20, rue des Grands-Augustins, 75006 Paris, France, fax 33 1 46 34 67 19, contact@cfcopies.com or (for US only) to Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA, fax 1 978 646 8600, info@copyright.com.

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FOREWORD –

Foreword This report is one of a series on digital broadband content prepared since 2005, focusing on changing value chains and developing business models and the implications for policy. The series is part of ongoing OECD analysis of the digital economy and information and communications policy. The report was drafted by Sacha Wunsch-Vincent and Graham Vickery of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry as part of the digital content series under the overall direction of Graham Vickery (Head, Information Economy Group).

The report was presented to the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy (WPIE) in December 2006, and in March 2007 the Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy recommended that the report be made available to the general public. The authors are grateful for the contribution of national delegations that provided information and commented on the draft. Other documents in the series cover scientific publishing, music, on-line computer games, mobile content, and public sector information and content (all available at www.oecd.org/sti/digitalcontent), and further reports are forthcoming on film and video and on-line advertising. Some of these reports are also summarised in the OECD Information Technology Outlook 2006 (see www.oecd.org/sti/ito) or are forthcoming in the next edition, to be published in 2008.

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Table of Contents Foreword............................................................................................................................3 Summary...........................................................................................................................9 Definition, measurement and drivers .............................................................................9 Emerging value chains and business models ...............................................................10 Economic impacts ........................................................................................................11 Social impacts ..............................................................................................................12 Opportunities and challenges .......................................................................................13 Chapter 1. Introduction.................................................................................................15 Chapter 2. Defining and Measuring the Participative Web and User-Created Content....................................................................................................17 Definition .....................................................................................................................17 Measurement ................................................................................................................19 Chapter 3. Drivers of User-Created Content ..............................................................27 Technological drivers...................................................................................................27 Social drivers................................................................................................................29 Economic drivers .........................................................................................................29 Institutional and legal drivers.......................................................................................30 Chapter 4. Types of User-Created Content and Distribution Platforms ..................31 UCC types ....................................................................................................................34 Text...........................................................................................................................34 Photos and images ....................................................................................................34 Music and audio .......................................................................................................34 Video and film..........................................................................................................35 User-created content posted on products and other interest areas ............................35

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6 – TABLE OF CONTENTS UCC platforms .............................................................................................................36 Blogs.........................................................................................................................36 Wikis and other text-based collaboration formats ....................................................37 Group-based aggregation and social bookmarking ..................................................37 Podcasting ................................................................................................................37 Social networking sites.............................................................................................38 Virtual world content................................................................................................38 Chapter 5. Emerging Value Chains and Business Models .........................................41 The emerging value and publishing chain of user-created content ..............................41 Monetisation of user-created content and new business models ..............................45 Chapter 6. Economic and Social Impacts ....................................................................53 Economic impacts ........................................................................................................53 Consumer electronics, ICT hardware, software, network service and platforms .....55 Users/creators ...........................................................................................................56 Traditional media .....................................................................................................57 Professional content creators....................................................................................61 Search engines and advertising ................................................................................61 Services that capitalise on UCC ...............................................................................62 Marketing and brands...............................................................................................62 Use of UCC and participative web tools in business................................................63 Social impacts ..............................................................................................................63 Increased user autonomy, participation and communication ...................................64 Cultural impacts .......................................................................................................64 Citizenship engagement and politics ........................................................................65 Educational and information impact.........................................................................67 Impact on ICT and other skills .................................................................................68 Social and legal challenges.......................................................................................68 Chapter 7. Opportunities and Challenges for Users, Business and Policy ...............71 Enhancing R&D, innovation and technology...............................................................72 R&D and innovation ................................................................................................72 Ensuring technological and other spillovers.............................................................73 Creative environments, skills, education and training..............................................73 Fostering local and diverse content ..........................................................................73 Developing competitive, non-discriminatory policy frameworks................................74 Enhancing the infrastructure ........................................................................................75 Broadband access .....................................................................................................75 Convergence and regulation .....................................................................................76 Regulatory environment...............................................................................................77 Intellectual property rights and user-created content................................................77 Digital rights management .......................................................................................88 PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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Freedom of expression .............................................................................................90 Information and content quality ...............................................................................90 Mature, inappropriate, and illegal content................................................................92 Safety on the Internet and awareness raising............................................................94 Privacy and identity theft..........................................................................................95 Impacts of intensive Internet use..............................................................................96 Network security and spam ......................................................................................97 Virtual worlds, property rights and taxation.............................................................98 Governments as producers and users of content.......................................................99 Conceptualisation, classification and measurement .....................................................99 Annex.............................................................................................................................101 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................107 Notes ..............................................................................................................................115

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SUMMARY The concept of the “participative web” is based on an Internet increasingly influenced by intelligent web services that empower users to contribute to developing, rating, collaborating and distributing Internet content and customising Internet applications. As the Internet is more embedded in people’s lives users draw on new Internet applications to express themselves through “user-created content” (UCC).

This study describes the rapid growth of UCC, its increasing role in worldwide communication and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are new value chains and business models?

What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts? What are associated challenges? Is there a government role and what form could it take?

Definition, measurement and drivers There is no widely accepted definition of user-created content and measuring its social, cultural and economic impacts are in the early stages.

In this study UCC is defined as: i) content made publicly available over the Internet, ii) which reflects a certain amount of creative effort, and iii) which is created outside of professional routines and practices. Based on this definition a taxonomy of UCC types and hosting platforms is presented.

While the measurement of UCC is in its infancy, available data show that broadband users produce and share content at a high rate, and this is particularly high for younger age groups (e.g. 50% of Korean Internet users report having a homepage and/or a blog). Given strong network effects a small number of platforms draw large amounts of traffic, and online video sites and social networking sites are becoming to be the most popular websites worldwide.

The study also identifies: technological drivers (e.g. more wide-spread broadband uptake, new web technologies), social drivers (e.g. demographic factors, attitudes towards privacy), economic drivers (e.g. increased commercial involvement of Internet and media firms in hosting UCC) and legal drivers (e.g. the rise of more flexible licensing schemes).

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10 – SUMMARY Emerging value chains and business models Most user-created content activity is undertaken with no expectation of remuneration or profit. Motivating factors include connecting with peers, self-expression, and achieving a certain level of fame, notoriety or prestige.

Defining an economic value chain for UCC as in the other OECD digital content studies is thus more difficult.

From a creator’s point of view, the traditional media publishing value chain depends on various entities selecting, developing and distributing the creator’s work often at great expense. Technical and content quality is guaranteed through the choice of the traditional media “gatekeepers”.

Compared to the potential supply, only a few works are distributed, for example, via television or other media.

In the UCC value chain, content is directly created and posted for or on UCC platforms using devices (e.g. digital cameras), software (video editing tools), UCC platforms and an Internet access provider. There are many active creators and a large supply of content that attract viewers, although of potentially lower or more diverse quality. Users are also inspired by, and build on, existing works as in the traditional media chain. Users select what does and does not work, for example, through recommending and rating, possibly leading to recognition of creators who would not be selected by traditional media publishers.

Most UCC sites have been start-ups or non-commercial ventures of enthusiasts, but commercial firms are now playing an increasing role in supporting, hosting, searching, aggregating, filtering and diffusing UCC. Most models are still in flux and revenue generation for content creators or commercial firms (e.g. media companies) is only now beginning. Different UCC types (e.g. blogs, video content) have different although similar approaches to monetising UCC. There are five basic models: i) voluntary contributions; ii) charging viewers for services, e.g. pay-per-item or subscription models, including bundling with existing subscriptions; iii) advertising-based models; iv) licensing of content and technology to third parties; and v) selling goods and services to the community (“monetising the audience via online sales”). These models can also remunerate creators, either by sharing revenues or by direct payments from other users.

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Economic impacts User-created content is already an important economic phenomenon despite it originally being largely non-commercial. The spread of UCC and the amount of attention devoted to it by users appears to be a significant disruptive force for how content is created and consumed and for traditional content suppliers. This disruption creates both opportunities and challenges for established market participants and their strategies.

The more immediate economic impacts in terms of growth, entry of new firms and employment are currently with ICT goods and services providers and newly forming UCC platforms. New digital content innovations seem to be more based on decentralised creativity, organisational innovation and new value-added models, which favour new entrants, and less on traditional scale advantages and large start-up investments. Search engines, portals and aggregators are also experimenting with business models that are often based on online advertisement and marketing. On social networking sites and in virtual worlds, for example, brands increasingly create special subsites, and new forms of advertising are emerging.

The shift to Internet-based media is only beginning to affect content publishers and broadcasters. At the outset, UCC may have been seen as competition as: i) users may create and watch UCC at the expense of traditional media, reducing advertising revenues; ii) users become more selective in their media consumption (especially younger age groups); iii) some UCC platforms host unauthorised content from media publishers.

However, some traditional media organisations have shifted from creating on-line content to creating the facilities and frameworks for UCC creators to publish. They have also been making their websites and services more interactive through user comment and ratings and content diffusion. TV companies are also licensing content and extending on-air programmes and brands to UCC platforms.

There are also potentially growing impacts of UCC on independent or syndicated content producers. Professional photographers, graphic designers, free-lance journalists and similar professional categories providing pictures, news videos, articles or other content have started to face competition from freely provided amateur-created content.

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12 – SUMMARY Social impacts The creation of content by users is often perceived as having major social implications. The Internet as a new creative outlet has altered the economics of information production, increased the democratisation of media production and led to changes in the nature of communication and social relationships (sometimes referred to as the “rise - or return - of the amateurs”). Changes in the way users produce, distribute, access and re-use information, knowledge and entertainment potentially give rise to increased user autonomy, increased participation and increased diversity. These changes may result in lower entry barriers, distribution and user costs and greater diversity of works, as digital shelf space is almost limitless.

UCC can provide citizens, consumers and students with information and knowledge. Educational UCC content tends to be collaborative and encourage sharing and joint production of information, ideas, opinions and knowledge, for example building on participative web technologies to improve the quality and extend the reach of education. Discussion fora and product reviews can lead to more informed user and consumer decisions (e.g. fora on health-related questions, book reviews).

The cultural impacts of this social phenomenon are also far-reaching.

“Long tail” economics (the potential to distribute small quantities of products cheaply) allows a substantial increase in, and a more diverse array of, cultural content to find niche users. UCC can also be an open platform enriching political and societal debates and increasing diversity of opinion, the free flow of information and freedom of expression. Transparency and “watchdog” functions may be enhanced by decentralised approaches to content creation. Citizen journalism, for example, allows users to correct, influence or create news, potentially on similar terms to newspapers or other large entities. Furthermore, blogs, social networking sites and virtual worlds can be used for engaging electors, exchanging views, provoking debate and sharing information on societal and political questions.

Challenges related to exclusion, cultural fragmentation, content quality and security and privacy have been raised. A greater divide between digitally literate users and others may occur and cultural fragmentation may take place with greater individualisation of the cultural environment. Other challenges relate to information accuracy and quality (including inappropriate or illegal content) when everybody can contribute without detailed checks and balances. Other issues relate to privacy, safety on the Internet and possibly adverse impacts of intensive Internet use.

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Opportunities and challenges The rapid rise of UCC is raising new questions for users, business and policymakers. Digital content policy issues are grouped under six headings: i) enhancing R&D, innovation and technology; ii) developing a competitive, non-discriminatory policy framework; iii) enhancing the infrastructure; iv) shaping business and regulatory environments; v) governments as producers and users of content and vi) better measurement. Governments as producers and users are treated in more detail in separate work.

Apart from standard issues such as ensuring wide-spread broadband access and innovation, new questions emerge concerning whether and how governments should support UCC. The maintenance of pro-competitive markets is particularly important with increased commercial activity combined with strong network effects and potential for lock-in. UCC is also testing existing regulatory arrangements and the separation of broadcasting and telecommunications regulations. With the emergence of increasingly advertising-based business models and unsolicited e-mail and marketing messages, rules on advertising will play an important role in the UCC environment (e.g. product placements, advertising to children).

In the regulatory environment important questions relate to intellectual property rights and UCC: how to define “fair use” and other copyright exceptions, what are the effects of copyright on new sources of creativity, and how does IPR shape the coexistence of market and non-market creation and distribution of content. In addition, there are questions concerning the copyright liability of UCC platforms hosting potentially unauthorised content, and the impacts of digital rights management.

Other issues include: i) how to preserve the freedom of expression made possible by UCC; ii) information and content quality/accuracy and tools to improve these; iii) adult, inappropriate, and illegal content and selfregulatory (e.g. community standards) or technical solutions (e.g. filtering software); iv) safety on the “anonymous” Internet; v) dealing with new issues surrounding privacy and identity theft, vi) monitoring the impacts of intensive Internet use; vii) network security and spam, and viii) regulatory questions dealing with virtual worlds (taxation, competition etc.). Finally, new statistics and indicators are urgently needed to inform policy.

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Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Wider participation in creating, distributing, accessing and using digital content is being driven by rapidly diffusing broadband access and easy-touse software tools. Initial analysis of the participative web was published in the Information Technology Outlook 2006,1 and heightened awareness of the growth and potential impacts of user-created content was a major outcome of the international conference on The Future Digital Economy: Digital Content Creation, Distribution and Access organised in Rome by the OECD and the Italian Minister for Innovation and Technologies in January 2006.2 As the Rome Digital Content conference progressed it became increasingly clear that the Internet is not only embedded in people’s lives but that with the rise of a more “participative web” its impacts on all aspects of economic and social organisation are expanding (OECD, 2006a, 2006b).

The conference increasingly focused on new “user” activities, where users draw on new Internet applications to create content and express themselves through “user-created content” and a more pro-active, collaborative role in content creation, distribution and use. More active users, consumers and user-centred innovation were seen to have increasing economic impacts and social importance. New forms of content creation and distribution are spurring new business models and are beginning to bypass, intersect with, and create new opportunities for, traditional media and content-related industries and access routes.

This study further expands published OECD work, exploring the development, rise and impacts of user-created content (UCC) in greater detail, and drawing out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its key drivers, its scope and what different forms does it take? What are new value chains and business models? What is the extent of its economic, social and cultural impacts?

What are associated challenges? Is there a government role and, if there is, what form could it take?

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16 – 1. INTRODUCTION The analysis in this report is divided into six main parts. The first part defines user-created content. The second and third parts identify the key drivers of UCC and provide a broad overview of various UCC types and related distribution platforms. The fourth part analyses associated “value” chains and new business models while the fifth part examines economic and social impacts. The final part analyses opportunities and challenges for users, business and government policy.

The development of user-created content is very recent and as general trends, impacts and related policies are still evolving, some questions raised in this report cannot be answered fully.

While open source software is often included as part of the participative web, it is not included in this analysis. However, in terms of economic and social impacts, the large-scale collaborative development and use of opensource software merits a great deal of further attention and analysis.

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Chapter 2 DEFINING AND MEASURING THE PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT Definition The use of the Internet is characterised by increased participation and interaction of users to create, express themselves and communicate. The “participative web” is the most common term and underlying concept used to describe the more extensive use of the Internet’s capabilities to expand creativity and communication. It is based on intelligent web services and new Internet-based software applications that enable users to collaborate and contribute to developing, extending, rating, commenting on and distributing digital content and developing and customising Internet applications (O’Reilly, 2002, 2005; MIC, 2006; OECD, 2006a, 2006b). New web software tools enable commercial and non-commercial service providers to draw on an ever-widening array of content sources and what is often called the “collective intelligence” of Internet users, to use information on the web in the form of data, metadata and user resources, and to create links between them. A further characteristic of the participative web is the communication between users and between separate software applications via open web standards and interfaces.

The rise of user-created content (UCC) (French: “contenu auto-créé”) or the so-called “rise of the amateur creators” is one of the main features of the participative web but the participative web is a wider concept.3 UCC comprises various forms of media and creative works (written, audio, visual, and combined) created by Internet and technology users. Despite frequent references to this subject no commonly agreed definition of user-created content exists.4 Also referred to as “user-generated” content, sources such as Wikipedia refer to it as “… various kinds of media content that are produced by end-users (as opposed to traditional media producers such as professional writers, publishers, journalists, licensed broadcasters and production companies)”.5

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18 – 2. DEFINING AND MEASURING THE PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT To have a more solid understanding of user-created content, three central characteristics are proposed below. These characteristics lay the ground for identifying a spectrum of UCC although they are likely to evolve over time.

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Publication requirement: A principle characteristic is that the work is published in some context, for example on a publicly accessible website or on a page on a social networking site only accessible to a select group of people (e.g. fellow university students), even though UCC could be made by a user and never published online or elsewhere. This characteristic excludes e-mail, two-way instant messages and the like.

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Creative effort: A certain amount of creative effort has to be put into creating the work or adapting existing works to construct a new one; i.e. users must add their own value to the work. UCC could include user uploads of original photographs, thoughts expressed in a blog or a new music video. The creative effort behind UCC may also be collaborative, for example on websites that users edit collaboratively. Merely copying a portion of a television show and posting it on an online video website (a frequent activity on UCC sites) would not be considered UCC. Nevertheless the minimum amount of creative effort is hard to define and depends on the context.

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Creation outside of professional routines and practises: User-created content is usually created outside of professional routines and practices.

It often does not have an institutional or commercial market context and UCC may be produced by non-professionals without expectation of remuneration or profit. Motivating factors include: connecting with peers, achieving fame, notoriety or prestige, and expressing oneself.

Although conceptually useful it has become harder to maintain the last UCC characteristic of creators not expecting remuneration or profit and creation being outside of professional routines. UCC may have begun as a grassroots movement not focused on monetary rewards, but monetisation of UCC has been a growing trend (see section on economic impacts below).

Established media and Internet businesses have increasingly acquired UCC platforms for commercial purposes. Some users are remunerated for their content and some become professionals after an initial phase of noncommercial activity. Some works are also created by professionals outside of their commercial activities (e.g. professional video editors creating a film at home). The term UCC may thus cover content creation by those who are much more than just “users”. Still, the creation of content outside of a professional routine and organisation and potentially not for reward is a useful characteristic to separate it from content produced by commercial or quasi-commercial entities for commercial purposes.

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Measurement Measuring UCC is not straightforward. A number of factors complicate measurement: the decentralised nature of UCC production (sampling frames and defining the universe to be measured), the same UCC content may be accessible on different sites (issue of double-counting), not all registered users of UCC platforms may be active (inactive accounts), users may set up multiple accounts at the same site (identification of unique users), and distinguishing between user-created and other content (such as the uploading of clips from copyrighted television shows). The third and fourth factors may lead UCC platforms to overestimate the number of currently active unique users.

Little official data is available from National Statistical Offices (NSOs) on the numbers of users creating content, the amount that exists, the numbers of users accessing such content and economic and social patterns emerging from such creation. NSOs have only recently started to include such questions in surveys (e.g. Canada, the European Union, Japan, Korea).

It will take some time before official national data is available for all OECD countries in an internationally comparable forum.

Existing data however show that broadband Internet users produce and share content at a high rate and do not merely consume it, and all data sources point to large intergenerational differences in web media usage and to considerable gender differences in usage.

Data available from national statistical surveys and the OECD show that the typical online behaviour of Internet users mainly consists of: searching, consulting general interest sites and portals, using Internet tools and web services such as e-mail, e-commerce, using sites from software manufacturers, consulting classifieds and participating in auctions, using broadcast media, and financial services (OECD, 2004a; OECD, 2005a).

Available data shows that content creation is a very popular activity among young age groups. As shown in Figure 2.1 for the European Union, statistical proxies that measure some aspects of UCC –- posting messages to chat rooms, newsgroups or forums, using peer-to-peer file sharing sites and creating a webpage –- are already very popular among Internet users.6 In Finland, Norway, Iceland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Hungary and Poland (in increasing order), around one third of all Internet users aged 16-74 were engaged in one of these activities in 2005, most commonly posting messages in all countries. One-fifth of all Internet users in a few OECD countries report having created a webpage. Younger age groups are more active Internet content creators. In Hungary, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Germany, Poland and Luxembourg (in increasing order), in 2005 between PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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Post messages to chat rooms, newsgroups or forums Use peer-to-peer file sharing Create a webpage

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l y k a m ry rg lic ay ds ce nd ge en nd nd nd ria ki ga ar an la la la la ga do st ou ra ub rw an ee tu ed m va l m o n e g u n r r b e p o i r r rI e n o w c n u P A e I F G e e N av S Po H Sl he R Ki em D G et ux 25 ch ed N L t e i z n EU C U

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Age group: 16-24 years

Figure 2.1a. User-created content creators in the EU as a % of Internet users, 2005

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Source: OECD based on Eurostat.

y k y d e al m rg ge and way and ria ar ar an ec an l ug bou st l do ra r t e m n u e m ng Pol g r r e o i n r c v o u n A I i F G N e e m a P H K D G xe d 25 Lu te U ni E U

Post messages to chat rooms, newsgroups or forums Use peer-to-peer file sharing Create a webpage

s a lic en nd ki nd la ub ed ova rl a w Ire l ep e S S h R et ch N ze C

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Age group: 16-74 years

Figure 2.1b. User-created content creators in the EU as a % of Internet users, 2005

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21

22 – 2. DEFINING AND MEASURING THE PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT from 55% to over 70% of Internet users aged 16-24 posted messages to chat rooms, newsgroups or forums. One quarter but sometimes half of all Internet users in some OECD countries in that age group have created a web page. In France, about 37% of teenagers have created a blog.7 In 2005, 13% of Europeans were “regularly contributing to blogs” and another 12% were “downloading podcasts at least once a month” (European Commission, 2006).

Over one-third of all US Internet users have posted content to the Internet (Table 2.1). For broadband users under the age of 30, 51% have placed content on the Internet, 25% have their own blogs, and 41% have posted content online they created themselves. 57% of teenagers in the United States have created content on the Internet as of late 2004 (Lenhart, 2005). Online social networking sites were used by more than one-half (55%) of all online Americans in the 12-17 age group (Lenhart and Madden, 2007). In general, girls seem to use social networking sites relatively more for communication, chat and other forms of socialising and exchange, but less for just viewing content, for example, on online video platforms.8 Table 2.1. User-created content in the United States, 2006

All Internet users (in %)

Broadband at home (in %)

Americans with home Internet access who do the activity in question (in millions)

Americans with Internet access only at places other than home or work (in millions)

Create or work on your own online journal or blog

8

11

9

2

Create or work on your own web page

14

17

18

2

Create or work on web pages or blogs for others including friends, groups belonged to, or workmates

13

16

16

2

Share something online that you created yourself, such as your own artwork, photos, stories or videos

26

32

32

4

Percentage having performed at least one of the above “content” activities

35

42

43

5

Source: OECD based on PEW Internet & American Life Project, December 2005 survey.

Note: Margin of error for Internet users is +/- 2%. See also the presentation of John B. Horrigan (Pew Internet & American Life Project) to the OECD.9

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Official data from Asian countries show similar user behaviour. Data for Japan show that blogs and social networking sites (SNS) have substantially increased the amount of information available on the Internet (MIC, 2006).

At the end of March 2006, 8.7 million Japanese were registered as bloggers, and 7.2 million as SNS members (see Figure 2.2). About one quarter of Japanese Internet users over 12 years of age have experience in finding friends/acquaintances through the Internet and close to one fifth have had exchanges with people they did not previously know. The 20-30 age group has the most experience in finding friends and acquaintances online, with women more active than men. Of those with experience in such online exchanges, almost 50% subsequently met their online acquaintances offline.10 A recent Korean Internet use survey shows that about 50% of Korean Internet users use the Internet for managing homepages and/or blogs. In China, around 43% of all Internet users use electronic bulletin boards, online communities and fora and instant messengers and 24% use a blog (CNNIC, 2006).

Figure 2.2. Number of registered blog and social networking site users in Japan, in millions

Blogs 10 8 6 4 2 0

Social networking sites 8.70 7.20 4.70 4.00

3.35 1.10 Mar. 2005

Sept. 2005

Mar. 2006

Source: U-Japan presentation at www.apectel34.org.nz/uploads/061016%20Kondo.pdf.

New measurement tools which track Internet audience and traffic provide insights into the development of UCC. Private data providers are tracking millions of users and their Internet activity anonymously (large sample sizes with real-time flow of information and no need to gather data via surveys) and knowledge about Internet usage is growing rapidly. Firms which measure Internet traffic such as Hitwise, comScore or Nielsen NetRating show the increasing attraction of sites hosting UCC.11 For instance, during 2006 the five UCC sites that ranked in the top 50 sites in the PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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24 – 2. DEFINING AND MEASURING THE PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT United Kingdom (measured by total visitors that month) — Wikipedia, MySpace, Piczo, YouTube and Bebo — generated an average of 4.2 usage days and 79.9 minutes per visitor, according to comScore. By comparison, sites in the top 50 that were not based on UCC saw far less frequent usage days and times.

These UCC sites have also experienced significant traffic growth.

According to Internet traffic data of Alexa, YouTube continues to grow and the online video site is now ranked the number four web site in the world behind only Yahoo, MSN and Google itself.12 A study by Nielsen NetRating shows that in the United Kingdom UCC platforms for photo sharing, video sharing and blogging are among the fastest growing Web sites. In the US, UCC sites comprised five out of the top 10 fastest growing web sites in July 2006. Among the top 10 web sites overall, MySpace was the No. 1 fastest growing, increasing to 46 million unique visitors in July 2006 (see Table 2.2). In countries such as Korea, UCC has contributed to reinvigorating the growth of some web sites. Given the strong network effects which are a characteristic of UCC sites, a small number of platforms draw large amounts of traffic (i.e. a high concentration of users on only a few platforms).

Internet measurement services created to measure the size of particular content types (such as Technorati for blogs) and data from the sites hosting UCC, also point to this fast growth. Popular video sharing sites, for instance, serve more than one million videos every day and more than 50 000 videos are uploaded every day. Anecdotal evidence shows that certain videos are shared widely, some being viewed by more than 1 million persons in a relatively short time (often referred to as a “viral” spread of content). Often the content being watched is created by friends, families, etc. Surveys claim that 62% of online content viewed by 21-year-olds is generated by someone they know.13 Finally, figures show that there are at least 200 million pieces of content on the Internet that are under various Creative Commons licences (as counted by the number of “link-backs” to these licences on the Internet as tracked by Google).

All of these official and unofficial data show the rapid rise and increasing use of user-created content.

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104

105

Online music platform including for emerging artists

Online gambling site

Social network site

Online community project

Partypoker. com

MySpace

Wikipedia

29.2

46

6

3.2

6.3

3

7.7

9.7

3.7

6.4

Number of unique visitors (in millions)

181

183

184

185

201

213

233

234

241

394

% growth of unique users from July 2005 to July 2006

25

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Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, July 2006, www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/PR_060810.PDF. Shading indicates sites relevant to UCC. The term unique visitor refers to a person who visits a website more than once within a specified period of time.

Photo sharing site

Video sharing site

Heavy.com

ARTIST Direct

Image hosting site

ImageShack

Flickr

Provider of digital media software

Press agency

Associated Press

Bank

HSBC

Sonic Solutions

Type of Internet service

Firm

Table 2.2. Fastest growing web sites among US at-home and at-work Internet users, July 2006

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Chapter 3 DRIVERS OF USER-CREATED CONTENT There a range of technological, social, economic and institutional drivers of user-created content accounting for its rapid growth and pervasiveness.

These are summarised below and in Box 3.1.

Technological drivers First, the rapid uptake of broadband by households from the late 1990s has increasingly enabled users to create, post and download content. The limitations of dialup connections meant that user content creation was largely restricted to text and simple, low quality graphics. However, with high speed connections, users could quickly create and upload ever-larger media files. The ease of creation, uploading and downloading will amplify as fibre to the home/premises becomes widespread,14 as high-speed wireless broadband becomes available and as newer-generation ubiquitous networks spread.

Second, there have been large increases in processing speeds, hard drive and flash memory capacities and consumer electronics capabilities (high quality digital cameras, digital video recorders and mobile phones) to create content, while their price/performance ratios have decreased sharply. New mobile phone platforms with High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) and higher uplink data transmission speeds will further enable users to send and receive mobile phone clips and pictures at higher speeds.

Third, more accessible software tools, such as html-generating software, and software which enables users to find, edit and create audio and video without professional knowledge are another driving force. Because UCC is posted widely on the Internet, the challenge of locating, distributing, and assessing the quality of the content has spurred other new technologies which facilitate tagging (i.e. the association of particular keywords with related content), podcasting, group rating and aggregation, recommendations, content distribution (e.g. Really Simple Syndication, RSS, feeds which ensure that users automatically receive new posts and updates and filesharing software), and technologies for interactive web applications, PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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28 – 3. DRIVERS OF USER-CREATED CONTENT filtering and feeding such as Ajax, RSS, Atom and other content management systems necessary for blogs, wikis and other content (see Annex Box 1 and OECD, 2006a).

Box 3.1. Drivers of user-created content Technological drivers Increased broadband availability Increased hard drive capacity and processing speeds coupled with lower costs Decrease in cost and increase in quality of consumer technology devices for audio, photo, and video Availability of technologies to create, distribute, and share content Development of simpler software tools for creating, editing, and remixing Rise of non-professional and professional UCC sites as outlets Social drivers Shift to younger age groups (“digital natives”) with substantial ICT skills, willingness to engage online (i.e. sharing content, recommending and rating content, etc.) and less hesitant to reveal personal information online Desire to create and express oneself and search for more interactivity than on traditional media platforms such as TV Development of communities and collaborative projects Spread of social drivers to older age groups and for societal functions (social engagement, politics and education) Economic drivers Lower costs and increased availability of tools for the creation of UCC (e.g. for creating, editing, hosting content) and lower entry barriers Lower cost of broadband Internet connections for providers and users Increased commercial interest in user-created content and “long tail” economics (including mobile operators, telecommunication service providers, traditional media publishers and search engines) Increased possibilities to finance UCC-related ventures and sites through venture capital and other investment vehicles Greater availability of advertising and new business models to monetise content Institutional and legal drivers Rise of schemes which provide more flexible access to creative works and the right to create derivative works — (e.g. flexible licensing and copyright schemes such as the Creative Commons licence)15 Rise of end-user licensing agreements which grant copyright to users for their content.

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Finally, the rise of sites and services hosting UCC was a necessary driver as not every user has available server space or the technical skills to post and distribute their work. As the quality of cameras and video capabilities on phones grows and as phone networks are increasingly integrated with the Internet, mobile content (e.g. mobile blogging) is spreading more widely, and depends on new mobile services. New video platforms that feature UCC such as IPTV services (e.g. transmission of TV programming over broadband using peer-to-peer technology and technologies allowing high-resolution broadband video transmission), and video game consoles geared to UCC will provide additional impetus.

Social drivers Increased use of broadband, greater on-line interactivity and the willingness to share, contribute and create online communities are changing media consumption habits of Internet users, in particular younger age groups. Social factors are likely to be one of the most important drivers of change. UCC is only starting to move mainstream, with initially a limited number of young, male early adopters and highly ICT-skilled persons using the Internet in this way. According to surveys, almost three-quarters of people who publish amateur video content online are under 25, and of those, 86% are male.16 Overall, user-created video is viewed by a large number of people but created by only a few.

Economic drivers There is also increased interest in monetising UCC. Media companies, the communications industry (in particular mobile operators), and other commercial operators have identified the potential of UCC and are investing substantially in new and established UCC ventures. Slow-downs in revenues due to decreased interest in traditional media and the desire to cater to the so-called “long tail” (the potential to distribute small quantities of products cheaply) have been important driving factors (Anderson, 2004). This interest is also reflected in the growing amount of private and corporate financing and venture capital available for investment in UCC related sites and services. In the United States, for example, venture capital funding related to the participative web Internet technologies were estimated to have increased by more than 40% from the third quarter of 2005 to the third quarter of 2006, and venture capital investments in information services companies (covering Web 2.0 internet companies that run social networks, blogs and wikis as well as IT-based services such as database design) were USD 979 million in the second quarter of 2007, 52% higher than in the second quarter of 2006.17 While significant, however, total venture capital invested in ICT PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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30 – 3. DRIVERS OF USER-CREATED CONTENT and media are still only about a quarter of the investments at the height of the boom in 2000.

Institutional and legal drivers The rise of new legal means to create and distribute content has also contributed to the greater availability and diffusion of UCC. Flexible licensing and copyright schemes such as the Creative Commons licences allow easier distribution, copying and – depending on the choice of the author – the creation of derivative works of UCC.18 Increasingly search engines and UCC platforms allow for searches within Creative Commonslicensed photos, videos or other content allowing others to use and build on them. The rise of end-user licensing agreements (e.g. Second Life) which grant copyright to users for the content that they create may also be a significant driver.

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Chapter 4 TYPES OF USER-CREATED CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION PLATFORMS A range of different types and distribution platforms for user-created content have developed, with a significant amount relying on hosting services providing online space where the content can be accessed. This section gives an overview of common types of UCC and UCC distribution platforms (see Kolbitsch and Maurer, 2006 and Tables 4.1 and 4.2).

Different types of UCC types are often linked to specific UCC distribution platforms, e.g. written comments being diffused on blogs, videos being diffused on online sharing platforms, and UCC types and their distribution platforms are often closely associated (Tables 4.1 and 4.2).

However, some UCC distribution platforms such as podcasting are used for music and video with various purposes (entertainment, educational, etc.), and social networking sites can be used to post music, videos, to blog, etc.

Moreover, participative web technologies often originally used for UCC can also be used for traditional media, other commercial or educational content (e.g. podcasts of well-known news magazines, games or social networking site used for commercial or educational content). Businesses may also make use of weblogs to keep employees informed of new products and strategies or on the progress of projects and for other internal communications, but such activities are not discussed in detail in this study.

The following sections describe selected UCC types and distribution platforms. Some UCC types such as video are described only once even though they may appear on a range of UCC platforms.

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31

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Digital photographs taken by users and posted online; photos or images created or modified by users

Recording and/or editing personal audio content and publishing, syndicating, and/or distributing in digital format

Recording and/or editing video content and posting it. Includes remixes of existing content, homemade content, and combinations of the two.

Journalistic reporting on current events by ordinary citizens who write Sites such as OhmyNews, GlobalVoices and NowPublic; photos and news stories, blog posts, and take photos or videos of current events videos of newsworthy events; blog posts reporting an event; coand post them online. operative efforts such as CNN Exchange

Content created in schools, universities, or for educational use

Content created on mobile phones or other wireless devices such as text messaging, photos and videos. Generally sent to other users via MMS (Media Messaging Service), e-mailed, or uploaded to the Internet.

Content created within the context of an online virtual environment or integrated into it. Some virtual worlds allow content to be sold. Usercreated games.

Photos and images

Music and audio

Video and film

Citizen journalism

Educational content

Mobile content

Virtual content

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Virtual goods that can be developed and sold on Second Life including clothes, houses, artwork

Videos and photos of public events or natural catastrophes that traditional media may not be able to cover; text messages for political rallying.

Syllabus-sharing sites such as H20; Wikibooks, MIT’s OpenCourseWare

Movie trailer remixes; lip-synching videos; video blogs and videocasting; posting home videos. Sites include YouTube and Google Video; Current TV

Audio mash-ups, remixes, home-recorded music on band websites or MySpace pages, podcasting.

Photos posted on sites such as Ofoto and Flickr; photo blogging; remixed images

Fanfiction.net, Quizilla.com, Writely

Text, fiction and poetry

Examples

Description

Original writings or expanding other texts, novels, poems

Type of content

Table 4.1. Types of user-created content

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113

Legitimate sites that help share content between users and artists

Content or filesharing sites

Digital Media Project

Second Life, Active Worlds, Entropia Universe, Dotsoul Cyberpark

MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Bebo, Orkut, Cyworld

iTunes, FeedBruner, iPodderX, WinAmp, @Podder

Wikipedia; sites providing wikis such as PBWiki, JotSpot, SocialText; writing collaboration sites such as Writely

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Note: Podcasting, blogs and related technologies are also increasingly used professionally (see OECD, 2006a for more discussion).

Sites allowing the creation of personal profiles

A podcast is a multimedia file distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers

Podcasting

Online virtual environment

Collecting links of online content and rating, tagging, and otherwise Sites where users contribute links and rate them such as Digg; aggregating them collaboratively sites where users post tagged bookmarks such as del.icio.us

Group-based aggregation

Social network sites

Sites which provide writers and readers with a place to post and FanFiction.Net read stories, review stories and to communicate with other authors and readers through forums and chat rooms

Sites allowing feedback on written works

Virtual worlds

A wiki is a website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change content collectively. Other sites allow users to log in and co-operate on the editing of particular documents.

Wikis and other text-based collaboration formats

33

Popular blogs such as BoingBoing and Engadget; blogs on sites such as LiveJournal; MSN Spaces; CyWorld; Skyblog

Web pages containing user-created entries updated at regular intervals and/or user-submitted content investigated outside of traditional media

Blogs

Examples

Description

Type of platform

Table 4.2. Distribution platforms for user-created content

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34 – 4. TYPES OF USER-CREATED CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION PLATFORMS UCC types Text Users create texts, poems, novels, quizzes and jokes and share them with their communities. This allows the spread of works of amateur authors and community feedback. Fan fiction is often used to describe creative writing (often short stories) using pre-existing characters from television, movies or other fiction. Fanfiction.net is a fan site with thousands of stories for example expanding on J. K. Rowling’s characters in Harry Potter books.

Quizilla.com is an online, user-creative community of original teen authors who create and share quizzes, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc. Writing collaboration sites such as Writely support collaborative work on texts.

Photos and images User-created photos are generally taken with digital cameras. Photos may or may not be manipulated with photo editing software. Advances in the aggregation and search functionalities via tagging, user-implemented indicators, and recognition software have changed the landscape of digital photos. Content on some sites is largely published under a Creative Commons licence, building an attractive resource for web designers, publishers and journalists. There are numerous services that have evolved around the hosting of photos, including Flickr, Ofoto,19 and Snapfish. In 2006 the popular photo sharing service Flickr hosted 200 million photos taken by 4 million users, 80% of which were available to the general public.

Music and audio User-created audio content on the Internet varies widely, ranging from the combination of two or more songs into a single track to the posting of self-created music by amateur musicians to creating a radio-like broadcast show that users can subscribe to (i.e. podcasts). Audio content may be hosted on sites dedicated to remixing, on sites that provide podcasting services, traded on peer-to-peer networks, posted on social networking sites, and on personal homepages and websites. So far, user-created music has rarely been listed by digital music stores. While there is a significant amount of user produced or recorded music posted on the Internet, remixes have gained notoriety. Remixing is however common in various genres of music, including hip hop and electronic, and in professional contexts.20 Artists such as David Bowie have encouraged users to mash-up their music (OECD, 2005b).21

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Video and film User-produced or edited video content has taken three primary forms: homemade content, such as home videos or short documentaries; remixes of pre-existing works such as film trailer remixes; and hybrid forms that combine some form of self-produced video with pre-existing content.

Examples include Chinese teenagers lip-synching (see Figure 4.1). Another type of user-created video consists of splicing up portions of videos or movies and creating new versions, often perceived as mock “trailers” for one or more of the films involved. Examples includes the various mash-up “spoofs” (e.g. parody by imitation) surrounding the film Brokeback Mountain.22 Popular videos may also spur waves of remixes. Creators may use this form of remixing as social, political and cultural parody.

Video content may be hosted on a user’s website, traded on peer-to-peer networks, private web pages or hosted by video sharing platforms such as YouTube, Google Video, AOL Uncut, Guba, Grouper and vPod in Europe, Dailymotion in France, MyVideo and Sevenload in Germany and, in Italy, Libero Video (see Annex Box 2 on China). Increasingly these sites are also enabled for access (upload and download) from mobile phones and devices.

Stickam.com (live broadcasts from web cameras) and LiveLeak (realitybased footage) are among increasingly unfiltered video services.

Figure 4.1. Example of a lip-synching video

Source: YouTube.

User-created content posted on products and other interest areas A large and heterogeneous category comprises users and consumers posting opinions and advice, also referred to as information and knowledge commons (called “word-of-mouth” sites in MIC, 2006). These take the form of Internet-based bulletin boards where contributors can submit opinions PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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36 – 4. TYPES OF USER-CREATED CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION PLATFORMS and critiques, e.g. product reviews. Other users, in turn, can use this information to make informed purchase decisions,23 and businesses can more easily find out what the consumers feel about their products.24 Ideas for new products or modifications can be gathered (see also the concept of user-led innovation in van Hippel, 2005).

Topics discussed are not limited to product reviews. Internet platforms (e.g. blogs) are used to exchange or present a wide range of knowledge or information, ranging from housing, health, computer problems, financial investments,25 and travel advice to hobbies.26 Some sites allow questions to be potentially answered by other users (e.g. the Yahoo “Ask a question” service). Many users find the Internet and community sites very useful, with targeted information/knowledge with a significant personal touch.

UCC platforms Blogs A blog is defined as a type of webpage usually displaying date-stamped entries in reverse chronological order (Gill, 2004; OECD, 2006a). It is updated at regular intervals and may consist of text, images, audio, video, or a combination of them. Blogs serve several purposes including delivering and/or sharing information. Installing blogging software – e.g. Movable Type, WordPress and Nucleus CMS – on a server is necessary to blog.

However, blog hosting services (e.g. Blogger) make it easier by removing the technical burden of maintaining a hosting account and a software application. Often blogs are a launch pad for sharing other kinds of UCC, i.e. blogs typically refer to other blogs, music or discuss user-created videos.

In 2007, video blogging is expected to grow very significantly.

Some sources estimate that there were up to 200 million blogs in 2006 (Blog Herald); the blog tracking site Technorati tracked 55 million blogs in December 2006 and estimated that they had doubled approximately every 6 months over the previous two years.27 An approximation of the language distribution shows that nearly 75% of all blogs are written in English, Japanese or Korean.28 Blogging is also very popular in China, India, and Iran. Their popularity in Asia is also shown in a recent Microsoft survey which suggest that nearly half of all Asian Internet users have a blog, that young users are most prevalent (56% of all bloggers are under 25, while 35% are 25 to 34 years old, and 9% are 35 years old and over) and that women are very active (55% of bloggers). Blogging is considered a form of expression and a means to maintain and build social connections (74% find blogs by friends and family most interesting).29

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Wikis and other text-based collaboration formats A wiki is a website that allows users to add, remove and otherwise edit and change content (usually text). Users can change the content of pages and format them with a very simple tagging language. Initial authors of articles allow other users to edit “their” content. The fundamental idea behind wikis is that a large number of users read and edit the content, potentially enriching it and correcting mistakes.

Various sites provide wiki hosting. Sometimes termed “wiki farms”, these sites enable users and communities to create their own wiki for various purposes. In addition, forms of collaborative writing have developed with wiki technology (e.g. Writely, owned by Google, and Writeboard).30 One frequently cited example is the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. It comprised 4.6 million articles in over 200 languages in 2006 (Wikipedia, 2006). Fifteen of these languages had over 50 000 articles, with 1.3 million articles in English. The vast majority of edits come from a small percentage of users (Annex Table 1).

Group-based aggregation and social bookmarking This is relatively new and consists primarily of group-based collection of links to articles and media and/or group based rating of such links, also referred to as new social content aggregators, which build on opinions and knowledge of all web users. Users generally collect these links, tag them, rate them, and often comment on the associated article or media. Sites such as Digg specialise in the use of this model, whereby users post news links to the site, and other users rate them by adding their vote to it.31 Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking website, allows users to post links to their favourite articles, blogs, music, recipes, and more.

Podcasting Podcasting has emerged out of the combination of the ease of audio production with technologies that allow for subscription and syndication.

The publish/subscribe model of podcasting is a version of push technology, in that the information provider chooses which files to offer in a feed and the subscriber chooses among available feed channels. A consumer uses an aggregator software, sometimes called a podcatcher or podcast receiver, to subscribe to and manage feeds. Well-known podcast software includes FeedBurner, iPodderX, WinAmp and @Podder. Mobile-casting, i.e. receiving video and audio podcasts on mobile phones is expected to develop rapidly.

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38 – 4. TYPES OF USER-CREATED CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION PLATFORMS Podcasting technology is also used for content which does not come directly from users. Surveys estimated that 6 million Americans had listened to podcasts by 2005 (Raine and Madden, 2005). Popular download sites such as Apple iTunes hosted almost 83 000 podcasts in March 2006 (up from 8 000 one year earlier – see Annex Table 2 for the top categories).

Social networking sites Social networking sites (SNS) enable users to connect to friends and colleagues, to send mails and instant messages, to blog, to meet new people and to post personal information profiles. Profiles include photos, video, images, audio, and blogs. In 2006, MySpace had over 100 million users (although not all are active) and is the most popular website in the United Sates according to Hitwise. Other popular SNS include Friendster, Orkut and Bebo. Facebook is popular on US college campuses with over 9 million users. The Korean Cyworld is reported to have 18 million users, or 40% of the population and 90% of Internet users in their 20s (Jung-a, 2006). Mixi, a Japanese SNS, has more than 4 million users.32 Some video sharing sites such as Grouper allow private video sharing, furthering the social network dimension.

Some SNS sites are dedicated to particular topics, sharing knowledge, or purchases of products and services, transforming, for example, how users research, search and decide on travel plans. Yahoo’s Trip Planner, Google’s Co-Op, TripAdvisor’s Inside, VirtualTourist’s Trip Planner and others share travel journals, itineraries and photos. Similar social networking tools are used for real estate purchases.

Virtual world content Virtual world content is created in an online game-like 3D digital environment to which users subscribe, although not all online multiplayer games allow users to create their own content. Virtual environments such as those in Second Life, Active Worlds, Entropia Universe, and Dotsoul Cyberpark provide users with a scripting language and integrated development environment which enables them to build new objects (MayerSchoenberger and Crowley, 2005), often permitting them to keep the associated intellectual property rights (see Figure 4.2. for an exhibition in Second Life).33

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Figure 4.2. Library of Congress exhibit in Second Life

Source: Flickr.com.

In January 2007, Second Life claimed over 880 000 users in more than 90 countries who had logged on in the previous 60 days (and 2.5 million total residents).34 Owning land in Second Life allows users to build, display, and store virtual creations, as well as host events and businesses or real university courses. It has an economy based on so-called Linden Dollars with more than USD 130 million per year contracted between players. Users can make money by selling created items (e.g. clothes for avatars) and land purchased earlier.

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Chapter 5 EMERGING VALUE CHAINS AND BUSINESS MODELS New value chains and business models are developing around usercreated content and an increasing range of commercial and non-commercial participants are involved.

The emerging value and publishing chain of user-created content UCC by definition is for the most part a non-commercial phenomenon and the vast majority of user-created content is created without the expectation of profit or remuneration. Motivating factors include connecting with peers, achieving fame, notoriety or prestige, and expressing oneself.

Defining a value-chain for UCC in the traditional, commercial sense as for other OECD studies of digital content sectors is thus less straightforward.

This analysis of business models and value chains is therefore a snapshot of emerging approaches which may have to be revisited with the development of UCC. The value chain and distribution model for UCC is compared with a simplified established offline media publishing value chain (see Figure 5.1).

This comparison mainly applies for content such as text, music, movies and similar media but is less applicable for content created in virtual worlds.

From a creator’s point of view, the traditional media publishing value chain is characterised by a number of stages, i.e. publication and distribution of content depend on various entities selecting and consenting to a creator’s work. To produce and publish their work, an individual writing editorials has to be recruited by a newspaper, a musician has to sign a record deal, a poet has to find a book publisher and a film writer has to successfully submit his script to film studios.

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Support & Production production & manufacturing Manufacturing Fees / Advertising advertising

Broadcasting, Radio radio Device to & cinema, Cinema, retail retail of of access content recorded films, music

Distribution chain selecting content

Advertising & marketing Marketing & Sales sales

Consumers

Other artists

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Consumer behaviour provides signals to artists, content publishers and distributors

Content publishers selecting content

Amateurs/ Amateurs /artists artists

Artists being inspired and building on existing works (derivative works?)

Figure 5.1. Traditional offline media publishing value chain

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Device and software to access digital content

Acquirer News Corporation Viacom/MTV Sony Viacom/MTV Yahoo Viacom/MTV Google Google

Type Social networking site Video Video Games, films, animation Video editing Text, quizzes, images Video Wiki

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Acquired MySpace iFilm Grouper Atom Films Jumpcut Quizilla.com YouTube Jotspot

Table 5.1. Selected recent acquisitions of UCC platforms

Source: Company information and press reports.

Date Sept. 2005 Oct. 2005 Aug. 2006 Aug. 2006 Sept. 2006 Oct. 2006 Oct. 2006 Nov. 2006

Access providers (ISPs, mobile)

Users rating and recommending

UCC platforms

Price (USD millions) 580 49 65 200 Undisclosed Undisclosed 1580 Undisclosed

User/ Consumer

Users being inspired and building on existing works (derivative works?)

Access Users creating videos, providers music, blogs, etc. for or on UCC platforms (ISPs, mobile)

Device and software to create digital content

Figure 5.2. Original Internet value chain for user-created content

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44 – 5. EMERGING VALUE CHAINS AND BUSINESS MODELS The creation of the work to be published and its physical distribution can be, and usually are expensive. The content publishers select content, support the creator in production, manufacturing and advertising and in selecting the best distribution chain. Technical quality and content quality (although content quality is hard to define) is guaranteed by traditional media “gatekeepers”. Compared to the potential supply, only a few works make it through to airing on television, radio, being distributed on CD, etc.

Consumers then watch the content on television, read the book, or listen to the CD using the appropriate media devices (e.g. CD player, radio receiver), and the number of distribution channels may be limited for some platforms, e.g. for television. The content is either paid for directly by the consumer (i.e. purchase of the media or subscriptions, for example, to cable TV) or is brought to the consumer on the basis of advertising-supported distribution channels. Customer preferences feed back into how content publishers, distributors and artists select future content. Finally, available works influence creation of new works, i.e. jazz players, playwrights, scriptwriters, singers are inspired by works of earlier artists.

In contrast, Figure 5.2 depicts the value chain for user-created content.

The content is initially provided on non-commercial terms by its creators, potentially seeking recognition, fame or later financial reward. While UCC may rarely be a perfect substitute for traditional media content, it creates value for its viewers; as evidenced by the time spent by users downloading and watching (i.e. potentially high consumer surplus as content is generally free). Although the content itself may be free, UCC creates a strong demand for commercial products such as devices, software and Internet access to create and consume the content.

In the UCC value chain users create content for or on UCC platforms while using content creation devices (e.g. digital cameras, microphones), software (video editing tools), the UCC platforms themselves and an Internet access provider to create and post content (Figure 5.2). All users with access are able to create and publish their content widely, as opposed to the traditional media publishing chain and its selectivity as to what content shall be published. In some cases, users have their personal blog which does not rely on an external UCC platform. A greater supply of creative content from a larger number of active creators is available and engaging viewers, even if potentially of lower or greater diversity of technical and content quality. Similarly to artists in the traditional media chain, users are inspired and build on existing works – including from the traditional media.

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would not have been given by traditional media publishers. The time it takes for content to be created and distributed is greatly reduced compared with the traditional value chain, which may impact the type and quality of content in multiple ways.

Users access the content by downloading or streaming it from the UCC platform through their access provider, using devices (e.g. notebook computer) and software (e.g. video streaming software).

Monetisation of user-created content and new business models Commercial entities, including media companies, play an increasing role in supporting, searching, aggregating, filtering, hosting, and diffusing UCC. Direct revenue generation for the content creators or for established commercial entities (e.g. media companies, platforms hosting UCC) has only recently begun.

Until recently, sites hosting UCC were essentially non-commercial ventures of enthusiasts, or start-ups with little or no revenue but with increasing finance from venture capitalists. These sites often did not have business plans showing how revenues would be produced, rather their objective was to expand their user/creator and audience base, with an eye to either sell their business or implement paying business models at a later stage. However, despite low or non-existent revenues, considerable financial resources are necessary for the technology, bandwidth and organisation to keep operating, and given that many UCC platforms host unauthorised third party content they face demands for remuneration of content originators.

UCC sites are of increasing investor and business interest. For example, Mixi, the Japanese SNS site, and Open BC/Xing, a German business SNS site, have been listed on stock exchanges. Moreover, established media conglomerates and Internet companies are increasingly interested, with firms such as News Corporation, Google, Sony and Yahoo spending significant amounts to buy UCC sites (see Table 5.1).35 The increasing amounts being paid for UCC sites and the increased venture capital flowing into these areas have triggered renewed concerns about the build-up of a new Internet bubble. As in the late 1990s, the size of the website audience / “user engagement” (“eyeballs”, traffic and page views and click-throughs) are drawing investors’ attention. Earnings and revenues do not seem to be the prime concern. The large sums invested in buying up UCC start-ups have raised concerns of a second Internet bubble.

While this cannot be excluded, in some respects the environment for these investments has changed with new possibilities associated with online advertising, new possibilities to deliver high-quality content through broadband, changed usage habits, increased ICT skills, etc. Furthermore, the PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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46 – 5. EMERGING VALUE CHAINS AND BUSINESS MODELS overall sum of venture capital flowing into ICT-related areas in 2006 was still relatively small, only about 40% of average investments between 1999 and 2001 in the United States.

New models are developing on both the host- and creator-side of UCC spurred by an increased interest in monetising UCC. While the UCC value chain (i.e. the entities and activities that add value in producing and distributing the content) remains largely unchanged (see Figure 5.2), new models aim at the monetisation of this content. At the point when consumers access the UCC platform or a particular video, they donate, pay fees or subscribe to access the content or they see online advertising. New interactions with the established media value chain are emerging as UCC platforms are screened for promising talent and content which are later aired or integrated in the traditional media publishing value chain (e.g. in existing cable or TV subscriptions that are already subscribed to).

The advertising industry, search engines, and media firms who own UCC platforms or who select content from them are increasingly involved in the provision and distribution of content. When payments are involved, financial service providers and the associated technologies enter the value chain. As increasingly there is a need for tools to find content (e.g. search engines adapted to music, video and other multimedia content and user ratings and recommendations), the role of search portals and content aggregator of multimedia content is growing. Digital rights management or watermarking technologies may increasingly be used to assure that content is not accessed illegitimately.

Different UCC types (e.g. blogs versus video content) have different albeit very similar approaches to monetising UCC. These models can be paired with approaches that remunerate the creators of content (discussed below in the section on economic impacts). Whereas the interest in monetising UCC is growing, most models are still in flux and few providers generate substantial revenues or profits.

There are essentially five approaches to monetise UCC; combinations of these approaches are illustrated in the three cases in Table 5.2 (see also VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, 2007).

Voluntary donations In the voluntary donation model, the user makes the content freely available, like that of a musician performing on the street, but solicits donations from users. Such models are currently in place on many sites with a “donate” button, often encouraging those accessing the content to donate to the creator or the institutions (usually online by credit card or via PayPal).

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ask for donations from their audience for activities such as web hosting and site maintenance, or for the content. A common feature of certain noncommercial UCC sites is that they run their operations with quite limited funding (often only the time invested by volunteers and users). Wikipedia, for instance, spent less than USD 750 000 in 2005 to sustain its growth and it frequently draws on donations to finance these costs (beyond the donation of time and expertise made by user contributors).36 Blogging and citizen journalism sites such as Global Voices Online are supported by bloggers who commit their time, but operating expenses are funded by grants from foundations or even news companies (such as Reuters in the case of Global Voices Online). Such donations of time or money have been the cornerstone of Internet developments in the open source movement (e.g. for the support of free Internet browsers) or other user-driven innovations. Voluntary payment models for the promotion of UCC content and platforms based on reciprocity, peer-based reputation and recommendations have been proposed (Regner et al., 2006).

Charging viewers for services Sites may charge those viewing UCC, whereas the posting of content is free. This can take the form of pay-per-item or subscription models.

Popularity has to be high as competing sites are free and making small online payments and entering credit card information may be burdensome or impracticable.

Pay-per-item model. In this model users make per-item (micro) payments to UCC platforms or to the creators themselves to access individual pieces of content. iSTockphot, for instance, offers photographs, illustrations and stock video from its user-generated stock for USD 5 each.

Platforms exclusively hosting UCC or established digital content sale points (such as online music stores, video-on-demand platforms, or online retailers), for instance, could offer UCC as part of their repertoire on pay-per-item terms. The fact that no shelf space is needed to stock a variety of content facilitates this model.

Subscription model. In this model consumers subscribe to services offering UCC. Paying a subscription to access others’ content is rarely used; rather users pay a subscription for enhanced hosting and services for one’s own content and access to other’s content. In two-tiered subscription services, whereby a user may opt for a “basic” account free of charge that provides a set amount of services or for a “pro” account that users pay a subscription or other fee for. The “pro” accounts provide enhanced features, more (or even unlimited) hosting space, and other options that are attractive to the user.37 A new approach involves a hosting-based model with a cooperative element, such as Lulu.tv. Users pay for the service provided by PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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48 – 5. EMERGING VALUE CHAINS AND BUSINESS MODELS the site, but are also remunerated on the basis of the popularity of their content.

Bundling of UCC into existing subscriptions and associated payments may be a more viable option. Cable TV operators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), digital radio services and other media outlets derive most of their revenue through monthly subscription fees (e.g. EUR 29.99 per month for an Internet triple play offer in France). Such operators could opt to carry UCC, either by creating special channels exclusively devoted to UCC (such as the case with FreeTV in France) or by airing a selection of UCC on the regular programs. In both cases, users pay for the UCC content via their usual subscription.

Table 5.2. Three business models: blogs, photos and video Citizen journalism: AgoraVox (France)

AgoraVox is a European site supporting “citizen journalism” which is currently based on voluntary in-kind contributions. Users submit information and news articles on a voluntary basis. The submitted content is moderated by the small AgoraVox staff and volunteers.

Readers also feedback on the reliability of the information. Despite its low-cost model, AgoraVox aims to generate revenues through online-advertising in the near future. Similar citizen journalism sites such as OhmyNews in Korea remunerate their writers. OhmyNews redistributes advertising revenues to writers for very good articles. On OhmyNews readers also directly remunerate citizen journalists through a micro-payment system.

Photo: Flickr (US)

Flickr is funded from advertising and subscriptions. A free account provides the possibility to host a certain number of photos. Advertising is displayed while searching or viewing photos.

This revenue is not being shared with users. A “pro” account for USD 24.95 can be subscribed to offering unlimited storage, upload, bandwidth, permanent archiving and an ad-free service.

As Flickr is part of Yahoo! it also enhances membership and traffic to other Yahoo! sites.

Similar photo sites such as KodakGallery are owned by firms in the photography business.

Users can create free accounts. Revenues are generated through the sales of value-added photo services (e.g. purchase of prints).

Video: MyVideo (Germany)

The online video sharing site MyVideo derives its revenues mostly from advertising and from licensing its content to third parties. Recently, ProSiebenSat1 Media, Germany’s largest commercial TV company, bought a 30% stake in MyVideo. The objective is to secure a share of Internet advertising, to cross-promote content (UCC content on TV, and TV content on UCC platforms) and to identify interesting content for traditional media publishing (e.g. talent search show). Video sites such as YouTube have also started licensing content to telecommunication service providers.

Source: OECD based on company information and press reports.

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Advertising-based models (“monetising the audience via advertising”) Advertising is often seen as a more likely source of revenue for UCC and a significant driver for UCC. Models based on advertising enable users and hosts to preserve access to the content that is free of charge while bringing in revenue. The economics of such a service are often compared to free web mail where users get a free service, and owners of the service serve advertising to this audience. Payment for the advertising depends on numerous factors: number of users on UCC sites, related website usage (dwell time on site, depth of visit / page views per session / share of repeat visits), or clicks on the actual advertisement banner leading the user to the webpage of the brand being advertised. Viable sustainable business models are only likely to work with a large enough user base to attract enough advertisers and actions by users generating revenue flows for the site.

Services that host UCC make use of advertising on the site (including banners, embedded video ads and branded channels or pages) to generate revenue. The advertisements can be for specific audiences attracted by certain UCC platforms (often popular, young target groups) or linked with certain content being watched by the user. When users search or watch a particular video, related advertising is shown on the side bar, i.e. banners or short trailers start as the computer cursor moves across a banner.

Many UCC platforms such as Fanfiction.Net rely on services to drive advertising revenues (e.g. Google AdSense, Microsoft, or the service provided by the UCC hosting site itself such as FeedBurner Ad Network for blogs). Google AdSense automatically delivers text and image ads that are targeted to the UCC site, the requested UCC content, the user’s geographic location and other factors (for example, travel ads for China when searching for the keyword “China” on a video site).38 When users click on the ad, that advertisement service receives per-click revenues from the company being advertised. In turn, it then pays the UCC site hosting its ads. Some UCC sites are also redistributing part of this advertising money among those creating or owning the content. These models provide independent UCC sites (some owned by individuals) with access to a large base of advertisers.

Advertising may also be placed within the content, such as within a video. Popular video podcasts also incorporate advertisements where users can click to sites from within the video. Increasingly, “branded channels” have been launched on UCC platforms where users can view content from a special brand or media publisher. Virtual worlds like Calypso allow firms to create and display advertisements.39

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50 – 5. EMERGING VALUE CHAINS AND BUSINESS MODELS It is expected that sophisticated targeting techniques will increasingly enable advertisers to create targeted ad messages. The quality of the targeted nature of the advertisement will depend on how well videos or UCC is paired with relevant advertisements. Currently, advertisements are often displayed on the basis of tags and keywords which uploaders create. These may be more or less reliable with some users not creating keywords or using misleading ones to attract more traffic.

UCC platforms have received substantial sums from businesses wanting to advertise to their community. In August 2006, Google agreed to deliver at least USD 900 million in advertising revenue over three and a half years to News Corporation for the right to broker advertising on MySpace and some other sites (van Duyn and Waters, 2006) and Microsoft has also agreed to be the exclusive provider of advertising to Facebook (Sandoval, 2006a).

Although most of the hopes to monetise UCC are currently placed on purely advertising-related business models, it will take time to see whether these models will work (see also VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, 2007 which argues that social media cannot fully flourish on adbased models). Advertisers are concerned that the user audience may be accustomed to free content and will migrate to ad-free sites, and some are also concerned with being associated with UCC they cannot control or foresee (e.g. a car advertisement being shown before a UCC video about a car accident).

Licensing of content and technology to third parties Increasingly UCC is being considered for other platforms and licensing content to third parties (e.g. TV stations) may be a source of revenue.

According to most terms of services of UCC sites, users agree that they have given the site a licence to use the content without payment, sometimes reserving the right to commercially exploit the work (see also below).40 Sometimes this may include the right of the UCC site to licence the content to third parties but a revenue sharing model between content creators and the UCC site may apply. Increasingly deals to licence content to third parties or to cooperate with third parties to share the content involve mobile carriers (e.g. the Verizon and YouTube “Watch on Mobile” service).

Finally, UCC platforms can enter into commercial agreements with third parties to provide their technology to the latter (e.g. DailyMotion entering a commercial agreement with the French ISP Neuf Telecom to provide its video sharing service technology). Some UCC platforms (e.g. On2 Flix) are back-end service providers to facilitate the process of UCC video services of third parties.

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Selling goods and services to community (“monetising the audience via online sales”) Another option is to use the large, captive user base to market own or third party products. Due to network effects, successful UCC sites are likely to have a large user base, and this large audience can be monetised with UCC sites selling items or services directly to their users. Blogging, photo sharing and other sites may sell particular one-off or continued services to their users similarly to the examples in the pay-per-item or the subscription section. UCC platforms such as virtual worlds or social networking services can sell the use of online games, avatars, virtual accessories or even virtual land to their users. The Korean social networking site CyWorld, for instance, receives considerable revenues from the sale of digital items such as decorations for a user profile or furniture for one’s virtual “miniroom”.41 Users use Acorns as currency in the CyWorld Shop purchased via credit card.

UCC sites can also co-operate with third parties to allow them to sell directly to their users while taking a share of the revenue. For instance, the Mypurchase service of MySpace will provide the interface for creators to sell their music, taking a portion of sales revenues in exchange. The popular Japanese social networking site Mixi has several approaches, one of which is to allow users to rate and review books CDs, DVDs, games, electronics and other items and linking them directly to Amazon Japan with one click to purchase those items (“social commerce”) or to listen to music which can later be bought over iTunes.

UCC platforms could also allow for transactions amongst their users while taking a share of the revenue. Depending on the terms of service, other business models may involve the sale of anonymised information about users and their tastes and behaviour to market research and other firms.

Overall, each of these business and revenue models has advantages and disadvantages, and which will be relatively more successful is still being worked out.

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Chapter 6 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS The production and consumption of user-created content has been driven by technological developments, more active and participative Internet users and associated social and behavioural changes in use, economic forces and commercial opportunities, and institutional and legal change. However, the actual impacts of UCC and a more participative Internet are in their early stages, and longer-term impacts are unclear even if there are promises of greater changes to come. Furthermore social and behavioural changes are interrelated with economic ones and neither can be seen in isolation. This section provides a first analysis of the economic and social impacts of usercreated content to provide the context for the discussion of opportunities and challenges for users, business and policy.

Economic impacts User-created content is becoming an important economic phenomenon with direct impacts on a widening range of economic activities despite its original non-commercial context. The development and spread of UCC has contributed dramatically to the stock of broadband content. Combined with the attention devoted to it by users, this has had disruptive effects on how content is created and consumed and on established industries and activities supplying content, creating economic opportunities and challenges for both new and established market participants.

This section discusses some of the economic implications of UCC and how the business models outlined in the previous section and efforts to monetise UCC are developing. However, it must be borne in mind that monetisation of UCC is in its infancy, data on business impacts are generally unavailable, and aggregate economic impacts on growth and employment difficult or impossible to quantify.

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Expanding customer loyalty through promotion of brands on social networking sites or through advertising to UCC communities.

Marketing and brands

Reinventing business models to compete with free web content (e.g. photographs, images).

Professional content creators

Participating in increasing online advertising directed at communities on UCC platforms. Using UCC content in advertising campaigns.

Participating in UCC online revenues (essentially through advertising-based business models), reaching out to UCC audiences to promote own content. Broadcasting or hosting UCC to retain audience and advertisers. Preventing UCC from decreasing revenues from other content and/or preventing disintermediation.

Traditional media

Advertising

Facing either non-commercial incentives (to entertain or inform other users, for recognition or fame) or commercial incentives to generate revenue through donations, sale of content or sharing revenue from advertisement-based models.

Other users benefitting from free access to content which is entertaining, educational, informational or expands choices (e.g. on purchasing decisions, or advice on various topics).

Creators and users

Using UCC audiences to drive advertising revenues while improving searchability.

Attracting traffic, building Internet audiences and subscription and advertising revenues; increasing attractiveness for acquisition by third parties.

UCC platforms and sites

Using UCC to build more attractive websites and customer services and information (e.g. a travel agency or hotel chain that encourages users to post pictures and share appreciations).

ISPs using UCC to attract customers and build a user base for premium Internet services. Web portals aiming to attract traffic, build Internet audiences and advertising revenues (and avoid losing traffic to UCC-related sites).

ISPs and web portals

Search engines

Providing ICT services and software for creation, hosting and delivery of UCC.

Software producers

Web services that benefit from UCC

Selling hardware with new functionality and interoperability for users to create and access content.

Consumer electronics and ICT goods

Table 6.1. Economic incentives and benefits for different UCC value chain participants

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Different value chain participants have different economic incentives and derive different benefits from the expansion of UCC, as shown in Table 6.1.42 While press reports have centred largely on the impact of UCC on traditional media firms, more immediate impacts are on non-media firms and users. The more immediate impacts on market entry, growth and employment are initially with ICT goods and services providers and newly formed UCC platforms which have attracted significant start-up venture capital investment and been the target of acquisitions. Other firms active in monetising UCC are search engines, portals and aggregators attempting to develop UCC search, aggregation and distribution business models, often based on online advertising.

Impacts are also being felt by professional (often free-lance) content producers including journalists, writers, photographers, video-producers and others who are competing with freely available web content.

Consumer electronics, ICT hardware, software, network service and platforms The consumer electronics industry, the telecommunications industry (including Internet service providers and increasingly mobile operators), firms creating the tools and software to edit and publish content and information technology in general have benefited from UCC as users buy digital cameras and other content-creating tools, software, and broadband access to watch and create content. In addition, innovative new firms are entering the market and creating employment with new goods and services.

The ICT sector grew 6% in 2006, with much higher growth in digital storage, new portable consumer products, Internet activities related to the participative web and new digital products (OECD, 2006a). In particular, digital entertainment is currently a high growth market, with a growing global market for digital consumer appliances and a comeback in the last three years for the electronics industry (CEA, 2006).43 The detailed figures show users spending more on flash and hard-drives, portable MP3 audio players, digital cameras, new mobile equipment, display devices and related accessories despite price declines. New cross-platform application technologies allowing playback of popular web video content on TV, mobile phones, and other devices will drive further growth of ICT products.

The creation, upload and download of ever-larger content files are important drivers for the network services industry and other infrastructure providers. The need for greater speed, wireless and mobile access is increasing network revenues and is going some way towards replacing loss of traditional fixed-line voice revenues (OECD, 2006d, 2007a). To move into more value-added services, telecommunications operators are also PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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56 – 6. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS increasingly interested in hosting and providing UCC-related services. For example, Vodafone has announced that it will try to unite virtual and real communication, allowing people to talk through their avatars without necessarily sharing their real personal details.

The popularity of video sharing services has led to new types of application service providers (“broadband video application service providers”).44 Industry observers estimated that YouTube was already streaming 40 million videos and 200 terabytes of data per day in early 2006,45 and new firms such as Brightgrove, Entriq and Maven Networks offered publishing, syndication, commerce, content management, security and other platform components in the form of software-as-a-service. The market was projected to reach USD 1.9 billion in 2011 (ABI Research, 2006). Firms such as Limelight Networks providing content delivery to popular UCC sites report strong growth (USD 14 million revenues in the second quarter of 2006).46 Firms providing one-stop video upload, converting and transmission of optimised content services while reducing bandwidth requirements will see a large demand.

Similarly, spending is increasing on tools, ICT services and software which enable users to create, edit, locate, post and monetise audio and video files (Apple garage, Grouper, Jumpcut, Ripple Share) and on video compression software. Firms which are producing new tools such as recommendation engines, or which allow the creation of playlists, blogs and podcasting are entering the market, attracting investments and increasing revenues. In Japan the blog-related market was estimated to be about JPY 137.7 billion (USD 1.2 billion) in 2006 (MIC, 2006).47 This includes tools to publish and host blogs, blog software and related advertising, and mobile phone applications which make it easier to share photos and videos with other users and networking sites (e.g. developed by Shozu.com) are growing. The demand for digital rights management, watermarking technologies and other software tools will also increase.

Users/creators New models are also emerging to remunerate content creators (i.e. creators of original works) and, for example, surveys of younger age groups point to greater willingness to place advertisements at the end of videos, to feature brands in the video and to derive revenues from their work.48 A distinction must be made between models that provide revenue for the creators themselves and models which entail revenue sharing between creator and host. Initially, the possibilities for users to collect revenue directly without intermediaries were limited and a number of cooperative models were developed. A co-operative-based model is one where the creators contribute money to the service and this revenue is redistributed PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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among the creators. A hybrid model, such as Lulu.tv, combines the cooperative method with shared advertising-based revenues; users-creators pay for the service provided by the site, but then they are remunerated on the basis of the popularity of their content.

There is also the possibility of creators being remunerated via flat-fee subscription services. New services have arisen which allow for unlimited uploading and exchange of various content and which are financed by monthly fees from subscribers or Internet Service Providers. The Digital Media Exchange (DMX) is such an example based on P2P technology and operated as a non-profit co-operative.49 As well as unlimited exchange it allows users to make derivative works from the content while being copyright compliant. DMX collects monthly fees from subscribers or their ISPs, and pays all of the collected fees to content suppliers.50 Most revenues for creators are likely to come from revenue-sharing models between creator and host based on advertising revenues and UCC platforms are usually involved in remunerating content creators. In the case of creator-based advertising, users would utilise advertising on, within, or surrounding the content they created. For example, bloggers may put Google AdSense advertisements on their site. Many new companies and software tools are allowing users to post content and be remunerated (e.g. Ripple Share). In Korea, Mgoon has introduced a website “tag story” where users post their own content and share advertising revenues with the company.

Korean Shotech UCC site has started to share 30-40% of its advertising proceeds with UCC makers. Other startups such as Revver, Feedburner, Blip.tv and Panjea.com share at least 50% of their ad revenue with users who create their content.51 It is expected that the quality of the UCC can be improved if creators are remunerated.

Finally, professional and paying careers can arise for users creating content. For example, students in popular lip-synching videos were later hired for commercials. Remixers, bloggers or video podcasters have been hired by major music or media companies.

Users who consume the content usually benefit from free access to more diverse content which may be entertaining, educational or serve other purposes. In particular, information and knowledge commons mentioned earlier can add significantly to consumer welfare and entertainment.

Traditional media The impacts of the shift to Internet-based media – both in terms of challenges and opportunities – are only starting to affect content publishers and broadcasters. Moreover, the involvement of media publishers in the hosting and diffusion of UCC is at an early stage.

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58 – 6. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS At the outset, UCC may have been perceived as a challenge and competition to established media firms. First, UCC sites often host unauthorised content from media publishers without consent and without remunerating the rights-holders (e.g. full or part clips direct from TV shows which fall outside of the UCC definition adopted here). Thus traditional media publishers have a legitimate conflict of interest with UCC platforms and potentially face declining revenues due to illegitimate access to their content.

Second, users may create and watch UCC at the expense of other traditional media such as TV. This is a source of concern, given that many traditional media activities are based on attracting large audiences that generate advertising revenues to support the creation of content to attract further audiences and so on. As opposed to traditional media products, UCC can sometimes be produced very cheaply while still drawing a large returning audience. For example, Rocketboom is a popular three minute, daily video blog distributed via RSS and produced with a video camera, a laptop, some accessories, but with no additional overhead, promotion or large bandwidth costs.

Third, traditional media sources may be used more selectively. Most of the existing studies demonstrate that time spent on the Internet reduces the consumption of offline media (see OECD, 2004a). Figure 6.1, for example, shows that Internet use in the United Kingdom has led to a reduction of attention devoted to TV, newspapers and the radio. This effect is particularly notable in the 15-24 age bracket, which make considerably less use of traditional media and their viewing has declined more, with newspapers, magazines and radio particularly affected by this change in media consumption.

However, these surveys are of the Internet broadly as a potential substitute for established media not specifically UCC. In addition, media such as the major television channels face increasing competition from an ever greater number of new or specialist television channels, newspapers, and from other new media (e.g. online games, digital radio). Consequently, some of the concerns directed toward UCC may be a reaction to a new distribution medium and changing user habits which are general and hard to predict. Media firms that are used to “broadcasting” the same content to large audiences (one-to-many) are adapting to users who may be in search of more targeted, interactive or personalised on-demand “narrowcast” content (one-to-one). Content publishers will increasingly compete and co-operate with many entertainment forms (including UCC) for more fragmented audiences and advertising revenues.

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Figure 6.1. Reduced consumption of offline media in the UK driven by Internet use, April 2006, % of respondents All individuals Use games consoles

Listen to radio

Read magazines

15-24 year olds Read local newspaper

45-64 year olds Watch video/ Read national DVD newspaper

Watch TV

0

-5

-10

-15

-20

-25

-30

Question: Since using the Internet for the first time, which if any of the following activities do you believe you undertake less?

Source: Ofcom research, April 2006.

Overall, UCC has already begun to have an impact on traditional media industries and vice versa, and is increasingly seen as a market reality.

Progressively, the advent of UCC marks a shift among media organisations from creating on-line content to creating the facilities and framework for non-media professionals to publish in more prominent places or at least to take existing UCC into account when publishing their own products. For a start, traditional media have made their own websites and services more interactive, enabling users to comment, give feedback, rate particular articles and content and diffuse their content via participative web technologies such as RSS feeds, podcasts or host blogs on their sites.

Television companies increasingly select UCC for use on their usual channels or web pages; a trend facilitated by technology which allows viewing broadband content on television. For example, in France TF1 has launched the WAT site which allows users to upload content for later potential TV diffusion against remuneration (see also M6 Web in France).

CBS Television in the US is co-operating with YouTube to select and air the best viewer-videos. There is also an increasing number of TV channels being created to show only UCC (e.g. Current TV), and there are examples PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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60 – 6. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS of Korean terrestrial broadcasters using UCC while also allowing users to post comments (see Figure 6.2). Sony will introduce TV receivers which can access Internet video content (i.e. Bravia Internet Video Link) including user-created videos from Grouper. Narrowcasting content to target a specific audience or topic (Election TV and The People Choose 2006, or specialty interest content aggregators like Pet Video) is also developing.

Figure 6.2. Korean broadcasting of UCC while allowing other users to post comments

Source: www.afreeca.com.

Major media companies also have acquired or are in the process of acquiring content from or licensing content to UCC platforms to generate revenues and explore ways of extending their on-air programmes and brands to UCC platforms. In some recent deals, considerable amounts have been paid by video-sharing platforms to media firms to continue to host their content. Under these agreements, video sharing sites are offering free and full access to music videos (e.g. Vivendi Universal) or television content (from CBS, NBC Universal) – sometimes sharing related advertising revenue with the content owners, sometimes only relying on the promotional effects. Increasingly, traditional media firms have opted to advertise their content within UCC sites by giving access to trailers, free samples of some content, etc.

The impact of the increased involvement of traditional media and established Internet firms in UCC sites is unclear. On the one hand, they provide the necessary “backbone” to UCC platforms and potential remuneration to creators. On the other hand, users may migrate away from UCC platforms which have too much centralised control, too many intrusive PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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advertisements and forms of branding, or which develop into video delivery platforms for commercial content producers crowding out UCC. Newspapers and other print media (which will be discussed in greater detail in a separate OECD Study on Online News Distribution) have also started to change their way of reporting or commenting on the news and – in some cases – to aggregate UCC, e.g. with discussion fora, interactive blogs and other interactive features (“citizen journalists”).52

Professional content creators The impact of UCC on independent or syndicated content producers who previously did not face competition from Internet users or nonprofessional creators has been increasingly discussed on blogs and other fora. Photographers (including independent agencies), graphic designers, free-lance journalists and other professionals who provide pictures, news videos, articles or other content face competition from freely provided or low-cost UCC or other amateur-created content. In terms of photos and images, for example, the web offers a vast amount of copyright-free content (see Flickr, iSTockphot or how user-created blogs and videos supplant some editorial content in newspapers or online media ventures) which has decreased the average unit cost of images and competes with commercial image providers. In terms of video footage and news articles, citizen journalists are in some ways also competing directly with freelance and other journalists for the reader’s attention.

Overall, it is too early to be able to quantify the economic impacts on professional content producers. On the one hand, the suppliers of such professional content will have to readjust, some no longer able to make a living from their original work. In the case of agencies for photography and images, these seem to be increasingly concentrated into a few providers (e.g.

Getty Images, Corbis, Jupiter Images), although whether this is a natural evolution due to high classification, archiving and retrieval costs and related economies of scale, or partly due to the increasing availability of amateur content is unclear. On the other hand, cheaper or free access to such content also reduces costs for business and consumers.

Search engines and advertising Search engines and advertisers see the potential in capitalising on the user base of UCC sites. Worldwide growth of online ads was for example expected to be around 35% in 2006 to reach USD 11.6 billion (van Duyn, 2006, see also forthcoming OECD Online Advertising Study). While still small, it is expected that advertisement-supported UCC will be one of the main drivers of website revenue (eMarketer, 2006a, 2006b). This trend has PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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62 – 6. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS been supported by the recent acquisition of YouTube by Google, and SK Telecom which also owns the popular CyWorld is also planning on developing a search engine that combines search and UCC.53

Services that capitalise on UCC Commercial websites and services are emerging that allow users to contribute their content, increasing the overall interactivity and customer value of the site. Increasingly travel services (e.g. hotel websites, flight booking sites), real estate services and other websites allow users to share their experiences (i.e. “word of mouth”), pictures and ratings.

Marketing and brands On social networking sites, brands increasingly create special sub-sites and areas with social branding. Members of these sites may join brand groups and display logos on their personal profiles. Finally, advertisements can take a different form in virtual worlds. Second Life, for instance, has news companies such as Wired magazine, CNET, Reuters, and firms such as Adidas and Toyota buy virtual land (in this case advertising space), to hold press conferences and to advertise their brands (Figure 6.3). Another form of branding and advertising takes place when artists use UCC sites to build prominence and attract the attention of record labels, film studios, newspapers and the like.

Figure 6.3. Reuters in Second Life

Source: Second Life.

Established brands have also begun experimenting with new ways to integrate UCC into their advertisements. For example, when a video portraying the explosive combination of Mentos and Diet Coke spread on the video-sharing site Revver, Mentos responded by placing advertising PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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within the video. Initiatives by a US car manufacturer and by a beauty product supplier54 have encouraged users to create their own commercials.

Other firms have created sites on which users can create humorous content.55 There is, however, no way to know what users will do on such sites, with brands potentially losing control of their image and being subject to greater information exchange, for example between users intent on revealing flaws in products and bad service sometimes justified but sometimes not.

Market research is also using UCC to gather and use the information exchanged between users on the Internet – for example on brand reputation, customer service and product performance – to improve customer service, marketing campaigns, brand image and the products themselves. For example, Nielsen BuzzMetrics provides technology to help companies understand and use increasing consumer activity and content on the Internet.

Use of UCC and participative web tools in business While this study focuses on UCC, tools associated with the participative web are increasingly used by businesses and professions in their wider economic activities. Blogs, wikis, podcasting, tagging technologies, and techniques from community and social networking sites can be important tools to improve the efficiency of knowledge worker collaboration, advance product development and raise the quality of interactions with goods and service users and consumers. As the use of these tools expands, significant new uses of and markets for participative web technologies will develop and there are likely to be potential impacts on business organisation, behaviour and productivity.

Social impacts Despite growing economic impacts of UCC, the creation of content by users was initially perceived as a mainly social phenomenon with mainly social implications, raising a host of questions, opportunities and challenges.

On the side of opportunities, changes in the way users produce, distribute, access and use information, knowledge, culture and entertainment results in three cross-cutting trends: increased user autonomy; increased participation, and increased diversity, with structural impacts on the cultural, social and political spheres. The Internet and UCC may also change the nature of communication (“who communicates with whom under what conditions and whose discretion”; Benkler, 2006) and related social relationships. Challenges cover issues of inclusion, cultural fragmentation and issues related to security, privacy and content quality.

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64 – 6. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS Increased user autonomy, participation and communication The rise of UCC provides new ways for how information, knowledge and culture is developed and exchanged, potentially at lower cost (MIC, 2006; Benkler, 2006). The Internet has altered the nature and the economics of information production as entry barriers for content creation have significantly declined or vanished and led to the democratisation of media production (sometimes referred to as the “rise or return of amateurs”), distribution costs have declined dramatically, user costs are lower, and there is much greater diversity of works with shelf space in the digital media being almost limitless.

These changes imply a shift away from simple passive consumption of broadcasting and other mass distribution media models (“couch potatoes”) to more active choosing, interacting and creating content (Lessig, 2004) and a shift to a participatory “culture”. Technological change empowers individuals to “tell their stories”, to produce cultural goods such as music and video and to transform the information and media content environment surrounding them (Benkler, 2006, OECD, 2006a, 2006b, Fisher, 2004, 2006). Users may derive a higher value from this content consumption as it may be more personalised and on-demand (one-to-one, “narrowcast”) with users having greater control over it.

Furthermore, the changed structure of communication and resulting active relationships built around exchange are argued to have important impacts on how citizens and users communicate and express themselves as well as possible positive impacts on social ties and social structures.

Cultural impacts The cultural impacts of this social phenomenon seem far-reaching with culture at different levels being affected by new and different ways of creating and diffusing content and new interactions developing between creators, users and consumers (OECD, 2006a, 2006b). According to the long tail effect, a more diverse and substantially increased set of cultural content will find niche audiences and users, potentially expanding creativity. Some artists have already become celebrities while using UCC platforms to gain recognition.56 This phenomenon applies to all genres. In Korea, for instance, one portal alone had over 150 000 literature-related forums where classic and novel genres were created and commented on by amateur critics (National Internet Development Agency of Korea, 2006). Talent agencies, media publishers and Internet sites now use UCC platforms to discover new talent (screenwriters, directors, musicians).57 Even if the platforms lead to recognition and development of only a few outstanding content creators, this may still be considered a cultural enrichment.

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The availability and diversity of (local) content in diverse languages is increasing, with dynamic user bases in most OECD and many non-OECD countries. As more participate in building and cultivating culture and the democracy associated with egalitarian cultural development, greater general identification of users with culture and society may develop and less alienation result (Benkler, 2006; Fisher, 2006).

Citizenship engagement and politics The Internet can be an open platform enriching the diversity of opinions, political and societal debate, free flow of information and freedom of expression. UCC is in many ways a form of personal expression and free speech, and as such, it may be used for critical, political and social ends. It has also been argued that the “democratisation of access to media outlets” fulfils an increasingly important role for democracy, individual freedom, political discourse, and justice (Balkin, 2004; Fisher, 2004; Lessig, 2004; Benkler, 2006). As users raise questions and enquire, and as new decentralised approaches to content creation are adopted, the political debate, transparency and also certain “watchdog” functions may be enhanced (c.f. websites like Meetup and Pledgebank which facilitate collective action on political and social issues by civil society).

Citizen journalism, for instance, allows users to influence or create news, potentially on similar terms as newspapers, companies or other major entities. Creators of UCC have brought attention to issues that may have otherwise gone un-noticed (e.g. the online circulation of video files of politicians making racist remarks). Bloggers and other users on sites such as AgoraVox (see Figure 6.4) have taken on the role of grassroots reporters and fact-checkers which influences the content in traditional media (Gill, 2005).

Effects may include a greater call for accuracy within the mainstream media, as users point out inaccuracies and flaws online. UCC may also provide a way to gain the attention when none previously existed (for example, protest movies against particular events). In some cases issues are covered in great detail which would not be otherwise (e.g. a blog that specialises in human rights issues in country x or media reporting on alleged wrongdoings of influential persons or companies). GlobalVoices.com, for example, aims to redress insufficiencies in media attention by using weblogs, wikis, podcasts, tags, aggregators and online chats to call attention to conversations and points of views from non-English speaking communities. Often when unexpected events occur, the only source of immediate documentation may be users with their mobile phone cameras.

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66 – 6. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS Figure 6.4. AgoraVox

Source: www.agoravox.com.

UCC has been seen to be important in politics and has not gone unnoticed by politicians (see Box 6.1). On the one hand, blogs, social networking sites, and virtual worlds can be platforms for exchanging political views, provoking debate and sharing knowledge about societal questions. On the other hand, they can also be very directly involved in the partisan political process itself. Recently, popular social networks have covered political campaigns, urged young users to vote and have staged related debates. In the US these platforms have been active in getting youth to register to vote or using video contests to invite thoughts on national policy (e.g. the “MyState of the Union” initiative by MySpace). Social networking and other UCC sites are increasingly recognised tools to engage the electorate as evidenced by the discussions but also by the increased presence of politicians on sites hosting UCC. In Korea, as of January 2006, 60% of all lawmakers had blogged (National Internet Development Agency of Korea, 2006). The medium- to long-term impact of the participative web on political systems merits further study.

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67

Box 6.1. Politics, news and blogging in France In France, blogging has become a staple for politicians, and the leading contenders in the 2007 presidential election, including Segolène Royal58 and Nicolas Sarkozy59 maintained online journals. Nicolas Sarkozy’s appearance in a video podcast in December 2005,60 the first by a leading politician in France, was seen by many as a major step in embracing new forms of media. Socialist candidate Segolène Royal made her website, blogs, video podcasts and even virtual town hall meetings in a building on Second Life a part of her campaign of “participative democracy”. Other prominent uses include blogging for activist and political ends, such as critiquing gender roles in advertising, debating the rejection of the European Constitution, or commenting on the country’s labour laws.

French newspapers such as Le Monde, have set up a blogging service where users maintain online journals on the newspaper’s website.

Source: MediaMetrie and various press reports (including Crampton, 2006 and Matlack, 2005a,b).

Educational and information impact Multiple users can very effectively develop information and knowledge resources, often for free, that are potentially important ways to provide citizens, students and consumers with more useful and more detailed information. User-created educational content tends to be developed collaboratively and to encourage sharing and peer-production of ideas, opinions, information and knowledge. Provided that it is accurate, the availability of large amounts of freely accessible information such as Wikipedia, Creative Commons materials, freely available pictures on photosharing sites, and websites created by individuals (e.g. a former teacher providing a website on American history, a naval officer authoring podcasts on different ships) can have positive educational impacts. Discussion fora on various topics as well as product reviews increase the general level of knowledge and potentially lead to more informed user and consumer decisions (e.g. Amazon’s book recommendations).

Educational projects can also build on participative web technologies such as podcasts to improve the quality and reach of education. Schools and universities may make use of wikis for assignments, group projects, posting notes and syllabi, and creating online resources. The Harvard Extension School and other universities and groups of students, for example, are using UCC platforms such as virtual worlds to facilitate projects (Figure 6.5).61 Students and educators including in developing countries access resources and knowledge mostly free of charge.

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68 – 6. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS Figure 6.5. Harvard Law virtual distance education classroom

Note: See also Second Life’s educational platform at http://secondlife.com/education.

While accuracy and quality of information are well-assured in established institutional contexts, they may be a problem in Internet-based settings where everybody can contribute without detailed checks and balances (see later sections). Wrong information or mistakes (such as, for example, incorrect historical dates) can be widely diffused by the Internet, and discussion fora and product reviews can spread misleading or false information.

Impact on ICT and other skills The creation and the use of UCC are likely to improve ICT skills, especially in younger age-groups who will need these advanced skills later.

Furthermore, the actual process of creating content and viewing it, may create specialised skills such as video filming and editing, acting, writing (e.g. novels, poems). Participation in blogs, citizen journalism, critical videos concerning public events or politics and confrontation of different opinions may arouse critical minds and interest in debate.

Social and legal challenges The Internet and UCC may also raise social challenges. A greater gap between digitally literate users and others (elderly, handicapped, poor people) may occur, accentuating social fragmentation and intergenerational gaps. Cultural fragmentation may also be accentuated with UCC PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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encouraging greater individualisation of the cultural environment with citizens decreasingly sharing a common core of cultural values, exacerbating the effects of the multiplication of media channels and the diminishing role of a few national broadcasting channels for political discourse and shared national values.62 Other challenges relate to information accuracy and content quality (including the problem of inappropriate or illegal content), privacy issues, safety on the Internet and possibly adverse impacts of intensive Internet use.

In terms of legal challenges, the nature of the Internet and the ease with which content on the Internet can be reproduced and distributed makes online UCC, and all online content, particularly susceptible to copyright infringement. These challenges are discussed in the next chapter.

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Chapter 7 OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY User-created content is growing rapidly, and as broadband penetration spreads and ICT user skills develop it will diffuse through all age groups and activities. However the rise of the participative web in general and UCC in particular raise opportunities and challenges for users, businesses and governments which are the focus of this last section. A common set of digital content policy areas has been developed based on detailed analysis of digital content sectors and activities (see Box 7.1) and these policy areas are used as a framework for analysis of various aspects of UCC creation, distribution and access. There are also issues which were not raised in other digital content sectors, including: How sustainable is the UCC phenomenon?

Are there bottlenecks to its creation and diffusion? What problems are raised

by UCC? And finally should these impediments be removed? If so, how and by who?

This section explores these issues and challenges. The starting point is the potential of UCC and the question of how to foster economic, social, and cultural benefits while defining the boundaries of legitimate use and creating a safe Internet environment. 63 The analysis includes a review of the terms of service of 15 commonly used English-language commercial UCC platforms to provide indicative insights into the legal and policy setting of the most popular ways UCC is hosted, although users can also use non-commercial platforms or host their content themselves and in these cases the terms of services analysed here do not necessarily apply.64

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1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Box 7.1. Digital content policies Enhancing R&D, innovation and technology in content, networks, software and new technologies.

Developing a competitive, non-discriminatory framework environment (i.e. value chain and business model issues).

Enhancing the infrastructure (e.g. technology for digital content delivery, standards and interoperability).

Business and regulatory environments that balance the interests of suppliers and users, in areas such as the protection of intellectual property rights and digital rights management, without disadvantaging innovative e-business models.

Governments as producers and users of content (e.g. commercial re-use of public sector information).

Conceptualisation, classification and measurement issues.

Source: OECD (2006c), “Digital Broadband Content Strategies and Policies”, www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/36/36854975.pdf.

Enhancing R&D, innovation and technology R&D and innovation The creation of user-created content relies heavily on the availability of various new participative web technologies, for example tagging, group rating, content distribution (content packaging and management; digital asset management), interactive web applications and content management systems, 3D graphic production and digital animation (see earlier section on drivers of UCC), and innovations in networks and consumer electronics.

Often technologies will be the solution to many business and policy challenges such as combating spam, ensuring a safe Internet experience (implementing parental controls, age ratings), and securing intellectual property rights. These technologies for content creation and diffusion are increasingly R&D-intensive (faster networks, new platforms, contentintensive products, data-base management) and the challenge is to establish business settings, policies and approaches that encourage innovation.

Governments have an on-going role encouraging R&D and innovation.

Market participants and institutions create and commercialise innovative products, but governments support basic R&D, address market failures and provide an environment conducive to R&D and innovation (e.g. R&D tax incentives, specific R&D support, see OECD, 2006a) and very often encourage linkages between commercial and not-for-profit R&D and innovation-related activities.65 Basic R&D receives major public sector support, e.g. for energy, environment, health, military and space, and much PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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of this involves new components, devices, networks, imaging, software for virtual environments, 3-D modelling, etc. which impact UCC in various ways. To the extent that there are general market failures in the development of new software or platforms, governments may aim to foster an innovative business environment without choosing particular commercial or noncommercial technologies.

Ensuring technological and other spillovers Content creation and delivery technologies and user-created content itself are increasingly used in other, non-entertainment, sectors. There may be considerable technological spillovers from UCC technologies and approachesdeveloped in areas such as games imaging and virtual world technology to medical and other fields.

Creative environments, skills, education and training The creation of UCC and the necessary services and technology to support it rest on creative environments, skills and education. A central question is if and how governments can encourage and promote UCCrelated specific or general skills, and if there are new models to foster and provide incentives to creativity. Governments have a major role in developing skills via secondary and tertiary education and vocational training. For the creation of UCC, basic and sometimes more advanced ICT skills are needed, and advanced skills are necessary to develop the surrounding technologies. Furthermore, younger generations will more readily have the required middle-level ICT skills, but older generations, the disabled or poorer groups may warrant special efforts.

Fostering local and diverse content Cultural and language issues are seen as important in the development of digital content, particularly for smaller countries and linguistic and cultural minorities. Many OECD countries have rapidly developing markets for UCC and related services, and the development of user-created content may increase availability of specialised local and minority content in diverse languages. With lower access barriers and increased demand for content downstream and lower entry barriers in supply upstream, the creation of cultural content and identification of new creators could potentially be enhanced.66 There is significant government support for local content development where market failures are perceived to exist, and public institutions may have a role in driving the creation of UCC. In some countries public broadcasters have initiatives allowing citizens to download their content, PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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74 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY and rip, mix, and burn it (see in the UK the example of the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC).67 Cultural policies and institutions such as museums, musical conservatoria, and other cultural and educational institutions may also encourage innovation around UCC with the public policy objective of fostering creativity and cultural expression. Support programmes for the creation and diffusion of local content may need to further take account of the potential behind UCC and its associated diffusion and use.

On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, making available free content for downloading, remixing and other uses has triggered concerns that freely provided public content could “crowd out” the creation of commercial content with free public content competing on an unequal footing with commercial content.

Developing competitive, non-discriminatory policy frameworks The development of user-created content has thrived on wide-spread access to networks, software, content and other services, and commercial businesses are increasingly involved in supporting the creation, search, aggregation, filtering, hosting and diffusion of UCC. To encourage further experimentation and competition in value chains and business models, it is essential to maintain and further develop competitive, non-discriminatory policy frameworks and a pro-innovation business environment. This begins with the market for telecommunication services but extends to other business activities (e.g. traditional and new content industry entities, Internet portals, search engines).

Control over parts of the value chain should not unduly restrict new entrants or users creating content, in particular small firms. This holds particularly true in new fields such as digital rights management, an increasing concentration in search services, and technologies and services which limit or prevent interoperability. Very strong network effects, potential for lock-in and high switching costs have to be taken into account when making competition-related assessments of UCC services which have a critical mass of users.

However, new forms of digital content innovations are often based less on traditional scale advantages and large initial capital investments and more on decentralised creativity, organisational innovation and new business models for content production and diffusion (OECD, 2006a, 2006b). These factors favour new entrants, particularly for new platform aggregation models, where content owners had no legacy advantages (IBM, 2007). Very popular services were started by a small group of individuals and rapidly competed with established entities.

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Maintaining the open and collaborative nature of the Internet is a necessary condition for the further evolution of UCC. The question is whether the Internet will preserve its open nature with interoperable services or whether it may evolve into “walled gardens” which may be preferred by some users for reasons of simplicity, quality and security, and the role of policies is to ensure that the users can choose between these different options. Finally, the growth and development of UCC may have to be taken into account when determining policy on the prioritisation of network traffic. It is unlikely that individual users creating content on an informal basis would have the ability or funds to negotiate agreements with ISPs.

Enhancing the infrastructure Broadband access Widespread affordable broadband availability and access is a general policy target.68 Broadband policies to ensure (regional) coverage and equal access to infrastructure and applications on fair terms and at competitive prices to all communities, irrespective of location, are general policy aims, as is a regulatory environment which encourages investment and competition in communication networks and technologies and which is adapted to next generation networks.69 Initiatives such as the provision of municipal broadband networks can, in the absence of market solutions providing similar access, also be beneficial to the creation of UCC (including the accessibility of broadband services to the disabled).

One key technical challenge for the evolution of UCC is the low consumer availability of symmetrical networks. The majority of Internet connections are Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and cable services which are “asymmetric”, with the volume of data flow greater in one direction than the other. Providers usually market services for consumers to connect to the Internet in a relatively passive mode, with the higher speed for download from the Internet without running servers for high speed in the other direction.70 There is now greater potential for more symmetrical content download and upload, and the current infrastructure is not conducive to more symmetrical user behaviour. The deployment of new distribution technologies such as optical fibre (as in Japan and Korea) can help overcome this problem.

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76 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY Convergence and regulation Ensuring effective competition and continued liberalisation in infrastructure, network services and applications in the face of convergence across different technological platforms is a key policy challenge. Many new services have appeared which support the distribution of video material on an on-demand and one-to-one basis. These are often called non-linear services where the user decides upon the moment in time when a specific programme is transmitted on the basis of a choice of content selected by the media service provider. The distinction is between TV broadcast or linear services (“push content”), on one hand and non-linear or on-demand services (“pull content”). ISPs, new video services and others are now involved in the creation, hosting and diffusion of such one-to-one “pull content”. This technological and business convergence is putting existing regulatory arrangements and the separation between broadcasting and telecommunications regulations to a test, particularly as telecommunication regulations mainly focus on establishing competition, while broadcasting policy also tries to achieve wider public policy objectives (e.g. the protection of minors, cultural diversity) (OECD, 2004b, 2006e, 2007a).

Many OECD countries are in the process of realigning their regulatory regimes to deal with convergence as Internet content has become much more widespread.71 The essential question, while taking into account the particular nature of on-demand one-to-one video services, is to determine up to what point the new services should be subjected to similar rules as those applicable to traditional broadcasters or rules inspired by those.72 Examples of such regulations are broadcasting and production quotas (e.g. transmission time reserved for works of independent producers), rules on television advertising and sponsorship (e.g. maximum advertisement time per daily transmission, identification of advertising, rules on surreptitious advertising, restrictions on certain advertisements such as alcohol and product placement and sponsoring), the protection of minors, rules on incitement to hatred, the right of reply (i.e. a person whose legitimate interests have been damaged by an assertion of incorrect facts in a television programme must have a right of reply), and how events of major importance for society have to be treated.

With the emergence of increasingly advertisement-based business models and unsolicited email and marketing messages, rules on advertising will play a particular role in the UCC environment (in particular product placement in virtual worlds, and in the context of advertising to children).

A question which has also been raised is if and how UCC types and platforms can fulfil, extend or complement more effectively certain functions which up to now have been attributed to public broadcasting (public debate, social cohesion etc.).

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Regulatory environment User-created content raises a range of issues with respect to the business and regulatory environment in which it is created. The blurring of differences between content users and producers needs also to be kept in mind. If users increasingly derive non-pecuniary and pecuniary benefits from content creation and they become actual producers / commercial entities, their legal and regulatory treatment will change (e.g. in areas of consumer protection, intellectual property rights, taxation, and other producer responsibilities).

Intellectual property rights and user-created content Copyright law is intended to encourage the creation and dissemination of authors’ works of and thereby to promote cultural and economic development. From an economic perspective, copyright is designed to provide exclusive rights for a limited time to authors to recompense their creative effort in return for enabling their works to be widely appreciated and to encourage further creativity. This section discusses the salient intellectual property rights (IPR) issues in the areas of UCC and points to areas where further work may be needed.73 For a work to enjoy copyright protection, it must be an original creative expression of the author.74 Generally, copyrights confer on authors and/or right-holders a set of exclusive rights, i.e. the control over reproductions, the preparation of derivative works (i.e. adaptations), distribution to the public, public performances and public display. In some countries copyrights are also intended to protect the rights of integrity and attribution sometimes identified as the moral rights of authors (i.e. ability of authors to control the eventual fate of their works). These rights expire when the copyright term ends and a work falls into the public domain. Moral rights may continue even after the economic rights have expired (for example, in France).

Copyright regimes in OECD countries aim at balancing a creator’s exclusive rights and the public interest in the creation, access to and wide dissemination of knowledge and creative works. This is pursued through exceptions and limitations to the creator’s rights. These exceptions and limitations may be specific statutory exceptions and limitations which may or may not include fair use and fair dealing principles. In addition, information in the public domain is not subject to copyright protection.

Under certain circumstances, exceptions and limitations allow the reproduction and adaptation of copyrighted works without the authorisation of rights-holders. Both exclusive rights and exceptions and limitations have been clarified to apply to existing norms in the new digital environment, notably through the ratification of the WIPO Internet Treaties75 (see WIPO, PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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78 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY 2003; OECD, 2005b). The Recommendation of the OECD Council on Broadband Development recommends that member countries should implement regulatory frameworks that balance the interests of suppliers and users, in areas such as the protection of intellectual property rights, and digital rights management, without disadvantaging innovative e-business models.76

Copyrights in the context of user-created content Copyright issues related to UCC arise in a number of different ways. At the outset, it may be helpful to distinguish between “original works” created by users and works created by users from pre-existing works (commonly called “derivative works”). Original works identified as UCC raise the same copyright issues as original works created under other circumstances and can present relatively familiar issues of control, commercial exploitation, and protection in the online environment. Derivative UCC works (such as fan fiction or a blog that incorporates some or all of a protected work) highlights a difficult copyright issue, i.e. whether such derivative works are acceptable uses permitted by the respective jurisdiction’s exceptions and limitations (sometimes referred to as “fair use”) or an unlawful infringement of the creator’s exclusive rights.

Original works created by users: A large amount of UCC consists in individuals or groups uploading their own original content (e.g. photos, videos, art) to their personal blogs or other platforms. The originality requirement to obtain copyright does not necessarily imply an elevated standard of quality or effort (WIPO, 2006a). The creators of works identified as UCC are automatically granted the same exclusive rights as creators in other circumstances are granted. Infringement issues surface when third parties exercise one or more of the UCC creator’s exclusive rights without permission or the use is not an exception or limitation (sometimes referred to as “fair use”). In the same vein as for other forms of content creation, copyright for UCC can be considered a catalyst to the production of original works. This holds especially true when creators are interested in pursuing some gainful activity through the commercialisation of their works. Through the control of reproduction and derivative work, these creators also retain control of the way their work is used (including how it is commercialised) and can hence avoid, for example, unwanted modification of their works.

Alongside traditional copyright protection, creators or UCC platforms may – in parallel or in addition – also opt for different licensing schemes, such as the Creative Commons licence. Under these licences others are automatically allowed to copy and distribute a work provided that the licensee credits the author/licensor. In addition, other rights may be reserved PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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or waived (e.g. right to create derivatives on non-commercial terms).

Examples would be an attribution licence, whereby others can copy, distribute, and remix the work as long as the original author is attributed.

While such licensing schemes may permit copying and non-commercial reuse, original authors can specify certain restrictions which have to be observed by those interested in creating derivative works.

Derivative works: Because of copyright law, creators of content identified as UCC, have to respect the exclusive rights of other content producers, i.e. of those who choose to work within and those who choose to work outside professional routines and practices (or some combination thereof). Copyright infringement issues may arise whenever someone who is not the copyright holder (or a licensee) exercises an exclusive right, such as adapting the work to create a derivative work, be it for commercial or noncommercial purposes. Copyright issues may thus arise when users create content by using – in part or in full – pieces of others’ work without authorisation or where the use does not fall within an exception and limitation. Examples which entail replicating or transforming certain works are the use of particular characters (e.g. from Lord of the Rings) in writing fan fiction, using certain images and texts while blogging (e.g. using press agency pictures when blogging, using large excerpts of news reporting video footage in one’s news commentary), creating lip-synching videos or music mash-ups with samples of existing songs, and the creation of UCC videos while using copyrighted characters, texts or video images.

Copyright laws typically limit in one way or another the copyright holder’s ability to control derivative works.77 Depending on the OECD country, “fair use”- and “fair dealing”- principles and/or specific statutory exceptions allow courts to avoid the rigid application of the copyright statute’s exclusive rights when, on occasion, it would discourage creativity, and the public interest in or wide dissemination of knowledge through copyrighted works. Under these circumstances, portions of works can be used without permission and without payment if their use is within one of the copyright exceptions and limitations. Most copyright acts contain limitations for the following activities: personal use, quotation and criticism, comment, parody, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research, educational and library activities, and – depending on the country in question – other forms of use. In all OECD countries, the latter exceptions are varied reflecting local traditions and are decided on a case-by-case basis.

These differences between fair use and copyright limitations are described in Box 7.2.78 In general, when large portions of a work are taken over or when commercial implications arise, fair use exemptions are less likely to apply (see Gasser and Ernst, 2006).

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80 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY Box 7.2. Fair use and copyright limitations Under Article 9(2) of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and other international copyright treaties79 signatories are permitted to establish limitations and exceptions at national level but are subject to the so-called “three-step test”: The “three-step test” requires that limitations and exceptions must be i) confined to special cases, ii) not in conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and iii) of no unreasonable prejudice to the legitimate interests of the author (see Fiscor, 2002 and Senftleben, 2004 for discussion). The agreed statement concerning the three step test in article 10 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty also underlines that these provisions permit signatory countries to devise new exceptions and limitations that are appropriate in the digital network environment.80 National approaches to the determination of exceptions and limitations vary. Rather than specifying a closed list of limitations, common law countries allow for a particular type of limitation on exclusive rights, i.e. fair use and/or fair dealing exceptions (Guibault, 1998, WIPO, 2006b). Under US copyright law, for example, a use is permitted if it is determined to be “fair use” as that term is defined by U.S. statutes and case law. US copyright law lists categories of uses that may be fair use under the copyright law, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. This listing is not exhaustive. To determine whether a use is fair, a US court would consider i) the purpose and character of the use (e.g. use for non-profit educational purposes), ii) the nature of the copyrighted work, iii) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and iv) the effect of the use upon the potential market of the copyrighted work.81 The approach in other OECD countries such as Australia, member countries of the EU, Korea and Japan is rather to define a set of closed purpose-specific exceptions to exclusive rights.82 In Australia, “fair dealing” is a use of a work specifically recognised as not violating exclusive rights. However, in order to qualify for such exceptions a use must fall within closed purpose-specific exceptions (e.g. review or criticism, parody, satire, research or study, news-reporting) and certain circumstances must be met (depends on the nature of the created work, effect of the use on any commercial market for the work, etc.). In the United Kingdom, the “fair dealing” approach also specifies a list of situations where “dealing” with a protected work is permitted.83 “EU Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (EUCD)” introduces an exhaustive list of optional exceptions and limitations.84 This list is amenable to the various legal traditions of the EU member states. The EU Directive also mandates the adherence to the three-step test described above.85 Finally, Korean and Japanese Copyright Acts contain categories of uses for which the exclusive rights of authors does not hold: e.g. educational uses, quotation, news reporting, etc.86 In particular, the fair use exception connected to non-profit performance may – under certain circumstances – be relevant to UCC.87

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No matter whether copyright systems follow a “fair use” doctrine or whether they opt for a specific list of exemptions, broadly speaking the application of these standards is complex and it is difficult to predict what a court will decide when applying them (See Cotter, 2006 and Litman, 2006, for a related discussion). Also, in the digital UCC environment one question is how to adapt the parameters of certain copyright exceptions and limitations, such as fair use, when citations and compilations are increasingly prevalent and easy. In a multi-media environment with mixes of text, video, and graphic works, concepts such as “citation” may be blurry.

As with any other use being made of a work still under copyright protection, if no exemption can be invoked, the creator of derivative UCC has to obtain permission from the original authors to create the UCC (e.g. for remixes, mash-ups). There remains a degree of legal uncertainty on the side of the creator of the original work as well as with the creator of the derivate work.

While this legal uncertainty may lead to the creation of less derivative works, it also has advantages, namely that courts maintain some degree of flexibility when deciding on whether a use is a permissible exception.

The general question for UCC is what are the effects of copyright law on non-professional and new sources of creativity and whether copyright law may need to be examined or does not need to be re-examined, in order to allow coexistence of market and non-market creation and distribution of content and spur further innovation.

Current legal interpretation maintains that standard copyright rules and exceptions are a necessary condition for creativity and that the exceptions and limitations work well (e.g. Ginsburg, 2002). In principle, copyright limitations provide ample opportunity for a use to qualify as a permissible exception or limitation. Future case law may determine the boundaries of exceptions and limitations and produce clarity in the UCC context. This is also the thinking pursued in recent national and international legislative approaches (i.e. the WIPO Internet Treaties) which propose a combination of exclusive rights and exceptions and limitations. If necessary, existing limitations can also be amended. The Gowers review in the United Kingdom, for example, suggests amending applicable EU copyright law to allow for an exception for creative, transformative or derivative work, within the parameters of the Berne three-step test and to broaden the list of exceptions to copyright for the purpose of caricature, parody and pastiche (UK Treasury, 2006). Overall, it must be clear that a sizeable share of original UCC works is not concerned by these considerations as no derivative works are involved, and many examples of UCC qualify for the standard limitations on copyrights.

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82 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY On the other hand, proponents of UCC have voiced concerns which are largely based on the idea that non-commercial users have different incentives to create, use, and to share than established professional content holders and that these incentives should be preserved due to their social and cultural impact (see, for example, OECD 2006b, for related discussions and follow-up discussions of the World Summit on the Information Society88).

These concerns centre on how the copyright law on derivative works could stifle some of the creativity that digital technology enables (Lessig, 2004; Fisher, 2004, 2006). It has been argued that some would-be users are deterred from engaging in conduct that could fall within the ambit of fair use (and hence be legal), due in part to concerns over incurring legal fees and also to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the fair use approach itself (Cotter, 2006). The idea that the IPR system may not have kept pace with progress in this sense and that content production based on the reuse of existing materials – such as sampling or mash-ups – should not be penalised per se has been echoed at the policy level.89 Facilitating UCC creation: More flexible and efficient licensing processes for copyrights (including for non-UCC areas) have been suggested in the digital context (EU, 2006; OECD, 2006c). Current licensing regimes have been seen by some to be unduly burdensome because of the costs involved or the inability to identify and locate the author of the original work. In some cases the original author of a work will not be identifiable and cannot be contacted, and hence no legal use of the material can be made.90 Solutions such as new ways to license copyright or new technologies to facilitate licensing could be explored and have – in some cases – been implemented. This could, for example, involve the creation of clearing houses/centres for the attribution of rights to UCC and other creators. From the point of view of commercial copyright interests, any such changes should not be solely to benefit creators of UCC and to the detriment of their commercial interests.

Furthermore, the expansion of fair use-type provisions to derivative works that are more than just copying (i.e. that have real transformative and creative value) and that are non-commercial, have also been proposed (Litman, 2006, Fisher, 2004) – often based on the argument that remixing of others’ work can also serve to benefit original creators by providing increased exposure. Commercial use of such derivative works would continue to be regulated by the regular statutory rights and limitations.91 These suggestions may imply changes to copyright laws, and they rely on a clear dividing line between commercial and non-commercial content, which may be difficult to establish taking into account the diversity of UCC services and related business models. Moreover, the suggested benefits from such new approaches would have to be weighed very carefully against their PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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costs, including, for example, to the established commercial content industry which produces significant economic value. Beyond suggestions, more study is needed of the extent to which UCC creates proven, valuable creative works and associated private and public benefits, as well as of what the potential economic damage is, if any, to the established commercial content industry. So far available statistics seem to demonstrate rapid growth of UCC within current frameworks. One question is to what extent could this growth be even more rapid, whether it comes at the expense of the commercial content industry and other creators, and whether there is a likelihood of constraints on further growth due to difficulties encountered under copyright law.

To date, the attention of rightholders is mostly focussed on UCC platforms which host unmodified snippets or entire reproductions of their original works without authorisation (see section below). So far there seem to be relatively few legal cases directly aimed at the creation of noncommercial derivative works by individuals. However, there are increasing legal actions in the form of take-down notices and “cease and desist” letters which are sent to UCC platforms and individuals asking them to take down certain potentially unauthorised content and which may not reach courts.92 Finally, experimentation with new models for the economic use and creation of new digital content is ongoing which does not rely on changes of statutory rights and exceptions of copyright regimes, e.g. flexible licensing regimes such as the Creative Commons.93 The idea is to facilitate the release of creative works under liberal licence terms that would make works available for sharing and reuse. These may address the particularities of content created by amateurs and allow for a parallel coexistence between traditional commercial content and free UCC. But their impacts are not clear and merit further study, including positive or negative effects on the creation process (OECD, 2006a, 2006b). Introducing further diversity in access and licensing regimes to copyrighted works may also have disadvantages (ElkinKoren, 2006). In sum, the legal meaningfulness of such licences has not yet been fully assessed by research and courts.

Copyrights and the terms of service of UCC sites As shown by the analysis of the terms of service (Table 7.1), most UCC sites specify that they retain IPRs in their respective content (e.g. text, software, graphics, layout, design – especially in cases such as Second Life or social networking sites with their own software and content).

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84 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY Table 7.1. Intellectual property provisions in terms of service of UCC sites Content created by site

• Most sites specify that they retain IPRs in their respective content (e.g. text, software, graphics, layout, design) under copyright.

Content created by users

• Most sites specify that users who post content retain ultimate ownership, but that they have given the site a licence to use content without payment. In other words, by posting the content the sites receives a limited irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid-up, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicense) to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such content.

• Most sites specify that this licence does not grant the site the right to sell the content, nor to distribute it outside of the respective service.

• Most sites pledge to mention the identity of the user, the author of the work, and also the title of the work, in so far as technical conditions make this possible.

• Most sites specify that the licence terminates at the time the user removes his/her content.

• Some sites reserve the right to prepare derivative works (modify, edit content posted by users) or the right to adapt. At times, it is specified that the site may commercially exploit the works posted by users.

• Some sites specify that users lose their IPRs and forfeit payment in perpetuity (even when the content is removed). Sometimes the sites also ask the user to admit “moral rights” (meaning that the site does not have to give the author credit).

• Some sites require the user to agree that content will be subject to the Creative Commons licence.

• Some sites reserve the right of reproduction, i.e. the right to reproduce, without limitation, on any known or unknown medium, current or future, especially optical, digital, paper, disc, network, diskette, electronic, DVD, etc.

• Some sites reserve the right to distribute the work or to sublicense rights to third parties.

Mostly, it is proposed that revenue from these activities be shared between the user and the site.

• Some sites reserve the right to use the name and content of users for advertising and promotional purposes (promotional licence).

Reservation to terminate the service

• Most sites reserve the right to modify or terminate the service for any reason, without notice, at any time, which may have consequences on content stored or acquired by users.

Source: OECD based on a review of the terms of service of a sample of 15 widely-used English-speaking UCC sites.

UCC platforms usually grant users who upload content the right to retain copyright in their work. This right is enforceable and applicable both online and offline, both for non-profit and commercial ventures. According to the terms of services of the sample of UCC platforms, users agree that they have given the site a licence to use the content, mostly without payment.94 Competitors with profit-sharing strategies and arrangements have also emerged. At times the sites reserve the right to prepare derivative works of the content posted by users and the terms of service require the uploader to waive their moral rights. Some sites reserve the right to PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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commercially exploit the works posted by users or to license the content to third parties. Some sites require the user to agree that the content will be subject to the Creative Commons licence. In some cases, unclear terms and conditions or a failure of users to read the latter may lead the user to agree to granting additional rights (even after the user has taken down the content and even for commercial purposes). Often, however, the licence agreed to by the user terminates at the time the user removes such content from the Internet platform site, hence terminating the licence granted to the UCC platform.

A further issue is that some sites reserve the right to modify or terminate the service for any reason without notice at any time, and that this may have consequences on content stored or acquired by users. If, for instance, a UCC site terminates or modifies the service a user may lose his/her uploaded content, the way it was tagged and organised, potentially his/her avatar, and with it many hours of labour and/or money invested to create the content.

Copyrights and the liability of UCC platforms As discussed above, the growth of UCC is accompanied by the emergence of many sites and online intermediaries hosting the content which users upload. In some ways their existence drives the growth and access to UCC (and vice versa). From a copyright perspective, however, the question emerges in which way online intermediaries are liable for copyright matters.

For example, copyright issues arise when users post unaltered third party content on UCC platforms without authorisation (e.g. uploading parts of popular TV series without the explicit consent of the content owner). This activity is outside the scope of UCC as defined in this study, but it is still a key concern of rightholders, who may seek to hold the UCC platforms directly or indirectly liable for copyright infringement. Additionally, posting UCC that is created through the adaptation of pre-existing work may also raise copyright issues for UCC platforms, e.g. whether the particular use is permissible under exceptions and limitations such as fair use, and if not permissible, whether the UCC platform is liable for direct or indirect copyright infringement as a result or otherwise exempted from liability for the infringement.

Rightholders are beginning to engage in relevant actions against potential infringement on UCC platforms. Associations representing content owners have sent take-down notices and have asserted potential lawsuits against UCC platforms.95 An example of interactions between rightholders and a UCC site is the recent legal case between YouTube and the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) which PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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86 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY complains about music videos being uploaded to YouTube without rightholders’ permission. Major media companies have also requested online video sites to remove their content.

Some UCC platforms have defended the posting of unaltered third party and alleged infringing derivative UCC content on their platforms by arguing that they are similar to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who can, under certain circumstances, be exempt from liability for content uploaded by their users (see Litman, 2000). The essential question is whether online intermediaries be treated as electronic publishers, and thus liable for content on their servers (Koelman and Hugenholtz, 2003; WIPO, 2005). As shown in Box 7.3, national legislatures have dealt with the liability of online intermediaries in different ways, which raises issues for internationally operating online intermediaries.

Whether UCC platforms can be treated as a “mere conduit” under exceptions for online intermediaries is an ongoing question. As depicted in Table 7.2, most UCC sites specify that users who post content are responsible for it. They must own all rights to it or have express permissions from the copyright owners to copy and use images. They may not violate or infringe upon the rights of others. Moreover, the terms of service of UCC sites specify that when valid notifications are received, the service provider usually pledges to respond by taking down the unauthorised content.96 Then the owner of the removed content is contacted so that a counter-notification may be filed.

Table 7.2. Intellectual property provisions and responsibilities in terms of service of UCC sites Users are responsible for uploaded content

Most sites specify that users who post content are responsible for it. Those uploading must own all rights to it or have express permissions from the copyright owners to copy and use images. They may not violate or infringe upon the copyrights of others.

Take down notice procedure

When valid notifications are received, the service provider usually pledges to respond by taking down the offending content. Under some legal regimes, it is specified that the owner of the removed content is contacted allowing him/her to file a counter-notification.

Source: OECD based on review of the terms of service of a sample of 15 widely-used English-speaking UCC sites.

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Box 7.3. Copyright liability of online intermediaries In their copyright or e-commerce laws many OECD countries have addressed the liability of ISPs and other information intermediaries who merely deliver content by creating liability exceptions (“safe harbour” under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act97) for these entities. This is an exemption from secondary liability but requires the online service providers to remove infringing materials upon notice. In the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for instance, following the “notice and take down procedures”, ISPs are responsible for taking down unauthorised copyrighted material when a legitimate claim of a rights holder is presented to them.98 They are also responsible for terminating access by repeat infringers. Similar principles on the liability of online intermediaries also exist in Australian copyright law99, i.e. providers are not obliged to actively self-monitor for infringing activity.

The EU Electronic Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC also establishes an exemption from liability for intermediaries where they play a passive role as a “mere conduit” of information from third parties and limits service providers’ liability for other “intermediary” activities such as the storage of information.100 No general monitoring obligation can be imposed on the service provider.101 Activities which involve the modification of transmitted information, for instance, do not qualify for this exemption.

This EU Directive also encourages hosting services providers to act expeditiously to remove or to disable access to the information concerned upon obtaining actual knowledge or awareness of illegal activities.102 Such mechanisms are to be developed on the basis of voluntary agreements and codes of conduct between all parties concerned.103 In addition, in EU Member States such as Italy and France but also on the EU level, public-private partnerships emerged regrouping ISP, rightholders and the government to promote the development of legal online content (OECD, 2005b). Some of the resulting codes of conduct imply that upon notice ISPs should – while respecting privacy laws - contact users uploading infringing material and potentially terminate their accounts.104

While under certain circumstances UCC platforms may benefit from the exemption, UCC platforms could also be held liable under domestic law for facilitating, inducing or authorising copyright infringement (recognising that this form of liability is treated slightly differently among OECD member countries). Under the principle of contributory liability, it may be that such online intermediaries are found liable to induce, cause or materially contribute to the infringing conduct of their users. This holds particularly in cases where UCC platforms have knowledge of the infringing activity (i.e. “wilful infringement”), when they do not simply host but edit or categorise the content (which is mostly the case), when they induce users to post unauthorised content (c.f. the US Supreme Court Ruling vis-à-vis the Grokster case105), or when they derive revenues (e.g. advertising-related) from unauthorised postings.106

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88 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY In some cases the take-down notice procedure may lead to UCC being taken down without a legitimate reason. UCC platforms receiving notifications from media companies may prefer taking down the respective content rather than risking legal pursuit. Courts are not involved in this decision. There have been cases where UCC has been deleted from UCC platforms by error e.g. when the title of the video clip resembles copyrighted content or when in fact, fair use or free speech exceptions may apply.107 While the individual may have the right to counter-notification in some OECD jurisdictions, it is difficult to obtain information on whether these counter-notifications succeeded in restoring the non-infringing content to the UCC platform.

Despite these concerns rights holders, have also increasingly been interested in deriving value from UCC platforms and in implementing appropriate business models while leaving the copyrighted material on UCC platforms often also noting the significant promotional value of such content. Often legitimate IPR challenges will be resolved through appropriate business agreements between rights holders, UCC platforms and other associated entities. Upon the request of rightholders and to avoid legal actions against them, some UCC platforms have announced or adopted technologies preventing the upload of unauthorised content (e.g. acoustic fingerprinting, watermark detection).

Digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) has a number of impacts on usercreated content and DRM technologies affects UCC in two general ways (the opportunities and challenges raised by DRM and the need for appropriate disclosure are discussed in more detail in e.g. OECD 2005b; 2006c, f). First, DRM can enable digital distribution of UCC just as it has for content that is not identified as UCC. Second, DRM may limit access to works for creators of derivative works or reproductions that are permitted under certain copyright exceptions and limitations, such as “fair use” or other statutory exceptions and limitations.

DRM technologies have been seen as business enablers for the digital distribution of content and drivers for the variety of new business models that consumers may want (OECD, 2005b). DRM may facilitate the creation and dissemination of creative works. Content creators and publishers can use DRM to protect their work from unauthorised downloading, viewing and from the possible creation of derivative works. This potentially encourages the content rightholders to make content available for digitisation and subsequent digital sale. DRM also allows the creation of certain new business models. Through their ability to create diverse access schemes to content, DRMs may enable content to be more tailored to PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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consumer demand (e.g. the right to purchase time-limited access to songs) and that may – if prices reflect the level of access – increase consumer choice and satisfaction.

DRM creates opportunities for those users creating content who want to protect their copyrights (e.g. avoid copying or the creation of derivative works) and/or commercialise their content. It can be envisaged that users who create very popular content may eventually be interested in entering into commercial agreements with publishers, media companies and various distribution platforms. UCC creators may also like to protect their exclusive rights through DRM but not forego their large dissemination. The content security and amenability to new business models which is made possible by DRM then acts as a facilitator of the growth of UCC. DRMs or technical access limitations more generally are also reported to have negative effects on the growth of some legitimate UCC as they can generally prevent access to and modification of files. This limits access to works for creators of derivative works or reproductions that are legal under allowable exceptions and limitations (see also UK Treasury, 2006).

The WIPO Internet Treaties require signatory governments to provide “adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention” of technological protection measures like DRMs. These new legal norms make it illegal to circumvent existing technological protection measures to access the content – even if access to that content would in certain cases be covered by exceptions or limitation. For example, if a user wanted to make a parody remix of a film or a teacher make an educational video, the technological protection measures could restrict or prevent the user from extracting the portions of the video to do so, even if using portions of the video were permitted pursuant to copyright exceptions and limitations. Thus in some countries it would effectively be illegal to “circumvent” a technological protection measure (e.g. DRM) to access content – even if it falls under fair use or other statutory exemptions described earlier. The question then arises how technical protection measures can be implemented while preserving the balance between exclusive rights and fair use (see also WIPO, 2006b). The Gowers Report in the United Kingdom, for instance, has argued for easier possibilities for users to file complaints relating to DRM and to provide more consumer guidance (including through better labelling) (UK Treasury, 2006).108 In some OECD countries, the circumvention of DRMs has recently also been made possible through the introduction of certain exceptions. Recently, for instance, the US Copyright Office created new exemptions to the Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies (e.g. when circumvention is for the purpose of making PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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90 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors).

As technologies continue to develop that allow more people to create UCC more easily, cheaply, and faster, and as copyright holders continue to explore new business models available through DRM, the potential effects of DRM and the legal protection of circumvention for non-infringing uses may need review in order to maintain the balance between exclusive rights and exceptions and limitations as well as a balance between creator and user interests. Further evidence of cases where fair use has been hampered may be needed as currently there is little analysis in this field (Ginsburg, 2002).

Freedom of expression The Internet can be seen as an open platform enriching the diversity of opinions (including product reviews), various political and societal debates, the free flow of information and freedom of expression. UCC is in many ways a form of personal expression, and user / creators are engaging in a form of democracy where they can directly publish and enable access to their opinions, knowledge and experience. Preserving this openness and the decentralised nature of the Internet may thus be an important policy objective. Censorship, the filtering of information (including through ISPs or UCC sites themselves), depriving users of the access to certain information or tools for self-expression is in contradiction to this principles.109 As discussed below, a balance must be struck between freedom of expression and other behaviour e.g. the posting of illegal or unauthorised copyrighted content.

Information and content quality User-created content is produced in a non-professional context outside of traditional media oversight and often without any pecuniary remuneration, and this can have implications for the “quality” of material being posted, admitting that the concept of quality is hard to define and has both subjective and contextual aspects. Content quality problems are of two different but interrelated kinds:

•

Information quality and accuracy: In the case of blogs, commentary and other UCC forms which refer to facts and figures, the accuracy of content and acknowledgement of sources may not be guaranteed. For example, bloggers do not necessarily have an incentive to check the information that they provide or they may not properly cite sources. The risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information spreading over the web are seen to be increasingly important. The availability of large amounts of information (some

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accurate and some not) shifts the responsibility to users to correctly assess information found on UCC sites. Especially, younger users will have to develop the skills to differentiate between incorrect and correct information. This is an entirely new way of approaching information – in the previous media setting information was generally thought to be correct. This is not to say that the information quality on UCC sites is generally poor. In some instances information quality may be high as demonstrated by recent comparisons of Wikipedia and Britannica finding few differences in quality (Giles 2005), and about 50% of Asian users believe content on blogs to be as trustworthy as established media.110 Furthermore, while the selection process for content of traditional media outlets may be more organised, it too is not immune from quality problems and the provision of inaccurate information (e.g. TV content has also been criticised or wrong information released, even if subsequently usually corrected). Also, a large share of UCC not posted anonymously (e.g. personal blogs) can be of very high quality as creators care about their reputation, and have high incentives for accuracy.

•

Content quality: Many UCC posts would not have passed traditional editorial review or media selection processes (i.e. the comparison between Figure 5.2 and Figure 5.1). Content posted on UCC platforms may, for instance, have low technical quality (e.g. online videos posted may have poor images). Sometimes the quality of the content itself could objectively or subjectively be judged below standard, but although information accuracy can often be verified by accepted standards, quality of content is hard to define. Content posted by users may be of exceptional value to other users, particularly if it has a personal touch, despite suboptimal technical quality and lack of a story or newsworthiness, and high demand for UCC points to demand for such types of content.

As users are free to choose and often rate content, sources of poor information may not draw many visits. Ways and means to improve the reliability and the quality of information on sites hosting UCC have been developed which may alleviate problems of inaccuracies and onerous oversight. Sites hosting UCC, aggregators and other mechanisms assessing quality and credibility which effectively harness the unbiased “collective intelligence” of users may have greater ability to correct misinformation through “collaborative filtering”. Such tools may also find business and other applications to refine large amounts of information.

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92 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY Different ways of governing UCC sites have emerged: Pre-production moderation – content submitted by users is not posted until reviewed by an expert or a person controlling exactness and quality; Post-production moderation – content submitted by users is accessible by everybody immediately but moderation may opt to review, make changes or delete the content after posting; Peer-based moderation – content submitted by users is available immediately, but can be edited, reviewed or deleted by certain or all users of the same UCC platform. Due to the fact that a larger group of people is involved, peer-based moderation is considered to best maximise the potential of UCC platforms, but this system of moderation also places the greatest responsibility with the user community.111 New rating and recommendation schemes have also emerged for (e.g. social filtering and accreditation, see Kolbitsch and Maurer, 2006).

As the importance of reviews, tags and ratings increases, users may be tempted to abuse those systems by including wrong or biased reviews (review fraud) or engage in misleading tagging of their content (i.e. a member uses popular but irrelevant keywords to describe his/her video or other content in order to draw more traffic). This reduces the overall reliability of ratings and searchability of the network. UCC sites make an effort to reduce the possibility of such abuse, but overall, problems of information and content quality and accuracy may remain.

Mature, inappropriate, and illegal content Few technical limits are imposed on users with respect to their thoughts expressed or to their actions and most UCC platforms allow for relatively free expression (see also the situation of online multiplayer computer games in OECD, 2005d). Sites hosting UCC have been sources of explicit language and behaviour, mature content, gambling, harassment, and defamatory speech. In the United Kingdom and Korea, for example, policymakers have voiced concerns over violent videos on video-sharing sites (e.g. students being assaulted and filmed by other students), and video-sharing sites which do not filter content or allow live broadcasts can be a new source of concern.

Different OECD countries have different rules, especially as regards indecent or mature content, and the degree to which rules on freedom of expression would permit such expressions or make them unlawful is hard to establish in general. Furthermore, despite concerns regarding the international access to UCC sites, it should be kept in mind that these are one of the many Internet-based sources of such content raising concerns.

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Most UCC platforms make it quite clear that they do not police content or that they do not assume editorial responsibility for the content created (see Table 7.3). This is an important point if aiming to enforce laws on illegal content or to reduce the spread of content which may be deemed inappropriate or harmful to certain viewers, e.g. minors.112 Table 7.3. Content and conduct provisions in terms of service of UCC sites •

Most sites specify that users are solely responsible for the content that they publish or display on the website, or transmit to other members. The sites specify that they have no obligation to modify or remove any inappropriate member content, and no responsibility for the conduct of the member submitting any such content.

•

The sites reserve the right to review and delete or remove any member content which does not correspond to defined standards.

•

Some sites use age and content ratings or have areas for content which is rated mature.

Community standards

•

Most sites have community standards on intolerance (derogatory or demeaning language as to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation), harassment, assault, the disclosure of information on third parties and other users (e.g. posting conversations), indecency, etc.

Actions to enforce standards

•

Sites specify penalties when users infringe community standards. They range from warnings, to suspensions, to banishment from the service. The creation of alternative accounts to circumvent these rules is tracked.

Content regulation and editorial responsibility

Source: OECD based on a review of the terms of service of a sample of 15 widely-used English-speaking UCC sites.

Table 7.4. Age limits and warnings in terms of service of UCC sites Age limits and age ratings

•

Most sites require users either to be 13-14 years old or 18 years. Some put the bar at 16 years. Some have special sub-sites or parts of virtual worlds which are reserved for teenagers.113 Older users are not permitted to use these sub-sites.

Warnings on releasing information

•

UCC sites now post warnings not to post contact details, warnings about adding strangers to friends’ lists, warnings about inappropriate content, warnings about posting something which could embarrass the user or somebody else, warnings about reporting false age, warnings about phishing, i.e. third parties trying to get personal information, usernames and passwords.

Source: OECD based on a review of the terms of service of a sample of 15 widely used English-speaking UCC sites.

Because of such concerns, many UCC platforms and communities have adopted community standards and associated rules made by the service provider to reduce the incidence of inappropriate content and actions (see Table 7.4). These include, for example, rules on tolerance, on harassment, on assault in virtual worlds (e.g. shooting, pushing, etc.), on privacy and the prevention of disclosure of information, on indecency, or on undesired advertising content. If not respected, the service provider reserves the right PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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94 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY to take actions against the user (e.g. temporary or permanent suspension of accounts). In general, however, it remains difficult for businesses, online communities or governments to monitor all content and to clearly determine what content is illegal. In particular, this is a problem for children’s access to the Internet, and although UCC platforms often specify age limits in their terms of service (see Table 7.4) these may be difficult to police.

Technological, legal, self-regulatory solutions may help to limit access to such content. Age rating systems or age limits are seen as important to ensure protection of minors, but these rating systems need to be clear and increasingly internationally recognised and adhered to, in order to be meaningful (see the games study, OECD, 2005d). Filtering software and other parental controls may also provide solutions.

Safety on the Internet and awareness raising When users create profiles on a particular site there is no verification of the real identity of the user. This can be useful in cases where users may wish to create parodies or political pages, where a certain degree of anonymity may also stimulate creativity. Yet it can also pose a risk when users misrepresent themselves for illegal purposes, and some sites have established greater verification of a user’s identify via their school or work e-mail address and limit networks to schools or workplaces.114 Thus users may misrepresent their identities, for example by pretending to be a different age or gender and to deceive other, particularly younger, users. There are documented cases of sexual offenders and other criminals gaining access particularly to young or vulnerable users via social networks.

It remains to be seen however if these remain relatively isolated cases. As the Internet is an open platform, offenders may also be easier to track online than offline, as evidenced by successful police investigations.

Implementing robust safety measures, educating parents and children, and trying to minimise the risks of such behaviour should be a priority for law enforcement, government officials and social networking sites (Magid and Collier, 2006). Several initiatives have started to educate children and parents (e.g. SafeTeens.com, BlogSafety.Com, SaferOnlineDating.org) and technological solutions such as monitoring software are available (Software4parents.com). Despite shortcomings, age limits and rating schemes and software technologies may play an important role. The UCC platforms themselves have started to foster awareness concerning the dangers related to providing private information (see Table 7.4).

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Privacy and identity theft Concerns have been raised about users increasingly posting more information online about their identities, their lives and those of others (i.e. friends, family). Users post photos and videos, publicly accessible profiles on social networking sites, and online journals with intimate details of their lives on blogs and sites. While such sites offer privacy settings to limit the availability of this information to personal contacts or friends, many users choose to make their information publicly available. In principle, information which is not displayed publicly is protected and not sold to third parties (Table 7.5). In the case of a merger or acquisition by a third party, however, this information is an asset which is acquired (Table 7.5). There may also be cases of data leakages which could prove particularly damaging, although so far little is known about such cases which may have occurred via UCC sites.

Table 7.5. Privacy provisions in terms of service of UCC sites Privacy

• •

• •

Most of the sites collect personal information relevant to the service stating that this is to provide the user with a customised and efficient experience. This information is protected and not sold to third parties.

Sometimes personal information uploaded on SNS sites is provided to advertisers (sometimes delivered directly) and other parties in a personally identifiable manner and aggregate usage information in a non-personally identifiable manner to present to members more targeted advertising.

Most sites reserve the right to transfer personal information in the event of a transfer of ownership or sale of assets.

Sites specify that personal information may be released for law enforcement purposes.

Source: OECD based on a review of the terms of service and the privacy policies of a sample of 15 widely used English-speaking UCC sites.

Another potential negative consequence of the vast amount of personal information available online could be increased occurrences of privacy violations or identity theft (phishing). SNS sites are reported to have been used to phish for users’ personal information through spam campaigns.

Individuals have used UCC platforms to expose content about somebody else (i.e. including posting online videos or other content without the consent of the persons involved) or creating accounts on behalf of another person with false information or content.115 As a result, normal life has been compromised in some documented cases (Sang-Hun, 2006). Other examples exist in which employers have made use of SNS to screen potential employees. Finally, identity thieves can much more easily track down information to mimic someone else’s identity. Further work would be useful on privacy challenges resulting from UCC, including users voluntarily making their information public.116

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96 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY Impacts of intensive Internet use The impacts of intensive Internet use are an emerging concern. While this phenomenon is not particular to UCC, the popularity of these sites has contributed to particularly intensive Internet use. The blurring of the real and the virtual world may lead users to spend large amounts of time on the Internet and they may fail to devote enough time to other obligations (e.g. school, work, and even sleeping and eating). Emotional attachment to online friends and activities may lead to a deterioration of relationships outside of the Internet. Research also reveals a growing number of those for whom the medium becomes a consuming habit with potentially negative consequences (Aboujaoude et al., 2006)117 and whose symptoms are often referred to as “on-line addiction” (Young, 1996; Minoura, 1999; OECD, 2005d).

Only a few OECD countries report data on Internet addiction (see Figure 7.1 for Korea).118 According to official Korean data related to online gambling in particular, the number of Korean Internet users with possible addiction was 3.3% of Internet users in 2004 and 2% in 2006 (and 11% with suspected addictions).119 The Korean government has programmes to reduce Internet addiction while educating students on “healthy Internet use” (e.g. courses and the designation of Internet-free days).120 Overall, it needs to be kept in mind that such intensive use is not particular to user-created content, but relate broadly to how people decide to manage their Internet and other media usage habits (e.g. TV, BlackBerry).

Users who engage more actively on UCC sites may have previously been watching TV in a passive fashion. Sometimes the relationships created on UCC sites may not be solely virtual as they may subsequently build offline relationships via on-line meetings. With 3D video conferencing and other technological developments emerging, virtual images and Internet-based communication platforms may facilitate day-to-day interactions.

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Figure 7.1. Internet “addiction” as reported by the Korean government, 2006

11%

2% Normal Suspected addiction Addiction

87%

Source: Korean Ministry of Information and Communication.

It is worth stressing that the social impact of the Internet in general and the impact of UCC-related pass-times and communication on society and personal relations have not yet been researched in detail. The spectrum of predictions ranges from Internet communications leading to the “breakdown of personal relationships and social contact” to Internet communications “holding great promises for improving real life relationships and tasks”.

Recent assessments point to people communicating more than ever but that their pattern of communication and interaction has changed (Statistics Canada, 2006121). There is also insufficient understanding of how media consumption generally affects brain processing, learning, attitudes, and behaviour, e.g. the impacts of virtual worlds on behaviour, or on learning / skills (see also OECD, 2005d for skills in the context of online games).

More research in these fields is warranted.

Network security and spam Like other information technologies, the participative web is not immune to information security risks. Many Internet sites today serve as platforms for creation and sharing of content. One of the key factors in the growth of UCC was the ease of use in creating and publishing, including CMS, blogging services and wikis. As opposed to web pages of earlier generations, Internet sites now enable the posting of content and the modification of sites. This new interactivity and uploading of content from a large user base can be a source of security problems (Finjan, 2006, Evers, 2006, Nuttall, 2006). In some cases, such sites have been used by hackers who uploaded malicious content (e.g. viruses), achieving quicker propagation.

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98 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY butions can cause problems unintentionally. Often, bad implementation of the technology rather than the technology itself may be the root of the problem.

Despite ant-spam provisions in the terms of services of widely used reputable UCC sites (Table 7.6), spam blogs (“splogs”122) exist to promote the spammers’ site, advertisements or related links, and they include comment spam where a spammer will post comments (often hundreds) to a legitimate user’s blog, and wiki spam, where spammers will take advantage of the capacity to rapidly edit a page.123 Table 7.6. Spam provisions in terms of service of UCC sites Spam

•

Most sites prohibit illegal and/or unauthorised use of the services, including collecting user names and/or e-mail addresses of members by electronic or other means for the purpose of sending unsolicited email.

Source: OECD based on a review of the terms of service of a sample of 15 widely used English-speaking UCC sites.

Technologies may help to reduce spam.124 For example, there are tools such as Akismet within blogging software to identify such comment spam.

These tools may either automatically delete such comments or put them into a queue, where the blogger can review them. Search engines have sought to combat link-related spam by the implementation of the “no follow” tag attribute.125 Requiring user registration may also limit spam.

Virtual worlds, property rights and taxation Increasingly virtual worlds and games are platforms for real economic transactions. Users purchase virtual land and properties, create objects and sell them, and develop the skills and looks of their avatars. Sometimes these commercial transactions take place within the virtual world, sometimes outside of it (e.g. selling virtual objects on eBay). Increasingly this phenomenon of virtual economies with real-life impacts is taken seriously (Castranova, 2001, 2005). The question of how to “price” virtual land which in theory is not scarce is just an example of the new questions raised.

On a more practical level, commercial exchanges between the hosting site and the user or between the users themselves are likely to trigger legal disputes as ownership and commercial activity increases. As objects created by the user are often inextricably tied to the virtual world itself, establishing straightforward ownership rights may be difficult. Disputes have already arisen when the hosting site terminated a user’s account, thereby deleting objects and land, for actions on the UCC platform banned by the terms of service (see last row of Table 7.1).

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Commercial activity in or around virtual world content is also increasing interest by tax authorities.126 Growing virtual assets and capital gains can be translated into off-line economic gains (e.g. when users convert money back to real money or when they sell virtual items on consumer-to-consumer exchanges such as eBay), and tax authorities are beginning to investigate how such transactions should be treated for taxation.127 Tax authorities will be dependent on the taxpayer actually declaring such sales as income to avoid an electronic version of the “underground” economy. Finally, a number of OECD countries levy wealth and inheritance taxes. Interesting questions arise as to how these taxes apply to “virtual”, intangible wealth and thus unrealised gains. At present, tax authorities’ attention has not been drawn to these issues due to a combination of high thresholds for wealth taxes and the relatively low value of virtual wealth, but this could become an issue over time.

In the light of the growing influence of virtual worlds, governments will increasingly be faced with associated regulatory questions, be it in the tax or other legal areas, especially when sites operate in a legal vacuum or when it is unclear if and how existing laws apply in such online environments.

Governments as producers and users of content Governments posting content to inform their citizens are part of egovernment policies and does not relate directly to user-created content.

Nonetheless, governments may encourage comments or discussions from citizens via discussion platforms at the local (virtual town hall), regional or national level or via other Internet-based tools. The latter may either inform ongoing debates relating to public projects (public constructions, schools, etc.) or they may constitute an outlet for citizens to express themselves, potentially creating greater social cohesion and identification. This area is developing rapidly as public authorities are increasingly turning to new ways of interacting with citizens to increase their own efficiency and be more pro-active in their citizen relations, and is the subject for ongoing analysis.

Conceptualisation, classification and measurement In general comparative international data on digital content products and industries is not available.128 Benchmarking the impacts of digital content policies is complicated by the absence of this data. The lack of reliable official data on UCC and more knowledge on changing usage are a challenge. As a result, it is often hard to accurately assess the statistical, economic, and societal effects of UCC. In particular, the social impacts of increased Internet use deserve greater attention. However, OECD has PARTICIPATIVE WEB AND USER-CREATED CONTENT: WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING – ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5 – © OECD 2007

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99

100 – 7. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR USERS, BUSINESS AND POLICY recently proposed ways of improving official data collection on UCC in particular (see OECD, 2007b) New Internet usage measurement techniques developed by private data services and based on very large sample sizes to monitor online behaviour (sometimes for advertisement-related purposes) provide more detailed data concerning Internet user behaviour, often for targeted advertising, but this also raises challenges regarding the use of that data in the context of the protection of privacy.

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101

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102 – ANNEX

Annex Box 1. Participative web technologies

•

Tagging is the association of particular keywords with related content, such as photo tagging on photo sharing sites or link tagging on collaborative news sites. Generally, a user will choose a brief selection of keywords that best indicate the content of a particular piece of audio, video, or text. Tagging has played a significant role in social bookmarking sites where users collaboratively store and publish their favourite links.

•

Group rating and aggregation occurs on sites where users submit links and descriptions of articles and other content and where other users can rate the content.

Recommendation engines, particularly popular for music, are technologies enabling users to share tastes and discover new content. An example would be recommendation engines based on musical similarities, or on patterns emerging between users (e.g. those who liked x also liked y), or a combination of both.

•

Syndication and aggregation of data in RSS/Ajax/Atom and other content management systems (CMS). These include:

− RSS: Really simple syndication is a technology that enables distribution and

subscription to content so that users may automatically receive new posts and updates. RSS plays an extremely important role in blogging, and it is increasingly used for videocasting, podcasting, and photo streams. RSS files, also called feeds, transmit structured data which typically include headlines, dates, authors, content summaries and links to the full versions (Bowman, 2003; Gill, 2005). Users can subscribe to a feed and transform the transmitted data into information via a RSS reader. Content creators are able to easily syndicate content for RSS readers.

Often, RSS tools are already integrated in publishing software. Readers are able to personalise web services: they do not have to check web pages regularly for new entries but are kept informed by their RSS readers.

− Atom: The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds. Web

feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a web site. To provide a web feed, a site owner may use specialised software (such as a content management system) that publishes a list (or “feed”) of recent articles or content in a standardised, machine-readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by web sites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader programs that allow Internet users to subscribe to feeds and view their content. The development of Atom was motivated by the existence of many incompatible versions of the RSS syndication format. …/…

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103

Annex Box 1. Participative web technologies (continued)

− Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) – a Rich Internet Application

technique - is a web development technique for interactive web applications which encompasses different technologies. It can be better described as a pattern than a technology — it identifies and describes a particular design technique (McCarthy, 2005). The main advantage of this technique is that “web pages are dynamically updated without a full page refresh interrupting the information flow” and allows creating “richer, more dynamic web application user interfaces”.

This can be achieved by an Ajax engine which is interposed between the user and the server.

•

Application Mash-ups and Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs): Along with audio and video mash-ups, the term can also refer to a combination of multiple web applications. Mash-ups are interactive web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new services (Merrill, 2006).

This type of web-based integration aggregates and combines third-party data. API is the interface that a computer system, library or application provides to allow requests for services by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between them (Wikipedia, 2006e). An Open API is available to use free of charge. A variety of web applications uses open APIs, such as Google maps. This has enabled programmers to create combinations, or mash-ups, of Google Maps with other information sources. Examples include a map where all housing ads from Craig’s List are placed on a Google Map with relevant information, or the plotting of all of a city’s crime incidences on a map with the time and date of occurrence. Other web application mash-ups include video and photo mash-ups, where designers mash photos or video with other information that can be associated with the attached metadata (i.e. tags) (Merrill, 2006). An example includes taking news headlines and displaying photos tagged with the particular words. News and RSS feed mash-ups such as NetVibes and My Yahoo aggregate various feeds and present them on a website, enabling users to create a personalised page.

•

Filesharing networks: Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are communication structures in which individuals interact directly through decentralised information exchange without going through a centralised system or hierarchy and centralised information control. With P2P technology, users may share information, contribute to shared projects or transfer files (OECD, 2004a). P2P networks provide opportunities for commercial and non-commercial content production and delivery, and providers of content, Internet services and technology are increasingly looking to legitimately “monetise” P2P networks rather than leaving them solely for unauthorised downloading of copyrighted works (OECD, 2006a, 2006b; EITO, 2006).

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104 – ANNEX Annex Box 2. User-created content in China: Video UCC has started to play an important role in China. Online video provides users with an outlet to express their creativity. A popular video style involves spoofs, or parody-style remixes of other videos. An example was a video which spliced together other videos to make it look as if China had won the 2006 football World Cup. Top video sharing sites in China (August 2006): 1. Toodou.com 2. Qyule.com 3. Pomoho.com 4. 56.com 5. 365cast.com Toodou, the country’s most popular video sharing, multimedia podcasting and social network site estimated it had 7-10 million unique visitors per month and approximately 50 000 people creating videos mid-2006 (reported 4 million unique users a day mid-2007, and a 47% share of time Chinese Internet users spend on all video sharing websites).

Video sharing sites from OECD countries are also trying to take foothold in China.

Established Chinese media companies are looking to forge partnerships with online video companies, to position themselves in the next generation of media.

Self-censorship generally occurs on Chinese online video sites, with explicit content and content critical of the government prevented from being posted. Many online video providers employ monitors that view videos and determine the suitability according to self-imposed guidelines for the sites. A significant number of users post their videos anonymously, with fame not necessarily the number one priority. Chinese video websites and clips may soon require approval for posting and distribution from China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT).

Source: OECD interviews, Pacific Epoch statistics at www.pacificepoch.com and http://digitalwatch.ogilvy.com.cn/en/?p=56.

Annex Table 1. Growth in contributors to Wikipedia Jan. 2001

Jan. 2002

Jan. 2003

Jan. 2004

Jan. 2005

Jan. 2006

June 2006

Contributors (min. of 10 total contributions)

10

512

2 423

10 883

50 281

145 564

240 062

Active contributors (min. of 5 contributions per month)

9

205

834

3 202

13 301

47 624

65 905

n/a

29

187

684

2 292

7 516

9 142

Very active contributors (min. of 100 contributions per month)

Source: OECD based on Wikipedia 4 August 2007 at http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/, and presentation of Frieda Brioschi (Wikipedia) at www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/14/36133622.pdf.

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Annex Table 2. Podcast categories rating Category

No. of podcasts

News/ politics

11 409

Music

10 342

Religion & spirituality

9 886

Art

7 710

Society & culture

7 207

Education

6 039

Technology

5 878

TV & film

5 671

Comedy

5 106

Business

3 769

Sports & recreation

3 266

Health

2 074

Games & hobbies

1 812

Kids & family

1 301

Science & medicine

1 085

Government & organisations

423

Total

82 978

Source: Apple iTunes and “iTunes Podcast Count over 82,000”, in: Digital Podcast (9 October 2006), http://typicalmacuser.com/wordpress/?p=134.

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Notes

1 2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9 10

See OECD Information Technology Outlook 2006, Chapter 7 (OECD, 2006a).

For an overview of the digital content work programme of the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy see www.oecd.org/sti/digitalcontent; for the January 2006 Rome digital content conference see: www.oecd.org/sti/digitalcontent/conference.

The participative web is a much broader phenomenon than user-created content.

Participative web technologies allowing for interaction, blogging and other activities have been particularly conducive to the creation of UCC. But definitions of the participative web (see e.g. O’Reilly, 2002, 2005) typically include broader developments, including the rise of new commercial web services or other commercial ventures.

UCC is referred to as consumer-generated media in publications from Japanese official sources, see www.johotsusintokei.soumu.go.jp/whitepaper/eng/WP2006/chapter-1.pdf.

Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_generated_content, accessed 27 August 2007.

Posting chat messages or using file-sharing services per se do not necessarily qualify as UCC. The distinction between UCC (e.g. a blog) and just any type of chat content is difficult and subjective. File-sharing sites can be used for the exchange of UCC as well as other types of (copyrighted) content, sometimes without the authorisation of copyright holders.

For a survey of French blogging demographics see Credoc (2006), ‘La diffusion des technologies de l’information dans la société française’, available at: www.arcep.fr/uploads/tx_gspublication/etude-credoc2006.pdf.

According to the survey, for girls social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends. See ‘Microsoft survey: Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia, According to New Research from Windows Live Spaces’, in: Xinhua-PRNewswire, 28 November 2006, based on Microsoft surveys of its MSN and Windows Live Online Services Business.

Available at www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/17/36133687.pdf.

See: www.soumu.go.jp/joho_tsusin/eng/Releases/Telecommunications/pdf/news050517_2_1. pdf.

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12 13

14

15

16

17

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19 20

21 22

Data on web traffic are an up-to-date and increasingly reliable source of usage information (see OECD, 2004a, Chapter 5). See also the presentation of David Day, Managing Director, EMEA Nielsen//NetRatings at the OECD-Italian Minister for Innovation and Technologies Digital Content Conference available at: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/16/16/36134913.pdf.

Alexa traffic rankings at www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500.

Remarks of Tony Perkins at ‘The AlwaysOn Network’s On Hollywood 2006’ conference in May 2006. See ‘Future of Entertainment: Democratic party’, in: Hollywoodreporter (26 September 2006) available at: www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/tools_data/media_analyst_corner/e3i%2 FWNldeNUbIvVQ4t3MKmReg%3D%3D. Japan leads the OECD in fibre-to-the-premises with 6.3 million fibre subscribers in June 2006, OECD Key ICT indicators. See www.oecd.org/sti/ictindicators.

See presentation of Creative Commons to the OECD-Italian Minister for Innovation and Technologies Digital Content Conference available at: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/31/36134387.pdf.

Data from Interpublic’s Emerging Media Lab. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, men are 20% more likely to visit YouTube than women. See http://netratings.com/pr/pr_060721_2.pdf.

‘U.S. venture investors betting on energy, Web 2.0’, in Reuters, 23 October 2006; ‘Venture capital investors wake up to Web 2.0’ in Financial Times, 23 July 2007, available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e2f648d6-38b4-11dc-bca9-0000779fd2ac.html.

Every Creative Commons licence allows others to copy and distribute a work provided that the licensee credits the author/licensor. In addition, the Creator/Licensor may apply different conditions (Non commercial, No Derivatives, Share Alike – the latter allowing you to alter, transform or build upon the work while sharing the resulting work under the same licensing). Licensed content can be explored, search is improved and re-use is promoted.

Now known as Kodak EasyShare Gallery.

Remixing can take the form of “mash-up”, whereby two or more songs are edited together. Another related derivative use is sampling, whereby snippets of a song or other audio file are taken and added to another, often in a modified form. An example would be taking Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, rearranging it, and setting it alongside music.

See www.davidbowie.com/neverFollow/.

The Phantom Edit is an alternate version of writer-director George Lucas’ “Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace”. In addition, user-created videos may also involve animation, where users create or remix animated material. Further, “machinima” is UCC where characters and stories are created within computer games, recorded, and then posted online as short films.

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In many OECD countries online shoppers consider ratings and reviews a key element in their research when shopping for a new vehicle.

Honda has a sponsored site on the blogging network 2Talk About, where users can give their views on the company’s products.

See, for example, www.bullpoo.com/explore/.

See the debate ‘User-generated Content - What Does it Mean for Consumers and Marketers’ as part of the FTC’s hearings on Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade!

November 2006 available at: http://ftcchat.us/blog/?p=56#more-56.

The difficulties measuring blogs are discussed in OECD (2006b), Chapter 7.

See for more details OECD (2006b), Chapter 7. The number of Japanese and Korean blogs is disproportionally large compared with Japanese and Korean general use of the Internet.

“Microsoft Windows Live survey: Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia”, in: XinhuaPRNewswire, 28 November 2006, based on Microsoft’s MSN and Windows Live Online Services Business.

Writely and Writeboard enable users to collaborate on documents in a word processingbased environment.

Digg had nearly 450 000 users mid-2006, with 30% of frontpage stories coming from the Top 10 users. See http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=250.

Similarly, OpenBC/Xing, LinkedIn and Spoke are professional networking services that attempt to create a networking site or platform for experts and business partners.

See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5182759758975402950 for a more detailed and technical explanation of Second Life.

See www.SecondLife.com and Shimo (2006). It is reasonable to assume that these data do not refer to unique users. Individual users can create multiple accounts for different residents and register virtual avatars but never or rarely use them, and thus these data may overestimate the unique audience.

Google, for instance, also owns the social networking site Orkut and the wiki-builder Jotspot.

See e.g. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Personal_Appeal.

In the case of Flickr, ‘pro’ means an ad-free service for providers of photos, as well as unlimited bandwidth, storage and other features. Feedburner, a widely used blogging software provider, offers additional paid services to create awareness for the blog, to optimise and embellish display, to track and monitor usage patterns, to manage traffic and even to monetise the blog via participation in the FeedBurner Ad Network.

For a full explanation of Google’s business model see https://www.google.com/adsense/afc-online-overview or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense.

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49 50

In Second Life users and firms can advertise through buying land and building firmspecific buildings, locations or shops. In theory they can also create standard advertisements on their land.

By posting the content the sites receive a limited irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid-up, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicense) to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such content through the particular site.

See http://us.cyworld.com/mall/index.php for the English language version CyWorld mall and http://cyworld.nate.com/mall/mall5_index.asp for the Korean gift shop.

Excluding impacts on businesses from the internal or external use of participative web technologies themselves (e.g. by disseminating business news internally via a blog).

Data obtained from the Consumer Electronics Association, ‘Consumer electronics growth to continue through 2007 according to new CEA Forecast 2005”, press release, 14 August 2006, and CEA study on US household ownership of Consumer electronics products. The Consumer Electronics Association forecast total factory-to-dealer sales in the US to reach USD 140 billion in 2006, 8% growth over 2005. See http://consumerelectronicsdaily.typepad.com/consumer_electronics_dail/2006/08/ce_mar ket_to_gr.html. See also OECD (2005b) for the impacts of digital content on the consumer electronics industry.

‘YouTube success to spawn US$2b video ASP boom”, in: IT News, 17 October 2006, available at: www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=40872.

‘Your Tube, Whose Dime?” in Forbes, 28 April 2006, available at: www.forbes.com/intelligentinfrastructure/2006/04/27/video-youtube myspace_cx_df_0428video.html.

See Limelight financial investors release at www.limelightnetworks.com/news/pr.2006.07.20.html.

In May 2005, Japan had 115 providers (including SMEs) providing blog services and 75 providers of SNS. See www.soumu.go.jp/joho_tsusin/eng/Releases/Telecommunications/pdf/news050517_2_1. pdf.

Other findings of the ‘Generator Motivations Study’ of the Interpublic Emerging Media Lab at http://ipglab.com/ include that as many as 73% of content generators notice Internet advertising, a much higher share than the male 18-24 year-old group as a whole.

Also, 57% of all content creators surveyed said they are willing to feature brands in their videos, and many within the group have already done so. 62% are motivated by personal recognition, while 60% are driven by cash compensation.

See http://hcs.harvard.edu/cyberlaw/syllabus/dmx.pdf for more explanations.

This system faces a number of problems including leakage of music from the DMX onto traditional P2P networks, a form of click fraud as artists have other sites downloading their content to generate revenue for these other sites rather than for DMX and its artists.

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This model requires that a user must be online while viewing the content to generate advertisement revenue. It does not work well for videos that are downloaded and then viewed later offline or on a portable audio/video player.

The International Herald Tribune, for instance, signed a deal in May 2006 to syndicate content from the Korean citizen journalism site OhmyNews.

‘Korea: SK Com. to launch new search engine”, in Korea Times, 23 October 2006.

See http://dovecreamoil.com/.

Budweiser, for instance, allows users to put words in the mouth of celebrities or animals to send as postcards. See http://veepers.budweiser.com/service/Start.

Examples are the folk singer Sandi Thom and the Artic Monkeys.

Coca-Cola and iTunes have recently announced a web page to foster new musical talent (artists can send their music to a selection committee for airing).

See www.desiresdavenir.org/. This was an important part of candidate Ségolène Royal’s campaign.

See http://blog-ump.typepad.fr/.

See www.loiclemeur.com/english/2005/12/nicolas_sarkozy.html.

Collaborative educational initiatives such as MIT OpenCourseWare provide opportunities for educators and students to make use of these resources and improve education. The University Channel podcast (Princeton University) makes videos of academic lectures available.

On the changing role played by broadcasters in shaping politics and the democratic process, see the ongoing conferences and seminars ‘Beyond Broadcast 2006: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture’, Harvard Law School, 24 February, available at: http://cms.mit.edu/.

This section benefited from research conducted by Elizabeth Stark, consultant, United States.

The analysis is based on the terms of service and the Privacy Policy of a sample of 15 widely internationally used UCC sites: Flickr, Ofoto, BoingBoing, Digg, del.icio.us, Bebo, Cyworld, Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, Dailymotion, Google Video, YouTube and Second Life. The tables are a generalisation of their terms of service. Other UCC sites, especially non-English-speaking ones, may have different terms of service.

Terms of service vary according to local legal frameworks and cultures.

The final provision of the OECD Council Recommendation on Broadband Development is the ‘[e]ncouragement of research and development in the field of ICT for the development of broadband and enhancement of its economic, social and cultural effectiveness”.

See also the OECD-BIAC Workshop on Future of Online Audiovisual Services, Film and Video: Issues for Achieving Growth and Policy Objectives, 29 September 2006, Summary, DSTI/ICCP/CISP/IE(2006)2, available at: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/33/42/37866987.pdf.

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72 73

74

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77 78 79

80

81 82 83 84

See also comments and suggestions by the UK regulator OFCOM supporting audiences being able to re-use content, available at: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2007/01/nr_20070124a.

See also the OECD Council Recommendation on Broadband Development, available at: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/38/29892925.pdf.

Regulators will have to monitor whether their current approaches to guarantee competition in the telecommunication market will be adequate for new NGN environments. See the OECD NGN Forum available at: www.oecd.org/document/12/0,2340,en_2649_34223_37392780_1_1_1_1,00.html.

This technological set-up is based on historical Internet use patterns which did not originally show large user demand for high upload capacity.

See the OECD Council Recommendation on Broadband Development, available at: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/38/29892925.pdf.

See also the OECD-BIAC workshop, in footnote 66.

Comments from Prof. Dr. Urs Gasser, Dr. Martin Senftleben and OECD Delegations on this section are gratefully acknowledged.

The requirement of originality can be understood as a reference to the uniqueness of works resulting from the personal and individual character of the process of creation (WIPO, 2006a).

WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) at www.wipo.int/copyright/en/treaties.htm.

OECD (2004), Recommendation of the Council on Broadband Development, C(2003)259/FINAL, available at: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/38/29892925.pdf.

See http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/index.html.

See also Hugentholtz (1997) for a discussion of fair use in different legal regimes.

WIPO Copyright Treaty (Article 10) and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (Article 16), and Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights TRIPS (Article 13).

Agreed Statements concerning Article 10 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty adopted by the Diplomatic Conference on December 20 1996.

17 U.S.C. 107, U.S. Copyright Act (found in Title 17 of the United States Code).

Australian Copyright Act, Division 3, Art. 40 ff.

UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Chapter III. See EUCD Article 5, para. 3 and 4. Exceptions are valid for (i) teaching or scientific research, (ii) for the benefit of people with a disability, (iii) reproduction by the press, communication to the public or making available of published articles/broadcasts on current economic, political or religious topics or of broadcast works or other subjectmatter of the same character, (iv) quotations for purposes such as criticism or review, (v) use for the purposes of public security or to ensure the proper performance or reporting

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of administrative, parliamentary or judicial proceedings, (vi) use of political speeches as well as extracts of public lectures or similar works or subject-matter to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and provided that the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, except where this turns out to be impossible, (vii) use during religious celebrations or official celebrations organised by a public authority; (viii) use of works, such as works of architecture or sculpture, made to be located permanently in public places; (ix) incidental inclusion of a work or other subject-matter in other material, (x) use for the purpose of advertising the public exhibition or sale of artistic works, to the extent necessary to promote the event, excluding any other commercial use, (xi) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche, (xii) use in connection with the demonstration or repair of equipment; (xiii) use of an artistic work in the form of a building or a drawing or plan of a building for the purposes of reconstructing the building (xiv) use by communication or making available, for the purpose of research or private study, (xv) use in certain other cases of minor importance where exceptions or limitations already exist under national law.

EUCD, Article 5. See Senftleben (2004), for more on this topic.

See Japanese Copyright Act, Subsection 5, Korea Copyright Act, Section 6.

Korea Copyright Act, Section 6, Article 26 (Public Performance and Broadcasting for Non-Profit Purposes): (1) It shall be permissible to perform publicly or broadcast a work already made public for non-profit purposes and without receiving any benefit in return from audience, spectators or third persons: Provided that this shall not apply to cases where the stage performers are paid any normal remunerations. (2) It shall be permissible to reproduce and play for the general public any commercial phonograms or cinematographic works, if no benefit in return for the relevant public performance is received from audience or spectators: Provided that this shall not apply to the case as prescribed by the Presidential Decree. Japanese Copyright Act, Subsection 5, Japan: Article 38 (Public Performance and Broadcasting for Non-Profit Purposes. i.e. works can be performed or exhibited freely if the performer is not remunerated, and the audience is not charged an admission (1) It shall be permissible to publicly perform, present and/or recite a work already made public, for non-profit-making purposes and if no fees are charged to the audience or spectators (‘fees’ includes consideration of any kind whatsoever for the offering and the making available of a work to the public; the same shall apply below in this Article), to audiences or spectators. The foregoing, however, shall not apply when the performers or reciters concerned are paid any remuneration for such performance, presentation or recitation.

Inaugural Internet Governance Forum Meeting Athens, Greece, 30 October-2 November 2006, Content Rights for the Internet Environment, available at: www.intgovforum.org/Athens_workshops/Content%20Rights%20workshop%20report.pdf.

Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, “The Disruptive Force of Web 2.0: how the new generation will define the future”, Youth Forum, ITU Telecom World, Hong Kong, China, 3 December 2006, available at: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/06/773&format=HT ML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en.

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95

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97 98 99 100

101 102 103 104

See UK Treasury (2006) and the discussion on orphan works in many OECD countries.

Recommendations 11 and 12.

For example, bloggers who posted audio clips of part of a copyrighted broadcast to criticise the content and tone of the programme were asked to take down relevant material. See www.chillingeffects.org for an attempt to take stock of such notices.

See also Regner et al., (2006) on flexible platforms for free content created by users.

By posting the content the sites receives a limited irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid-up, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicense) to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such content through the particular site.

Universal Music filed a lawsuit against Grouper and Bold (two video sharing sites) for violation of their copyright arguing that the latter services host their content without authorisation. In some cases, such lawsuits or related concerns have led to video-sharing sites removing videos from the sharing site.

For an example of such take down notice procedures for a user-created content site see: http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php.

Section 512(c) of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Section 512(a) of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 39B of the Australian Copyright Bill.

Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (‘Directive on electronic commerce’), Article 12. It is implied that the online intermediary’s ‘activity is of a mere technical, automatic and passive nature, which implies that the information society service provider has neither knowledge of nor control over the information which is transmitted or stored’ (Recital 42).

‘Directive on electronic commerce’, Art. 15.

‘Directive on electronic commerce’, Recitals 40 and 46.

‘Directive on electronic commerce’, Art. 16.

In March 2005, the Italian government promoted the San Remo charter for the adoption of a co-ordinated set of codes of conduct by the content industry, ISPs, network operators, manufacturers and rights owners, to foster the availability of quality content in a secure environment, and to organise and promote educational campaigns in particular amongst youth to ensure the respect of digital rights. See for France, the Charte d’engagements pour le développement de l’offre légale de musique en ligne, le respect de la propriété intellectuelle et la lutte contre la piraterie numérique, available at: www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/conferen/donnedieu/charte280704.htm. At EU level see the European Charter for Film Online, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/comm/avpolicy/docs/other_actions/film_online_en.pdf.

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United States Supreme Court Decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. 545 U.S. 913 (2005), at: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgibin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=04-480.

See WIPO (2005).

See http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/2007/02/02/viacoms-cease-and-desist-lettersfor-a-home-video/.

Recommendations 15 and 16.

The Geneva Declaration of Principles and the Tunis Commitments of the World Summit on the Information Society refer to and underline the importance of freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge and the identification of the appropriate enabling legal, policy and regulatory frameworks that preserve openness as one of the key founding principles of the Internet.

‘Microsoft survey: Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia, According to New Research from Windows Live Spaces’, in: Xinhua-PRNewswire, 28 November 2006, based on Microsoft surveys of its MSN and Windows Live Online Services Business.

For example, this is also the form chosen by Wikipedia.

Debated in the context of the revision of the UK Violent Crime Reduction Bill. See “Move to ban happy-slapping on the web”, The Guardian, 21 October 2006.

Certain user-created content services have also implemented special zones for underage users (e.g. Teen grid for 13-17 year olds in Second Life).

Even this is not perfect, though, as one could obtain access to such an address and start a profile.

In Korea the posting of pictures and videos of the behaviour of some people has led to ‘public shaming’.

See www.oecd.org/sti/security-privacy for OECD work on privacy and ICT security.

Since the early 1990s, several clinics have been established in the United States to treat heavy Internet users. They include the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, in Bradford, Pa., and the Connecticut-based Center for Internet Behavior.

‘Developing teaching curriculum to disseminate a sound Internet culture”, Korea Herald (15 September 2006), www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=5298.

Survey of 3 000 Internet users. See: www.itu.int/wsis/stocktaking/scripts/documents.asp?project=1120746255&lang=en.

See Republic of Korea, Ministry of Information and Communication, The Center for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counselling, available at: www.itu.int/wsis/stocktaking/scripts/documents.asp?project=1120746255&lang=en.

Statistics Canada (2006) notes that, ‘[t]hus, it is not that people are becoming anti-social; it is that people are becoming differently social.’

‘Splogs’, a combination of blog and spam, are weblog sites with faked articles which the author uses only for promoting affiliated websites or other content, such as stocks.

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According to Technorati, approximately 8% of all new blogs are spam, with short-term spikes up to 30%.

See www.oecd.org/sti/spam for the work of the OECD on spam and the OECD Report of the OECD Task Force on Spam: Anti-spam Toolkit of recommended policies and measures, available at: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/63/28/36494147.pdf.

This tag, which can be used in blog comments, would not raise a particular site’s ranking within a search engine when it is linked to by spammers.

The authors thank David Holmes (OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration) for useful discussions on this topic. See also Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress: www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2006/id20060502_832540.htm and Washington Post at http://tinyurl.com/ve34c.

For OECD work on taxation and e-commerce see: www.oecd.org/topic/0,2686,en_2649_33741_1_1_1_1_37427,00.html.

Japan presented the results of its Annual Survey of Digital Content at the December 2006 session of the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy and called for international collaboration in this area.

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Participative Web and User-Created Content

Participative Web and User-Created Content

WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

This study describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in worldwide communication, and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content?

What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are the new value chains and business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts?

What are the associated challenges? Is there a government role, and what form could it take?

About the authors: Graham Vickery is Head of the Information Economy Group, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD. He has published extensively on the information economy, technology strategies, sector developments and government policies, and directs the bi-annual OECD Information Technology Outlook and OECD work on digital content.

Sacha Wunsch-Vincent is a Policy Analyst in the Information Economy Group, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD. He has authored recent OECD studies on digital content, China and information technologies and e-business developments, as well as on the Internet and trade in digital products and cross-border electronic services.

The full text of this book is available on line via this link: www.sourceoecd.org/scienceIT/9789264037465 Those with access to all OECD books on line should use this link: www.sourceoecd.org/9789264037465 SourceOECD is the OECD’s online library of books, periodicals and statistical databases.

For more information about this award-winning service and free trials ask your librarian, or write to us at SourceOECD@oecd.org.

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Participative Web and User-Created Content WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

The Internet is becoming increasingly embedded in everyday life. Drawing on an expanding array of intelligent web services and applications, a growing number of people are creating, distributing and exploiting user-created content (UCC) and being part of the wider participative web.

WEB 2.0, WIKIS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING RNET S INTE

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Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content José van Dijck UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM – MEDIA STUDIES

It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. (Time Magazine, 16 December 2006)

When Time designated ‘you’ as Person of the Year 2006, the editors paid tribute to the millions of anonymous web users who dedicate their creative energy to a booming web culture. The cover story heralded the many volunteers filling so-called user-generated content (UGC) platforms. After decades of vilifying the passive coach potato, the press now venerates the active participant in digital culture. But just who is this participant? Who is the ‘you’ in YouTube and what kind of agency can we attribute to this new class of media users? Are users indeed, as Time wants us to believe, the ‘many wresting power from the few’ – a collective power that will ‘change the way the world changes’?

Traditionally, media scholars have theorized the agency of media recipients in close connection to the type of medium. Whereas the study of film yielded various concepts of spectatorship, television prompted a conceptualization of audience both as viewers and consumers. With the emergence of Web 2.0 applications, most prominently UGC platforms, the qualification of ‘user’ gradually enters the common parlance of media theorists (Livingstone, 2004).

Users are generally referred to as active internet contributors, who put in a ‘certain amount of creative effort’ which is ‘created outside of professional routines and platforms’.1 Since the 1980s, the term ‘prosumer’ has been

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deployed by various academics to denote how users’ agency hovers between the bipolar categories of producer versus consumer, and of professional versus consumer. New hybrid terms such as ‘produser’ and ‘co-creator’ have meanwhile entered academic parlance to accentuate users’ increased production prowess (Bruns, 2007). As this article will argue, user agency is a lot more complex than these bipolar terms suggest; we need to account for the multifarious roles of users in a media environment where the boundaries between commerce, content and information are currently being redrawn.

To illustrate the complexity of user agency, the recent development of YouTube serves as a case of inquiry. Started as a video-sharing site in 2005 and run by three students from a Silicon Valley garage, the financially flailing but hugely popular site was bought up by Google in October of 2006 for the unprecedented sum of $1.6 billion. Obviously, Google’s acquisition was not about bringing innovative technology into the home, as its own GoogleVideo was already running on superior software; it was about bringing in communities of users. In less than a year, YouTube became an (independent) subsidiary of a commercial firm whose core interest is not in content per se, but in the vertical integration of search engines with content, social networking and advertising.

YouTube’s case perfectly illustrates the need for a more comprehensive approach to user agency, including perspectives from cultural theory, economics and labour relations. User agency is cast by cultural theorists as participatory engagement, in contrast to the passive recipients of earlier stages of media culture. Economists and business managers phrase user agency in the rhetoric of production rather than consumption. And in terms of labour relations, users are appraised in their new roles as amateurs and volunteers vis-ávis those in the professional leagues. If we want to understand how socio-economic and technological transformations affect the current shake-up in power relationships between media companies, advertisers and users, it is important to develop a multifarious concept of user agency. Users like ‘you’, as I will argue, have a rather limited potential to ‘wrest power from the few’, let alone to ‘change the way the world changes’.

The cultural perspective: recipients versus participants With the emergence of Web 2.0 applications, cultural theorist Henry Jenkins (2006) sees a definite paradigm shift in the way media content is produced and circulated: ‘Audiences, empowered by these new technologies, occupying a space at the intersection between old and new media, are demanding the right to participate within the culture’ (2006: 24). The result is a participatory culture which increasingly demands room for ordinary citizens to wield media technologies – technologies that were once the privilege of capitalintensive industries – to express themselves and distribute those creations as 208 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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they seem fit. When ‘old media’ still reigned, media recipients had little direct power to shape media content and faced enormous barriers to enter the marketplace, whereas ‘the new digital environment expands the scope and reach of consumer activities’ (2006: 215). Jenkins, like other media theorists, applauds the technological opportunities seized by grassroots movements and individuals to express their creativity and provide a diverse palette of voices (Deuze, 2007). And even if the explosion of information on the internet tends to result in ‘monitorial citizens’ (Schudson, 1998), Jenkins is convinced that networked technologies offer users sufficient leverage to renegotiate their relationships with media companies.

There are several assumptions implied in the notion of participatory culture that I want to relativize in this section. First, the concept of user is often bolstered by a deceptive opposition between the passive recipient, couched in the rhetoric of ‘old media’, and the active participant cast ideally as someone who is well-versed in the skills of ‘new’ media. Second, participation refers to citizens and community activists as well as to people who deploy their skills and talents towards a common cause. Yet can terms such as ‘communities’ and ‘(cultural) citizenship’ be unequivocally transferred to internet communities?

And third, now that citizens have become creators and arbiters of media content, what role do platform providers play in steering the agency of users and communities? Let me elaborate on each of these points.

The implied opposition between passive recipients defined by old media (e.g. television) and active participants inhabiting digital environments, particularly UGC sites, is a historical fallacy. Scholars from the humanities have long emphasized the intrinsic engagement of the viewer with the medium (McLuhan, 1964) either stressing the ‘multi-accentuality of the sign’ (Volosinov, 1973) or noting the role of subject positions in the text’s ideological effect (Brunsdon and Morley, 1978). Television audiences were never solely defined in terms of passive spectatorship, but there is a long tradition in media history to point at the recipient’s active engagement with Hollywood-prefab content (Ang, 1991; Moores, 1990). As Jenkins (1992) rightly points out, recipients of cultural content – whether fiction, music, film or television – have always engaged in activities, such as bands playing cover versions of songs or fan clubs stimulating the recreation of content. Over the past 15 years, viewers have increasingly acted as participants in game shows, quizzes, talk shows and make-over programmes.

Particularly the surge of reality television has boosted the participation of ‘ordinary people’ in broadcast productions (Teurlings, 2001). In addition, the popularity of personal and communal media (home movies, home videos, community television) has profoundly affected television culture, particularly since the 1980s.2 What is different in the digital era is that users have better access to networked media, enabling them to ‘talk back’ in the same multimodal language that frames cultural products formerly made exclusively in studios. This is partly due to the availability of cheap and easy-to-use digital 209 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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technologies, which certainly should stimulate audiovisual production of audiovisual production, but a more important driver is the many internet channels, particularly UGC sites, that allow for do-it-yourself distribution.

However, it’s a great leap to presume that the availability of digital networked technologies turns everyone into active participants. As a Guardian technology reporter observes, an emerging rule of thumb suggests that ‘if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will “interact” with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it’ (Arthur, 2006). If it is true that there are relatively few active creators of content, what do we mean when we talk about participation? It may be crucial to distinguish different levels of participation in order to get a more nuanced idea of what participation entails. A recent American survey categorizes user’s behaviour according to six levels on a participation ladder.3 Of all online users of UGC sites, 13 percent are ‘active creators’ – people actually producing and uploading content such as webblogs, videos or photos. Just under 19 percent qualify as ‘critics’, which means they provide ratings or evaluations. Furthermore, 15 percent of all users are ‘collectors’, a term referring to those who save URLs on a social bookmarking service which can be shared with other users; another 19 percent count as ‘joiners’ – people who join social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook, without necessarily contributing content. The majority of users consist of ‘passive spectators’ (33%) and ‘inactives’ (52%); while the former category perform activities such as reading blogs or watching peer-generated video, the latter category does not engage in any of these activities.4 Looking at these numbers, it becomes readily apparent that ‘participation’ does not equal ‘active contribution’ to UGC sites; participation is thus a relative term when over 80 percent of all users are in fact passive recipients of content (OECD, 2007).

On a different level, digital participants are ascribed a heightened level of engagement with society, enhancing cultural citizenship. The attribution of citizenship to media users is nothing new. There is a long tradition in scholarship theorizing television audiences as citizens, both in relation to commercial media as well in the context of public television (Dahlgren, 1995; Hartley, 1999) Besides treating television as an audiovisual text, media theorists have always taken into account the socio-cultural experience of interacting with television (for an overview, see Dahlberg, 2007). Building individual and group identity is an integrated element of the self in a democratic culture. Citizenship has to do with belonging and participating in a public sphere inundated with media; at the same time, as sociologist Thompson (1995: 215) already observed, individuals are increasingly dependent ‘on a range of social institutions and systems to provide them the means – both material and symbolic – for the construction of their life-projects’. This double-bind of media dependency was evident long before the emergence of digital networked media. Media use was and still is strongly defined by evolving group identities, as individual viewers tie in their personal taste and lifestyles with shared ‘mediated’ experiences.

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Scholars theorizing the current trend of participatory culture emphasize users’ strong preference to share knowledge and culture in communities.

Sharing has indeed become the default mode of UGC interfaces like YouTube and MySpace. Yet the term ‘community’, in relation to these sites, appears to cover a range of different meanings. On the face of it, ‘community’ strongly connotes the inclination of users to belong to a (real-life) group and be involved in a common cause. YouTube’s owners promote their site as the home of many such communities; as we can read on the site’s Terms of Use: ‘Remember that this is your community! Each and every user of YouTube makes the site what it is, so don’t be afraid to dig in and get involved.’ Indeed, some YouTubers periodically hold public gatherings to celebrate the videosharing community, but these real-life happenings remain exceptions. More likely, the term ‘community’ relates to groups with a communal preference in music, movies or books (a so-called ‘taste community’); building taste is an activity that necessarily ties in individuals with social groups (Hennion, 2007).

There are plenty of such groups sharing their cultural experiences with anonymous users on YouTube, such as anime-fans or heavy metal adepts. We also find the word ‘community’ applying to people who happen to buy the same brand of toy cars or follow the same diet: ‘brand communities’ is the hybrid name to tout consumer products offered as cultural resources (Arvidsson, 2005). ‘Communities’, in relation to media, thus refers to a large range of user groups, some of which resemble grassroots movements, but the overwhelming majority coincide with consumer groups or entertainment platforms.

A more profound problem with ascribing participatory involvement and community engagement to users per se, is its neglect of the substantial role a site’s interface plays in manoeuvring individual users and communities.

YouTube users are steered towards a particular video by means of coded mechanisms which heavily rely on promotion and ranking tactics, such as the measuring of downloads and the promotion of popular favourites. The site’s users indeed serve as providers and arbiters of content – both unwittingly by means of download counts and consciously by rating and commenting on videos – but rankings and ratings are processed with the help of algorithms, the technical details of which remain undisclosed. YouTube singles out ‘most viewed’ videos; it also lists ‘most discussed’ videos and has rankings for ‘Top favourites’ and ‘Top rated’ – familiar categories deployed by most commercial radio stations. Obviously, rankings and ratings are vulnerable to manipulation, both by users and by the site’s owners.

In the emergent participatory culture, ‘participation’ is thus an ambiguous concept. The presumption that new networked technologies lead to enhanced involvement of recipients as well as to active cultural citizenship is rather generalizing. The historical continuity between participation of ordinary citizens in ‘old media’ like television and participation of users in networked UGC sites defies any definition grounded in binary oppositions. Instead, user agency comprises different levels of participation, varying from ‘creators’ to 211 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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‘spectators’ and ‘inactives’. The same can be said with regard to the notion of ‘communities’, a term that applies to very different modes of user involvement. When looking at user-generated content, we also need to take account of a site’s coded abilities to steer and direct users. User agency, in other words, encompasses a range of different uses and agents, and it is extremely relevant to develop a more nuanced model for understanding its cultural complexity.

The economics perspective: users between producers and consumers Participatory culture finds its economic equivalent in the notion of ‘prosumption’ or ‘wikinomics’, a theory in which user agency is increasingly defined in terms of production and less in terms of consumption (Leadbeater, 2007; Tapscott and Williams, 2006). According to media analysts and business gurus, new digital platforms are giving rise to a profound paradigm shift in the way companies approach their customers and go about business relations: You can participate in the economy as an equal, co-creating value with your peers and favourite companies to meet your very personal needs, to engage in fulfilling communities, to change the world, or just to have fun! Prosumption comes full circle. (Tapscott and Williams, 2006: 150)

In marketing and business discourse, hybrid terms such as ‘co-creation’ and ‘produsage’ are rapidly replacing the terms ‘consumption’ and ‘customization’ (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). Of course, notions such as prosumer have permeated theories of media production ever since ‘experience’ became the magic word to tout customer engagement (Pine and Gilmore, 1999; Toffler, 1981). But with the full implementation of Web 2.0 technologies, and particularly with the emergence of many UGC sites, business interest has apparently shifted away from consuming activities and gravitated towards producing activities, giving users more power over content because they add business value.

This new status of the people-formerly-known-as-consumers prompts further critical assessment of user agency. How valid is the claim that all users become ‘co-creators’ or ‘produsers’ of content? And where does this leave the consumer? Hybrid concepts appear to disregard users as objects of targeted advertising. But in casting new user agency, it is indispensable to look at the role of advertisers as well as new media platforms in the renegotiation of power relationships.

The presumed opposition between production and consumption in relation to media is misleading because American media function on the triangular basis of producers, consumers and advertisers. American media have always been driven largely by market forces – forces that control production and distribution of audiovisual content through reaching audiences and profitable 212 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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markets (Ettema and Whitney, 1994). In these markets, consumers have been targeted as masses, groups and individuals, and they have exerted power over cultural content via their power as consumers (e.g. buying or boycotting products, giving input to consumer panels, etc.). The relation between specific people watching specific content constitutes the basis of targeted advertising; information vital to marketers derives from the connection between content, disposable income and consuming behaviour. With the emergence of every new medium, advertisers and media companies have adjusted their strategies to reach the viewer-as-consumer – from mass audiences targeted by broadcasting in the 1950s to niche audiences reached by narrowcast channels in the 1990s (Smith-Shomade, 2004). The potential for niche marketing has been further enhanced in the internet era; advanced digital technologies facilitate the tracking of individual social behaviour. The already close relationship between content producers, advertisers and consumers has become even more intimate.

As argued in the previous section, only a small percentage of users actually create content whereas the large majority consists of spectators or passive viewers; yet all categories of users actually qualify as potential consumers.

The social demographics of UGC platform visitors bespeak an average user who is highly educated, well connected and well paid, with an average household income of almost twice the median income of American families (Li, 2007: 6). In other words, all UCG users – whether active creators or passive spectators – form an attractive demographic to advertisers. Not surprisingly, the marketing people employed by ‘old media’ hail the emergence of these new platforms, while the legal people curse them because of frequent copyright infringement by users. At this moment in history, Hollywood producers hesitate whether to see YouTube-Google as a friend or foe: either they go after them and use their historic prowess to impose their old (content-protection) rules on this newcomer, or they side with them in creating new business and marketing models to create buzz for conventional broadcast products.

However the face-off turns out, it is crucial to understand the new role of users as both content providers and data providers. Besides uploading content, users also willingly and unknowingly provide important information about their profile and behaviour to site owners and metadata aggregators. Before users can actually contribute uploads or comments to a site, they usually have to register with their name, email address and sometimes add more personal details such as gender, age, nationality or income. Their subsequent media behaviour can be minutely traced by means of databots. More importantly, all users of UGC sites unwittingly provide information because IP addresses – the majority of which can be connected to a user’s name and address – can be mined and used without limit by platform owners. Permission to use metadata towards specific purposes are commonly regulated by a site’s service agreements (Terms of Use), which users are required to sign. Metadata can be mined for various purposes, from targeted advertising to interface optimization, but the bottom line is that users have no power over data distribution.

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YouTube’s practices are a case in point. When the site first started, YouTube’s business model was quite simple: banner ads were placed next to video uploads to cover the costs of operating the video-sharing site. The site never turned a profit before its takeover by Google. YouTube’s Terms of Use still require that subscribers ‘use YouTube for purely personal purposes and not for any commercial purpose’, ruling out potentially commercial activities in relation to uploads. Yet a first sign towards the accommodation of advertisers came in January 2007, when YouTube’s CEO Chad Hurley announced the introduction of short commercial clips; in the ensuing months, the site has added a large number of entertainment channels with paid commercial content. More importantly, the site’s owners have a licence to exploit any data they gather from their users. Although YouTube’s Terms of Use state that they do not sell email addresses or other personally identifiable information to commercial or marketing messages without consent, at the same time they track both personal information and digital behaviour: We may record information about your usage, such as when you use YouTube, the channels, groups, and favorites you subscribe to, the contacts you communicate with, and the frequency and size of data transfers, as well as information you display or click on in YouTube (including UI elements, settings, and other information). If you are logged in, we may associate that information with your account.

We may use clear GIFs (a.k.a. ‘Web Beacons’) in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened by recipients. (http://youtube.com/t/terms)

Seemingly unimportant technical information, such as anonymous usage data, cookies, IP addresses, browser type, clickstream data, etc. are said to be deployed to ‘improve the quality and design of the site’, but this limitation seems rather dubious in the face of YouTube’s takeover which effectively transferred the right to access all user information to its new owner.

Since Google took over YouTube, the role of users as data providers has increased notably. In principle, YouTube is still an ‘independent’ subsidiary of Google Inc. and the new owners vowed in a press statement to respect YouTube’s distinct identity, but it would be naïve to think that YouTube’s policies will be unaffected by the takeover. Gradually, YouTube’s features are taking the shape of Google’s own GoogleVideo – a site that casts users as targeted consumers as well as content providers. If we look at the Terms of Use regulating GoogleVideo’s UGC traffic, they differ from YouTube’s: You are directing and authorizing Google to, and granting Google a royalty-free, non-exclusive right and license to, host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, modify, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, facilitate the sale or rental of copies of, analyze, and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content in order to (i) host the Authorized Content on Google’s servers; (ii) index the Authorized Content; (iii) display, perform and distribute the Authorized Content, in whole or in part, in the territory(ies) designated in the Metadata Form, in connection with Google products and services now existing or hereafter developed, including without limitation for

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syndication on third party sites. (https://upload.video.google.com/video_terms.html, emphases added)

Google’s conditions for use shift the power over users’ information to the site’s owners. The metadata Google harvests from UGC traffic and clickstreams is much more valuable to advertisers than the content users provide to these sites. Metadata are not merely a by-product of user-generated content: they are a prime resource for profiling real people with real interests. The phrase ‘in connection with Google products and services’ spoofs the spectre of a platform interlocking advertising, content and data. Google already operates the hugely profitable AdSense, a subsidiary coupling advertising to search engine results, and recently acquired online advertising firm DoubleClick – a deal currently under scrutiny by federal anti-trust legislators who will also investigate privacy and competition issues. The vertical integration of Google, combining a near-monopoly search engine with information aggregation sites, advertising companies and UGC platforms renders the question of ‘googlization’ rather pertinent (Batelle, 2005; Caufield, 2005; Vaidyanathan, 2007). Google’s strategy is obviously in the interest of business, but what does it teach us about user agency?

Notwithstanding neologisms touting the user as a ‘produser’ and ‘co-creator’, the user’s role as a data provider is infinitely more important than his role as a content provider. Even if some users receive part of the monetary gains made from their self-made content, the real value added by users – generating metadata on the social behaviour of a profitable consumer segment – remains highly invisible and unaccounted for. The triangular relationship between media producers, advertisers and consumers has become ever more intimate. On the one hand users assert their creative agency by demanding a greater role in content production; on the other hand they lose their grip on their agency as consumers as a result of technological algorithms tracking their behaviour and refining their profile. User agency thus comprises content production, consuming behaviour and data generation; any theory highlighting only the first of these functions effectively downplays the tremendous influence of new media companies in directing users’ agency.

Labour relations: amateurs versus professionals A third approach to user agency draws attention to UGC in terms of labour relations; according to the official OECD definition (see note 2), users contribute creative efforts ‘outside of professional routines and practices’. Terms such as ‘hobbyists’, ‘amateurs’, ‘unpaid labourers’ and ‘volunteers’ often applied to internet contributors, contrast with the words ‘professionals’, ‘stars’, ‘paid experts’ and ‘employees’ commonly attributed to people producing traditional television content. But as the market for user-generated content 215 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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further commercializes and is incorporated by new media conglomerates, the sliding scales of voluntarism are inversely proportional to the sliding scales of professionalism, resulting in new mixed models of labour. In order to understand the changes in user agency, it is important to scrutinize ‘human resources’ management of UGC sites such as YouTube. What characterizes the type of effort users put into creating and rating online content if this is not regularly paid labour? Why devote much time and energy to creating content and what to expect in return? The changes YouTube made in its policies towards users are typical of the current trend towards integrating amateur efforts into a capital- and technology-intensive media system.

Since the beginning of the web, thousands of volunteers, hobbyists and idealists have enabled the development of what some observers have described as a ‘gift economy for information exchange’ (Barbrook, 2002). The worldwide web, after all, was envisioned as a new frontier space where grassroots initiatives, communal spirit and ‘free’ amateur culture had a chance to blossom. Labour critics and neo-Marxist scholars noticed early on how the glamorization of the digital domain was a convenient pretense for the mobilization of ‘immaterial labour’ – befitting the familiar logic of capitalist exploitation (Hardt and Negri, 2000; Terranova, 2000). Enterprises like America Online (AOL) boomed on the efforts of thousands of volunteers who developed their skills in the service of companies. In the 1990s, AOL employed thousands of what they called ‘remote staffers’ who monitored electronic bulletin boards, hosted chat-rooms and enforced Terms of Service agreements. These unpaid remote staffers were referred to as ‘online families’ and communities, and AOL even created a sort of kinship system based on mentor–mentee relationships. As Postigo (2003) relates in his detailed study, volunteers were less driven by a spirit of community, as they were stimulated by the novelty of working with new technologies; they needed computer experience to be employable in the emerging tech-economy. When, in 1999, AOL wanted to exert more power over their volunteer remote staffers, they implemented a mixed system of paid and volunteer staff, igniting a huge controversy among its loyal base. AOL remote staffers filed a class-action lawsuit to require retroactive acknowledgement of their work as labour; the case was settled and AOL completely abandoned the system in 2003.

The AOL case is emblematic of the current transformation in labour relations with regard to the commercialization of UGC sites; sites like YouTube are facing the double-bind of courting their volunteer content providers while making a profit on them as targeted consumers. When the popularity of videosharing sites began to soar in early 2006, the debate on user motivation, status and rewards quickly intensified. The question of what drives users to contribute time and labour to an exploding number of UGC sites is crucial if we want to understand the volatile relationship between media companies and their worker-client base. According to the aforementioned Forrester survey (Li, 2007: 11–12), users can be segmented according to one of three primary 216 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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motivations: entertainment, career and family. Entertainment-driven users are much more likely to participate in UGC activities, closely followed by careerdriven users. Users are attracted to these sites because of their novelty; as soon as the entertainment value starts to wear off, they will seek a new platform or change habits. The decision of YouTube to mix amateur content with prefab entertainment content is thus meant to boost the site’s perpetual entertainment value. Career-driven users can be characterized as aspiring professionals, both in the technical-creative sphere and in the artistic-entertainment sphere.

Many contributors to UGC sites are enthusiasts who make home videos for a small circle of family and friends – the third most important driver for producing content. Apparently, many amateurs take pride in developing their skills and dream of turning their hobby into a profession. Tinkering with media technologies has been the department of hobbyists since the time of radio hams, and digital labour has acquired the image of being creative play (Douglas, 1999; Gillespie, 2006). Labour volunteered to UGC sites is thus not conceived of as work, but as fun or play. This ‘work as play’ ethos also reigns in many workplaces of the digital creative industries; the workforce of designers, software developers and hardware engineers are attracted to places with an ‘anti-corporate culture’ where young people are ready to work unusual hours for sometimes very little money; it is not unusual in this sector to be paid in stock options of companies that have yet to emerge (de Peuter and Dyer-Witheford, 2005). Google is well known for its unconventional labour contracts and its ‘geek culture’ that pays bonuses for creative input and provides spare time for employees to spend on non-assigned projects. In a sense, the emergence of UGC sites stipulates a variable scale of labour relations, where many contractual forms can be pinpointed somewhere between the two poles of volunteerism and professionalism.

Striking the balance between the commitment of volunteers and the directing power of paid staffers is a difficult issue, especially now that many UGC sites are transforming from commons-like structures towards commercially driven platforms. Even if content is said to be ‘user generated’ that does not mean that users have full control over what is produced and how it gets displayed. UCG sites are governed by technological and social protocols (Galloway, 2004). Technological protocols are, for instance, the rating and ranking systems explained in the previous section; social protocols govern how uploads are filtered by the site’s staffers, by experts or by peer-users (or a combination thereof), before or after posting. Of course, quality of content and abuse of rating and evaluation systems are a constant source of worry to the site’s owners, as the opportunity for manipulation is very real. Most startup UGC sites depended completely on volunteer users for their operational activities. In the case of YouTube, users themselves policed the site for profane, racist and explicit sexual content, and the moderation of content was entirely peer-based. Since the takeover by Google, the commercial stakes are rising and YouTube’s paid staffers are taking over an increasing portion of the 217 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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site’s moderating tasks. For one thing, YouTube is forced to exert sharper control over its uploaded content, especially with regard to copyright violation, now that lawsuits are pending. More control over operational matters is inevitable if the site wants to turn a profit; whether users will still form the loyal volunteer base they once did remains to be seen.

When UGC sites’ popularity really started to explode, in early 2006, media analysts and industry watchers noticed rapidly changing mores in the treatment of volunteers generating content (Siklos, 2006). Yahoo and Metacafe organized contests, promising rewards of several thousand dollars for the most popular uploads. YouTube originally did not pay any of its volunteers who acted as content providers or who kept the system of peer-reviewing and quality monitoring afloat. Since its takeover by Google, YouTube has been quickly remodelling its reward system, for instance by introducing paid uploads so contributors can opt to charge viewers to see their content.

GoogleVideo already has such system, where revenues are split between the site owners and the maker of content.5 Labour relations thus shift from a usercontrolled platform, run largely by communities of users mediated by social and technological protocols, to a company-steered brokerage system, where platform owners play the role of mediator between aspiring professionals and potential audiences. Companies like Google are not looking to turn every amateur into a professional so much as acknowledging the growing appeal of selling home-made material to audiences and media businesses.

In more than one way, YouTube and GoogleVideo are mediating platforms between the masses of aspiring amateurs and the ‘old’ Hollywood media moguls. Video-sharing sites have quickly become the global rodeo for talent scouts: they provide a new link in the upward mobility chain of the commercially driven star-system. Originally, YouTube’s intentions were to ‘democratize the entertainment process’ by giving ordinary people the opportunity to perform for potentially large audiences. In interviews, CEO Chad Hurley (quoted in McGrath, 2006) effectively downplayed the influence of YouTube’s employees in moderation systems that promote the popularity of certain uploads and thus favour particular claims to fame. By nominating ‘noteworthy videos’ on their homepage and all the strategic ‘listing’ systems mentioned before, YouTube is now definitely a partner in the entertainment brokerage business. The site even imitates the Hollywood star system by establishing yearly YouTube Awards.

However, the erosion of YouTube’s democratic ideal is not simply the result of unilateral popularity promotion, but also of overtly ambitious users inventing numerous strategies to thwart YouTube’s system of popularity measuring and peer-based evaluation. Notorious examples such as LonelyGirl15 and Lamo1234 illustrate the weakness of an open system driven by volunteer users: the ‘lonely girl’ turned out to be the creation of professional film-makers represented by Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency, and Lamo1234 was a 23-yearold student who downloaded his own recorded guitar solos 10,000 times to boost his view counts. Although YouTube and many other video-sharing sites 218 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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carefully nurture the concept of amateur home-made content, the actual myth driving this concept is the popular belief in ‘rags to riches’ stories.

The UGC market increasingly relates to the professional Hollywood market as stock options relate to shares and bonds – a trade market in potential talents and hopeful pre-professionals. YouTube’s role as an Internet trader in the options market for fame is unthinkable without a merger between old and new media. Ironically, YouTube fame only counts as fame after it is picked up by traditional mass media – television, movies, newspapers and so on. The case of Dutch vocalist and songwriter Esmee Denters typifies the site’s function in paving the way to recognized celebrity status. In September 2006, the 18-yearold high school student posted a video of herself singing on YouTube and then mobilized her friends via Hyves.nl and other social networking sites to view her recording and up her ratings. But Denters’ popularity only soared after she appeared on several Dutch television shows. In April 2007, she signed a contract with Justin Timberlake’s record company. The growing role of UGC platforms as intermediaries between amateurs and professionals, volunteers and employees, anonymous users and stars, can hardly be conceived apart from ‘old’ media conglomerates’ power to select, promote and remunerate artistic content. UGC is firmly locked into the commercial dynamics of the mediascape.

The contention that UGC platforms stimulate a democratic culture dominated by creative amateurs and providing free culture (Lessig, 2004) has been countered by vehement criticism. Former entrepreneur Andrew Keen (2007) lashed out at the ‘cult of the amateur’ which, in his view, has destroyed the system of paid content and paid professionals. Before the advent of UGC platforms, companies responsible for content could at least be held accountable for the mistakes they made; but the ‘wisdom of crowds’, according to Keen, causes the demise of the professional system. The overwhelming supply of amateur digital content has created a market in which cultural products are created at no cost and given away for free. Keen is thus convinced that amateurs and professionals, unpaid and paid labourers, cannot cohabit within the same system of cultural production. But, as the example of YouTube shows, the sliding scales of voluntarism and professionalism result in a variety of labour relationships, as well as in a recalibrated system of financial rewards, risks and benefits in an emerging ‘options’ market. Instead of bringing down the reigning professional leagues, UGC actually boosts the power of media moguls, enhancing their system of star ratings and upward mobility.

If anything, Keen’s critique shows the fallacy of defining user agency in bipolar terms of labour relations. UGC is neither exclusively produced by amateurs nor by professionals. The development of media content and media technologies has always attracted a mix of workers, due to its appeal as entertainment as well as work. The blending of work and play reverberates in the labour conditions adapted by many internet-based companies and new media industries. It is also manifest in the intermediary function of UGC sites, brokering between aspiring amateurs and commercial content firms. In this 219 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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emerging combination of job markets and trade markets, it is a myth to expect that amateurs or volunteers will gain more control over the monetization (or moderation) of their immaterial labour. By the same token, it is unlikely that professional markets will give way to a powerful base structure consisting of volunteers with enhanced claims to creative autonomy and financial independence. On the contrary, user agency is defined more than ever by the capital-intensive and technology-driven economies of global, vertically integrated markets.

Conclusion When Time hailed You as the ‘Person of the Year’, the magazine paid tribute to the millions of anonymous, productive contributors to the web – a tribute akin to the badge of honour bestowed upon the unknown soldier. This powerful but contrived metaphor has come to define the concept of user agency as it dissipated into academic and professional discourses. Notions of ‘participatory culture’ tend to accentuate the emancipation of the engaged citizen, who unleashes her need for self-expression and creativity onto the digital spaces created expressly for this purpose. Economists and business managers applaud the rise of ‘wikinomics’, hailing the surge of produsers and co-creators whose contributions add substantial economic value. And notions such as ‘playful work’ and ‘professional voluntarism’ enter the digital industry’s parlance of work ethos and employment. Despite lingering images of self-effacing, engaged and productive cybernauts – echoing early internet frontierism – the ‘You’ lauded by Time has meanwhile entered the era of commercialized user-generated content, where user activity is heavily mediated by high-tech algorithms and datamining firms. Exemplifying this transformation is the changing position of YouTube, a UGC site that evolved from a small start-up site driven by user communities into a commercial platform that is now an important node in an evolving ecosystem of media conglomerates dominated by Google.

It is important to include the perspectives from cultural theory, consumer sociology and political economy when trying to understand the essence of new user agency. Although older cultural theories of media use may still prove to be helpful in defining the conceptual boundaries at stake in this discussion, it seems obvious that we need more than singular disciplinary theories to help us understand the intricate relationships between social and technological agents.

Cultural production can no longer be theorized exclusively in terms of industry or social stratification of consumers, as the amplified efficacy of media technologies is closely intertwined with the rise of global media constellations (Hesmondhalgh, 2006). Increasingly, we find studies by cultural sociologists who scrutinize user-generated media in close connection to their technological design, but without further reference to their economic or political impact (Lai, 2007). Political economists have addressed issues of governance and power in 220 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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relation to technologically mediated interaction, but rarely relate these issues to cultural content and actual users (Mansell, 2004). A multidisciplinary approach to user agency should yield a model that accounts for users’ multiple roles, while concurrently accounting for technologies and site operatorsowners as actors who steer user agency.

David Croteau (2006) rightly observed that we still know very little about the effect of user-generated content on the new media landscape. Conceptually and methodologically, media scholars will need to devise new ways to assess content trends across these new production platforms. In this article, I have argued for the articulation of user agency as a complex concept involving not only his cultural role as a facilitator of civic engagement and participation, but also his economic meaning as a producer, consumer and data provider, as well as the user’s volatile position in the labour market. Such a multifaceted concept needs to be met with proposals for multi-levelled methodologies that combine empirical research of users’ activities, motivations, status and intentions with contextual analyses charting techno-economic aspects of media use.

User agency in the age of digital media can no longer be assessed from one exclusive disciplinary angle as the social, cultural, economic, technological and legal aspects of UGC sites are inextricably intertwined. Theories from cultural theory, empirical sociology, political economy and technology design need to be integrated to yield a nuanced model for assessing user agency.

Indeed, composite companies like Google should be met with equally multifaceted models for understanding ‘users like you’.

Notes 1. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), based in Paris, issued a report titled Participative Web: User-generated Content (12 April 2007). The report was compiled by the OECD Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy. Citation on page 4. URL: http://www.oecd.org/home/ 0,3305,en_2649_201185_1_1_1_1_1,00.html 2. In fact, so-called personal media products have increasingly become part of televized everyday life, as illustrated by immensely popular formats such as America’s Funniest Home Videos. For more information on the development of home movies and videos, see Moran (2002) and van Dijck (2007).

3. A recent Social Technographics Survey, executed by Forrester Research Inc. (a private survey company), interviewed close to 10,000 American users and was conducted by Charlene Li in December of 2006. The Forrester report, Mapping Participation in Activities Forms the Foundation of a Social Strategy (19 April 2007), can be accessed for a charge at: www.forrester.com/go?docid=42057. The statistics in this list do not add up to 100 percent because users can be active in various roles, and, for instance, if they are ‘joiners’ they do not necessarily contribute content.

4. If we look at YouTube, which in the summer of 2006 covered almost 60 percent of the video-sharing market, these numbers are about right: on 100 million downloads there are 65,000 uploads each day, bringing the active–passive ratio on YouTube to just under 0.5 percent of all users. The Forrester survey in December 2006 (Li, 2007: 12) 221 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at Maastricht University on February 24, 2014

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sets the number of ‘active users’ on YouTube at 25 percent. The difference between these statistics, besides a time gap of six months in measuring, lies in the fact that ‘active creators’, according to the Forrester survey, do not necessarily contribute content to YouTube; they may have created content elsewhere (e.g. blogs).

5. GoogleVideo states in its Terms of Use: Yo may designate a purchase and/or rental price in the Metadata Form that end users must pay in order to download Your Authorized Content. If you do not designate a price for Your Authorized Content, the price will automatically be set at zero. Except as otherwise set forth herein, In the event of any download of Your Authorized Content, by end users, We will pay to You seventy percent (70%) of the gross revenues, if any, recognized by Google and attributable to such video playback of Your Authorized Content based upon the price you designate. (https://upload.video.google.com/video_terms.html)

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Barbrook, R. (2002) ‘The High-tech Gift Economy’, First Monday, URL (consulted July 2007): http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/ Batelle, J. (2005) The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture. New York: Penguin.

Bruns, A. (2007) ‘Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-led Content Creation’, paper presented at Creativity and Cognition 6, 13–15 June, URL (consulted June 2007): http://snurb.info/files/ Brunsdon, C. and D. Morley (1978) Everyday Television: ‘Nationwide’. London: British Film Institute.

Caufield, J. (2005) ‘Where did Google Get its Value?’, Libraries and the Academy 5(4): 555–72.

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Dahlberg, L. (2007) ‘The Internet, Deliberative Democracy, and Power: Radicalizing the Public Sphere’, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 3(1): 47–64.

Dahlgren, P. (1995) Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy, and the Media. London: SAGE. Deuze, M. (2007) ‘Convergence Culture in the Creative Industries’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 10(2): 243–63.

Dijck, J. van (2007) Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Douglas, S. (1999) Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. New York: Random.

Ettema, J. and C. Whitney (eds) (1994) Audiencemaking: How the Media Create the Audience. London: SAGE. Galloway, A. R. (2004) Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Gillespie, T. (2006) ‘Designed to “Effectively Frustrate”: Copyright, Technology and the Agency of Users’, New Media and Society 8(4): 651–69.

Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Hennion, A. (2007) ‘Those Things that Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology’, Cultural Sociology 1(1): 97–114.

Hesmondhalgh, D. (2006) ‘Bourdieu, the Media and Cultural Production’, Media, Culture & Society 28(2): 211–31.

Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.

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Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values. New York: Doubleday Currency.

Lai, C.-H. (2007) ‘Understanding the Design of Mobile Social Networking: The Example of EzMoBo in Taiwan’, M/C Journal 10(1), URL (consulted July 2007): http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/08-lai.php Leadbeater, C. (2007) We Think: Why Mass Creativity is the Next Big Thing. Online publication, URL (consulted July 2007): http://www.wethinkthebook.net/ cms/site/docs/charles%20full%20draft.pdf Lessig, L. (2004) Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York: Penguin.

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McGrath, B. (2006) ‘It Should Happen to You: The Anxieties of YouTube Fame’, New Yorker 13 October, URL (consulted September 2008): http://www.newyorker.com/ archive/2006/10/16/061016fa_fact McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2007) Participative Web: User-generated Content, OECD Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy report, April, URL (consulted July 2007): http://www.oecd.org/home Peuter, G. de and N. Dyer Witheford (2005) ‘Playful Multitude? Mobilising and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour’, Fibreculture 5, URL (consulted June 2007): http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/depeuter_dyerwitheford.html Pine, B. J. and J. H. Gilmore (1999) The Experience Economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

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José van Dijck is a Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She is currently the Dean of Humanities. Van Dijck is the author of some 70 articles and five books, including Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent: Debating the New Reproductive Technologies (New York University Press, 1995); ImagEnation. Popular Images of Genetics (New York University Press, 1998); and The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging (University of Washington Press, 2005). Her latest book is titled Mediated Memories in the Digital Age (Stanford University Press, 2007). Address: University of Amsterdam – Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9 Amsterdam 1012 XT, The Netherlands. [email: j.van.dijck@uva.nl]

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MCSXXX10.1177/0163443711427199KimMedia, Culture & Society

Article

The institutionalization of YouTube: From user-generated content to professionally generated content

Media, Culture & Society 34(1) 53­–67 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0163443711427199 mcs.sagepub.com

Jin Kim

The College of Saint Rose, USA

Abstract This article explores the institutionalization of YouTube: its transformation from usergenerated content (UGC) – oriented as a virtual village – into a professionally generated content (PGC) video site, especially after being purchased by Google. YouTube has influenced the traditional media environment, but at the same time this new medium imitates the rules of the old media, including legally managed distribution of broadcasting content and smooth links between content and commercials. YouTube constitutes an evolution of the present media milieu, rather than a revolution. On the other hand, the dominance of mainstream media is, to a degree, still compromised in UGC culture. The emancipatory dimension of UGC media (e.g. as democratic, creative outlet with high accessibility and online library potential) is discussed in the conclusion, not losing sight of the technological-economic limitations placed on its continuing promise.

Keywords advertisement, institutionalization, interactivity, professionally generated content, user-generated content, YouTube As a convergence medium between the internet and TV, YouTube has highlighted a series of contradictions between traditional broadcasting and digital narrowcasting.

YouTube cannot be thought of solely as a revolutionary medium because of its being influenced by traditional agents (i.e. network broadcasters and TV audiences), content (i.e. program genre and style) and institutions (i.e. copyright and advertisements).

Corresponding author: Jin Kim, The College of Saint Rose, Communications Department, 432 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12203, USA. Email: bachnin@hotmail.com

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YouTube has come to represent what video on the web looks like: short, mostly humorous and easily accessible. The short video clip pattern can also be found in mainstream media websites. Major media companies have responded to YouTube either by launching their own YouTube-like site or by introducing new video services on their own sites. Responding to professional video services in mainstream media, YouTube also offers full-length episodes of television shows.

With regard to co-influence between traditional broadcasting and YouTube, one of the main issues is copyright infringement. From a broader context, however, the copyright issue is more than a financial and legal conflict: it reflects a hegemonic tension between an amateur-led, individual-driven alternative mediascape and a professional-led, institution-driven traditional mediascape (Andrejevic, 2009). Advertisers are concerned about the degree to which the YouTube environment is ad-friendly: they do not want their advertisement next to low-quality home video content.

In this study, I will analyse the institutionalization of YouTube. The major implication in the argument that YouTube evolved from an amateur user-generated content (UGC) medium to a professional broadcasting channel would be that the brief history of YouTube repeats the historical trajectory of the internet. In 1995, Al Gore popularized the term the ‘information superhighway’ and Bill Gates presented his vision of a networked learning community. In Europe, a year before Gore and Gates presented their optimistic visions, the European Community (forerunner of the European Union) described the future of the information society in the Bangemann report. The basic assumptions of this report are that recent information technology development is revolutionary, the coming of the information society is unavoidable, the information society will bring about major change in Europe and it must be fostered by market forces (EC, 1994).

However, these optimistic predictions were contradicted by the way in which the internet content was commercialized. Observing the rise and fall of the optimistic vision of the internet as a place embodying public values, Fabos (2004) argues that the end result of the commercialization of the internet is that users are attracted towards commercial sites, and unpopular voices are becoming more marginalized. With regard to commercialization, I believe that Fabos is correct, and YouTube has been following a similar path to the internet. While the optimistic vision of the internet still persists in the case of YouTube, it is important not to lose sight of the legal and economic forces that limit individual use of it.

YouTube and online video service have yielded new patterns of television watching.

YouTube has influenced television, but at the same time this new medium imitates the rules of the old media, including legalized distribution of broadcasting content and smooth links between content and commercials. Furthermore, the conflicts between old and new media are based on more than economic interest: they are hegemonic tensions resulting from the formation of a new mediascape.

Copyright Rather than competing with each other, narrowcasting YouTube and broadcasting television utilize each other. Media convergence comes about because people use YouTube as a stepping-stone to mainstream media, and the mainstream media use YouTube to 226 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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Kim

promote their programs, especially in ‘webisode’ format, a 3–5-minute episode of TV shows for web showing only. Nobody’s Watching, a failed network television program pilot gained popularity through YouTube (Steinberg, 2006). The skyrocketing popularity of Saturday Night Live’s short clip series (e.g. ‘Lazy Sunday’ and ‘Dick in the Box’) would not have been possible without YouTube.

In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion. After being purchased by Google in 2006, YouTube introduced adeffective tools, including YouTube Video Identification (Video ID) for copyright holders.

Responding to pressure from media companies, in October 2007 YouTube introduced a content management tool, Video ID, which helps copyright holders (mostly media companies) find copyright infringing materials and claim their rights. Infringing videos can be tracked by using Video ID. Copyright owners have choices ‘whether to block, promote, or even – if a copyright holder chooses to partner with [YouTube] – create revenue from them, with minimal friction’ (YouTube, 2007). In other words, the industry can claim the videos and remove them. Or, rather than removing the clips, the industry can put advertisement in the clips and share the revenue with YouTube (Stelter, 2008a).

In 2010, with advancing filtering technologies, YouTube created a new copyright policy and management tool, Content ID, which includes Video ID and Audio ID. Once copyright holders deliver reference files of audio and video content they own, YouTube technology automatically identifies newly uploaded content, comparing it against all the data. According to YouTube, this advanced copyright management tool can even find that a posted video’s quality is worse than the original. Once YouTube identifies a match, the copyright holder can ask ‘either block it, leave it up, or even start making money from it’ (YouTube, 2010).

However, in regard to this ad revenue sharing model, the industry is divided. While NBC Universal and Walt Disney have opted for their own video sites, the Warner Music Group plays the role of strictly defending itself against copyright infringement (Stelter, 2008a). In December 2008, the Warner Music Group demanded that all their music videos be taken down from YouTube: the infringing videos included user-generated clips that used songs copyrighted by Warner. Music is important to short skit videos and music video is one of the most popular genres on YouTube. As of 7 July 2011, 72 out of the top 100 all-time popular YouTube clips are music videos, which are mostly copyrighted and provided by major music labels. Before Google’s purchase of YouTube, big record companies did not make an issue of free use of their copyrighted songs on YouTube. The main reason was that YouTube was such a small venture group that even if it was sued and had to pay, the young founders could not afford to pay much. Afterwards, the copyright issue affecting YouTube was now on the table, not only because the illegal use of songs skyrocketed but also because companies found the appropriate target, the one who can pay, Google.

The corporate chiefs want more from YouTube than payment for re-transmission of their music videos: they claim the copyrights even for amateur users’ singing of their songs or the use of portions of their songs in home videos. With regard to network and cable shows, the media industry’s pressure on YouTube to apply a strict copyright infringement policy has been increasing. In February 2007, Viacom (the owner of CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon) asked YouTube to remove more than 100,000 227 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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unauthorized clips (1.2 billion streams) belonging to Viacom: from the MTV popular animation show South Park to Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants (Lee, 2007).

As of 2006, major record companies including Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI and the Warner Music Group reached a deal with YouTube. Under this deal, the record companies receive a per-stream fee for their videos and share advertisement revenue with YouTube (Leeds, 2006; Stelter, 2008d). However, Warner Music concluded that the deal was not beneficial enough. Of Warner’s $639 million digital revenue in 2008, less than 1 percent was generated by YouTube’s advertisement and fees (Stelter, 2008c).

Media companies around the world claimed their rights and asked YouTube to take down the clips that belonged to them. In the fall of 2006, the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers asked YouTube to take down 30,000 copyrighted videos (Lee, 2007). After YouTube took down copyrighted clips, the charges were dropped. But some media companies wanted to finalize the case in court. Italian media group Mediaset sued YouTube for copyright infringement, asking for $500 million in damages (YouTube faces Italy, Turkey, 2008). Before Google’s purchase of YouTube, copyright issues had been framed as the collision between greedy media moguls and freedom fighter YouTube. After the purchase, the debate turned in a different direction.

The copyright issue came to involve an economic conflict of interest between big media groups. After the PRS (Peforming Right Society) for Music, a British group that collects music royalties, and Google failed to reach agreement, YouTube blocked music videos for British YouTube users (Arango, 2009).

On the one hand, broadcast networks use YouTube as a window to promote their programs. In this sense, experimental webisodes on YouTube are nothing but one type of well-made and well-financed professional advertisement. On the other hand, webisode experiments show a certain tendency wherein old media interact with new media and both evolve, rather than one displacing the other. Media ‘convergence’ is not one way. Big media adapt to a new media environment. Of the many ways in which the media industries adopt the practices of YouTube, this article will now focus on two: how media industries use YouTube as a new economic resource, and how they use YouTube as a new promotion tool.

Advertisement revenue If the pre-Google era of YouTube is characterized by amateur-produced videos in an adfree environment, the post-Google purchase stage is characterized by professionally generated videos in an ad-friendly environment. Because of YouTube’s popularity, industries have shown a deep interest in monetizing it. Since being purchased by Google, YouTube has adopted a new e-commerce model; it puts banner ads in videos or in YouTube pages and shares the revenue with the copyright holders of the videos. The basic idea of selling banner advertisements is to play commercials during the streaming of videos (Sorkin, 2006). Based on the number of views that the video receives, the ad revenue is split between the service provider (YouTube) and the content provider (copyright owners) (Stelter, 2008c).

With new technologies enabling a severe restriction of amateurs’ video use without permission from copyright owners, as of March 2009, YouTube made money by selling 228 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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banner advertisements, ‘Featured Videos’ and ‘Promoted Videos.’ Both ‘Featured Videos’ and ‘Promoted Videos’ are sponsored videos. The difference is that ‘Featured Videos’ work like a traditional ad page and ‘Promoted Videos’ are based on new methods of selling key words. Beginning in 2008, Google began to sell YouTube homepage space.

Users can buy the ‘Featured Videos’ section, which is located on the YouTube front page.

They can set their budget, and for just that amount of money, their videos are displayed on the front page of YouTube (Clifford, 2008).

Another commerical source of revenue in YouTube is from ‘Promoted Videos’.

YouTube sells key words, which YouTube’s parent company, Google, has in its main site.

This method does not employ banners, but works like Google ads, displaying text on the side. In November 2008, YouTube began letting users promote their videos by bidding on keywords. Users choose which videos they want to promote through the YouTube search tool and choose which key words they want to target. Then, YouTube uses the same technique as Google: ‘users place bid for the key in an automated online auction, as well as set spending budgets’ (Sandoval, 2008). Whenever people type the key words in the YouTube search function, related videos are displayed next to the search results because the words have been sold to the highest-bidding advertiser. In the ‘YouTube Promoted Video Overview’ clip, a product manager of YouTube says: ‘YouTube democratized the broadcast experience and now we’re democratizing the promotion and advertising experience as well’.

YouTube’s economic potential looks so promising that the YouTube partnership has been growing. However, only 3 percent of all YouTube clips are supported by advertising, presumably due to the still problematic copyright question. Of these, profitable partners are far less than 3 percent (Stelter, 2008c).

Promotion tool In its early development stage, YouTube looked like a threat to media companies, especially in terms of copyright. However, when this video site became a unit of Google, concern about an anarchic mediascape and copyright infringement seemed to soften.

In 2008, major networks began not only posting their shows on YouTube but also providing video services on their websites. Media companies came to regard YouTube not as a rival but as a new channel to re-transmit their programs and a new source of advertising revenue.

Recognizing the potential of YouTube as a fast distribution route, media companies sought to adopt the distribution practice of YouTube. MGM began its partnership on November 2008. With advertisements on the videos, MGM posted decade-old television shows (e.g. American Gladiators) and full-length movies (e.g. The Magnificent Seven and Legally Blonde).1 Lions Gate also opened shop. A deal was struck between Lions Gate and Google in July 2008 (Wallenstein, 2008). This middle size movie company already had a channel on YouTube, but their clips were mostly trailers. In their new channel, users could watch several short clips of Lions Gate movies. With regard to copyright, Lions Gate’s philosophy was flexible, different from big groups in that it did not request YouTube to remove unauthorized clips. Rather, the movie company requested

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that YouTube users who posted videos without permission should not be allowed to share in the ad revenue (Stelter, 2008a).

Major networks adopted online video services for the sake of program promotion and to recover lost audiences, especially those who prefer watching shows on the web. NBC, CBS and ABC began to provide web streaming video service from 2007. As of March 2008, Walt Disney’s television unit made a deal with YouTube to share Disney-owned programs, especially recent ABC shows, including Lost and Desperate Housewives (Stelter, 2009b). On their main sites, audiences can watch several past episodes of the networks’ popular shows. For the sake of promotion, such as in the case of Lost, all past season episodes were available.2 Previously, major networks had provided full-length episodes, yet they were mostly old shows, such as Star Trek, MacGyver and Beverly Hills 90125 (Rodgers, 2009b). The episodes on the networks’ websites contain commercials, which users cannot skip, with interruptions occurring the same way as on TV (preprogram advertisements, post-program advertisements, and several within the shows).

Network video service and YouTube collide, but they coexist. Major broadcast ­companies not only adopt YouTube’s main idea, the streaming video service, but also use YouTube as another content distribution channel. What broadcasting networks mainly borrow from YouTube is the idea of convenience and ease of accessibility, rather than technical advancement. Old media adopt new media’s format but, at the same time, the former apply traditional frameworks into the latter. Copyright laws have been strictly applied and advertising has become a part of YouTube’s mediascape. Complications as well as solutions between new media and old media come from their mutual interdependence.

The old and the new imitate each other, rather than the new replacing the old or the old suffocating the new with institutional powers. YouTube opened up the opportunity for UGC videos and basically welcomed any type of video. As major media groups came to engage in YouTube, PGC videos became the dominant format. Changes in the online video realm occurred in two ways: YouTube became ad-friendly, and networks began to emphasize online video streaming. Although YouTube creators resisted the idea of commercialization, as YouTube matured, the pressure to provide stable revenue led to diverse e-commerce practices, including banner advertisements, and the selling of key words and web space. YouTube inspired online video services such as hulu.com, and traditional broadcasting channels (e.g. NBC, CBS, ABC) adopted online video streaming. However, media companies changed the atmosphere of online video streaming to fit their interests by pressuring YouTube to become an ad-friendly space and by providing PGC exclusive video streaming services on their web sites.

The transition from UGC to PGC Big media have adopted YouTube strategies, and solved technical issues that YouTube had, such as the length of files, revenue and video quality. As online video services were becoming more popular, the media industry came to recognize two potentially advantageous characteristics of streaming video services: re-transmission channels and interactivity-based advertisements.

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when user participation and interactive media do not work to create predictable markets.

Media companies caught on to YouTube’s potential as a new distribution window and source of advertisement revenue. However, the unpredictable program schedule and UGC, which is not commercial-friendly, inhibited industry investment on YouTube.

Emphasizing PGC, a network video service does not follow UGC’s core philosophies, which are amateurism and populism. What the media industry wants is for YouTube to provide an ad-friendly media environment that links content and advertisements smoothly. Initially, the industry was concerned with the copyright issues arising because of YouTube, but once Google had purchased YouTube and enforced copyright law more strictly, media companies began to think about profitable uses of online video services.

Networks ‘formalized’ online video services into providing the same commercially interrupted viewing culture as TV.

Hulu and other professional video websites Despite its dominance in online streaming video services, YouTube is neither the first nor the only web video service. Founded in August 2007, Hulu (hulu.com) began as a joint venture of the News Corporation, NBC Universal, the Walt Disney Company and the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, becoming a strong rival to YouTube. As of October 2008, this online video hub was the sixth most popular online video site in the United States. Hulu’s ratings were higher than those of the CNN, MTV and ESPN websites (Stelter, 2008b). In 2008, the estimated advertising revenue of YouTube was $100 million, while that of Hulu was $70 million, and, in 2009, it was predicted that Hulu would catch up with YouTube (Hefflinger, 2008). Nevertheless, in terms of popularity Hulu still could not rival YouTube. According to comScore, an internet marketing research company, YouTube ranked as the top online video site in June 2011 within the United States, with 149 million viewers, compared to Hulu’s 26 million (comScore.com, 2011).

Although Hulu cannot compete with YouTube in terms of popularity, its PGC programming differentiates it from YouTube, where UGC coexists with PGC (Graham, 2008). With agreement from mainstream channels (including NBC, Fox, Comedy Central and Bravo), Hulu posts full-length episodes of popular shows. As of July 2011, popular network shows, including Fox’s The Simpsons (six rotating episodes) and NBC’s The Office (five rotating episodes) were available at Hulu, and such past shows as Fox’s Arrested Development (one full season) were available.

Hulu began as an ad-friendly outlet, and it allows users to watch shows only with commercial interruptions. Major industry was willing to invest in Hulu due to its emphatic advertising model. During 2008, YouTube garnered $200 million, which is more than the $90 million generated by Hulu. However, while UGC is still dominant on YouTube, and only 3 percent of all clips provide advertisement profit, 70 percent of all the videos on Hulu created profits (Wie and Chang, 2009). While this online video hub earned advertising dollars, it labored to make more profits by introducing Hulu Plus.

Launching on June 2010, this subscription service ($7.99 per month) supplements its free, advertising-based content. Customers can watch more episodes by paying fees, but with Hulu Plus, free videos turned into commodities.3 231 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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This online video hub might provide convenience and accessibility, but compared with YouTube, what is missing in Hulu is an international service and interactivity functions: Hulu is not available outside America and its users cannot give comments or post videos. YouTube’s influence on mainstream media can be found on Hulu, but of all YouTube’s characteristics, the broadcasting networks adopted only a few.

Online video service While YouTube opened up the chance of watching TV shows on the web, the reality is far from being that YouTube seriously threatens broadcasting networks. It was ABC that launched the first major network video service in 2006. According to ABC’s research in January 2008, a free online video service is effective in that ‘the one-ad-per-segment format resulted in a 54 percent ad recall rate’ (Stelter, 2009b). As of fall 2008, NBC and CBS also began web streaming services: for new shows, 4~6 recent episodes are available, and for selected classic shows, more than one full season is available.

For the major networks, video streaming provides a great opportunity for promoting their programs. NBC’s online launching of the second season of 30 Rock is a good case of a web video service being used as a promotion tool. In fall 2007, one week before the first episode was broadcast on the network, online users could watch it at NBC.com and Hulu. Fox and CBS seemed hesitant to adopt the web video service at first, but entering 2008 they began to provide their old shows (such as the entire episodes of Arrested Development on Fox and the first two seasons of Dynasty on CBS), as well as new ones, including Fox’s House and Fringe, and CBS’s CSI series and Survivor.

With regard to video services on the web, major networks pursue two different goals: making online video libraries and finding multi-distribution routes. Compared with Hulu, network streaming services provide better quality video and more choices.

Compared with YouTube, however, PGC-oriented services share similar weaknesses: geographical limitation and lack of user-participation. Network video service and Hulu place more emphasis on distribution and consumption, rather than creation, and many PGC-oriented video services profess the function of video archives. However, considering the selectivity of their focus on popular shows, the instability and short history of the video archive, the promise of an online video library requires close questioning.

Media convergence Online video services raised issues not only about the convenience and accessibility of visual content but also about the futuristic optimism regarding UGC culture, alternative distribution channels and online video libraries. UGC culture persists, despite the media industry’s efforts to tame it with PGC. Traditional broadcast companies welcome streaming service as a tool for re-transmitting videos only if they are PGC and harmonize with the institutionalized mediascape. Despite their potential, the future of online video libraries does not look promising, considering the relatively weak business model, fast technological innovations, copyright complications and cultural gaps.

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automatically kill amateurism, in that users still can post UGC clips. Yet, dominance of PGC marginalizes UGC. On YouTube, PGC and UGC videos coexist, but old customers of YouTube since its beginning would recognize the increasing dominance of sponsored and copyright protected videos.

The evolution of YouTube from an amateur-driven medium to a professionaldominated channel coexists with the market expansion of the TV industry into the web.

Networks and cable were challenged by the new mediascape and entered this new realm in order to protect their materials and to tame new territory by reinforcing traditional ‘rules of the game’. There are several reasons that induced TV networks and distributors to begin online video services: new advertising revenue, protection of copyrighted materials, the challenge presented by YouTube and control of the mediascape (Andrejevic, 2009).

From a media convergence perspective, the development of YouTube makes for a particularly interesting case of bridging traditional broadcasting and customized narrowcasting. The internet’s innovation, YouTube, provided a benchmark for traditional mass communication (broadcasting) which then adapted to the new media environment (the internet). While the television industry embraces video streaming technology for the purpose of distributing its content, technological innovations bridging broadcasting and the internet threaten the broadcast industry. Such gadgets as the Apple TV set-top box, Boxee and Roku, make it possible to move web videos from the computer to the television. The basic idea is to connect online streaming video content to TV sets with a cable, set-top box or computer program (Ensha, 2009). Exploring the changes of television, Lotz (2007) makes the point, also made by other commentators, that we live in a post-network era, which is characterized by digital innovation, niche audiences and narrowcasting media such as YouTube. In a post-network era, with new digital gadgets and changed TV watching practices, audiences can opt out of the inflexible, networkregulated time schedules of broadcasting and into the highly flexible time frames of narrowcasting.

Although YouTube was a pioneer in the history of the web video library, it also adopted various characteristics of its followers. In 2009, YouTube redesigned itself, listing four big categories: ‘Movies’, ‘Music’, ‘Show’ and ‘Video’. Of these, the ‘Video’ option is the only UGC clip category (Rodgers, 2009a). In 2011, YouTube began content commercialization by launching a paid video-on-demand service. The meanings of the newly designed YouTube are multiple: separation of brand-safe clips from UGC, traditional genre making, stricter application of copyright protection and the facilitation of an ad-friendly environment.

The story of YouTube amounts to a short history of media and their influence. First, the internet imitates broadcasting (YouTube), next, old media fight back (Hulu and network websites), then new media strike back again (Apple TV set-top box and Boxee), and in this way the imitation of old and new media continues.

Discussions and conclusions Digital technologies brought not only the proliferation of media content outlets, they also aided the further concentration of media ownership. With his notion of ‘mass 233 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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self-communication’, Castells (2009) explains this combination of decentralized delivery and centralized control. According to him, YouTube is a form of ‘mass’ communication because it has potentiality to reach universal audiences, and also a form of ‘self’ communication because its content is self-generated, ‘the definition of the potential receivers(s) is self-directed’, and message retrieval is self-selected (Castells, 2009: 55).

However, whether or not Castells’ celebratory vision of YouTube as a new form of mass communication will become a reality remains very much an open question.

Amateur audiences will continue posting and watching UGC clips as long as the idea of an online video portal exists. UGC culture will not fade away, just as past UGC cultures, such as the counterculture and alternative media movement, have persisted.

However, the dominant picture of the UGC culture does not seem to go along with what the YouTube slogan says, ‘Broadcast Yourself’ for multiple reasons. First, YouTube has too many clips to permit any one individual contributor’s voice to be ‘broadcast’ in any meaningful sense of that term. ‘Accessibility’ and ‘chance to broadcast’ do not necessarily lead to significant delivery (Peters, 2010). Second, the commercialization of YouTube intensifies YouTube’s identity as an ad-friendly mediascape (Andrejevic, 2009).

Advertisements function as stamps for quality videos, and consequently UGC without advertisements may face the question from viewers of whether it is worth watching.

Third, though UGC will survive, the chances are that ubiquitous PGC will overshadow UGC, marginalizing individuals’ own creations.

From the perspective of mainstream broadcasting, YouTube has multiple meanings: rival, novelty or supplement. From the business perspective, especially in terms of copyright infringement, YouTube challenges old media. Although legal and business issues bring about tensions between new media and old media, the new aesthetics and technical aspects of YouTube have influenced traditional broadcasting. Also, YouTube embraces the rules of the market, including advertisements, which lie at the core of commercial broadcasting. Here, YouTube imitates broadcasting not only with its method of televising content, but also broadcasting as an institution that is monetized through advertisements.

In this sense, networks do not die; instead, the old broadcasting institutions transform themselves by adopting web-friendly technologies.

The institutionalization of YouTube is accompanied by complications following from YouTube’s distinctive earlier culture and meanings. Just as YouTube did not revolutionize the media milieu but constituted an evolution of that milieu, so institutional influence is compromised and partially blocked. The following section looks at some other, significant, institutional issues that are likely to shape the future development of YouTube.

Creative outlet in a post-network era Although the future appears to be framed by such dynamics as commercialization and severe copyright protection, YouTube still has potential as the media space of the nonprofit community, amateurs and independent artists. While networks treat YouTube as a guinea pig for distribution routes, YouTube also has room for alternative content distributors. Ideally speaking, anyone can produce video clips, but it does not mean anyone should. Within the sea of what has been negatively dubbed ‘loser-generated content’ (Petersen, 2008), some talented and experienced directors jump in with their own 234 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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experiments. Also, struggling with their ratings in mainstream media, certain professional directors and producers turn their eyes to online video services.

Some independent film-makers have found expanded opportunities to reach audiences on YouTube. Independent movie distributor Magnolia is one of the companies that take advantage of this potential. Magnolia’s 100 minute-long, Academy-Award nominated movie No End in Sight, a political documentary about the US occupation of Iraq, has been posted on YouTube (Bloom, 2008). Director Wayne Wang’s 2007 movie, The Princess of Nebraska, first premiered on YouTube. The movie’s topic (abortion) and independent style resulted in the movie’s limited opening both in the US and worldwide.

For the movie distributor Magnolia, this premiere meant a pioneering experiment with a new creative outlet, a new distribution route for their films and a promotion tool for the same director’s companion film (A Thousand Years of Good Prayers) prior to its theatrical premiere in 2008. Although the full-length clips were only available temporarily,4 it is worth noticing how YouTube’s potential has been actually verified by independent film-makers.

For activist documentary directors like Robert Greenwald, YouTube shortens the time gap between production and distribution, increasing impact and introducing new possibilities for strategic design. Using one of the many technical characteristics of YouTube, short clip prevalence, Greenwald split the whole project into parts and released these parts as soon as they were completed (Stelter, 2009a). Dealing with such political issues as the 2008 US presidential election, the Afghanistan war and biases in the Fox News Channel, Greenwald’s YouTube channel has been capitalizing on this new medium as an efficient creative window.

Not only independent film-makers, but also mainstream producers experimented with YouTube as a new outlet. Marshall Herskovitz, a director and producer of critically acclaimed but low-rating shows, had difficulty in pursuing his new show, Quarterlife.

Without enough sponsorship from major broadcasting and cable networks, Herskovitz found a way to proceed with his project on the web. Premiering on 11 November 2007, webisodes (5–10-minute original web series) of Quarterlife were posted every Sunday and Thursday on Quarterlife.com, MySpace, and later on YouTube. Right after professionals like Herskovitz found alternative outlets for creation and distribution on the web, mainstream media channels acquired narrowcasting content. In spring 2008, networks suffered from a lack of content because of the writers’ strike, and thanks to this, Herskovitz could find a spot for his show on NBC. Herskovitz described the Quarterlife case as a victory in that the internet experiment worked as a television platform and, more importantly, creators earned 100 percent creative control over a network (Herskovitz, 2008).

Quarterlife’s launching on the web constitutes a rare and significant case of bridging broadcasting and narrowcasting.

Continuing tensions between UGC and PGC Media conglomerates’ strategies for taming YouTube involve more than a strict application of copyright law: they care about media milieu where content and advertisement flow smoothly. Wasko and Erickson argue that ‘user-generated content is not as desirable or valuable as professional media content from major companies, unless it can somehow 235 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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be manipulated to make a profit for media companies and Google, but certainly not for the individual user’ (2009: 383). Network and cable companies want every viewing to be sold, and advertisers want every viewing to be counted. From a profitability perspective, media companies prefer PGC videos, yet dominant portions of YouTube clips have been created, re-interpreted and mashed-up by amateur users who do not care about creating an ad-friendly milieu in YouTube. Advertisers prefer a smooth transition between the content and advertisement, and they have found ‘that user-created videos of pet pratfalls and oddball skits are largely incompatible with commercials for cars and other products’ (Stone and Barnes, 2008).

The tension between UGC and PGC is also found in the geographical availability of clips. Originally UGC-driven YouTube was accessible globally. As of February 2009, 59 percent of YouTube users are from the United States, Europe and Japan (Stone and Helft, 2009). Most PGC-only video sites, including Hulu, major US network sites (e.g. nbc. com, abc.com and cbs.com), Veoh and IMDb, restrict the availability of their clips to residents in the United States. The ‘US-residents only’ policy is firmly based on profitability. The cost of providing bandwidth in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America is expensive and the advertising rates in these places are low. In this scenario, audiences get benefits from globally transmitted programs, but the market produces relatively meager ad revenue (Stone and Helft, 2009).

The PGC-oriented portal’s limited video accessibility led to another information gap with regard to net neutrality on the global level: for instance, limited accessibility to online video services in underdeveloped countries. After providing high-quality video options, YouTube had to endure the cost of delivering billions of videos. YouTube suggested a middle ground between global access and US-only availability by restricting bandwidth in developing countries, and thus it provides slower access to lower-quality videos in order to manage costs (Stone and Helft, 2009). In the case of severe restrictions on video services, it is one thing for audiences to lose the chance to watch PGC entertainment, but it is another for global citizens to have difficulty in using YouTube as an alternative channel to deliver marginalized voices, or for amateur movie-makers to miss out on a creative window.

Limits of online video libraries In theory, YouTube could be an ideal video library; in practice, YouTube was tamed into a commercialized and PGC-dominated re-transmission channel. While technical innovation expanded the capacity of YouTube as an online video library, images of the internet appeared in literature before the internet came into being. Prefiguring the world of hypertext, Borges suggested the idea of online digital libraries in his short story, ‘The library of Babel’: From those incontrovertible premises, the librarian deduced that the Library is ‘total’ – perfect, complete, and whole … that is, all that is able to be expressed, in every language.… There was no personal problem, no world problem, whose eloquent solution did not exist. (1941: 115)

With optimistic visions of the information society and superhighway driven by entrepreneurs (e.g. Bill Gates) or government institutions (e.g. Al Gore and the European 236 Downloaded from mcs.sagepub.com at UNIV OF AKRON on October 11, 2016

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Community), discussions of digital libraries and information infrastructures blossomed during the last decade of the 20th century (Borgman, 2000). The internet, it was argued, would become a model of a virtual, total and omnipresent library as Borges imagined in ‘The library of Babel’ and YouTube would become a model of an omnipresent online video library (Cohen, 2008; Sassón-Henry, 2007).

YouTube might have improved technologically, but just as doubts about the internet as a ‘total library’ continue, questions about YouTube as a stable video repository remain.

Users sometimes take down clips, either for the convenience of managing clips or because of copyright infringement. It is not an unusual experience for users to realize that the videos they watched are gone. The reliability of YouTube as a stable online library is weakened by severe application of copyright as well as users’ whims. Legal complications haunt online video services, while advertising factors limit the genre of clips on YouTube.

In online video services, too much is as problematic as too little. Redundancy of the same materials in different video services does not help the completion of the online video library. One particular strength of PGC services like Hulu, Veoh and IMDb is the convenience of watching top-rating shows from diverse sources, rather than technical improvement or genre diversity. Convenience, accessibility and mere quantity do not lead to an online video library, which remains a dream compared with the reality of the dominance of the repetitively re-transmitted PGC of online video portals. It is true that YouTube still provides room for alternative creative outlets, but amateur UGC is on the verge of being marginalized.

Except for some web exclusive content, PGC-only portals are geared toward the ubiquitous watching of the same content and similar genres, rather than towards an environment in which users create their own programs. In the network era, the fear was of content malnutrition, given limited storage capacity. In a post-network era, the fear is of information overflow and redundancy in the limitless storage capacity.

With regard to the process of institutionalization, to borrow the 19th-century German biologist Haeckel’s phrase, ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ (quoted in Gould, 1997).

The argument here is that a short history of YouTube repeats the history of the internet.

YouTube has evolved from personal to public to commercial. When media conglomerates invest in a rising medium, institutionalization begins in the form of commercialization and legalization. The road to institutionalization is the same for digital media: for UGC media in particular, and for the internet in general.

In sum, YouTube should be understood as one of the consequences of the evolution, rather than the revolution, of the internet culture. Online video sites provided alternative ways of consuming and producing visuals, yet traditional broadcasting struck back with institutional strategies, including copyright protection and advertisements. With regard to the social influence of YouTube, Wasko and Erickson (2009) point out a fundamental trade-off between user satisfaction with the YouTube experience and the industry’s prosperity. YouTube represents the coexistence of the old and new systems. The dominant portion of videos on online video sites comes from mainstream media, and users borrow not only content to consume but also specific formats in order to produce their clips. The influence, as noted earlier, is not one-way. For major content providers, including broadcasting networks, video sharing sites function as a promotion tool, and for advertising companies online video services open up valuable new ad revenue.

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Notes 1. A year later, MGM seemed to pull out of its YouTube experiment of providing full-length movies. As of July 2011, its YouTube site provides only trailers and short clips.

2. As of January 2010, the past five seasons’ full episodes of Lost were available on abc.com, hulu.com and its partnership Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). The video postings, however, were promotional and temporary. As of July 2011, none of the sites provided any full episode of the show. These web streaming services are limited to the United States. One cannot watch the shows on the web unless using the US internet service.

3. With Hulu Plus, customers have more new videos, but with a reduction in those that are freely available. For instance, before Hulu Plus, all seasons of Arrested Development were freely available in their entirety. After the new subscription service, only one season’s episodes are freely available., 4. In the Autumn of 2008, both No End in Sight and The Princess of Nebraska were available on YouTube. As of July 2011, they were gone.

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Brabham, D. C. (2008). Crowdsourcing as a model for problem solving：An introduction and cases. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14(1), 75-90. 索羅斯基 (Surowiecki, J.) (2011)。群眾的智慧 (The wisdom of crowds)( 楊玉齡譯 )。台北：遠流 .

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ARTICLE

DOI: 10.1177/1354856507084420 http://cvg.sagepub.com

Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving An Introduction and Cases Daren C. Brabham University of Utah, USA

Abstract / Crowdsourcing is an online, distributed problem-solving and production model that has emerged in recent years. Notable examples of the model include Threadless, iStockphoto, InnoCentive, the Goldcorp Challenge, and user-generated advertising contests. This article provides an introduction to crowdsourcing, both its theoretical grounding and exemplar cases, taking care to distinguish crowdsourcing from open source production. This article also explores the possibilities for the model, its potential to exploit a crowd of innovators, and its potential for use beyond forprofit sectors. Finally, this article proposes an agenda for research into crowdsourcing.

Key Words / collective intelligence / crowdsourcing / distributed problem solving / Goldcorp Challenge / InnoCentive / open source / iStockphoto / Threadless / wisdom of crowds

There is an incredible story to be told about human ingenuity! The first step to its unfolding is to reject the binary notion of client/designer. The next step is to look to what is going on, right now.

The old-fashioned notion of an individual with a dream of perfection is being replaced by distributed problem solving and team-based multi-disciplinary practice. The reality for advanced design today is dominated by three ideas: distributed, plural, collaborative. It is no longer about one designer, one client, one solution, one place. Problems are taken up everywhere, solutions are developed and tested and contributed to the global commons, and those ideas are tested against other solutions. The effect of this is to imagine a future for design that is both more modest and more ambitious. (Mau, 2004: 17)

We can take Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries’ claims a step further – from team-based and multi-disciplinary to fully, globally distributed – and come to terms with a creative industry that relies increasingly on crowdsourcing to find solutions to problems. Mau is correct in his estimation that problem solving is no longer the activity of the individual genius, but he is hesitant to imagine a problem-solving model that is so radically distributed beyond the boundaries of professionalism. The design team, as enlarged and diverse as it has become, is nothing like the crowd. Where design teams and other group collaborations rely on collections of experts, the wise crowd insists on 245 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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the presence of non-experts, on the presence of amateurs. Crowdsourcing, a distributed problem-solving model, is not, however, open-source practice. Problems solved and products designed by the crowd become the property of companies, who turn large profits off from this crowd labor. And the crowd knows this going in. And the Frankfurt boys roll in their graves.

This article is an introduction to crowdsourcing – what it is, how it works, and its potential. As an emerging, successful, alternative business model, I hope to turn the model toward non-profit applications for health and social and environmental justice.

Toward this end, I argue that crowdsourcing is substantially different from open-source production – and superior in many ways. I also argue that crowdsourcing is a legitimate, complex problem-solving model, more than merely a new format for holding contests and awarding prizes. In critiquing the theories which seem to predict crowdsourcing, I hope to establish an agenda for research on crowdsourcing so that some day we will have developed a model that can have profound influence in the way we solve our world’s most pressing social and environmental problems.

Crowdsourcing Coined by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in the June 2006 issue of Wired magazine (Howe, 2006f), the term crowdsourcing describes a new web-based business model that harnesses the creative solutions of a distributed network of individuals through what amounts to an open call for proposals. Howe offers the following definition: Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers. (2006a: 5)

Howe further clarifies that ‘it’s only crowdsourcing once a company takes that design, fabricates [it] in mass quantity and sell[s] it’ (2006b: 1). In other words, a company posts a problem online, a vast number of individuals offer solutions to the problem, the winning ideas are awarded some form of a bounty, and the company mass produces the idea for its own gain. To understand the workings of crowdsourcing, it is best to examine some of the most successful and profitable cases in a variety of industries.

Threadless Threadless.com is a web-based t-shirt company that crowdsources the design process for their shirts through an ongoing online competition. The company formed when Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart met through an online design forum, both entered into a t-shirt design competition, and Nickell won. They formed skinnyCorp and its flagship property, Threadless, in late 2000 when Nickell was only 20 and DeHart only 19 years old (Nickell and DeHart, n.d.). Based in Chicago, skinnyCorp today is the umbrella company for OMG Clothing, Extra Tasty, Naked and Angry, Yay Hooray, and other message boards and businesses in the company’s mission: ‘skinnyCorp creates communities’ (Our Ideas, n.d.; skinnyCorp, n.d.). None of skinnyCorp’s other properties are as successful as Threadless, 246 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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however, and none more true to the crowdsourcing definition; as of June 2006, Threadless was ‘selling 60,000 T-shirts a month, [had] a profit margin of 35 per cent and [was] on track to gross $18 million in 2006’, all with ‘fewer than 20 employees’ (Howe, 2006e).

With its profits, Threadless has also made large donations to organizations such as the Red Cross in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Anyone may join the Threadless community free with a valid email address, and membership in the community – in the crowd – grants access to vote on designs or to submit them. To submit a design, community members download either an Adobe Flash or Adobe Photoshop template, follow the guidelines for image quality and number of colors, and upload their design back to Threadless. From there, designs are scored on a zero-to-five scale, with an option to check an ‘I’d buy it!’ box, and a new design to be scored becomes available to the community. Designs remain available for voting for two weeks, and the highest scoring designs are selected by Threadless staff to be printed and made available for sale on the website. In a typical week there are at least three new shirts for sale and at least one reprinted shirt, reprinted by overwhelming demand from the community. For designer shirts, they are priced affordably, at around US$15, or US$10 during their frequent sales, all due to the low cost of designing them. Winning designers receive US$1,500 in cash and US$500 worth of Threadless t-shirts and gift certificates.

However, US$2000 is a very low price for design services that yield such high profits.

Threadless also boasts a street team (for promotional needs) and rewards its members with purchasing credits for referring sales by linking to the website or by submitting photos of themselves wearing Threadless shirts they own.

iStockphoto iStockphoto.com is a web-based company that sells royalty-free stock photography, animations, and video clips. Calgary, Alberta-based iStockphoto was launched in February 2000, founded by Bruce Livingstone, who ‘conceived the iStockphoto engine’ (Introduction and Company Background, n.d.). To become a photographer for iStockphoto, one must fill out an online form, submit proof of identification, and submit three photographs for judging by the iStockphoto staff. If the photographs are technically sound, regardless of their content, applicants are typically admitted as photographers to the website. From that point, photographers may submit their photographs to the website to be stored in the databases under keywords. Clients seeking stock images – for use on websites, in brochures, in business presentations and so on – purchase credits (US $1 per credit) and start buying the stock images they want. Typical sizes and qualities of photographs can be purchased, royalty-free, from between one and five credits, with high resolution photographs, oversized images, and some longer video clips costing as many as 50 credits (Introduction to iStockphoto, n.d.).

Photographers receive 20 per cent of the purchase price any time one of their images is downloaded (Frequently Asked Questions, n.d.), and some photographers, who become more involved members of the online community and typically end up donating their talents for screening applicants and maintaining the database, can begin to earn exclusive contracts with iStockphoto and get 40 per cent of the price of their sold work (Mack, 2006: 17). As long as photographs are in focus, free of dust specks and so forth, they will be accepted to the database, meaning anyone able to operate a camera can 247 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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potentially earn money as a stock photographer. Like Threadless, iStockphoto’s community is composed of both amateurs and working professionals in the field.

InnoCentive Crowdsourcing is not limited to the creative and design industries. Corporate research and development (R&D) for scientific problems is taking place in a crowdsourced way at InnoCentive.com. Launched in 2001 with funding from pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly (Howe, 2006f: 22), Andover, Massachusetts-based InnoCentive ‘enables scientists to receive professional recognition and financial award for solving R&D challenges’, while it simultaneously ‘enables companies to tap into the talents of a global scientific community for innovative solutions to tough R&D problems’ (About InnoCentive, n.d.: 2, 3). Seeker companies, which include ‘Boeing, DuPont, and Proctor and Gamble’ (Howe, 2006f: 22), post their most difficult R&D challenges to the InnoCentive solvers under the broad categories of Life Sciences and Chemistry and Applied Sciences. The crowd of solvers can then submit solutions through the web, which go under review by the seeker, which remains anonymous at least during the open phase. If a solution meets the technical requirements for the challenge, which about half of the time only requires written theoretical and methodological proposals (Lakhani et al., 2007: 5), the seeker company awards a cash prize that they determine up front. Awards range from US$10,000 to $100,000 per challenge (Howe, 2006f: 23), though a current challenge, open through November 2008, offers US$1 million to a solution actually put into practice that identifies a biomarker for measuring disease progression in ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

Potential solvers need only to register for free at InnoCentive, supplying contact information and checking off categories for degrees earned, areas of research interest and so on, though each of these questions required for registration includes an ‘other’ option, meaning solvers need not be professional scientists or scholars. Submitting solutions is simple, also, requiring only the uploading of a word-processed solution written into a downloadable template in most cases. InnoCentive ‘broadcasts scientific challenges to over 80,000 independent scientists from over 150 countries’ (Lakhani et al., 2007: 5).

Lakhani et al. offer further background information on InnoCentive (2007: 28).

Other Cases of Crowdsourcing Beyond the full-time crowdsourcing operations of Threadless, iStockphoto, and InnoCentive, other corporations operating on traditional global business models have experimented with crowdsourced work. Shoe company Converse welcomed homemade commercials from its customers at ConverseGallery.com, and ‘user-generated [advertising] content is a favorite of companies like JetBlue, Sony, and Chrysler’ hoping ‘to reach young, tech-savvy consumers who will spread their marketing messages [virally] around the Web’ (Bosman, 2006: 13–16). For the 2007 Super Bowl, potato chip giant Doritos launched ‘Crash the Super Bowl’, a user-generated advertising contest with the winning advertisement and some of the finalists airing in coveted, multi-million-dollar commercial spots during the game. Chevrolet experimented with crowdsourced advertising as well, introducing ‘a website allowing visitors to take existing video clips and 248 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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music, insert their own words and create a customized 30-second commercial for the 2007 Chevy Tahoe’ (Bosman, 2006: 3). The Chevy Tahoe crowdsourcing experiment is a clear example of what Wired editor Mark Robinson calls crowdslapping, when ‘the crowd turns against the crowdsourcer’ (Howe, 2006d: 2). In Chevy’s case, the crowd resisted the call to develop clever Tahoe advertisements and instead assembled 30second spots that ‘skewer[ed] everything from SUVs to Bush’s environmental policy to, natch, the American automotive industry’ (Howe, 2006d: 2). Interestingly, Chevy did not take down the satirical ads, claiming ‘it’s part of playing in this space’ (Bosman, 2006: 8).

Finally, Goldcorp, a Canadian gold mining company, developed the ‘Goldcorp Challenge’ in March 2000. ‘Participants from around the world were encouraged to examine the geologic data [from Goldcorp’s Red Lake Mine] and submit proposals identifying potential targets where the next 6 million ounces of gold will be found’ on the Ontario, Canada, property (Goldcorp Challenge Winners!, 2001: 6). By offering more than US $500,000 in prize money to 25 top finalists who identified the most gold deposits, Goldcorp attracted ‘more than 475,000 hits’ to the Challenge’s website and ‘more than 1400 online prospectors from 51 countries registered as Challenge participants’ (Goldcorp Challenge Winners!, 2001: 6). The numerous solutions from the crowd confirmed many of Goldcorp’s suspected deposits and identified several new ones, 110 deposits in all.

Goldcorp’s subsequent ‘Global Search Challenge’, with US$2 million in cash and capital investments available for winning, launched in 2001.

What these several applications of crowdsourcing provide is a view into a problemsolving model that can be generalized, applied to a variety of industries to solve both mundane and highly complex tasks. Crowdsourcing is not merely a web 2.0 buzzword, but is instead a strategic model to attract an interested, motivated crowd of individuals capable of providing solutions superior in quality and quantity to those that even traditional forms of business can. The crowd solves the problems that stump corporate scientific researchers. The crowd outperforms in-house geophysicists at mining companies. The crowd designs a handful of original t-shirts every week which always sell out of stock. The crowd produces memorable commercials and fresh stock photography on a par with professional firms. And the crowd outperforms industry faster and cheaper than even the top minds in the fields. Such is a profound paradigm shift in our view of the professional, of the corporation, of the global commons, and of the value of intellectual labor in a transnational world (Appadurai, 1996).

Crowd Wisdom But how can this be? How can so many dispersed individuals excel at singular, sometimes highly complex problems when traditional problem-solving teams cannot? James Surowiecki (2004), in his book The Wisdom of Crowds, examines several cases of crowd wisdom at work, where the very success of a solution is dependent on its emergence from a large body of solvers. Based on these empirical investigations – from estimating the weight of an ox, to the Columbia shuttle disaster, to gaming sports betting spreads – Surowiecki (2004: xiii) finds that ‘under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them’. This ‘wisdom of crowds’ is derived not from averaging solutions, but from aggregating them: 249 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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After all, think about what happens if you ask a hundred people to run a 100-meter race, and then average their times. The average time will not be better than the time of the fastest runners. It will be worse. It will be a mediocre time. But ask a hundred people to answer a question or solve a problem, and the average answer will often be at least as good as the answer of the smartest member. With most things, the average is mediocrity. With decision making, it’s often excellence.

You could say it’s as if we’ve been programmed to be collectively smart. (Surowiecki, 2004: 11)

The web provides a perfect technology capable of aggregating millions of disparate, independent ideas in the way markets and intelligent voting systems do, without the dangers of ‘too much communication’ and compromise (Surowiecki, 2004: xix).

Surowiecki is not the first to ponder crowd wisdom. Pierre Lévy decreed it as the condition of now: It has become impossible to restrict knowledge and its movement to castes of specialists . . . Our living knowledge, skills, and abilities are in the process of being recognized as the primary source of all other wealth. What then will our new communication tools be used for? The most socially useful goal will no doubt be to supply ourselves with the instruments for sharing our mental abilities in the construction of collective intellect of imagination. (Lévy, 1997 [1995]: 9)

Lévy, however, is perhaps too utopian in his vision of a society thriving on collective intelligence. In these knowledge communities, as he calls them, Lévy (1997 [1995]) hopes for democracy, ethics, art, spirituality. He makes no mention of hipster t-shirts. But, as Jenkins (2006: 27) makes clear, ‘the emergent knowledge culture will never fully escape the influence of commodity culture, any more than commodity culture can totally function outside the constraints of the nation-state’. The compromise: ‘collective intelligence will gradually alter the ways commodity culture operates’ (Jenkins, 2006: 27). Thus, there may be an immense amount of good that can come from the existing for-profit crowdsourcing applications in that we may be able to harness the intelligence-aggregating engine of the crowdsourcing model to blend commodity culture with social justice goals.

Harvesting Distributed Intellect Cyberspace designates the universe of digital networks as a world of interaction and adventure, the site of global conflicts, a new economic and cultural frontier. There currently exists in the world a wide array of literary, musical, artistic, even political cultures, all claiming the title of ‘cyberculture’.

But cyberspace refers less to the new media of information transmission than to original modes of creation and navigation within knowledge, and the social relations they bring about . . . It is designed to interconnect and provide an interface for the various methods of creation, recording, communication, and simulation. (Lévy, 1997 [1995]: 118–19)

Lévy (1997 [1995]) is equally optimistic about the capability of crowds networked through web technologies, an optimism that has been seconded (Terranova, 2004). He called this capacity collective intelligence, a ‘form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills’ (Lévy, 1997 [1995]: 13). Since ‘no one knows everything, everyone knows something, [and] all knowledge resides in humanity’, digitization and communication technologies must become central in this coordination of far-flung genius (Lévy, 1997 [1995]: 13–14, Ch. 3). Successes in distributed intelligence – or intelligence amplification (Bush, 1945; Smith, 1994), or crowd wisdom, or innovation communities (von Hippel, 1988, 2005), or 250 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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whatever the nomenclature – existed prior to the arrival of the web, as Surowiecki (2004) notes throughout his book. Yet, if diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization and aggregation of the crowd are necessary conditions for crowd wisdom – as opposed to crowd stupidity and irrational mobs – (Surowiecki, 2004), how can we not ground crowd production in the web?

The web is the necessary technology that can realize the four-pronged specifications of crowd wisdom and flex a mass of users into productive laborers. First and most simply, the web provides the means for individuals around the globe to commune in a single environment; the web is ‘not simply a specific medium but a kind of active implementation of a design technique able to deal with the openness of systems’ (Terranova, 2004: 3). Given that users spread throughout a geographical terrain, among a variety of cultural backgrounds, the web can facilitate the exchange of diverse opinions, independent of each other, in a decentralized way. The web – along with various lines of code designed to collect and assess solutions specific to different crowdsourcing applications – is the aggregator of this open system, this diversity of thought. What is more, the immense nature of the web, the grand network of networks (Terranova, 2004), and its ability to facilitate idea exchange both in real time and asynchronously makes possible the aggregating of disparate flows of ideas in one stream.

Second, though, the web is a technology that enables a certain kind of thinking, stimulates a certain kind of innovation. We must remember the intertwining of technology and its human users, that we must be careful of becoming too technologically determinist in our understanding of how the two distantly affect each other (Williams, 1992 [1972]: 3–25). The hypertextual nature of the web mimics the very way we think as humans (Bush, 1945), so it should come as no surprise that humans should see themselves in the medium as actors, creators, innovators, as implicated in the information flow rather than witnesses to it. As active users of media who seek gratifications through our interactions with media technologies and their contents,1 the highly interactive nature of media in the postmodern era can even be seen as an erotic mode (Ott, 2004). Thus, the web’s interactive identity, its welcoming of user-generated content and play, makes crowdsourcing applications into pleasuredomes, crowd labor into digital (fore)play, the crowd into brand communities (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001) engaged in e-rotic, simultaneous consumption and self-expression in a commodity culture. Thus, the web is not merely ‘the means through which a flexible, collective network intelligence has come into being’ (Terranova, 2004: 74–75), but it also beckons users to cobble together ideas within its architectures.

Why Crowdsourcing Is Not Open Source Open source is most commonly applied to software development, as some of the clearest examples of the model exist in that context, but it can be seen as an overall philosophy for product development in general. To paraphrase the definition for open source production from the Open Source Initiative’s official website, it involves allowing access to the essential elements of a product (such as source code for software) to anyone for the purpose of collaborative improvement to the existing product, with the continued transparency and free distribution of the product through the various stages of open development (Parens, n.d.). In essence, all the nuts and bolts of a finished product are made 251 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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available to everyone so that people may contribute their improved versions of the product back to the commons. The driving philosophy is that transparency and access in the design stage and the ability to develop a product outside of the punishing constraints of traditional intellectual property law will produce a product that is increasingly better, developed collectively and democratically. Also part of the philosophy: open source production is a hacker ethic manifest (Levy, 1984; Himanen, 2001). In the hacker ethic, information strives to be free and hackers toil passionately to learn about it, manipulate it, and keep it free (Himanen, 2001; Raymond, 2003). The open character of these kinds of projects is key for collaboration and bringing new creative input into the design process. In this open source philosophy, the world is full of talent, two heads are better than one, and a million heads can move mountains.

Products like the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Linux operating system are successful examples of the open source model, but open source, while appropriate for software development, may not be particularly suited for other applications. The most compelling reasoning behind this doubt of the open source model lies in the concept of self-interest and in material demands of production. Many of the people tinkering with the source code for Linux, for example, are hobbyists who would be doing this kind of tinkering anyway. The payment for their service in producing a better version of Linux is perhaps some recognition among other hobbyists, but, more importantly, the pursuit of the problem and the satisfaction in finding a better solution to the problem is payment enough (Ghosh, 1998; Hars and Ou, 2002; Hertel et al., 2003; Bonaccorsi and Rossi, 2004; Lakhani and Wolf, 2005). There is an intrinsic, feel-good reward in solving the puzzle (Ghosh, 1998; Raymond, 2003), and perhaps some social capital among fellow hobbyists if one succeeds. Thousands of minds working on a problem and none of them compensated in cash.

Not all problems are as well suited for the open source model as software development. In simple economics, software can be produced with basically no overhead costs.

The Linux or Mozilla programs exist virtually, in ones and zeroes, occupy no shelf space in a brick-and-mortar storefront, use no raw materials, emit no waste products, and the distribution is free – as easy as a download from a website. Not all products are composed of digital code; the overwhelming number of designed products in our built world are made from actual materials, require machines to produce, have real-world costs associated with distribution, and so on. What happens when the product that needs to be improved – or invented in the first place – actually has these kinds of material production costs? Will the hobbyist’s interest in the problem, and his or her subsequent donation of free labor, account for the costs of producing the improved end product? A company investing in the capital to produce such a product would need to ensure at least enough sales to cover the investment. Thus, if the product will eventually be sold for a profit, would a human, with a natural degree of self-interest, reasonably want to donate his or her talent and energy to the project without a cut of the profits? These questions cast some doubt on the open source model as a supreme model for product development. Crowdsourcing, however, overcomes these limitations in the open source model by providing a clear format for compensating contributors, a hybrid model that blends the transparent and democratizing elements of open source into a feasible model for doing profitable business, all facilitated through the web.

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Further, winning crowdsourced solutions, because they are owned in the end by the company posting the call for solutions to its problem, have a monetary value relative to the potential to maximize profits from the solution. Because the ideas of the crowd can yield profits, those ideas can be relied upon to offset the costs of material production. In other words, Threadless must eventually silk screen the crowd’s ideas onto t-shirts, must incur the expenses of shipping the shirts, maintaining the website, renting the warehouse space, buying the clothing and ink. Since the work of t-shirt production costs Threadless money, it reasonably must own the ideas it acquires from the crowd to guarantee no other clothing company can make the exact same shirts, lest the t-shirt design lose its exclusive aura, its endowment as a commodity, its fetish appeal. For material objects to have cultural importance as commodities in capitalist societies, the idea driving the object must be novel, rare, coveted. Open source production works precisely against this notion by liberating code, making it available to everyone. At the same time, though, open source production yields products superior to those of closed development (see any comparison of Linux to the bug-riddled landscape of Microsoft). This philosophy of liberation, while noble, is naïve. Material goods do not make themselves, are not free from cost and risk. A society that values the quality and innovation of open source production, but is locked into a capitalist system of ownership, capital, and overhead, can have their cake and eat it too with crowdsourcing.

The Crowd’s Human Costs No system is perfect. Crowdsourcing, though it may blend the best aspects of open source philosophy and the benefits of global business (including its outsourcing component), it might negatively affect a labor pool: the crowd. To see it one way, the intellectual labor the crowd performs is worth a lot more than winning solutions are paid. Threadless designers win far less than professional clothing designers would earn if design work were outsourced to them. iStockphoto members earn a tiny amount for their photography, where professional stock photographers could expect hundreds or thousands of times more for the same work. InnoCentive solvers win very large awards, but the bounties pale in comparison to what the equivalent of that intellectual labor would cost seeker companies in in-house R&D. The young filmmakers whose Doritos commercials aired during the Super Bowl certainly were not paid the same as the major advertising agencies who produced all the other spots for other products during the game. Proportionately, the amount of money paid to the crowd for high quality labor relative to the amount that labor is worth in the market resembles a slave economy. Similar to the ways commercial video game developers use ‘modders’ to develop new games, crowdsourcing companies hope to use the crowd for their own profits. Postigo argues that ‘this process manages to harness a skilled labour force for little or no initial cost and represents an emerging form of labour exploitation on the Internet’ (2003: 597).

As Postigo (2003) argues that ‘unwaged work on the Internet is an attempt to transcend alienation’ because laborers take ‘ownership of the productive process, even when this process is not physical’, I contend that crowdsourcing, where the crowd is not only part of the productive process but also produces tangible goods, is even more transcendent. Though crowdsourcing companies – say, Threadless – stand to make enormous profits off the backs of the crowd, the crowd gets to slip the very products they design 253 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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on their own backs, sporting their ideas-on-cloth as fashion statement, as stylistic resistance to the homogeneity of mainstream fashion design and culture in general (Hebdige, 1979; Muggleton, 2000). Crowdsourcing can be quite empowering indeed, a hopeful reunion of worker and product in a post-industrial economy of increasing alienation of labor.

In other ways, though, crowdsourcing necessarily involves casualties, as any shift in production will. For instance, iStockphoto has crippled long-time stock photographers, whose prices – hundreds or thousands of dollars for image rights – were necessary to cover the cost of their equipment, travel, and film processing. As photographer Russell Kord laments on the crowdsourcing blog, ‘digital cameras have taken away any skill necessary to expose a decent image, composition is a matter of opinion, and distribution [e.g. through iStockphoto] is now cheap and easy’ (Howe, 2006c, Comments section: 43). Because of this willingness for amateur photographers to ‘dump’ their work on iStockphoto for next to nothing, professional stock photographers are becoming obsolete. The tragic tale in this loss of jobs is the last tail of an increasing obsolescence of the industrial economy as a whole, and the diffusion of technology (like the digital camera), spread of expert knowledge (via the web), and our discovery of value in amateurs can be seen as refreshing and liberating in its own way. On the micro-level, crowdsourcing is ruining careers. On the macro-level, though, crowdsourcing is reconnecting workers with their work and taming the giants of big business by reviving the importance of the consumer in the design process.

The Crowd’s Human Possibilities To see it the other way, being part of the crowd is far from exploitation. Instead, it is an opportunity for the crowd, the Protestant self-help ethic rearing its head in a bootstrap, capitalist, global economy. Crowdsourcing offers individuals in the crowd a chance at entrepreneurship, or at the very least an outlet for creative energy. Lakhani et al. (2007) have identified the desire to acquire new skills and the desire to learn as motivators for solvers at InnoCentive, and the passion for problem solving and exploration in open source production has been noted in several articles (see, for example, Levy, 1984; Ghosh, 1998; Raymond, 2003). As some of the narratives from individuals in the crowd indicate (Mack, 2006; Brabham, 2007a; Livingstone, 2007a, 2007b), part of this motive to learn new skills in crowdsourcing is to be able to incorporate that experience in the seeking of better employment or in the goal of establishing oneself in freelance work as an entrepreneur. I posit, though, that this motivator is perhaps more prominent in crowdsourcing cases than in open source production, simply because bounties in crowdsourcing applications already indicate for the crowd a recognition that such work is worthy of compensation. Coupled with an individualistic, libertarian mentality that seems pervasive on the web, the entrepreneurial prospects of crowdsourcing experience presumably become evident for many individuals in the crowd.

Much in the way American entrepreneurial spirit is fueled by poster-child success stories of working-class heroes who ‘made it big’ in business by blazing their own paths, superstars of crowdsourcing are emerging and inspiring others in the crowd to continue working. The several designer interviews available on the Threadless website speak to this desire to ‘make it’ on one’s own, some solvers at InnoCentive have experienced career 254 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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success because of their work, and some iStockphoto photographers are becoming professional amateurs, so to speak. For example, Lise Gagné’s ‘over 390,000 downloaded sales of her stock photographs in just 3 years’ through iStockphoto has allowed her and her partner to ‘have a comfortable lifestyle’ and to soon afford the expensive adoption of a child from China (Mack, 2006: 2, 17, 24). Now an exclusive photographer to iStockphoto and a volunteer screener of new applicants to the community, Gagné receives higher commissions from her photography sales and does stock photography full-time.

And, she adds, ‘Lately, I hear from a growing number of people who are doing this fulltime’ (Mack, 2006: 17). Howe (in press) argues that in a culture where liberal higher education is developing diverse creative skills in young generations – skills which are suddenly not put to use when students spill into the entry level positions of a postindustrial, cubicle-filled information economy – it stands to reason that crowdsourcing would provide such an outlet for this pent-up talent, would inspire an entrepreneurial mentality in the crowd.

Still, though, a libertarian self-perception in the crowd has its dangers. Cyberlibertarianism, as Winner (1997: 16) writes, entails an ‘emphasis upon radical individualism, enthusiasm for free market economy, disdain for the role of government, and enthusiasm for the power of business firms’. Perhaps the crowd ‘revel[s] in [the] prospects for ecstatic self-fulfillment in cyberspace and emphasize[s] the need for individuals to disburden themselves of encumbrances that might hinder the pursuit of rational selfinterest’ (Winner, 1997: 15). The success narratives of the very select few winners among the crowd, and the prominence of those narratives on the websites of the companies themselves and in chatter about crowdsourcing in the blogosphere, indicate the crowd, true to the rhetoric that has existed online since its birth, embraces this cyberlibertarianism (for an example of these narratives, see Brabham, 2007a). Yet, radical positions within cyberlibertarian rhetoric ‘[fail] to sense the role played by corporate capitalism in its creation and continuous survival of society’ (Kelemen and Smith, 2001: 383), so it seems reasonable to assume that the crowd may not recognize its own dependence on and existence within corporate capitalism as it strives to rise above crowdsourcing in pursuit of entrepreneurship. Appropriately, then, the biggest successes within crowdsourcing are not the individuals in the crowd who were able to set themselves apart from the masses and make it on their own as professional versions of their former crowdsourcing selves.

The biggest successes are the inventive young minds (e.g. Nickell and DeHart at Threadless and Livingstone at iStockphoto) and large corporations (e.g. Eli Lilly at InnoCentive) who conceived the crowdsourcing applications in the first place. They reap the biggest rewards. So much for rugged, defiant individualism!

Faces Not in the Crowd The democratizing, empowering promise of the mere presence of new media technology is far overstated, as Winner (2003 [1986]) reminds us. Many people are still without access to the web, and of those connected, many still do not have high-speed connections enabling them to participate like broadband owners can (Fox, 2005). Further, simply connecting the disconnected does not guarantee they will want to participate in the play of the web (Winner, 2003 [1986]). This means we cannot be assured a diversity of opinion in the crowd. A theory of wise crowds needs this diversity of opinion to succeed, but 255 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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what does this diversity of opinion entail? Brabham (2007b) argues that diversity of opinion must be broken down into smaller pieces, into diversity of identity, diversity of skills, and diversity of political investment.

According to many scholars who study identity, diversity – in terms of gender, sexuality, race, nationality, economic class, (dis)ability, religion, etc. – is important because each person’s unique identity shapes their worldview. Thus, we can assume that differing worldviews might produce differing solutions to a problem, some of which might be superior solutions because the ideas might consider the unique needs of diverse constituencies. (Brabham, 2007b: 3)

We must be careful, too, in assuming that ideas emerging from the crowd in crowdsourcing applications represent an ascendance of the superior idea through democratic process. Many studies on the digital divide indicate the typical web user is likely to be white, middle- or upper-class, English speaking, higher educated, and with high-speed connections. Moreover, the most productive individuals in the crowd are likely to be young in age, certainly under 30 and probably under 25 year of age (Lenhart et al., 2004; Lenhart and Madden, 2005), as this age group is most active in the so-called web 2.0 environment of massive content creation, such as through blogging (Madden, 2005; Rainie, 2005; Madden and Fox, 2006). With such a lack of diversity of opinion in the crowd, particularly a lack of diverse identity, crowdsourcing applications are possibly doomed to fail, based on wise crowd theory. More important for critical theorists, however, is that the crowdsourcing applications that do succeed through the might of a homogenous crowd are reproducing the aesthetic and values of white, straight, middleclass men.

In this hegemonic environment, then, does resistance get squashed? Alternative ideas, which may or may not come from the minds of ethnically diverse members of the crowd, are likely in this system to sink to the bottom as tried-and-true, familiar forms of the dominant culture rise to the top. A problem-solving model such as crowdsourcing, which values the quality of a solution over an individual’s identity or pedigree, may seem democratic and liberating, true to a hacker ethic (Levy, 1984). But, if solutions are measured against the yardstick of the company sponsoring the crowdsourcing application, or measured against the opinions of the homogenous crowd, alternatives to the presiding discourse will probably always lose out. Thus, familiar hegemonic mechanisms lie beneath the veneer of the ‘democratic’ crowdsourcing free-for-all, brass-knuckling dissent and difference away from positions of power in the system. Can we truly democratize innovation in crowdsourcing (von Hippel, 2005)?

An Agenda for Crowdsourcing Research There is much for the cultural critic and the communication scholar to investigate in this new phenomenon of crowdsourcing. It is easy for critics to bemoan the oppressive exploitation of labor taking place in the crowdsourcing process, but narratives from superstars in the crowd indicate more agency than Marxist critiques would allow. Research is needed to understand how members of the crowd feel about their role as a laborer for companies, examinations not only of the success stories, but qualitative interviews with members of the crowd who have not ‘made it’ yet as crowdsourcers. Investigating how crowds resist attempts by companies at manipulation and servitude, especially through 256 Downloaded from con.sagepub.com at Universitaetsbibliothek Kiel on December 28, 2014

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crowdslapping, might shed light on the human experience of being part of the crowd.

At the same time, a constant eye on who is missing from the crowd must remain. Barriers to access in participation in crowdsourcing applications not only include access to computers, access to the web and access to high-speed connections. New barriers to participation in crowdsourcing include access to problem-specific skills and technologies.

For instance, one cannot submit a design idea to Threadless without the graphics and editing software necessary to upload to the company’s template, and a digital camera – and knowledge of its use – is required of iStockphoto photographers. This begs the question, can and should crowdsourcing ventures be governed, regulated (Rossiter, 2006)?

Tracking which crowdsourcing ventures fail and which ones succeed should also be part of an agenda of crowdsourcing research. What advertising and public relations techniques, for instance, are employed by companies looking to attract a robust and eager crowd? Beyond that, we must strive to understand what truly motivates crowd participation. Open source motivators are helpful but are not precisely translatable to crowdsourcing cases. More research in the vein of Lakhani et al. (2007) is needed.

As more businesses test the waters by crowdsourcing aspects of their production, ethical and legal analysis will be needed. Hopefully, too, standards of best practice will emerge from the crowd to inform companies eager to try their hand at crowdsourcing.

Ultimately, though, I am hopeful for a refining of crowdsourcing as a generalizable, effective model for problem solving. For better or for worse, lessons from the for-profit world have informed other industry sectors: leadership and accounting strategies in non-profit organizations, fundraising in colleges and universities, and more. I am eager to see us learn from the successes and mistakes of crowdsourcing so that we can apply the best principles to the non-profit world and in the fight for social and environmental justice.

Where altruism may be lacking or where material products are needed by these causes, crowdsourcing may provide a productive alternative. Environmental sustainability, architecture and urban planning, emergency logistics planning, public art projects, and even intelligence industries may benefit from the application of crowdsourcing in the problem-solving process.

Conclusions In this article I have provided an introduction to crowdsourcing through definitions established by its pioneers and illustrated through a collection of case examples. Crowdsourcing can be explained through a theory of crowd wisdom, an exercise of collective intelligence, but we should remain critical of the model for what it might do to people and how it may reinstitute long-standing mechanisms of oppression through new discourses. Crowdsourcing is not just another buzzword, not another meme. It is not just a repackaging of open source philosophy for capitalist ends either. It is a model capable of aggregating talent, leveraging ingenuity while reducing the costs and time formerly needed to solve problems. Finally, crowdsourcing is enabled only through the technology of the web, which is a creative mode of user interactivity, not merely a medium between messages and people. Because of this, it is now the challenge of communication studies, science and technology studies, and other scholars to take up this new, hearty agenda for research.

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I hope we can agree with Mau that it is time ‘to imagine a future for design that is both more modest and more ambitious . . . More ambitious in that we take our place in society, willing to implicate ourselves in the consequences of our imagination’ (2004: 17–18). Crowdsourcing may very well be the means to harness the productive potential of such imagination as we implicate ourselves in the process.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Cassandra Van Buren, Hector Postigo, Glen Feighery, Annie Maxfield, and the editors and reviewers for all of their feedback in shaping this article.

Note 1 See Severin and Tankard (2001) and Lakhani and Wolf (2005) for but a small recent sampling of the long line of uses and gratifications research since Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch (1973).

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Daren C. Brabham (University of Utah) is a graduate teaching fellow and doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah.

Address Department of Communication, University of Utah, 255 South Central Campus Dr., Rm 2400, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. [email: daren.brabham@ utah.edu]

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Rosenbaum, S. (2011). Curation Nation: How to win in a world where consumers are creators. New York: McGraw-Hill. 或 見 黃貝玲譯 (2012)。為什麼搜尋將被淘汰。台北：麥格羅 ˙ 希爾。

Ricknert, S. (2013). Democratic communication as a strategic tool: Exploring the nation branding-initiative Curators of Sweden as a contemporary application of digital democracy. http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=dow nloadFile&recordOId=3808379&fileOId=3808385

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SKOM12 Vårterminen 2013 Howard Nothhaft Åsa Thelander

Democratic Communication as a Strategic tool Exploring the nation branding-initiative Curators of Sweden as a contemporary application of digital democracy SUSANNA RICKNERT

Lunds universitet Institutionen för strategisk kommunikation Examensarbete för masterexamen

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Abstract

Democratic communication as a strategic tool This study explores the relationship between democratic ideals and web technology discourses observable in the US media debate on the nation branding initiative Curators of Sweden.

Having identified discursive patterns that touched upon issues of democracy and web technology, and by connecting the reactions to a theoretical foundation on digital democracy, the analysis show how the democratic value of the initiative was interpreted differently due to conflicting ideals and assumptions of democracy and web technology.

The study concludes that while democracy may be used as a self-evident value in the rhetoric and practice of digital democracy, it may also apply to communication practices that serve conflicting democratic ideals.

The findings allows us to problematize the use of democracy as a strategic tool, and explains some socio-cultural dynamics surrounding web technology discourse, illustrating implications for strategic communication practitioners and scholars with an interest in digital democracy, public diplomacy and nation branding.

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Sammanfattning Demokratisk kommunikation som strategiskt verktyg Den här uppsatsen undersöker relationen mellan demokratiska ideal och teknologiska diskurser så som de uttrycks i den amerikanska mediala debatten kring nation branding-initiativet Curators of Sweden. Genom att ha studerat reaktionerna till kampanjen, och med en teoretisk utgångspunkt i digital demokrati, identifierades diskursiva mönster som framhöll andra demokratiska ideal än de som kampanjen avser att förmedla.

Studiens resultat vittnar således om de eventuella problem som kan uppkomma när demokrati används som strategiskt verktyg och belyser därmed även en allmän företeelse i retorik och praktik kring digital demokrati där konceptet demokrati antas innehålla samstämmiga ideologiska värden men som i praktiken genererar antingen oförutsedda eller motstridiga tolkningar.

Vidare illustrerar studien socio-kulturella mekanismer kring teknologiska diskurser som är av betydelse för olika kommunikationsverksamhetsområden såsom digital demokrati, offentlig diplomati och nation branding.

Keywords: Curators of Sweden, (digital) democracy, ideology, public diplomacy, strategic communication, web technology

Word count (including space):119 679

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Table of Content

PREFACE............................................................................................................... 6 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 7 1.1

Background to the Study ......................................................................... 10

1.3 Problem Statement and Discussion.............................................................. 11 1.4 Purpose and Research Questions ................................................................. 16 1.5 Delimitation ................................................................................................. 16 1.6 Notes on Terminology ................................................................................. 17 1.6.1 Content Curation ................................................................................... 17 1.6.2 Discursive patterns ................................................................................ 18 1.6.3 Democracy ............................................................................................ 18 1.6.4 Nation branding .................................................................................... 18 1.6.5 Public diplomacy .................................................................................. 19 1.6.6 Second generation of web technology (Web 2.0) ................................. 19 2. Research Design and Methodology ................................................................ 20 2.1 Objects of Study: Reactions to Curators of Sweden .................................... 20 2.2 Curators of Sweden in a US media context ................................................. 21 2.3 Selecting respondents for Expert Interviews ............................................... 22 2.3.1 Interview proceedings ........................................................................... 23 2.4 A Critical-Hermeneutic Perspective ............................................................ 23 2.4.1 A Critical Approach .................................................................................. 27 2.5 The Internet as a Social Construction .......................................................... 28 3 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................... 30 3.1 An overview of the Digital Democracy Debate ........................................... 30 3.3.1 The Virtual Public Sphere..................................................................... 33 3.3.2 “The Good Citizen� Theorizing discourses on citizenship and civility 36 3.4 Digital Democracy Ideals ............................................................................ 38 3.5 Self Expression Values and Civility ............................................................ 40 4.

Analysis ......................................................................................................... 42 4.1 Individual empowerment and the role of the curator ................................... 42

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4.1.1 Explaining the reactions through differences in citizen discourse ....... 45 4.2 Questioning the functionality of the initiative ............................................. 46 4.2.1 Explaining reactions through understandings on civility ..................... 49 4.3 What should belong in the (virtual) public sphere? ..................................... 52 4.3.1 Sweden embodies values of (cyber-) libertarianism ............................. 53 4.3.2 Is it meaningful communication? ......................................................... 54 4.3.3 Balancing between public and private matters ..................................... 55 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 57 Suggestions for further research .................................................................... 59 6. References. ........................................................................................................ 61 6.1 Attachment 1: Interview Frida Roberts ....................................................... 67 6.2 Attachment 2: Interview Ludvig Beckman .................................................. 69 6.3 Attachment 3: Interview Philip Young ........................................................ 71 6.4 Attachment 4: Interview Deeped Niclas Strandh ........................................ 73

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PREFACE

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Howard Nothhaft-, for his contribution with immense knowledge and dedication in every step of this process.

A second word of thanks goes to my dear friends Alice and Annika, and to my wonderful sisters Caroline and Louise, for their patience and sincere encouragements throughout.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank everyone interviewed for making this study possible by offering their precious time and valuable knowledge.

A special thought goes to my grandfather Rune who despite his passing inspired me to keep on working.

Thank you!

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1. Introduction

Winning the hearts and minds of foreign audiences is said to be the key to success in International relations (Anholt, 2007; Michalski, 2005; Nye, 2004). During the past decades, nations around the world have adopted the mantras of soft power, pioneered by political scientist Joseph Nye (2004); that stategies of persuasion is the way to attain foreign policy goals rather than through hard power such as military force or coercion. One of Nye’s central claims is that those countries whose culture and ideas are closer to international norms, and whose credibility abroad is reinforced by their values and policies, are better suited for success in postmodern international relations (2004).

Nation branding and public diplomacy are features of statecraft based on principles of soft power communication and principally aimed at communicating with foreign publics to achieve foreign- and domestic policy goals. These practices are essentially linked to the field of Strategic communication by the means of informing, influencing and persuading publics on country image and values, as well as building long term relationships with publics on the international arena (Cornish, French-Lindley York, 2011).

Traditionally, place- and nation branding campaigns have followed a linear model of communication signified by an active sender of a message, to a more or less passive audience or receiver, making the communication structure hierarchical and asymmetrical (Ketter & Avraham, 2012). However, as the global communication environment undergoes significant transformations, particularly by modern networked forms of technology, the premises under which strategic communication practitioners interact with foreign publics are changing, especially due to difficulties in separating domestic audiences (public affairs) from foreign audiences (public diplomacy) (Melissen, 2005). Melissen (2005, p. 10) describes that current public diplomacy practice is taking new, less hierarchal forms, and refers to an erosion from state- and media centered models of foreign public communication: “This new public diplomacy moves away from (…) peddling information to foreigners and keeping the foreign press at bay, towards engaging with foreign audiences” (my italics).

Along with these changes in the global communication environment, with less hierarchical forms of communication, the assumed democratic potentials of web technology becomes of 271

interest for communication practitioners who want to use these tools in their communication with foreign publics or utilize democracy as a strategic tool in delivering policies. As communication practitioners are gradually acknowledging the unique, interactive characteristics of social media, PR-efforts are also increasingly being built upon the principle of user-generated content (UGC) impacting both the co-creation of and the distribution of (organizational) messages (Ketter & Avraham, 2012). Who controls the message is thus becoming a matter of public involvement, turning traditionally passive audiences into active ones.

Since the democratic potentials of web technology is vastly theorized in the academic field, as well as practiced as a rhetorical tool for political purposes (Dahlgren, 2009; Kaneva, 2011; Habermas, 2007) it has inspired me to ask how our understanding on democracy and its basic components are shifting in the new communication environment, and how it in turn affects our strategic approaches and perceptions of online communication. To this background, this study will hopefully encourage us to reflect on to what extent ideology determines both the strategyand reception-, of our online communication practices. As indicated in the figure below, the focus of this study is to explore the complex dynamics within the relationship between three interlinked concepts. This would be an attempt to better understand the premises under which strategic communication practitioners act-; a contemporary communication environment that both celebrate and criticize the assumed democratic potentials of web technology.

Strategic Communication

Democratic understandings

New Web Technology

Figure 1: own

This study will originate in the nation branding-initiative Curators of Sweden that is based on a principle of democratic communication, where democracy and web technology (Twitter) are used as strategic tools in Sweden’s nation branding strategy. While most nation branding initiatives are still based on traditional marketing principles of coherent message creation and oneway communication, the strategic idea behind this campaign is to establish “a democratic form 272

of communication� by public involvement, where Swedish citizens alone, get to create and distribute their own narratives in an official online communication channel (Svenska Institutet, Pressrum 2011). With this campaign as an empirical point of departure, a unique opportunity is given to empirically explore the dynamics between assumptions of democracy and web technology and how it may impact strategic communication practices, such as public diplomacy and nation branding.

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1.1 Background to the Study In December 2011, Sweden offered its citizens “The world’s most democratic Twitter-account”. By deliberately handing over the official Twitter account @Sweden to a selected citizen each week, to tweet freely about the country, Sweden directed its nation branding strategy into a “mined” field of almost uncensored content curation (Svenska Institutet, Pressrum, 2011).

The Curators of Sweden (CoS) initiative was introduced in an attempt to raise awareness about Sweden, and let ordinary Swedes “paint a picture of Sweden different to that usually obtained through traditional media” (available from http://curatorsofsweden.com/about). The campaign, which is currently running, and active with a new curator every week, is part of a larger nation branding strategy dedicated to the long-term promotion and profiling of Sweden through public diplomacy and strategic communication (available from www.si.se ).

The creators behind the initiative, state-funded Swedish Institute (SI), VisitSweden, the marketing agency of Sweden’s Tourism Board (VS) and PR agency Volontaire, claims the initiative as a great success pointing to the large buzz CoS redeemed in both social- and traditional media, creating widespread publicity for the Swedish nation brand (Svenska Institutet, Pressrum, 2012). Internationally, and from an early stage, the initiative was covered favorably in the newspaper New York Times and the online current affairs magazine Slate, signifying the great attention the initiative gained. The biggest buzz however, was undoubtedly created in June 2012 when tweets of one curator caused great commotion and media attention worldwide. Due to the nature of some tweets, massive discussions followed and the initiative regained widespread media attention in the US and elsewhere (Haberman, 2012).

Many reactions to the initiative seemed to imply ideologically rooted interpretations, touching upon democratic premises and assumptions of the democratic effects digital technology. Some voices pointed to the concept’s fragility and sentenced it to fail, while others celebrated it as a democratic experiment in true citizen participation and free speech. Forbes Magazine (Hill, 2012) analyzed the rationale behind the campaign and suggesting that: “Sweden wanted to dramatically show how committed it is to freedom of speech and the power of the unfettered internet”, whereas a blogger for TIME Magazine concluded that some tweets just should be left “to the experts” (Traywick, 2012 para. 7).

Due to the controversy the campaign caused, I would argue that the CoS spurred discussions on very basic preconditions for (modern) democracy - e.g., censorship, representation and political incorrectness, making the initiative more than a matter of national image and publicity,

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but a contemporary commentary on modern democracy discourse and the assumed democratic potentialities of new web technology and media.

1.3 Problem Statement and Discussion During the past decades the world has experienced two generations of digital communication technology, providing billions of people the means of receiving, producing, and distributing information, with major shift in power relations as a result (Loader & Mercea. 2012). The 1st generation of Internet enthusiasts predicted a transformation of representative democracy onto strong participatory models with Habermasian (virtual) public spheres and online agoras as significant features (Barlow, 1996). These visions came to be discarded as utopian and replaced by the convergence of social and economic interests onto the online sphere which challenged the preconditions for those ideals (Loader & Mercea, 2012). Today, much attention is given to the political effects of the second generation of Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) or Web 2.0, signifying arising trends in citizen participation and transformations from top-down, authoritative structures of communication towards more interactive modes (O’Reilly, 2005).

In these days, the enthusiasm for the democratic potentials of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) is widely adopted by politicians, journalists, scholars and everyday citizen, and commonplace in discussions of the potential of web technology (Dahlberg, 2011; Nothhaft, 2012). Debating the potential of web technology, most prominent seem to be a deliberative discourse celebrating increased participation through the creation of new forms and modes of participation (Dahlberg, 2011), and it is also commonly argued (Barber, 2003; Loader & Mercea, 2012) that the interactive elements of Web 2.0 technologies have the ability to generate new forms of civic engagement and political activity, and thereby revitalize key components of democracy.

There are at the same time those who question the possibilities for web technology to meaningfully enhance democracy. Some authors point to the very opposite of these optimistic claims, that civic life, for instance, is being undermined by trends and processes of commercialist

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thoughts in society, and an increased commercialization of cyberspace1 (Dahlgren, 2009; Habermas, 2004). Here, it is argued that economic interests are not only privileged over other (civic) values, but that these values are intrinsically linked to the media discourse, where media acts as “carriers” of these modes of thoughts and structures (Dahlgren, 2009). Similar fears are raised against the emergence of individualistic structures, which arguably, by its celebration of individual autonomy, generate conditions that are harmful for modern societies. Fuelled by mass self-expression trends, such developments are enabling too much autonomy, in both the public- and virtual sphere- and are as such considered a threat to communitarian, or collectivistic values in civil society (Castells, 2009; Etzioni, 2011).

In spite of this debate, with seemingly contradictory predictions about web technologies’ effects on democracy, various actors, institutions and organizations,-(political or civil), frequently refer to the democratic potential of web technologies, as reasons to integrate them into their own activities (Dahlberg, 2011). The concept of democracy seem to apply to various phenomena and practices almost metaphorically, and even across ideological stances. At the same time, what is really meant by democracy-, is rarely defined in the rhetoric and practice of these technologies (Nothhaft, 2012). Conceptions like digital democracy, online democracy and e-democracy may sometimes be defined, but in very technical terms. More often the democratic rationales of web technologies seem to be mentioned rather haphazardly and, as something commonly known and unproblematic.

Peter Dahlgren (2009, p.20) uses the term “economism”, understood as mode of thought where economic criteria is privileged over all other values.

1

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Lincoln Dahlberg (2011) similarly observes: “For well over a decade there has been widespread enthusiasm about the possibilities of digital media technology advancing and enhancing democratic communication. This enthusiasm comes from a surprisingly wide arrange of political interests (...). As a result there are very different understandings of the form of democracy that digital media may promote, with differences in digital rhetoric and practice. Despite this diversity, digital democracy (…) is often talked about as though there was a general consensus about what it is.” (2011, p. 855)

Following these observations, democracy, either as a term or concept, seem to be employed as an empty signifier2, a concept initially coined by philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss (1950).

An empty signifier is “emptied of its particular meanings- a universal function of representing an entirety of ambiguous, fuzzy related meanings, an idea or aspiration” (cited in Gunder & Hillier, 2009, p. 3). The use of democracy as an empty signifier implies not only a simplistic understanding of a highly normative concept, but may also be applied on potentially contradictory practices. Mainly so, because it is also possible for an empty signifier "to represent an undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning" (Mehlman, 1972 p. 23). In other words, what counts as “democratic communication” is subject to various interpretations-, and definitions, of which democratic value should be promoted in any given communication setting.

Given any of these premises, this immediately becomes a significant matter for the communication practitioner who must determine how democracy should be utilized as a strategic tool, and for what purpose. From a critical perspective, digital strategies that communicate democracy based on the logics of an empty signifier, or as self-evident may in fact involve, or generate potentially contradictory outcomes, or even communications regarded as “undemocratic” when seen from other ideological standpoints.

The key rationale when examining this case is, thus, to highlight this very aspect, by exploring the dynamics of ideology and communication practices. It has lead me to ask how our understanding on democracy and its basic components are shifting in the new communication envi-

2

The term empty signifier or floating signifier is in this study used solely for its ability to demonstrate and highlight my own observations of how the term of democracy is exploited in the everyday debate on digital democracy. As such, I do not intend to evaluate or analyze the concept of democracy as an empty signifier.

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ronment, and how it in turn affects our strategic approaches and practices of online communication since it forces us to reflect on to what extent ideology determines both the strategy-, and reception of our online communication practices.

As web technologies are increasingly being used by communication practitioners as a tool to communicate with strategic publics, one should also question what role strategic communication play and should play in exploiting these tools for democratic purposes in a context of digital rhetoric. This issue is brought up by Benjamin Barber, and other scholars in the field (della Porta, 2012; Loader & Mercea, 2012) who are asking for a more critical understanding of the complex relationship between web technologies and democracy, and points to a key issue that will be the guiding principle of this study. Whether we experience new communication realities either as threats to modern democracy or as an opportunity for its revival, Barber argues that one must acknowledge the fact that there are variations of democratic conceptions out there, with highly subjective understandings on what an ideal democracy is.

Following Barbers warning, developments on democracy and web technology discourse should subsequently be of interests for communication practitioners and policy makers, as the ideological debate on digital democracy is a component of the very environment they engage in. For those reasons primarily, I find it interesting to direct this study towards commentaries and ideological discourses around a contemporary case related to digital democracy, to shed light on the dynamics between discourse and practice and how they can work instrumentally in shaping attitudes towards new technologies. The methodological approach will be elaborated on shortly, but a significant part of the analytical approach is dedicated to the identification of discursive patterns in this debate i.e. the many meanings, ideas and depictions of reality presented in the articulations surrounding the initiative, and interpret how they fit in to a larger theoretical framework of democratic ideology and web technology (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000).

By studying the digital democracy discourse surrounding the CoS and the interplay between ideology and web technology, this study aims to be a modest contribution to such knowledge and reflection. The research design is holistically driven, and involves analyzing the reactions to the case of CoS, prevalent in a US media context, as to illustrate the diversity of democratic understandings and discursive patterns. Just like the reactions to the initiative can be seen as discursive artifacts, the case can itself be seen as an application of rhetoric both on democracy and the promises of digital technology The aim with this study is to identify and reconstruct contemporary discursive patterns, in a US media context, that touch upon ideas of democracy and web technology, and by doing so, 278

contribute to a more critical understanding of the assumed democratic potential of web technology. Moreover, I hope to pinpoint some implications on how to communicate with foreign publics given that there are competing/alternative visions of democracy that supposedly shape both the design and interpretations of online communication practices. As such, this thesis extends to scholars and practitioners in public diplomacy, nation branding and the wider field of communication.

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1.4 Purpose and Research Questions This study seeks to investigate the relationship between ideology and web technology in the US media debate as it becomes observable from the nation branding initiative Curators of Sweden.

By identifying discursive patterns that touch upon issues of democracy and web technology, and by doing so using a critical hermeneutic approach, this study investigates how different notions of democracy and understandings of web technology relate to the media reaction of the CoS initiative. This study will hopefully allow us to problematize strategic communication practice and research in a contemporary context of digital democracy discourse as well as enable a critical discussion of the assumed democratic potential in social media use. To fulfill the purpose of the study, the following questions will guide the research design: 

What discursive patterns that touch upon understandings on democracy and web technology can be found in the reactions to Curators of Sweden in US media?



What democratic ideals do, assumedly, underpin the different receptions of Curators of Sweden and web technology?

1.5 Delimitation As in any study, the scope and boundaries of the research must be clearly defined. I will in this section discuss the most significant delimitations of the study.

The study is centered on the media reactions to the Curators of Sweden-initiative as a case study. The case is here used instrumentally, to “tease out” artifacts of contemporary democracy and web technology discourse such as articulations, assumptions and understandings. This means that there is no ambition to analyze the initiative in any other context than how it is perceived in a US media context. For instance, the initiative is not evaluated from a marketingor branding perspective but principally aimed at investigating the surrounding debate and the context in which the case is situated. Related concepts however, such as public diplomacy, nation branding and content curation are however useful as conceptual frameworks theoretically.

As a result, this study makes no attempt to evaluate the quality of the initiative whether in terms of democratic impacts or as a PR-initiative. Instead, the purpose is to identify discursive patterns and dynamics in the debate that emerged from the Curators initiative in US media, to better understand the environment and context of digital democracy that strategic practitioners engage in.

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The study is also limited to a US media context solely, and the debate that occurred in US media between December 2011 when the initiative first appeared in US media, and onward3.

To that background I would like to emphasize that this is not a media study, or investigation on how the story was covered in US media, nor any attempt to evaluate the reporting on Curators of Sweden. The media is merely “a location” where articulations and commentaries of interest are situated. Therefore, one should not attempt to generalize the views expressed in the sources, nor are they representational for any larger population or media format. That is not the point either; neither generalizations nor representative understandings are rationales for conducting this study, but to seek out variations of understandings in this particular context.

Furthermore, it should be obvious that this study is less concerned with causality in the relationship between democracy and technological development, let alone evaluating or taking a subjective stance in this debate. However, there is one presupposition in particular that I take on in this study. I make the assumption that democratic understandings impacts our online communication behavior discursively i.e. that normative understandings of democracy are factors that help shape how we make sense of web technology and for which purposes. By the same token, I accept that the relationship can be the reverse, that web technology discourse impact democracy understandings and discourse.

1.6 Notes on Terminology

1.6.1 Content Curation According to Steve Rosenbaum (2011 p. 3), author of the book Nation Curation, curation is about “adding value from humans who add their qualitative judgment to whatever is being gathered and organised". The concept can also be summarized as “the creation, display and management of content in a consistent manner to encourage a desired understanding of an organization (Young, 2012). The case Curators of Sweden is designed upon this very principle, where each selected citizen act as a “curator”, thus managing the content of the tweets (available from www.curatorsofsweden.com).

3

The Curators of Sweden is at the time of writing an ongoing project and there is no apparent reason to disregard any potential up to date coverage of the initiative.

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1.6.2 Discursive patterns According to (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000) discursive patterns is about conveying the many meanings, ideas and depictions of reality presented in various forms of artifacts surrounding a social phenomenon. In the analytical strategy of the media commentary on Curators of Sweden I will seek out discursive patterns against a larger theoretical framework and by following the logics of the hermeneutical cycle (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011)

1.6.3 Democracy As democracy is a concept without any unanimous or agreed upon meaning, it would be beyond the scope of this thesis to elaborate on the concept to any depth-, or historical manner. Any definition of the term democracy is subject to political disagreements, and always has been since its foundation in ancient Greece. Within the scope of this study, democracy will be mentioned in various forms, either as a method of governance, as a normative ideal (e.g. rule by the people), or with reference to a set of practices. When referring to “democracies” in broad terms similar implications occur. This study is based on observations from western, liberal democracies as well as literature affiliated with western democratic discourses (e.g. Held, 2006).

1.6.4 Digital democracy A common definition of the term is made by Kenneth Hacker and Jan van Dijk (2000): “a collection of attempts to practice democracy without the limits of time, space, and other physical conditions, using information and communications technology or computer-mediated communication instead, as an addition, not a replacement for traditional (…) political practices”.

Obviously, the infrastructure of the Internet has gone through some major changes since 2000 but this, fairly broad, definition is yet useful for studying online communication practices such as Curators of Sweden and other forms of online participation.

1.6.4 Nation branding As the name implies, this concept builds upon branding principles, but is largely concerned with reputation management, or managing a country’s reputation. Simon Anholt is one of the most prominent figures in the field as well as the man behind the Anholt Nation Brand Index (Kaneva, 2011). Nation branding often refers to “The strategic self-presentation of a country with the aim of creating reputational capital through economic, political and social interest promotion at home and abroad” (Szondi 2008, p. 5)

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1.6.5 Public diplomacy Public diplomacy is a term that is most frequently used within International Relations and the Political Science discipline. In broad terms, public diplomacy refers to communication practices towards foreign publics with the intent of establishing dialogue, to inform and influence strategic audiences as well as building relationships with stakeholders (Melissen, 2005).

1.6.6 Second generation of web technology (Web 2.0) The Web 2.0 defines the second phase of the evolution of the Web and highlights its interactive and participatory character. According to O’Reilly (2005), whose definition is often cited in a media context, defines Web 2.0 as such4: “Web 2.0 is the network as a platform, spanning all connected devices. Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an architecture of participation, and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.” (2007, para. 1)

1.6.7 Strategic Communication The term is used in a variety of forms in this study; either as a concept, a process, practice or academic field. Strategic Communication can in broad terms be understood as “the purposeful use of communication to fulfill its mission” (Hallahan, et al. 2007 p. 3).

O’Reilly’s definition is, however, subject to scholarly critique and that there are other understandings on the term (cf. Murugusan, 2010).

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2. Research Design and Methodology

As the Curators of Sweden-initiative spurred discussions on basic premises and assumptions on (modern) democracy- e.g. censorship, freedom of expression as well as civic behavior, I saw an opportunity to look at the reactions to the initiative, as a contemporary commentary on modern democracy discourse and the assumed democratic potentials of web technology. To that background, this study aims to explore not only the dynamics between democratic understandings and communication practices but also to explore empirically how “democratic communication” is carried out as a strategic communication practice. In order to achieve this, the structure of this study is designed to first, identify discursive patterns in the reactions to the campaign that touch upon democracy and web technology and, secondly, to investigate the underlying ideological assumptions in these reactions.

2.1 Objects of Study: Reactions to Curators of Sweden Using the Curators of Sweden-initiative as a case for this study has to do with its experimental character (Merriam, 2010) i.e. its ability to demonstrate interesting assumptions, arguments and logics prevalent in the US media debate on digital democracy. It thereby also connotes to what Yin (2009) calls a “unique case”.

However, as the purpose with this study is to identify and reconstruct discursive patterns of democracy and web technology, that arose in the US media from the Curators of Sweden-campaign, it also means that the case itself is not to be regarded as the object of study but as a stimulus to generate data necessary for the purpose of the study. Instead, it is the discourses surrounding the case that are of interest, i.e. the articulations, assumptions and commentaries elicited through the US media reporting on Curators of Sweden. For this purpose, the Curators of Sweden is used instrumentally, to help “tease out” abstractions and articulations on the objects of study; democracy and web technology discourses prevalent in the US media commentary.

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2.2 Curators of Sweden in a US media context The main area of study is a US media context alone, although the debate appeared on a global scale through social media, and in other international contexts. This context is of course one of many settings where one can study the initiative, but the significant media attention Curators of Sweden received in the United Sates makes this context a fruitful setting in which to study the reactions, taking into account the normative and influential role US media have in opinion formation. I have mainly focused on the reactions in press and television, but tweets and blogs were considered relevant only if they were apparently linked to a US media context, for instance journalistic blogs (j-blogs) or tweets linked to American newspapers or magazines. It would be unwise to disregard the online debate as it occurred on various social media platforms, and while the campaign itself appearing on Twitter. And more importantly, conversations that appear virtually constitute a significant part of today’s media context (Jenkins & Thorburn, 2003) and are as such, part of the context of the case, the very conversations and articulations that the study is seeking to investigate.

Some 45-50 items comprised the empirical material, such as articles and video files. Additonal blog posts and tweets were included as well. The gathering of the data was done holistically, attempting to integrate as much of the debate as possible. The guiding principle with gathering the data holistically was that the study would benefit from findings from various locations, as to generate synergetic results with the CoS being the common denominator. The empirical data was found primarily through online search engines5: Google, Google Blog Search, Google News, Storify, and Twitter.com which gave an indication of the “spreading of the story”. These findings demonstrate that the story was covered in a variety of media forms press, television, (j-) blogs and tweets in various forms (re-tweets, shares etc.). News articles and blog posts have dominated the reporting, televised reporting being less frequent. Moreover, a principle of “the bigger span of media covered the better” is applied here, as it makes the study more inclusive and comprehensive, but it also implies that all “opinions” represented in the designated context is considered equally valid as relevant sources of data, regardless of where it occurred. Unfortunately, I have had no opportunity to investigate if the story has been covered in other media sources such as American radio, or American podcasts.

The US context is not only a strategic choice of context, but interesting also from a sociocultural perspective shedding light on potentially different communication practices overseas.

5

Search engines and databases that required subscription or fees were not utilized e.g. Lexis Nexis.

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The United States has a political history built upon liberal individual rights and a civil society that emphasize strong loyalty to groups and community (Schudson, 2003) but is at the same time a country that undergoes significant changes in the political discourse (Beckman, 2013; Schudson, 2003).

2.3 Selecting respondents for Expert Interviews The research design does also include the use of expert interviews that adds another dimension to the holistic approach used in this study. The experts were selected with the purpose of generating empirical material, as well as to function as a theoretical ground for understanding the empirical material. The use of expert interviews is meant to contribute to the holistic approach in this study with the objective of letting each expert contribute with individual and different perspectives to the case. The idea behind this selection is that each expert should add value to the study by their mere unique position or relation to the context in which the case is being studied.

All respondents were deliberately selected due to their connection to, or expertise in related fields such as; Political theory and Democracy, Content Curation and Public Relations. One respondent was selected due to her professional connection to the Curators of Sweden initiative.

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Respondents: 

Frida Roberts, Head of Communications, The Swedish Institute



Ludvig Beckman, Professor at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. Recent publication: Territories of Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) (Co-edited with Eva Erman)



Philip Young, project leader of NEMO. Research field: Public Relations, Social Media, Ethics and Curation



Deeped Niclas Strandh, Deepedition DigitalPR, social media expert and brand planner at UnitedPower (Telephone Interview)

2.3.1 Interview proceedings The research design of the study affected both the choice of respondents and the interview proceedings. Four experts were here interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide that was individually tailored to each respondent. Conducting the one interview by phone was done after a request from the respondent. The interviews lasted for typically 30-45 minutes and all but one (the telephone interview) were recorded using a digital recorder. Subsequently all recorded interviews were transcribed.

Two of the recorded interviews were conducted in each respondent’s respective office or conference room, and one was situated at a café in Stockholm. In retrospect, the café as an interview environment was not ideal due to some noisiness that caused distraction and at times difficulties in hearing. This led to some, but not extensive, problems for the recorded material. At times, the interviews became more of a “conversational character” that shifted the setting from interview towards “a discussion”. This became most apparent in the interview with my former teacher in Political Science. My honest impression is that this approach, being less formal and less standardized added to the quality of the interview.

2.4 A Critical-Hermeneutic Perspective The methodology of this study is drawn from the ontological stance of social constructivism and the idea of epistemic relativism- the conviction that views on reality are results of subjective understandings and interpretations- as they are always relative to a “culture, an individual or

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paradigm” (Kukla, 2000 p. 4; Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2008). The rationale for using this approach is to enable research that can generate knowledge of complexities in the interplay between understandings of democracy, web technology and the reactions to Curators of Sweden, thus interpreting the material through the logics of the hermeneutical circle, where theory and empirical material work synergistically (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011).

As the purpose of the study is to seek out understandings on democracy and web technology, an analytical method to reconstruct articulations is being used. This is done by drawing on an established method performed in a previous study about conceptions on digital democracy where articulations on digital democracy themes were interpreted and reconstructed in to general categorizations (Dahlberg, 2011). Following Dahlberg’s approach, the procedure in this study involved immersing myself in all material, i.e. all “media locations” where reactions to the campaign appeared, within the frames of this study, and perform the analysis in a “circular” manner based on theoretical knowledge and empirical data. I was thus able to delineate and extract articulations from the data that implicitly or explicitly touched upon democracy issues and web technology in general terms, for instance; censorship, representation, community, civil society, individual vs. community etc.

Figure 2: Own

The interpretations and reconstruction of the commentaries were here conducted synergistically and in conjunction with one another. The theoretical framework has been essential in the analytical process, enabling me to put the data into a context, frame and make sense of the commentary readings. Equally important, the theoretical basis has, at the same time, also evolved throughout the readings of the data. As my understanding of the case has deepened, ideas about what is regarded as appropriate theory came to change as well, which is the general procedure

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of the hermeneutical circle (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). I believe that this way, of letting theory and analysis work synergistically, also reduced the risk of making mere empirical descriptions, as well as to the extent possible, reduce the risk of verification bias, i.e. the risk of confirming any preconceived notions.

The analytical strategy did of course involve a more selective reading that, together with the theoretical foundation emerged into three interlinked elements that would assist in the interpretation of the material. Similar to Dahlberg’s procedure, but departing in this study’s research questions, I developed interlinked elements related to established concepts in political theory and digital democracy:

1. The ideal role of the citizen/civic behavior 2. Understandings on the public sphere and a potential virtual sphere 3. The relationship between elites and citizens in terms of order and autonomy By utilizing these “theoretical” elements in the analytical process, features of the commentary were analyzed against these three interlinked elements. This enabled me to categorize the findings into theoretical and abstract “positions” that subsequently conveyed the underlying ideological assumptions in the reactions.

Figure 3: Own

In Dahlberg’s terms, this process is about reconstructing articulations, and commentary into positions that “provide a general categorization of existing empirical instances” (2011, p. 856).

It is of course important to point out that such positions, or general categorizations are mere abstractions and approximations of my subjective interpretations, rather than firm ideal types.

Rather, reconstructing the commentary into positions is a way to illustrate similar characteristics, patterns and attributes in the commentary on the case and of course accentuate differences

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and nuances. Those aspects or features of the commentary, i.e. reactions to the case that subsequently did not fall into either position were discussed separately.

Naturally, the interpretations I delineate through the analytical procedure are, of course, the results of others’ interpretations or reconstructions of reality- a result of a “double hermeneutic” to use the words of Anthony Giddens (1987, p. 20). The point to make here is that the study does not aspire to make any objective truth claims or assumptions of an objective reality. Instead, reactions, or subjective understandings articulated in the material are here regarded as equally valid epistemologically and I will not attempt to evaluate the validity or truth in either of these standpoints (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2008). In fact, it is the manifold, and variations of understandings of democracy and web technology, that are of core interest in this study,

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2.4.1 A Critical Approach According to Alvesson and Sköldberg (2008) one of the main purposes of conducting critical research is about revealing taken for granted- understandings of social phenomenon. The hermeneutic approach6 is valuable in this sense as it permits interpretations of hidden meanings and implicit assumptions in human interactions and behavior (2008). Also, this study is concerned with the concept of democracy, that despite its elusiveness and normative character, its meaning is somewhat taken for granted in the everyday discussion. One presupposition that I take on in conducting this study is that there are varieties of democratic understandings (discourses) present in the digital democracy debate, that affects how and for what purpose web technology is used that may have implication for both democracy discourse and (online) communication practices. This is actualized by Jenkins and Thorburn (2003) who points out the value of looking into the rhetorical logics behind web technology as they might help explain why it has such an appeal.

“A surprising range of thinkers on the right and left have used a notion of “the computer revolution to imagine forms of political effects”. Examining the rhetoric of digital revolution we may identify a discourse about politics and culture that appears not only in academic writing or in explicably ideological exchanges, but also in popular journalism and science fiction. This rhetoric has clear political effects, helping to shape attitudes toward emerging technologies” (2003, p. 9)

The critical perspective I take on in this study is driven by an ambition to explore how ideological understandings on democracy correspond with perceptions on online communication practices, where the CoS can be seen as an application of digital democracy rhetoric, as well as the reactions to it. As such, the initiative as well as it surrounding context may function as an empirical example of a digital democracy practice and phenomenon that is widely theorized about (Barber, 2008; Habermas, 2004; Loader & Mercea, 2012). The point here is to explore a situation, or context, where strategic communication and digital democracy are used in conjunction with each other. When performed by policy makers or public diplomacy practitioners, such practice is likely to be bound to a particular policy and political practice which may determine

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The hermeneutic approach can be divided into two basic stands; the objectivist and alethic. The method used in this study is more linked to the alethic perspective (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2008).

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the communication strategies of varying character. What this case provides, is a unique opportunity to investigate such practice empirically- and what democratic communication actually entails.

Another dimension I wish to highlight, by approaching this study critically, are the assumptions in the digital democracy debate and rhetoric that stress very different outcomes of a networked, individualized society, especially when it comes to the prospects for modern democracy (Dahlberg, 2011). As Hurwits (2003) points out, the Internet is “a contested area, with struggles of private versus public interest” and between “civil liberties/civil society” (p. 101102). It is therefore fair to say that online communication practices are to play a significant role in the transformation of political structures on a societal level.

2.5 The Internet as a Social Construction According to Lindlof and Taylor (2011) hermeneutic research methods are closely tied to studies in communication. They claim that “(…) communication is the fundamental activity by which humans constitute their social world as “real” phenomenon (…)” (italics in original). For the purpose of this thesis, applying a hermeneutic approach is a means to study “artifacts” of democracy and (web-) technology understandings to better understand its rather complex relationship. I believe that this makes one approach the concept of democracy as something more than a theoretical premise, but rather as a social practice and how people make sense of the idea of democracy in a context of web technology communication.

It is generally helpful, in qualitative studies of the Internet, to use pre-existing conceptualizations of the Internet, also understood as metaphorical frameworks (Markham, 2006). Given the constructivist nature of this study and its dedication to the communication field, there are obvious reasons to look at the Internet as a communication medium- where various forms of interaction is taking place, visually, textually and discursively. At the same time, I believe that (rhetorical) discourses surrounding web technology are underpinned by ideological ideals and interests which makes it relevant to look at online practices from a more constructivist and social perspective as it separates the understandings of the Internet from a “set of technological tools” towards a more socio-cultural understanding. This study will to that end, regard the Internet as a tool for communication as well as scene of social construction” (2006).

From a general perspective, this framework makes us explore the Internet as a factual place of cultural production; an arena of “complex interrelationship between language, technology and culture” and to explore what occurs when technology and culture are interwoven as well as

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its implications on reality construction (Markham 2006, p. 98). The case that this study is centered on, and the context in which it occurred, can be seen as such “a factual place”, where ideology and communication practice are shaped in conjunction with each other, a kind of place for reality construction on for example, the democratic potential of web technology. Similar frameworks are being used in academic fields of communication, and there referred to as an “arena for social construction” or “a carrier of culture” (cf. Dahlberg, 2011).

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3 Theoretical Framework

This chapter accounts for the theoretical framework of the study. The main focus has been to discuss key notions of democracy from a communications perspective, and illustrate how they can enhance our understanding of the Curators of Sweden-initiative and the reactions to it. The theoretical framework centers on the following theories and concepts; the role of the good citizen and the public sphere. It will also introduce Dahlberg’s digital democracy positions on liberal, communitarian and deliberative ideals and postmodernist discourses on self-expression values and civility (2011; 2007). I will also describe the broader academic digital democracy debate7 that centers on the assumed democratic potential of web technology and subsequently relate the case to an existing research base on digital democracy. A critical perspective has been applied throughout the analysis using a critical hermeneutical perspective in understanding the initiative and the reactions to it.

3.1 An overview of the Digital Democracy Debate

“There are “high expectations on democracy as an ideal, yet low evaluations of the performances of representative institutions” (Pippa Norris 2001, p. 96)

Modern democracy, it is argued, is suffering from de-politicization of civic life with democratic deficits and decreased dependence in traditional political institutions as a result (Moravcsik, 2004). There are, as a result of this development, various interpretations of the health status of modern democracy. But the focus point of the debate, nonetheless, is the assumption that web

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Contemporary digital democracy debate spans over a much wider context, covering topics such as governmental involvement, intellectual property, access to information, gender etc. Here, I will focus on the debate that centers on the assumed democratic potentials of web technology development.

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technology can help, either to restore or revive, modern representative democracies (Dahlgren, 2009).

As will be demonstrated through this study, the strategic use of online communication, is partly dependent on the values one ascribe to technology and its potential, indicating (different) ideological understandings. Much of the contemporary writings on the democratic potentials of web technology are sprung out of a historical debate that has centered on the dichotomous relationship between technological determinism and social determinism (Jenkins & Thorburn, 2003). Simplified, this debate concerns the fundamental question of whether technologies have some inherent democratic qualities, or to the contrary, that technology is like any other aspects of society, largely bound to its societal context in the way it develops. Scholars in general however, seem to agree that both stands run the risk of oversimplifying the complex relationship between technology and democracy (Chadwick, 2006; Dahlgren, 2011; della Porta, 2012). Even so, the contemporary debate is yet to be polarized, resulting in sometimes very different understandings on the capabilities and impacts of web technology (Chadwick, 2006; Papacharissi, 2009). Curators of Sweden is an example of this, being both celebrated and criticized for the concept of a “democratic” Twitter account, which brings us back to the issue of what democratic communication actually entails in practice. With that being said, Papacharissi (2009) points out that how we make use of technologies, and ultimately how we measure the (political) impacts of web technology, seem to depend on the values we ascribe to them: “While it is important to avoid the deterministic viewpoint (…) it is also necessary to understand that technologies frequently embed assumptions about their potential uses, which can be traced back to the political, cultural, social and economic environment that brings them to life. Therefore, it is not the nature of technologies themselves, but rather, the discourse that surrounds them, that guides how these technologies are appropriated by a society.” (2009, p. 230)

Optimists, generally, stress that recent developments in web technology are favorable for modern democracy, pointing out the increased access to information, the new modes of communication between citizens and representatives, and opportunities for increased transparency (della Porta, 2012).

While parts of the debate turn to the democratic deficits facing democracy, other scholars, like Manuel Castells (2009) and Pippa Norris (2011), argue that western democracy does not

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necessarily suffer from de-politicization, but that civic engagement is evolving outside of traditional political structures. In a similar way, Lance Bennett (2008) argues that citizen engagement, especially among youths, is taking other forms than what is usually expected from citizens. The gradually increase of social media use, and the emergence of a more interactive web, is one of the most apparent indicators of such development. What Bennett highlights, to put it shortly, is a development where relying on non-governmental means for engagement is, by some, found to be a more attractive way of engaging, than for instance a visit the voting booth.

Ludvig Beckman, mentions in our interview, similarly, how voters are more transient in their loyalties today which makes it more difficult for political parties to comprehend the political mobility amongst citizens (personal interview, January 16, 2013).

Given these circumstances, web technology have the potential to expand the boundaries of civic engagement and ultimately, political boundaries. One obvious implication of this is that practitioners who want to direct their communication strategies to these publics, which engage in less traditional ways of participation, thus run the risk of miss-communicating. This actualizes the point that communication strategies that rely on outdated views on, for instance, citizenship and (political) behavior might simply not work let alone use the traditional top-down communication methods. Such transformations are thus important to acknowledge as they are a part of the very environment communication practitioners engage in.

Following a critical point of view, some authors claim that technological developments are everything but egalitarian and just, and instead, that exclusion, and hierarchical structures are pervasive elements of modern technology discourse (Fraser, 2011; Habermas, 2004). In example, modern and technologically developed societies are involved in reproducing asymmetrical socioeconomic structures, where the technological infrastructure “connects the connected� to use the words of Pippa Norris, which brings forth the digital divide argument (2001, p.1). At the same time, there are also those who argue a form of status quo. Here a central claim is that web technology is so attached to social and economic structures that it mirrors pretty much the same political and social structures that appear offline (Margolis and Resnick, 2000).

A significant part of the digital democracy debate centers on how the Internet can provide opportunities for deliberation to create a more active citizenship and stimulate civic engagement (Dahlgren, 2009). Benjamin Barber (2003), an advocator of strong democracy, sees potential in web technology as to increase citizen deliberation and providing better opportunities for influencing local matters. Advocates of a deliberative digital democracy emphasize the idea of a virtual public sphere, where exchanges of ideas and opinions can flourish online under relatively free circumstances (Dahlberg, 2007; Papacharissi, 2009). Here, it is argued that not only 296

may the Internet generate two way- or interactive modes of communication to a fairly low cost, it may also have the ability to by-bass corporate and governmental structures of power, making it ideal, at least in theory, for processes of rational deliberation and the creation of a critically informed public (Dahlberg, 2007; Dahlgren, 2009).

However, the abilities for the Internet to facilitate a strong, deliberative democracy is widely questioned (Dahlberg, 2004; Papacharissi, 2009). Habermas (2004) and Papacharissi (2009) argue that the Internet is at risk of becoming a “virtual reincarnation” of the public sphere where economism and commercial interests undermine the conditions and objectives for critical discussion. Similarly, Habermas (2004) warns that instead of being a platform for rational, critical opinion, the virtual sphere, just like the public sphere, has succumbed to commercial interests, such as advertising and public relations, and thus assumed to generate the very opposite of rational communication. When discussing these topics during the interview with Deeped Niclas Strandh, he points out how Twitter as a social medium may turn into corporate “megaphone” tools, rather than being a channel of the individual citizen voice (personal communication, February 19, 2013), highlighting these very developments where commercial interests are “interfering” with social media, thus making the possibilities for democratic communication questionable.

3.3.1 The Virtual Public Sphere The digital democracy debate is often framed within the theoretical concept of the public sphere, developed by Jürgen Habermas (Dahlberg, 2005). Habermas (1997) defined the public sphere as “a realm of social life, in which something approaching public opinion can be formed” (p.102). In principle, the public sphere is open to all citizens to discuss matters of “public concern” or “common interests” independent of market or government concerns (Fraser, 2011 p.58; Dahlberg; 2005). Habermas’ concept of the public sphere is closely linked to the idea of communicative rationality; communication and exchanges of ideas oriented towards a mode of consensus, through the force of the better argument (Habermas, 1997). The formation of a public opinion should thereby be power- or coercion free to serve the common good.

While modern society seem quite different from the thoughts worked out by Habermas, the very idea of a public sphere, that operates outside of government and economic forces, is according to Chadwick (2006), still “meaningful as a normative ideal (...) to judge the existing communication structures” (p. 88). In a similar vein, Papacharissi (2009) argues that rational deliberation still is a valuable outcome of deliberation, but that “the true value of the public

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sphere concept “lies in its ability to facilitate uninhibited and diverse discussion of public affairs” (p. 10-11). She makes a valuable distinction between the two; “(…) a new public space is not synonymous with a new public sphere. As public space, the internet provides yet another forum for political deliberation. As public sphere, the internet could facilitate discussion that promotes a democratic exchange of ideas and opinions. A virtual space enhances discussion; a virtual sphere enhances democracy." (p.11)

As Papacharissi’s distinction highlights, the idea of a virtual public sphere is far from straightforward, and something very different to an Internet that serves as space(s) for “civic talk”.

One central theme in the digital democracy debate is to ask how new structures of communication appear to change the borders of the public sphere. Manuel Castells (2007) argues that the very foundation of the public sphere is changing due to the evolution of a network society, and that the frequency of online communication is expanding the public sphere. One key element in Castells hypothesis is that the state is becoming a weaker form of governance, and thus no longer central in defining the public sphere. Instead he argues, that “the public sphere is moving from the institutional realm to new, online communicative spaces” (p. 238). This development is, according to Castells, characterized by the convergence of two major trends; onedirectional mass communication and of horizontal networks of mass self-communication. Castells describes this as the convergence of two modes of communication; “The interactive capacity of the new communication system ushers in a new form of communication, mass self-communication, which multiplies and diversifies the entry points in the communication process. This gives rise to unprecedented autonomy for communicative subjects to communicate at large. Yet, this potential for autonomy is shaped, controlled, and curtailed by the growing concentration and interlocking of corporate media and network operators around the world” (Castells, 2009 p.135)

The online sphere can as such be understood as an extension of the public sphere, as well as a place of greater autonomy for the public in creating and distributing content. An apparent implication of this is that the gatekeeper role of the traditional media is being reduced, but yet present in the new emerging horizontal media, by the participants, or audiences, themselves.

Castells also highlights the changed role of the media and its political impacts in opinion formation. Skeptics looks upon this development also as a “corporate colonization of cyberspace”

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(Dahlberg, 2005) where democracy is threatened as such tendencies limit the possibilities for critical communication, or “marginal” voices. Castells expands this line of thought and sees a supposed conflict between media corporations with interest in “commodifying” the virtual sphere, yet he acknowledges the emergence of a more autonomous public with greater freedoms to create and distribute information.

This “blend” of commercial and public interest in pursuing the online sphere, is elaborated upon by Papacharissi (2009) who see some “democratic” potential in this development, despite a virtual sphere succumbing to commercial interests. She suggests a hybrid form of the virtual public sphere, which compromises the power of larger corporations: “Online public spaces do not become immune to commercialization. However, they become adept at promoting hybrid of commercially public interaction that caters to audience demands and is simultaneously more viable within a capitalist market” (p. 243)

An example of a compromised hybrid relationship is when larger corporations buy smaller online entities with formats of typically audience-created content. She observes some larger trends like YouTube being bought by Google, MySpace incorporated with News Corporation, or file-sharing network Napster partnering with the entertainment industry. The result of this, she argues, is changed media formats with changed standards of gate-keeping and information structures (2009).

So far, the debate on the transformations of the public sphere is definitely not limited to the theoretical requirements of Habermas. Rather it seems to mirror the many socio-economic trends of contemporary society and a clear skepticism towards the real potentials of deliberative democracy. This is elaborated upon by Chantal Mouffe, who is skeptical of the way the concept of democracy is approached by a “rationalist” deliberative understanding (2005) as it tends to ignore structures of powers. Mouffe’s premises is that reaching a true rational consensus is practically impossible, a mere cul-de-sac and suggests an alternative democratic view built upon the idea of agonistic pluralism. This view, in general terms, is about recognizing the diversity of values, opinions and identities present in public life and to encourage “a clash” between them, instead of promoting an ideal of consensus. True democracy is hindered, she argues, by the principle of consensus in the political life, as clashes between diverse opinions are either being banished or circumvented by this principle. As antagonism is an unavoidable element of society, democracy should be about generating agonism, where the “other” view is seen as equally legitimate. To this background, a public sphere based on rational deliberation and

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consensus is dramatically different to the one that Mouffe advocates, and would subsequently generate very different forms of communication to pursue either ideal.

3.3.2 “The Good Citizen” Theorizing discourses on citizenship8 and civility Historically, citizens have always been encouraged to be civic and to engage in public matters.

As Dahlgren (2009) points out, the term civic resonates with the notion of the public, and is thus outside of the private realm. Civic also implies some kind of engagement in the public life and may also “signify the public good” and “a kind of service, doing good for others” (2009) Moreover, what constitutes desirable forms of civic engagement is closely linked to understandings on the role of the citizen, on the meanings ascribed to citizenship (Bennett, 2008). Citizenship is at the same time generally understood as a concept built upon rights, duties, equality and a form of universalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011). It is also inextricably linked to the organization of the nation state, were citizens constitute a territorial “public” and a civil society separated from the state (Kymlicka & Norman, 2000).

One scholarly approach in the field is to study how understandings on citizenship changes over time, as well as what meanings the concept acquire in different historical and socio-cultural settings. Knight-Abowitz and Harnish (2006) who have studied contemporary citizen discourses in United States illustrate two dominant citizen discourses; the civic republican and the liberal. They conclude that within these discourses “belies a vibrant and complex array of citizenship meanings that have more recently developed out of, and often in opposition to, these dominant discourses (2006, p. 656). The civic republican discourse is largely built upon principles of a strong political community. Good citizenship involves active participation for a “common good” and a “sense of responsibility” to society at large (2006, p.660). In the republican discourse, the political community is not necessarily linked to the state or government but to the civil society at large (2006). Therefore, the civil society is the fundamental sphere for citizenry to take place, and it is also the fundamental place for unity and cohesion amongst citizens. In short, it is the (civic) duties and responsibilities and workings towards a common good that defines the democratic citizen (Dahlgren, 2009).

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The term citizenship is in this context understood as a mode of social agency (Dahlberg, 2009) and not as a legal or formal status. Understanding citizenship as a social agency is similar to McMahon’s understanding of citizenship as “a social practice to be analyzed through contextualized discourses, rituals, laws and institutions” (2012, p. 2 my italics)

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In the liberal discourse, the basic premise is that of individual liberty and democratic rights.

Freedom from any form of oppression prevail this tradition and stresses the virtue of autonomy.

Deliberative democracy has been present in liberal political discourse, and has introduced values of discussion, disagreement and consensus (Knight Abowitz & Harnish, 2006). The ability for the citizen “to reason” and think freely, is important in this tradition and highly associated with “civility” and respecting the rights and actions of others (p. 663).

In contemporary theoretical debate much attention is given to the political impacts of an increasingly networked, individualized society and how transformations in communication structures are changing “the role of citizen” (Bang, 2004; Deuze, 2008; Putnam, 2004). One common assumption is that traditional forms of communication and participation are eroding, and that new forms are emerging, either to replace or reform its predecessors. For instance, it is sometimes argued that the citizen is no longer a passive receiver of information, but more of a consumer because of the new horizontal modes of communication available through digital media (Deuze, 2008). Here, larger trends of individualism and commercialism is claimed to pose a threat to civic- and public values, and that modern society experience an ongoing “atomization” where citizens, instead of being dedicated to public life, turn into “atomized citizens” that may inhibit meaningful participation (2008).

However, there are prominent ideas in this debate that suggests that understandings of citizenship are changing. Lance Bennett (2008) suggests that new communication structures is causing changes in citizen discourse, and as a result, transforming traditional ways of looking at political boundaries. Bennett describes a shift amongst citizens from enjoying a sense of duty towards civic affairs and traditional ways of participating in society, towards engagement for the purpose of personal fulfillment. Bennett’s typology mirrors changes in both attitudes towards citizens and expectations of behavior which ultimately can impact the way one relate to both means and modes of communication.

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Figure 4: The Changing Citizenry: The Traditional Civic Education Ideal of the Dutiful Citizen (DC) versus the Emerging Youth Experience of Self-Actualizing Citizenship (AC) (Bennett, 2008: MIT Press)

3.4 Digital Democracy Ideals The research design in this study is based on Dahlberg’s method of reconstructing rhetorical articulations and practices into positions, i.e. demonstrating discursive patterns in the digital democracy rhetoric and practice around CoS. But Dahlberg’s research on digital democracy also functions as a theoretical framework to this study, as a tool to make sense of the empirical material and to understand the ideological assumptions behind the reactions. I will here outline concepts of democratic theory and digital democracy research described by Dahlberg.

Dahlberg describes some prominent camps and democratic positions that are prevalent in digital democracy rhetoric and practice. These “positions” draws on classical concepts in political theory and have emerged from his research on digital communication rhetoric and practice.

In his article Cyberspace Democracy (2001) he outlines three visions of (digital) democracy in which he explores “how each vision sees the Internet as aiding its cause” (p. 157). In another article Reconstructing Digital Democracy- an outline four positions (2011) he demonstrates the democratic assumption each vision entails in each “position”. These positions are also drawn from established concepts of political theory and critical interpretations from articulations, commentary of the digital democracy debate.

The liberal-individualist approach is according to Dahlberg dominating the digital democracy discourse, and in sharp opposition to communitarian ideals. There is an additional stance that highlights the deliberative aspects of online communication and structures, namely the deliberative stance.

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The liberalist-individualist stance is concerned with the expression of individual interest and is as such open to those communication structures that encourage and facilitates those aims.

From this perspective, new media and online practices are appreciated as long as it is fairly decentralized and opens up for the possibilities of information, expression and the pursuit of own, individual or corporate, interests. Such ambitions typically connotes those of the liberal self, the view on citizenship as “less a collective, political activity, than an individual, economic activity” (Dahlberg 2011, p. 859) The liberal individualist might appreciate decentralized organization forms, but are at the same time different from cyber-libertarians claims a virtual public sphere for “the primacy of individual liberty” as an ideal and where online communication is about maximizing civil liberties without restriction (Thierer & Szoka, 2009).

In the communitarian stance, typical liberal rights as freedom of expression are valued but the fostering of the community and societal developments are yet to be prioritized (Etzioni, 2011). A strong democracy must counter-balance individualist and commercial interest, as the good society is about generating shared values and agreed upon definitions of “the common good”. New media and technology should foster communitarian ideals of responsibilities as well as the promotion of public interests and establishing community ties.

As the name implies, the deliberative stance is based upon the ideals of deliberative democracy that centers on rational dialogue and deliberative means to foster democracy. Benjamin Barber (2003) a prominent figure in deliberative thought, advocates a “strong” democracy where citizens should be encouraged not to pursue individual interest or community, but to be publicly oriented and active citizens. Democracy can here be understood in terms of a consensus, in contrast to the liberal-individual aim of aggregating opinions. New media is here believed to have the capabilities in executing these ideals, especially by extending the public sphere to a rational virtual public sphere of rational communication (Dahlberg, 2011).

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3.5 Self Expression Values and Civility In their theory of Modernization, Inglehart and Welzel (2005) expands the classical Modernization theory by emphasizing cultural conditions as drivers of societal change and democratization. While large parts of the world experience a shift from survival to self-expression values, this cultural change is predominant it affluent, postindustrial societies where survival, i.e. physical and economic security, is taken for granted. These societies tend to prioritize liberating actions, such as freedom of expression, gender equality, and environmental protection.

According to this theory, societies that demonstrate a high level of self-expression values show a stronger demand for autonomous choices and an effective execution of individual rights.

In fact, it suggest that it produces greater levels of (interpersonal) trust and social tolerance, values that are conducive to maintain and strengthen democracy. While such values are individualistic in character, they also demand empowerment “from above” to bring about autonomy to pursue these liberty aspirations. This can be seen as an “emancipation” from cultural and institutional constraints. The key assumption within this line of thought is that it is the broadening of human choice, creating greater autonomy that is the key driving force of democratization, and as such cultural symptoms that also make effective democracy more probable: “Economic development facilitates a shift toward some cultural syndromes associated with individualism and away from some of the cultural syndromes associated with collectivism, resulting in increased emphasis on individual freedom-focused values and reduced focus on traditional hierarchies; these cultural shifts are conducive of the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions” (Inglehart & Oyserman, 2004 p. 1)

There is however a disagreement, rooted in the premises of individualism, whether these values are civic or uncivic in character, and whether symptoms of self-expression are beneficial or detrimental to a democratic society (Welzel, 2010). Welzel, who sees self-expression values as “an emancipative set of orientations (…) that emphasize freedom of expression and equality of opportunities”, argues that these values by all means are civic as their individualistic character generate a sense of “human equality (...) that allows for a generalized form of trust that cuts through group boundaries” (2010, p. 153). Consequently, increased demands for individual autonomy engenders cultures of trust and reciprocity, as forms of social capital that in turn, strengthens democracy.

To the contrary, critics of individualism equates such values to the very opposite, where the self-interests of individuals are served rather than the common good (Welzel, 2010). Robert 304

Putnam argues against the effects of individualism in his theory on the decline of American civil society. In his article Bowling Alone (1995), and in subsequent writings, he demonstrates declining rates in group-based civic activities (such as bowling) that underpins a society’s social capital. Social capital such as informal interactions between people is here a pre-condition for civic participation and his thesis illustrates typical republican values that the civil society is the most important aspect of democratic life.

Putnam’s assessment that modern civil society is on decline is of course debatable, especially with today’s new forms of (online) engagement but yet influential in the political discourse (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). Critics of Putnam does however counter-argue claiming that even though we might experience declining rates in certain forms of participation or communication it does not necessarily imply erosion in civic life. Instead, as Inglehart Welzel and Deutsch (2005) argues, mass self-expression values nurture self-assertive publics and emancipative social capital that motivates various forms of elite-challenging actions pivotal for democratic power relations.

Such predictions becomes meaningful in a context of digital democracy where new technologies are transforming traditional power structures between elites and civilians, governments and corporations. Ultimately, where we locate self-expression values or symptoms we are also locating elite-challenging actions possibly outside of institutional realms, for instance within the virtual public sphere and without of significant governmental control.

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4.

Analysis

The introductory part of the analysis chapter answers the first research question: What discursive patterns that touch upon understandings on democracy and web technology can be found in the reactions to the Curators of Sweden-initiative in US media? I will begin by outlining the discursive patterns evident in the US media commentary and discuss these discourses against the theoretical framework. These patterns emerged throughout the reading of the material following the logic of the hermeneutical circle.

In the second part of the analysis chapter, I will discuss how the reactions to CoS, underpinned by different convictions of democracy, also conveyed different normative ideals on web technology. Here, I will discuss how different, or even conflicting views of digital democracy can be understood from a wider context of communication practice in a digital era.

The last, adjoining chapter is dedicated to a discussion of the results. I will there pinpoint the most significant conclusions drawn from this study and discuss the complexities between democratic understandings and web technology practice, with the CoS as the empirical fulcrum.

4.1 Individual empowerment and the role of the curator One key feature of the CoS initiative is to “empower” citizens through the means of web technology, in this case an official Twitter account. The curators are here “empowered” by both the access to an official communication channel and through the ability to express individual voices. And in the sense that they are given access to an official communication channel aimed at promoting the brand of Sweden, they are as well given the opportunity to “define” the Swedish brand based on their unique view and unmediated narratives. The apparent democratic value lies in expanding the rule of a public matter to the people, and as such, a form of empowerment.

By stressing the individual voice, rather than a collective voice, as well as the ordinary and the authentic, the initiative reflects another dimension to the democratic feature of empowerment. The empowerment aspect extends also to the individual citizen, as the curators are supposed to represent themselves, as swedes, and not the entire population, nor any official image

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of Sweden. The focus on individual representation, or unique voice, is stated in various places where the initiative is promoted. For instance, in the Local: “What we have told them is to continue being themselves on Twitter. They are not to be loudspeakers for an advertising campaign or to try to fit in to some sort of profile” (Martin, 2011 para. 18)

Or as in the official promotion video: “By means of the various curators’ narrations, not one Sweden is conveyed, but several” (Curators of Sweden, 2012)

While the democratic value of the initiative seems to lie in empowering individual citizens, and enabling transparency, what became apparent after analyzing the reactions was that there were different interpretations of what role the curators had, which furthermore impacted on how the initiative was received. Those who acknowledged that the role of the curators was to provide a unique picture of Sweden, by representing themselves as Swedes, they also appreciated the fact that officials actualized the potential of its citizens, seeing it as a democratic gesture. When New York Times reported on the issue in early June 2012, they concluded their article stating: “there is no such thing as a typical Swede” capturing the diversity and authenticity aspect the initiators intended to communicate (Lyall, 2012 para. 4). Another article pointed out that although the curators appear to report only on mundane things and that it as such “does not carry the same weight as updates on the Jan25 uprisings in Egypt” they also concluded: “there is something to be said for the value of giving otherwise anonymous citizens (…) a major platform to share their thoughts about a country’s natural heritage and culture” (Stahl, 2011 para. 3).

There were, at the same time, those cases where the democratic ambition was acknowledged, but where the individual empowerment aspect was questioned. Forbes Magazine dedicated an entire article debating the very purpose with the initiative, one hypothesis being that Sweden wanted to demonstrate its commitment to freedom of speech and another hypothesis implying a naïve outlook from the organizers, Sweden being sort of oblivious to the fact that they had recruited a so called “internet troll”9:

The term Internet troll is net lingo referring to someone who ”posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument” (UrbanDictionary)

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“It’s possible they didn’t know she was a troll. She doesn’t look like a troll. She’s a gorgeous, blond-haired, 27-year-old mother of two. Though if they took a quick look at her blog, there were some pretty obvious clues, including her name there: “Sonja “Hitler” Abrahamsson” (Hill, 2012 para. 4)

Another interesting aspect is that there were reactions that simply did not acknowledge, or even disregarded, that the democratic value was in letting the individual citizen communicate the Swedish brand. Looking closely at those reactions, the role of the curator was here interpreted as a representative for the population, or a semi-spokesperson, and not as their unique selves as Swedish citizens, reactions that were the very opposite of the intention from CoS. LA Times wrote “sure, every individual has an important voice in the chorus - or cacophony- that is a democracy, but should they really be given an online bullhorn to speak for everyone in the country?” (Maltais, 2012 para. 15). Or as in NY Daily where the writer quoted angry comments from bloggers who said “step away from the keyboard” and “You are representing your country” (Roberts, 2012).

What this indicates is that the perception of the curator’s role affected the impression of the initiative, and also framed whether the discussion came to be about the content of the tweets or the very message CoS wanted to communicate.

In the interview with Frida Roberts (FR), she stated that they, the initiative-coordinators, had not discussed different interpretations of democracy, but some democratic elements, such as freedom of speech and transparency (personal interview, January 14, 2013). At that time of the interview I thus wondered whether or not this ambiguity, in how the role of the curator was understood, was due to flaws in communicating the role of the curator effectively. Roberts declined: SR: “Would you say that you (the organizers) were communicating the message clearly enough, that empowering the citizens in this way is of value in itself? And that you (the official Sweden) are not behind each and every tweet?” (own translation) FR: “I think so. We have had many spokespersons (on the issue) so it might also depend on who spoke with the press. But they write what they want anyway. Really. It’s interesting, but also a little bit frightening.” (own translation)

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My question was merely a way to seek out if there were other possibilities to the different interpretations of the role of the curator, and whether the organizers (Visit Sweden, Swedish Institute and Volontaire) had discussed this beforehand, since it had consequences for how the initiative was perceived. This “alternative� interpretation of the role of the curator, as a representative of an entire population, does in my opinion demonstrate one of the possible implications of democracy being employed as an empty signifier. As I take it, the intended role of the curator (enabling the citizens to an independent voice) was to some extent taken for granted, by the organizers, as something unquestionably democratic and appreciated. And possibly so because such a stance represent typical post-modernist values based on emancipative elements such as self-expression, individual autonomy and freedom of speech. But just as the empty signifier may be ascribed universal, and self-evident meanings, it is nevertheless prone to receive additional meanings. Here, some comments reveal ideological assumptions that democratic communication is more connected to representativeness (e.g. country affiliation) rather than freedom of expression of the individual to communicate their own experience or narrative.

As mentioned in the theoretical chapter, postmodern theory suggests that emancipative values are becoming increasingly significant worldwide, but where Sweden happen to rank very high10, and that the broadening of human choice is the essential driving force of democratization (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). CoS does seem to embody some of these values in assuming that expanding the direct rule over a public matter is automatically democratic as it broadens the freedoms of the individual. This understanding of democracy is in this light also fuelled by the assumption that self-expression values actualizes the autonomy of the individual citizen, also meaning that representing his or hers country in any way they want is a form of emancipation and empowerment.

Shifting focus the perceptions of the initiative, what I will demonstrate below is that some of the reactions are in conflict with these postmodernist and individual values.

4.1.1 Explaining the reactions through differences in citizen discourse As mentioned in the theoretical chapter, there are two prominent discourses on citizenship in the US, the civic republican and the liberal (Knight-Abowitz & Harnish, 2006). While the US certainly is a country celebrating liberal rights there is nonetheless a prominent discourse of civic republicanism present in the US that emphasize duties over individual rights, for example

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cf. World Values Survey, 2011

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communitarian values with ideals of social morality instead of rights and individual preferences (Etzioni, 2011). I suggest that the different interpretations of the curator may be rooted in citizen discourses that are in conflict with some typical postmodernist values that CoS embodied.

While the democratic value, from a postmodern, individualist perspective, lie in empowering the citizens through emancipative values such as self-expression and autonomy, the civic republican stance stress not an absolute right to carry out the right of freedom of speech or selfexpression but the prioritizing of the responsibilities the citizen has to the community (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Etzioni, 2011). Such ideals are downplayed in the example of CoS, not only because of the generous freedoms the curators are given, but by the simple fact that the curators are supposed to act as self-mediators rather than spokespersons for any community or identity.

Given that CoS represents typical postmodern values such as the inherent democratic value of self-expression and freedom of speech, it also distances itself from the view of the dutiful, or, virtuous citizen, where citizenship is fostered “through social morality, rather than individual preferences” (Bang 2004, p. 3; Deuze, 2008). Instead, the CoS appears as an empirical example of the fostering of the “atomized citizen” that pursues self-actualization rather than duties, as well as someone who demands empowerment from above (cf. Bennett’s typology of Changing Citizenry in figure 4). Communication practices like CoS may thus be symptomatic of a general development towards individualism in society at large, where individualist rooted values appear as the prime democratic value at the expense of earlier notions that stressed duties and responsibilities (Dahlgren, 2009; Putnam, 2004).

4.2 Questioning the functionality of the initiative The study of the commentaries of the initiative in the US media demonstrate that the intended message, in general understood as “demonstrating the democratic values the Swedish society rests upon” (F. Roberts, personal interview, January 14, 2012), was challenged by a considerable discussion regarding the content of certain tweets, rather than the intended democracy message. Additionally, amongst those reactions that did pick up on the intended message with the CoS initiative, rather than focusing on the content of the tweets, the functionality of the initiative became questioned, reflecting an ambiguity of the value of an unmonitored, or unmediated public voice. A quote in Mashable illustrate this ambiguity, with Berkowits’ paradoxical comment on the initiative. While Berkowits apparently appreciated the idea with the CoS initiative the controversy around it seemed simply too inconvenient.

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“Seeing the clash of sensibilities on Twitter may not be pretty, but it is transparent and bold. At the very least, you can’t deny that it has raised awareness via its cringe factor.”

“It’s so amazing to watch, says David Berkowits, vice president of emerging media at digital agency 3601.” “I’m so happy it’s not my country” (Wasserman, 2012 para. 12)

This quote came at a time when the entire concept of the initiative came into question due to the controversial tweets made by the curator at the time, Sonja Abrahamsson. TIME Magazine (2012) blogged about the initiative with the headline Epic Twitter Fail, and further described it as something “that started innocently enough” (Traywick, 2012 p. 2). New York Times, that initially celebrated the initiative, giving it a front page exposure, linked to a Mashable blog post titled “@Sweden experiment goes painfully awry“ (Haberman, 2012) as did The New Yorker, “The @Sweden campaign goes pear shaped. An example of how to ruin a brand in 1 step. I’m stunned” (Arons, 2012 para. 1).

The reactions that followed were fully centered on the content of both Sonja’s and other curators’ controversial tweets, questioning the functionality of the case. Vanity Fair (Weiner, 2012 para. 1) wrote “The whole thing was very charming in a particularly Swedish sort of way- until now” and marketing magazine AdWeek (Beltrone, 2012) inquired in the article’s headline “How much transparency is good for tourism?” The interesting aspect here is that even though spokespersons for the initiative met the critique, pointing out that the CoS is a matter of freedom of expression, this message did not seem have bearing as the reporting continued to focus on the contents of the tweets. And not only those tweets from Sonja.

The fact that the functionality of the initiative was questioned can partly be understood against different assumptions on how far one is willing to go in empowering citizens with freedom of speech. Debating the limits of free speech is of course not nothing unusual, and certainly not within democracies, but nonetheless, the nuances in and between the reactions had apparent implications in this very setting, as they were rooted in different understandings of democracy and subsequently also diverging assumptions of how to pursue web technologies, like Twitter.

With a significant part of the media questioning the functionality of the initiative, referencing controversial tweets rather than the democratic values of Sweden, the debate turned into demands on regulation and censorship, the exact opposite of the message of the initiative.

Consequently, and due to these different sensibilities on the limits of freedom of expression, the issue of regulation and censorship appeared. Here, Sweden’s stance on censorship seemed to cause some raised eye-brows rather than appreciation: WSJ wrote: “Organizers behind the

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Twitter strategy declined to comment on specific tweets on the @Sweden feed, but appear to be open to letting Sonja continue to say what she wishes” (Stoll & Heron, 2012 para. 1). And TIME Magazine stated: “Sweden’s tourism board doesn’t seem too worked up about it either, maintaining that it won’t censor its curators” (Traywick, 2012 para. 6). Of course, the reactions I refer to did not necessarily advocate censorship, but they did raise the question, while others suggested harder regulations on who should be allowed to tweet. The interesting thing to note is that neither of them accepted the core message, that the value of self-expression and free speech was the primary democratic value.

The many reactions that brought up these issues, on censorship and regulation, extended the debate to an issue of responsibility and, ultimately, the question of what was appropriate behavior for governments to encourage. Huffington Post explicitly expressed that the officials behind the initiative were responsible for what was being said.

“As easy it is to place blame on the current @Sweden for her ignorant and misguided tweets (…) it is the people behind the page who are truly at fault. She is after all, still tweeting freely, still representing the country of Sweden.”11 (Burnham, 2012 para. 1)

To that background there are indicators that there are other, stronger ideals than the right to express individual opinions present in these reactions. I thus suggest that the democratic value of self-expression and freedom of speech, embodied by CoS was challenged by a “regulative” discourse in US media that stressed “order” and “functionality” rather than autonomy as a democratic value. What it further demonstrates is also that there are significant limitations to the democratic value of transparency.

I will in the following section attempt to explain these discursive patterns conveyed in the reactions; the different sensibilities towards the limits of free speech, the discussion on censorship, and the demands of responsibility.

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4.2.1 Explaining reactions through understandings on civility12 Civility has always been a precondition for democracy, as well as an indicator of a functional society (Papacharissi, 2004). According to Etzioni (2011), a prominent scholar of communitarian political thought, explains how the United States, a notoriously rights-focused country, is likewise permeated by discourses that strongly advocate social responsibility and duties to counterbalance this “rights culture”. A central claim in communitarian thought is that responsibilities might even be valued higher than individual rights (2011). In the academic debate, it is argued that contemporary society is constantly engaged with counterbalancing between rights and duties/responsibilities, as well as reacting to the emergence of increased individualism (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Habermas, 2004). The outrage expressed in some of the reactions to CoS, and the demands for responsibility and control, can be seen as a neglect of such responsibilities, either by government or the individual citizen. The initiative was, as pointed out earlier, both celebrated and significantly questioned for the very principle of executing the right of free speech, mirroring this conflicting interplay between rights and responsibilities. Thus, some reactions mirrors a regulative discourse, signaling that the initiative went too far in executing the rights of the individual (the curator) at the expense of individual social responsibility (e.g. towards community and/or other individuals).

The reactions that remarked on the lack of regulation are illustrative also of another discourse.

They are symptomatic of the suggested detrimental effects individualism has for civility and democracy, especially the fear that civil society emerges towards self-centered forms of organization and not towards a common good (Flanagan & Lee 2003; Putnam, 2004). If we recall Putnam’s thesis on the decline of civil society and the lack of social capital, which he links to morals and civility, the demand for regulation found in the commentary becomes sensible. Assumptions that are based on these logics, that indicate top down, hierarchical structures of order, with a civil society as the primary ground for civility, would naturally react to developments that challenge such forms of societal organization. In fact, these logics are in direct opposite to the demands placed by the so called “atomized citizen” who “demands empowerment from above” (Bang, 2004). It is therefore probable that the CoS, situated in a context of online masscommunication with limited demands of control, became the embodiment of such weakening institutions, and ultimately a challenge to the frames for civility. To that background, the “demands” for regulation, indicates a demand for someone to act as “a gatekeeper”, to counteract

Civility here is defined as ”attitudes and beliefs regarding a hypothetical universalized community” (Labigne, 2012)

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and balance the interplay between freedom of speech and responsibilities, but also to safeguard democracy understood against norms of civility and not as expanding the rights of the individual.

One of the conclusions I made earlier about the reactions to CoS was that there was considerable attention paid to the content of the tweets rather than the message of the initiative as a whole. Spurred by the controversies around curator Sonja, there were implicit and explicit discussions on what was “appropriate content” that ultimately lead to the questioning of the functionality of the initiative. Of course, not everyone saw the tweets as controversial or as inappropriate. Some tweets where brought up as mere amusements, including Sonja’s: ”Abrahamsson’s tweets also provided some truly hilarious characterizations of Scandinavian culture. “Swedish prisons are like hotels,” she wrote. “You come to prison as a thug but comes out as P. Diddy” (Arons, 2012 para. 3)

At the same time, many reacted to certain tweets, not only because they were controversial, but seemingly as they reflected “private” or “personal” expressions, revealing skepticism again, towards “self-centered” or “self-mediated” forms of communication.

If we keep in mind the very idea CoS had with the curation concept, letting the curator tweet from their own individual perspective, and as “ordinary citizens” a natural outcome of this is that the tweets will concern just that, ordinary and everyday activities. One author, who was generally impressed by the initiative, used the headline: “This guy holding a chicken- is he the future of Twitter?” (Stahl, 2011). While this headline seems rather harmless, there is a point to be made about the ironic undertone of worry it entails. Rather, it distances the CoS from being understood as a democratic initiative, towards something rather trivial, even silly.

Other articles touched upon similar aspects with references to reality television (Hill, 2012), “shock comic” and parallels between comedienne Sara Silverman and curator Sonja Abrahamsson (Wasserman, 2012). The “humorous” aspect of the Curators of Sweden was of course ignited when the initiative repeatedly appeared on political satirist Stephen Colbert’s television show on Comedy Central. Colbert ironized over the seemingly ignorant tweets by Sonja Abrahamsson, and over another curator who mentioned his fondness of “masturbation” (The Colbert Report 2012a; 2012b; 2012c). Colbert’s reports simply revealed the inability, for “Americans”, to comprehend how such an initiative can be sanctioned “from above” once again reminiscing the disregard of self-expression and free speech as superior democratic values. The initiative may perhaps be noble-, but people will always misuse such opportunities, was somehow the

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implicit assumption and undertone Colbert’s jokes drew on. Rather, it reflected the sympathies of a seemingly “elitist” view on democratic practice, where the CoS- initiative instead serves to prove the point of why democracy is about hierarchy and representation rather than “direct democracy”: simply because the people cannot be trusted. When Colbert continued his musings with the bold claim that he himself was more suitable to represent Sweden, as a curator, than any Swedish citizen, he touched upon other “distortions” of contemporary technology discourse, when new technologies are in the hands of the masses. Colbert here made a stunt where he himself pretended to write down on Wikipedia, “the proofs” for his suitability to be the next @Sweden curator.

If we return to the attention that was given to the comments of “inappropriate” content, that the initiative generated, another article also reacted to the use of private, or personal opinions, but with a less forgiving undertone: “One tweet yesterday for example, offers a disturbing take on what a mashup of the horror flick Seven and fairy tale-movie Snow White might look like (definitely NSFW13). Another draws a dark bizarre connection between Hitler and dolphins (also probably NSFW)” (Betrone, 2012 para. 3)

What this tells us is that the tweets that centered on mundane, trivial and/or private matters seemed to create ambiguity amongst those who reported on the initiative. From a CoS perspective, this ambiguity does not make sense as the value of individual representation of a country, and self-expression outplays other values. Frida Roberts makes this stance very clear in the interview: “This thing about having good taste is incredibly personal, and in a democracy you are allowed to have good taste, but also bad taste” (personal interview, January 14, 2013 own translation)

As mentioned in the theoretical chapter, there are different takes on whether self-expression is beneficial for a democratic society in terms of civic behavior (Welzel, 2010) and a substantial critique suggesting that the emergence towards individualist values creates behavior that puts individual interests, such as self-expression, before the common good (Etzioni 2011, Flanagan

NSFW is a ”web” abbreviation that generally mean ”Not Safe for Work or Not Suitable for Work” (UrbanDictionary)

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& Lee, 2003; Putnam, 2004. Reacting to the tweets that centered on private or mundane matters may be a way to question what common good such communication should generate and to question the execution of rights as the primary democratic value.

I will in the following section explain how the reactions were underpinned by ideals of a virtual public sphere, and ideological assumptions of web technology. This is done, to answer the second research question, and in an attempt to understand the implications divergent views on democracy and web technology may have for strategic communication practitioners in a context of digital communication.

4.3 What should belong in the (virtual) public sphere?

The reactions to the Curators of Sweden initiative does so far demonstrate that the perception of the initiative in the US media were underpinned by ideologically rooted discourses, such as different sensibilities when it comes to civility and the role of the citizen. These discourses seem to reflect different values in evaluating the initiative, either by stressing a more regulated communicative practice as to safeguard certain (democracy) values or emphasizing individual autonomy/empowerment to enhance democracy. There were also patterns that indicated ambiguity towards the use of self-mediation and revelation of “private� matters, implicitly questioning the democratic value individualistic trends.

In the theoretical chapter I mentioned the hypothesis by Manuel Castells (2007) that new forms of communication practices are changing the borders of the public sphere, and that new interactive and networked forms of communication expands the public sphere. For example, Castells claims that the ideals on the democratic dialogue are renegotiated through the increased use of mass self-expression. Following this hypothesis, that the global emergence of mass selfexpression is extending the public sphere, liberal and communitarians would supposedly have diverse opinions on what democratic ideals a virtual public sphere should entail and also react differently to new communication realities. If we return to the ideals represented in CoS, encouraged by the means of self-expression, it suggest a democratic ideal that implies extended boundaries of the public sphere, towards less regulation, increased autonomy and a move beyond the domains of institutions. It also suggests that the border between what is considered public and private is negotiated in this context as well, with different convictions on what should be meaningful (democratic) communication. As shown, there are apparent discourses present in the US media, which challenge these ideals, and where more regulatory aspects are emphasized.

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Below, I will demonstrate how norms and ideals of the public sphere translates into a hypothetical virtual public sphere, and how it became visible in the commentaries around CoS. The commentary gives us an indication on different democratic ideals for online communicative practices, in a virtual public sphere, that potentially sets the premises for the execution of strategic communication in terms of (democratic) digital strategies.

4.3.1 Sweden embodies values of (cyber-) libertarianism The discourse in the commentary that suggested regulation rather than self-expression as ideals indicate that Curators of Sweden appeared, by some, to have gone too far in executing the right of freedom of expression and, ultimately, that democracy is not strengthened by (communication) efforts that promote such values. In fact, some commentaries reveal the exact opposite, that too much focus on individualism is a move towards Libertarianism, and arguably, a threat to democracy because of the lack of regulation. This was conveyed with multiple, more or less implicit, references to cyber-libertarianism and the assumption that regulation is needed to safeguard democracy against anarchistic tendencies. One of the first reports on CoS was titled “In Sweden Twitter is democratic and filesharing is a religion” (Goodman, 2012a), an article that focused more on the cyber-activist group Kopimisterna than the CoS-initiative. Forbes also picked up on the theme of piracy and cyber-freedom: “Sweden wanted to dramatically show how committed it is to freedom of speech and the power of the unfettered Internet (…) “This is the land of the Pirate Party after all” (Hill, 2012 para. 8)

The digital strategy behind CoS is at one point described as “a laissez faire approach” reflecting a slight depreciation to the fact that the initiative is purposely unmediated (Goodman, 2012b para. 3). If one adds these “cyber-libertarian” references (filesharing and piracy) to the discourses on regulation found in the commentary, the image of Sweden appears almost anarchistic, being either senseless or naïve towards the potentials of the Internet. What these reactions touch upon is the inevitable question of how, and whether, the internet should be subject to regulation, either by governmental involvement or other forms of institutionalized gatekeeping.

It also relate to the conclusion I made earlier that this regulative discourse bear witness also to limitations for organizations to pursue transparency.

The “fear” of a virtual sphere without regulation and gatekeeping enters the discussion here indicating that social media/web technology is something to be not only cautious about but 317

possibly also detrimental to democracy. But regardless of the CoS appearing as either silly, naïve or borderline anarchistic, more interesting is the fact that diverging assumptions of technology affects not only how communication efforts are received but also the way online practices are carried out- that the meanings and connotations to technology determines affects strategy. As shown, some of the commentaries were in sharp contrast to the brand values in the strategic idea behind CoS; to use Twitter as a component in their branding strategy to demonstrate, or activate, some core values of the country- Sweden being technologically advanced and innovative, capable of utilizing web technology for not only “social” but democratic purposes (F. Roberts, personal interview, January 14, 2013)

4.3.2 Is it meaningful communication?

One of the most essential aspects of the public sphere is that it should contain public dialogue (Dahlberg, 2011; Habermas, 2004). As shown in the digital democracy positions worked out

by Lincoln Dahlberg (2011) there are variations on what a “meaningful” or “democratic” dialogue in the virtual public sphere entails. While the organizers behind CoS used Twitter to acquire cost-effective publicity, the idea of using the concept of curation and the promotion of self-expression illustrates an affinity with the liberal-individual view of the internet; a place for pursuing individual interest, self-expression and unfettered opinion formation (Dahlberg, 2011; Dahlberg, 2009). What CoS does at the same time, is to extend the ideal of pursuing the interest of the individual even further by encouraging the individual representation of a national identity. Recalling the many reactions that failed to acknowledge that the curators were representing themselves as individual Swedes and not the entire nation, it seems that the organizers behind CoS is picking up the marketing trends of personalization and adapting it to a policy matter of democracy.

While the idea of using Twitter as a tool for public voice was not criticized per se, it was the functionality and idea of having an unmediated Twitter account that seemed to cause the mixed reactions. For communitarians who see potential in using online communitarian forums for the purpose of enhancing community ties (Dahlberg, 2009), the very idea with having a curated Twitter account could possibly seem like a desirable attempt to both strengthen “local” community ties (between Swedes) as well as between other communities e.g. between countries or between individuals with “shared interests” a central ambition within the communitarian discourse of democracy (Etzioni, 2011). But as the controversies revealed, the democratic function became questioned as other “civic” ideals were cherished higher than self-expression. It became

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more problematic of course given that some people saw the curator as a representative of the country Sweden, resulting in the assumption that tweets would hurt the own “community” i.e.

Sweden as a country, or swedes as a group. By judging from the reactions underpinned by communitarian values, CoS simply caused fragmentation instead of building civic ties between communities or individuals, nor did it strengthen any meaningful democratic dialogue.

The different ideals of seeing the virtual sphere, either as a platform for possible “diverse opinions” i.e. the many different (world) views and experiences, or as a facilitator of community becomes apparent here. Naturally, organizers behind CoS did not experience the controversies in this way, nor did they question the functionality of this digital strategy. Instead, one acted upon the premise that there is a certain value to this “clash” of views, i.e. authenticity and transparency. The apparent reason here is simply because they stressed another democratic ideal, the ability to express the many different expressions and narratives from a multitude of individuals. Translated into an online setting, cyberspace is utilized not only as a place for plurality but possibly also dissent, which resonates a democratic view closer to the one of agonistic pluralism, rather than the ideal of consensus. Here, CoS seem to distance itself from the ideal of a consensus-oriented public sphere by encouraging a public sphere where differing takes on Swedish culture and identity is encouraged as it strengthens transparency and authenticity.

4.3.3 Balancing between public and private matters There was also the element of civility that permeated the responses, something that was clearly demonstrated by the focus on the content of the tweets. As suggested in the earlier chapter, some tweets were seen as un-civic in character, e.g. that they did not add anything meaningful to a hypothetical democratic dialogue for a virtual public sphere. The sense of ambiguity towards the fact that the curators tweeted about ordinary, everyday activities, might be explained by an inherent conflict on where to draw the line between public and private affairs. In the Habermasian ideal of communicative rationality, meaningful dialogue in the public sphere dictates a distinction between public and private matters (Habermas, 1984; Papacharissi, 2002).

I dare not speculate to what extent such an ideal have an impact in today’s society but according to Castells (2007), the networked society, induced by mass self-communication, is changing the borders of the public sphere, and thus also the boundaries between what is private and public. The horizontal networks of communication that Castells is referring to are defined by prin-

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ciples of self-mediation and not institutionalized gatekeepers which would naturally create content that is more focused on the self. Initiatives like CoS seem symptomatic of this development, where the blurred boundaries between what is public and private equates with transparency.

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5. Conclusion

This study emerged from the observation that democracy often appears as a ubiquitous and selfevident concept in the rhetoric and practice of digital democracy, but at the same time seems to encompass a very broad spectrum of ideals and practices. This inspired me to explore the dynamics between ideology and web technology in a contemporary setting where democracy is used as a strategic tool, with the purpose of generating more knowledge of how democratic discourse and communication practice work synergistically in shaping attitudes towards web technologies, and how it in turn affects our strategic approaches in a context of digital democracy. The case of Curators of Sweden is a unique example of a situation where the strategic use of democracy yielded very different outcomes in audience responses, bearing witness to the complex relationship between ideological assumptions and web technology, and the implications of democracy being employed as an empty signifier in digital communication strategies.

Having analyzed the US media reactions to Curators of Sweden, the empirical findings reveal different ideological assumptions on key components of democracy, some of them being in direct conflict with the democratic values inherent in the Curators of Sweden-campaign. While CoS embodies typical emancipative values, such as self-expression, and extending the right to freedom of speech, it also suggests its democratic value in pursuing an unmediated public voice, and by the means of web technology, ensure and expand autonomy for the individual. In contrast, a significant part of the reactions downplayed the democratic values of self-expression and transparency by invoking the ideals of civic responsibilities and duties, ideals that generated a debate on regulation and censorship, the very opposite of the transparency values proposed in the strategy behind the campaign. These reactions mirror a regulative discourse that is critical of the “emancipative� capabilities web technologies may bring, as they might generate too much autonomy at the expense of other democratic values Furthermore, by looking at the ideological underpinnings in these reactions, and by connecting the regulative discourse to ideals embedded in a hypothetical virtual public, some generic patterns evolved suggesting differing views on what democratic values cyberspace should be organized around. While the CoS embodies ideals of an expanded public sphere by the means of web technology, towards less regulation and increased autonomy, the regulative discourse 321

suggest a need for gatekeeping to balance between rights and responsibilities, as to safeguard democracy from too much autonomy.

Arguably, the ideological conflicts identified in the commentaries are illustrative of the dynamics between assumptions on the capabilities of web technology, democratic understandings and strategic communication practice (cf. figure 1.) What some of these conflicts also revealed were examples of how opposing democratic ideals and assumptions of web technology affected the strategic idea behind the campaign, namely whether Curators of Sweden was understood as a meaningful democratic initiative or not.

Consequently, these empirical findings forces us to reflect upon how different understandings of democracy affects the premises for strategic communication practices in forming digital strategies. Here, the Curators of Sweden-campaign is an example where one wish to use web technology to establish more egalitarian, or horizontal relationships with its publics and at the same time use democracy as a strategic tool in this pursuit. But the regulative discourse, manifested in the reactions, does not only mirror other ideals for digital democracy practice, but shows that there are limitations to the ideals of pursuing more egalitarian, or symmetrical structures of communication, an ideal that is widely influential in both communication theory and practice (Grunig, Grunig & Dozier, 2006).

Moreover, what this regulative discourse also imply is different assumptions on whether power should lie in the hands of representative/institutionalized structures or amongst individuals, a predicament that is actualized in today’s communication environment where we see an increase in online mass self-expression and user-generated content (UGC), as well as a development where the professionalization of information is “outsourced” through practices like curation. These are practices where organizations strategically actualize the potentials of its audiences, by the means of web technology, as to achieve corporate goals. But again, the findings from the empirical case of CoS suggests that there are boundaries to the ideal of pursuing more decentralized forms of communication, as it does not necessarily equate symmetry with democratic enhancement. An assumed consequence of this is of course that “proponents” of the regulative discourse would be less willing, or even oppose, communication practices that imply decentralized power structures and communication forms that appear to celebrate the primacy of individual autonomy and self-expression at the expense of other democratic values, i.e. civility.

Ultimately, it raises the question on what democratic value any given communication effort promote, and what the outcome of such practice would be. Organizations may frame any digital strategy as “democratic” but in practice serve potentially different (democratic) ideals which 322

complicates our possibility to adequately evaluate the political effects of digital strategies that use democracy strategically.

From a management perspective, ideological conflicts on web technology, like those highlighted in this empirical example, should encourage reflection not only on stakeholder attitudes, in a culturally diverse- and networked society, but also on democratic or ideological assumptions within the own organization, as it may affect the decisions of how to carry out digital strategies. Also, the ability to balance between own ideals and cultural variations are similar strategic concerns to help reduce the risk of miscommunicating with stakeholders. For policy makers and diplomats, whose practice depend on relationship building and effective communication, such sensitivity should be crucial, especially when operating in virtual public spaces, beyond “local contexts”, to culturally diverse publics.

To conclude, using democracy as a strategic tool is largely about using web technology in a way that fit with own values, ideals, or policies. But there are vulnerabilities in pursuing democracy as an all-encompassing rhetorical tool, as the ideological conflicts experienced in the reactions to Curators of Sweden bear witness to. This study thereby suggest that strategic communication practitioners, especially practitioners and scholars with an interest in public diplomacy and nation branding, can benefit from developing sensitivity of the socio-cultural and ideological dynamics that surrounds the use of web technology.

Suggestions for further research For future research, looking at the debate in other “locations” than what was done in this study should be encouraged if it adds to a better understanding of the implications of this case. The debate that occurred in the blogosphere is particularly interesting to analyze in conjunction with the debate in the media as it may generate competing narratives on the issue of Curators of Sweden as an empirical example of democratic communication. In theory at least, the blogosphere might reveal other discursive patterns that may be in contrast to, or different from, the (democratic) discourses in printed media. della Porta (2012) for instance has studied media biases towards social movements and describes a potential bias or tension between activists and journalists, activists being more likely to use social media as a communication tool. This might illustrate other discursive patters in locations in the media landscape where there are other, possibly discourses of a more counterbalancing nature involved in the discourse.

Furthermore, the use of social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, is a fairly new form of diplomatic practice (Hanson, 2011). From a national context, Swedish public diplomacy is

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modernizing its use of web technology and in the recent Statement of Government Policy (February 13, 2013) Sweden gave a clear example on how public diplomacy practices and related governmental efforts are adapting to new communication realities, proclaiming: “Public diplomacy is becoming increasingly important. Before the end of the month, all of our embassies will be on Twitter and Facebook� (Utrikesdeklarationen, 2013). But digital diplomacy, amongst embassies and consulates, is currently used mainly as one-way communication (Brandel, May 18, 2013), thus missing out on the interactive capabilities for relationship building. Although the CoS by its design and purpose is more connected to PR-diplomacy and branding and the place marketing of Sweden, rather than formal diplomacy, the CoS is a unique example of new forms of public diplomacy, and an empirical example of innovative ways to democratize branding practices.

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6.1 Attachment 1: Interview Frida Roberts Frida Roberts Head of Communications Swedish Institute (Svenska Institutet) Contact: 08-453 7879 Monday January 14, 2013 Swedish Institute, Stockholm The interview was conducted in Swedish and can be translated upon request.

INTERVJUGUIDE

Presentation av studien samt syftet med intervjun: Forskningsdesign, Syfte och Utgångspunkt  

Kan du beskriva din roll som enhetschef på Svenska Institutet?

Vilken roll hade du i utformandet av Curators of Sweden-initiativet

PRISBELÖNT PROJEKT  

Varför tror ni att just CoS vann priset?

Hur väl speglar projektet vår mediala samtid?

CURATION SOM KONCEPT 

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Tydlig fördel att låta svenskar ge egna oregisserade erfarenheter eftersom trovärdigheten stärkssamtidigt är nation branding initiativ baserat på traditionella marknadsförings-principer, med tydligt uttänkt budskap och målgrupp osv. vad var det som lockade?

Curation är örhållandevis nytt inslag, men curation/crowdsourcing förekommer i andra sammanhang också, inte bara i turistbranschen: Varför tror du att det idag finns ett behov av att förmedla en ”autentisk bild”? Har folk slutat lyssna på typisk reklam? På experten? Är det ”det alternativa” kommunikationssättet som är värdet i sig?

En del av kritiken har varit att en autentisk bilden av Sverige kommer fram genom att låta vanliga svenskar twittra och att en oförskönad lika gärna kan ge en orättvis bild av Sverige- att det rent av skadar varumärket Sverige. Hur resonerade ni i det sammanhanget?

Vad sades kring eventuell negativ press? Hur förberedde ni er inför eventuellt negativ press?

Hur väljs deltagarna?

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DEN MEDIALA UPPMÄRKSAMHETEN och REAKTIONERNA (Från start december 2011 och vidare)  

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Vad hade ni för förväntningar på projektet i termer av både ris och ros?

Valet att inte censurera innehåll har genererat mycket uppmärksamhet. Att inte heller kommentera särskilda tweets eller kuratorer. Det finns samtidigt vissa förhållningsregler: hur har ni hittat en balans mellan den frihet som ges till kuratorerna och vad som helt enkelt inte kan uttryckas på @Sweden. Vad finns det för motiveringsgrunder?

Skulle du säga att ni har varit generösa i vad som tillåts? Hur bemöter ni kritiken om att ni har varit för generösa? Har folk missat poängen? Den demokratiska poängen?

Vad skulle behöva hända för att publiciteten verkligen övergår i negativ publicitet? Finns det en sådan gränsdragning?

Vid fallet Sonja Abrahamsson, som varit mest uppmärksammat: Var det någonsin aktuellt att inte låta henne fortsätta?

Var ni beredda på eventuella ”troll”?

Hur skulle ni beskriva uppmärksamheten initiativet fick genom att Stephen Colbert uppmärksammade er? Fördel? Nackdel?

DEMOKRATI som marknadsföringsverktyg 1. Initiativet kallas för ”the world’s most democratic twitter account” : Vad ges ordet ”demokratiskt” för innebörd i sammanhanget?

Handlar det främst om att ”alla svenskar får komma till tals?” eller ”att Twitter-kontot är oregisserat?”

Fanns det andra aspekter av projektet som också gör det demokratiskt?

2. Vilken betydelse hade begreppet demokrati rent strategiskt i marknadsföringen?

3. Diskuterades eventuella nackdelar med att använda just demokrati som kärnbegrepp i beskrivningen av projektet?

4. Försvårades någonsin projektet genom att ni hävda att projektet var ”demokratiskt” Ponera att projektet hade skett på VisitSweden eller SI;s hemsida, och inte kopplat till @Sweden, officiella Twitter-kontot. (Inget hindrar ju någon från att Twittra som svensk ändå?) Hade det gjort någon skillnad?

5. Har ni varit tillräckligt tydliga med att kommunicera innebörden av begreppet, och reflekterat kring eventuella andra synsätt på demokrati? Yttrandefriheten är ju oerhört kontextberoende, och dessutom allt annat än allmängiltig, en utgångspunkt som jag tar fasta på i min under-

sökning.

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6.2 Attachment 2: Interview Ludvig Beckman Ludvig Beckman, Professor, Department of Political Science Stockholm University Contact: ludvig.beckman@statsvet.su.se Wednesday January 16, 2013 Stockholm University, Frescati The interview was conducted in Swedish and can be translated upon request.

INTERVJUGUIDE    

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Presentation av studiens syfte och utgångspunkt i demokratiska diskurser.

Vill du kort berätta om ditt forskningsfält? Jag tänker främst på det som är inriktat på hur synen på medborgarskap förändras.

Vad har varit mest intressant i din forskning kring medborgarskap och demokratiska problem?

Hur ser du på Ny, digital media som ämnesområdet- vad är de viktigaste aspekterna att forska kring? Du kan uttala dig för statsvetenskapen och utifrån din forskning.

Om vi går in på den samtida idédebatten kring demokratiska potential i ny media: Den deliberativa tanken har ju varit framträdande, vissa deliberativa värden som dialog och medborgardeltagande är vanliga, hur ser du på den diskussionen? Att deliberativa ideal kan fungera som alternativ till trasiga representativa demokratier? Vad är din allmänna inställning till den debatten?

Utöver de deliberativa tankesättet, hur har den allmänna politiska debatten följt den akademiska?

Vilka tänkare är mest tongivande i den allmänna debatten?: Habermas, Putnam? På vilket sätt avgör de demokratiska diskurserna som finns representerade i media hur vi ser på hur hur demokratin påverkas? Och vilka potential ny media har för demokratisering?

Vilka politiska (demokratiska problem) kommer inte fram i debatten?

Vad finns det för problem med konsensus-tänkandet? (Mouffe och agonistic demokrati) Det demokratiska samtalet på sociala medier, inte alltid särskilt konstruktiv: är informella samtal av betydelse ändå?

Kan man tala om en virtuell offentlig sfär?

Demokratiska värden, retorisk funktion. Demokratisering genom teknologi, men också en teknologisering av demokratin- förenklat? Förytligande? Kosmetisk demokrati? Ingen reell inverkan?

SYNEN PÅ MEDBORGAREN och deltagande (politiskt såväl som i det civila samhället) Hur har synen på den goda medborgaren förändrats? Vad finns det för nya aktuella medborgardiskurser? (The liquid citizen, citizen as consumer, den autonoma?)

Vad krävs för att alternativa synsätt på medborgarskap, och (kanske rent av på demokrati) ska få ökad plats bland de dominerande, liberala och republikanska?

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Om man tittar på politiskt deltagande i form av sociala rörelser så har det historiskt sett ingen nyhet, men dagens Occupy-rörelser sägs representera en ny form av politisk mobilisering. Hur ligger den typen av rörelser i tiden? Vad finns det för ny dynamik representerat där och hur hänger den ihop med demokratiska diskursiva förändringar?



STRUKTURELLA FÖRÄNDRINGAR: Diffus gränsdragning mellan privat och offentligt i postmodernt samhälle: Diskussionen om hur individen blir mer autonom, och att den privata sfären integrerar mer i den offentliga.

Mediaformat som uppmuntrar ”den vanliga människan”, crowdsourcing, personliga bloggar osv. Vad händer med experten när den vanliga medborgaren får tillgång till mer kunskap och större möjlighet att göra sig hörd?



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6.3 Attachment 3: Interview Philip Young Philip Young, Curation and Public Relations, Initiator of NEMO Lund University, Campus Helsingborg Contact: Philip.young@isk.lu.se Friday January 25, 2013 Stockholm INTERVIEW GUIDE PRESENTATION OF STUDY   

Presentation of Curators of Sweden and objective with case study.

Objective with CoS: Create buzz, elevate brand visibility Reveal preliminary results.

  

Variations in responses in US Media: Brilliant-democratic, foolish/risky:lack of quality Lack of quality-argument: being a swede is not enough to be the new expert.

Conflict between group identity values and individual values of self-expression.

CURATION in Contemporary Democratic Society      

Could you tell me a little bit your relation to the concept of curating, and perhaps also a little bit about how the NEMO project came to be and how it relates to the field of content curation?

If you were to name some major trends affecting the development of Curation and similar concepts, such as Crowdsourcing, what would that be?

How would you say curation fit into digital democracy debate?

There has been some discussion about the effects of personalized content; affect quality?

Lot of discussion that Curating is changing the role of journalism and as a result in the formation of public opinion: what would you say are the most important indicators of this?

What is the biggest problem facing curation today in terms of practice?

ADDING “THE HUMAN” ELEMENT to CONTENT AGGREGATION (The difference between content curation and content aggregation)    

What do you think about Rosenbaum’s definition?

Anyone can curate, but not everyone can create value. Is that an unfair distinction do you think? Is that maybe the missing link in the case of CoS? Context dependent?: Sharing individual stories of travel destinations is one thing, but representing a brand name, nation brand is another.

Can crowdsourcing and/or Curating be a form of exploitation?

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THE ROLE OF THE CURATOR     

Curators are representatives of Sweden (editors) (Live reporters) How can this be understood in terms of brand value development?

How can curation be managed in terms of strategy, how do we balance creativity from the curators and overall strategy? Especially in terms of branding.

Do you think CoS was successful in this achievement?

To what extent do you think the concept of curate will affect traditional marketing principles?

They will have to work in conjunction with each other?

PERSONALIZED CONTENT   

CoS is about social and common storytelling- the citizens tell their stories about their Sweden.

What explains this drive for more personalized content and authenticity? Other values?

It leads to the question of content quality. The blurred boundaries between private and public.

Why are we re-defining the role of the expert?

Should one include content that not everyone agrees with to create buzz?

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6.4 Attachment 4: Interview Deeped Niclas Strandh Deeped Niclas Strandh Title: Social Media Expert, Brand Planner, Digital Strategist at United Power, Co-partner Deepedition DigitalPR and blogger at digitalpr.se Contact: niclas@digitalpr.se Tuesday February 19, 2013

This interview was conducted in Swedish         

      

Vill du att jag tilltalar dig som Deeped?

Du har diskuterat CoS i olika mediasammanhang, bland annat på Webbdagarna med Svenska Institutets Maria Siv. Vad är din generella uppfattning om CoS som varumärkesinitiativ?

Att integrera sociala medier i just marknadsföringen av Sverige: Är det ett hållbart sätt att arbeta strategiskt när det gäller platsutveckling (jmf.. varumärkesutveckling) CoS är ett nyskapande men riskfyllt initiativ. Anser du att det skadat varumärket Sverige på något sätt? Isf, hurdå?

Lyckades man med autenticitets-ambitionen? Förmedlade man den bilden på ett lyckat sätt?

Vad var den avgörande faktorn till att det blev omtalat?

Vilken roll tror du demokratiaspekten hade? Mindre uppmärksammat?

Det vore riskfyllt att tulla på icke-censur-aspekten. På vilket sätt var kravet på icke-censur nödvändigt? Fans det något behov av starkare/tydligare riktlinjer?

Reaktioner: av kritiker i amerikansk media finns mycket som tyder på att fokus på att man gått för långt att när det gäller privatlivet. I CoS är kommuniceringen av ”den vanliga människan” central, något som dessutom ligger i tiden. Hur ser du på kritiken om att man är för privat ute på sociala medier?

Finns det alternativa sätt att förmedla demokrati-autenticitetsaspekten?

Det har spekulerats kring att även icke-svenskar kan komma att ta över kontot. Hur tror du bilden av initiativet skulle förändras i sådant fall?

Hur hänger autenticitetsvärdet ihop med att det är vanliga svenskar som twittrar?

Tappar man i autenticitetsvärde genom att låta turister twittra om sina upplevelser?

Tror du man skulle kunna använda sig av kungen till exempel? Är konceptet kring Curation- hållbart långsiktigt?

Om intresse finns så mejlar jag dig gärna antingen uppsatsen i sin helhet alternativt de utdrag där du är citerad.

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資料，及其開放 (open data)

Janssen, M., & Zuiderwijk, A. (2014). Infomediary business models for connecting open data providers and users.

Social Science Computer Review, 32(5), 694-711.

Khan, G. F., Hoffman, M. C, & Misztur, T. (2014). Best practices in social media at public, nonprofit, education, and health care organizations. Social Science Computer Review, 32(5), 571-574.

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Infomediary Business Models for Connecting Open Data Providers and Users

Social Science Computer Review 2014, Vol. 32(5) 694-711 ÂŞ The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0894439314525902 ssc.sagepub.com

Marijn Janssen1 and Anneke Zuiderwijk1

Abstract Many public organizations are opening their data to the general public and embracing social media in order to stimulate innovation. These developments have resulted in the rise of new, infomediary business models, positioned between open data providers and users. Yet the variation among types of infomediary business models is little understood. The aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the diversity of existing infomediary business models that are driven by open data and social media. Cases presenting different modes of open data utilization in the Netherlands are investigated and compared. Six types of business models are identified: single-purpose apps, interactive apps, information aggregators, comparison models, open data repositories, and service platforms. The investigated cases differ in their levels of access to raw data and in how much they stimulate dialogue between different stakeholders involved in open data publication and use. Apps often are easy to use and provide predefined views on data, whereas service platforms provide comprehensive functionality but are more difficult to use. In the various business models, social media is sometimes used for rating and discussion purposes, but it is rarely used for stimulating dialogue or as input to policy making. Hybrid business models were identified in which both public and private organizations contribute to value creation. Distinguishing between different types of open data users was found to be critical in explaining different business models.

Keywords social media, infomediaries, intermediaries, open data, open data ecosystems, business models, apps, e-government, open government, web 2.0

Introduction The opening of public sector data has recently gained considerable attention. In 2003, the European Union (EU) Public Sector Information (PSI) directive was released. PSI was based on two ideas: (1) enabling public sector data to become available to third parties at low prices and under unrestrictive conditions and (2) ensuring a level playing field among data users (European Parliament and 1

Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands

Corresponding Author: Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5 (Building 31, Room B3, 150), Delft, 2628 BX, the Netherlands.

Email: m.f.w.h.a.janssen@tudelft.nl

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Council, 2003). In this way, the EU government wants to make public information widely available.

PSI instructs governments not to use public data in exclusive deals with private companies that would create information monopolies. In 2009, the American President Obama issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (McDermott, 2010; Obama, 2009). The European Commission then published an open data strategy in 2011 (European Commission, 2011). In 2012, the Obama Administration published the Digital Government Strategy, which aims to provide citizens with digital government information to spur innovation and improve the quality of data services (Obama, 2012). In May 2013, the Obama Administration published another open data-related memorandum (Obama, 2013) and released the Historic Open Data Rules to Enhance Government Efficiency and Fuel Economic Growth (The White House, 2013). The publication of data has the potential to facilitate the innovative use of this data (Borzacchiello & Craglia, 2012; Dawes, 2010; Neuroni, Riedl, & Brugger, 2013; O’Riain, Curry, & Harth, 2012) and has many other advantages as well, such as the ability to tap into the intelligence of the crowd, improved policy making, accountability, and transparency (Janssen, Charalabidis, & Zuiderwijk, 2012; Zhang, Dawes, & Sarkis, 2005). Open data policies aim at stimulating innovation and already have resulted in a wide variety of initiatives from both governments and companies.

When releasing the European Union Open Data Strategy in December 2011, Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes (2011) portrayed data as the new gold. The European Commissioner believes that open data boost the European economy by €40 billion per year (European Commission, 2010).

Businesses commercialize new ideas through their business models (Chesbrough, 2010). Nowadays, the world is witnessing the growth of new initiatives and business models, facilitated by social media and fueled by open data. Government agencies are increasingly using social media as a means to interact with their constituents (Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012), whereas more and more data are being opened to make governments transparent and to generate new businesses and economic growth (European Commission, 2010; Kulk & Loenen, 2012). Social media rely on usergenerated content—‘‘users’’ being the end users of the information or the general public. Open data refer to public sector data that are made available for use by the public at large.

Open data and social media are considered to be web 2.0 developments. Web 2.0 refers to the delivery of software over the Internet, user-generated content, the consumption and remixing of data from multiple sources, and increased network effects due to more participating users (O’Reilly, 2007). Open data combined with web 2.0 technologies represents a relatively new and emerging way of facilitating interactions between governments and their clients (Chun, Luna-Reyes, & SandovalAlmaza´n, 2012). Social networks have altered politics and engagement with politicians and citizens (Baumgartner & Morris, 2010; Groshek & Al-Rawi, 2013). Social media are about communication and interaction structures through the relationship between the government and citizens (Khan, Young, Kim, & Park, 2013) and mediate interactions between governments and their clients (Sandoval-Almazan & Gil-Garcia, 2012). Social media combined with open data provide endless opportunities for developing all kinds of new initiatives. These initiatives are positioned between open data providers and users and can be labeled infomediary business models. The term infomediaries was introduced by Hagel and Rayport (1997) to describe a broker or an agent who helps users to manage the vast amount of information and safeguard their privacy. Over time, this concept has broadened to mean the handling of information between information providers and consumers.

Infomediary business models can be initiated by either the public or private sectors and are aimed at supporting the coordination between open data providers and users.

The initiatives driven by social media and open data that are coming into existence represent a variety of forms, such as apps and portals. The open data and social media movements are making large quantities of new data available. In addition, sophisticated techniques for data gathering, visualization, and analysis have expanded our ability to understand, display, and disseminate complex temporal and spatial information to diverse audiences. The novel use has resulted in the 342 Downloaded from ssc.sagepub.com at Selcuk Universitesi on February 3, 2015

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establishment of open and collaborative-based business models (for instance, Ferro & Osella, 2012; Ferro & Osella, 2013). Although business models are often associated with revenue and profit, they can also be aimed at generating public value (Janssen & Kuk, 2007; Janssen, Kuk, & Wagenaar, 2008). The relationship between those who provide the data, generate the value, and earn the money is not straightforward, and business models can help to provide insight into this. E-government business models aim at using the Internet to add value for the constituents in areas ranging from service delivery to political involvement (Janssen & Kuk, 2007; Janssen et al., 2008). Business models contain the rationale and elements required to accomplish certain objectives (Keen & Qureshi, 2006). As such, business models can be operated by both the private and the public sectors, although their underlying motives might be different. Yet there is limited insight into these new types of business models and what their essential differences are. Although there are many anecdotal examples, hardly any overviews capture the variety of new business models that have arisen. The aim of this article is therefore to obtain more insight into the variety of infomediary business models in the Netherlands that are driven by open data and social media. We do this by describing the analysis we described in case studies of open data that employ a variety of new business models in the Netherlands and using these cases to derive a set of business models. In addition, we use the cases to point out two variables that influenced our categorization of business model types.

This article is structured as follows. In the next section, the background of the business models is presented, followed by the research approach. Thereafter, the cases are presented and analyzed and the outcomes are discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn and recommendations are presented.

Business Models The origins of business model concepts can be found in the field of ‘‘e-commerce’’ so coined by Timmers (1998). He developed a classification of e-commerce models based on their provision of one or more functions and their degree of innovativeness. The functionality ranges from single function business models, such as an e-shop, to fully integrated functionality, for example a product market. The degree of innovativeness ranges from simply developing an electronic version of a traditional way of doing business to creating an entirely new virtual community business model.

There is no uniform definition or view on what constitutes a business model, and various routes toward further developing this concept have been pursued. Business models can occur at the regional, national, local, or institutional level (see for example Khan & Park, 2013). Afuah and Tucci (2000) define a business model as the method by which a firm builds and uses its resources to offer customers better value. The term ‘‘business model’’ refers to the way in which an organizational strategy and its web-based systems are connected (Hedman & Kalling, 2003). Business models are derived from an organization’s mission and strategy and contain the logic and rationale to generate value (Keen & Qureshi, 2006). Generally, it is accepted that a business model is an abstraction focused on a particular aspect under study, aimed at describing the organizing logic for delivering value. Open data and social media business models create new value propositions by using and processing open data from one or more sources and employing social media.

The e-commerce literature provides a large number of business models (Afuah & Tucci, 2000; Mahadevan, 2000; Rappa, 2002; Timmers, 1998; Weill & Vitale, 2002) as well as a few e-government (Janssen & Kuk, 2007; Janssen et al., 2008) and participation business models (Panagiotopoulos, Al-Debei, Fitzgerald, & Elliman, 2012). Some of these provide a comprehensive list of models, whereas others provide atomic business models that can be combined to create new models. Weill and Vitale were among the first to use atomic business models in classifying e-commerce websites (Weill & Vitale, 2001). They identified eight atomic business models.

Specific business models can be created by combining atomic business models.

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Recently, the emphasis shifted from business models to generic models. Al-Debei and Avison (2010) derived a unified business model framework based on a comprehensive review of the literature. They argue that the model provides an abstract but holistic view and that the fundamental dimensions are value based. There are four relevant aspects to the business model framework: 1. Value proposition—the business logic for creating value for customers by offering products and services for targeted segments, 2. Value architecture—an architecture for the technological and organizational infrastructure used in the provisioning of products and services, 3. Value network—collaboration and coordination with other organizations, and 4. Value finance—the costing, pricing, and revenue breakdown associated with sustaining and improving the creation of value.

New business models and practices driven by social media and open data have hardly been investigated. Exceptions are the analyses of companies in the United Kingdom (Hammell, Perricos, Lewis, & Branch, 2012) and a classification of social business models based on the revenue model (for instance, Ferro, 2012; Ferro & Osella, 2012; Ferro & Osella, 2013; Ubaldi, 2013).

Based on the analysis of a number of companies in the United Kingdom, five archetypes of business models can be identified (Hammell et al., 2012). These include (1) suppliers—public and private sector organizations—publishing the data, (2) aggregators linking open data to produce useful insights, (3) developers—organizations and individuals—building apps, (4) enrichers using open data to enable their existing products and services, and (5) enablers facilitating the supply and use of open data. Ferro and Osella (2013) identify the following models: 1. Premium—end users are offered a service or product in exchange for payment.

2. Freemium—basic services or products are offered free of charge. Profit is made by having end users pay for extended features.

3. Open source like—data are offered for free through cross subsidization.

4. Infrastructural Razor and Blades—data sets are stored for free and are accessible to everyone via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) (‘‘razors’’), while reusers are charged only for the computing power that they employ on demand in as-a-service mode (‘‘blades’’).

5. Demand-oriented platform—the company provides developers with a one-stop shop of data sets that are catalogued using metadata. Revenue is made in exchange for advanced services and refined data sets or data flows.

6. Supply-oriented platform—this business model is quite similar to the previous one, but the PSI providers are charged in lieu of developers.

7. Free as branded advertising—the company uses PSI as a tool to attract attention from customers by providing them with useful services. The company expects that the public will then favor its particular brand or company. Revenue is expected not to come directly from PSI, but from other business lines that represent the company’s core business.

8. White label development—a company wants to use PSI as an attraction tool but does not have the competencies required to do so. The company then uses an advertising factory, which receives payment in the form of a lump sum or recurring fees in exchange for turnkey solutions, depending upon whether the solution is in the form of a product or a service (Ferro & Osella, 2013).

The revenue model can be payment by open data providers or users in the form of (1) recurring fees, granting access for a specific time period, or pay per use, (2) advertisement, or (3) ensuring visibility for creating revenue for other activities (Ferro & Osella, 2013). Although these eight options describe a complete array of possible business models, they are derived from the revenue 344 Downloaded from ssc.sagepub.com at Selcuk Universitesi on February 3, 2015

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Data providers Public sector data

Private sector data

infomediary business models

Users (ci zens, businesses, public organiza ons, researchers, ‌)

Figure 1. Position of the infomediary business models in the public–private ecosystem.

point of view and do not capture the user point of view, networks, or other aspects of business models. As such, these can be better labeled as revenue models.

These types of business models can act as a kind of intermediary between open data providers and users. Resnick, Zeckhauser, and Avery (1995) suggest that intermediaries are important in markets because of five limitations of direct transactions that can be better managed by intermediaries: search costs, lack of privacy, incomplete information, contracting risk and pricing. Bailey and Bakos (1997) classify electronic intermediaries into four roles: aggregating information, being a trusted agent, facilitating the market, and matching buyers and sellers. These four generate value for the providers and users.

The sources of value of intermediaries might come from specialization and from economies of scale and scope (Bakos, 1991; Clemons & Row, 1992; Lee & Clark, 1997). With specialization, each ecosystem member specializes in performing certain functions. Specialization in a network typically creates dependencies among participants that need to be coordinated. Economies of scale can arise from building and managing a system of substantial size and functionality (Bakos, 1991). New business model developments are often characterized by a steep learning curve. Often this requires considerable investments and the creation of a strategy to attract and retain large groups of users.

Open data business models can leverage these investments over a larger number of public and private participants. Economies of scope can be obtained by sharing operational facilities and information collection among a number of businesses (Bakos, 1991). The advantages from network externalities increase in proportion with the number of participants, and the costs can be divided over more businesses. Economies of scale can arise from building and managing a system of substantial size and functionality.

Web 2.0 business models for open data and social media can be positioned between open data providers and users. In particular, new infomediary business models face the challenges of including both public and private components and acting as an infomediary between open data providers and users, as depicted in Figure 1. The new types of business models require a complex mix of public and private components. A change in one of the components influences the others and might even disrupt the whole process. Both public and private parties can make their data available, and both of them can employ the use of the data. These data might be used directly by users or might be intermediated by new types of business models. Notably, the open data portals established by governments often provide tools for searching and using data. New business models are also initiated by private parties to make money from the open data.

In this research, we used existing classifications of business models and varieties of the unified business model to derive infomediary business models. We will analyze the sources of value.

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Research Approach There is limited insight into the variety of business models now coming into existence, which are driven by social media and open data. In view of this, we opted for interpretive, multiple case study research. A variety of cases were investigated, using systematic protocol. We selected a number of case studies to ensure diversity (Yin, 2003). An important aspect of any case study is the careful selection of cases, as this helps to define the limits when generalizing the research findings (Eisenhardt, 1989). Cases can be selected in two ways, namely by statistical sampling or by theoretical sampling (Eisenhardt, 1989). Statistical sampling refers to acquiring accurate statistical evidence on the distribution of variables within a specific population, whereas in theoretical sampling, cases are chosen because they are expected to replicate previous cases, extend emergent theory, fill theoretical categories, or provide examples (Eisenhardt, 1989). The selection of cases for this research is based on theoretical sampling, as open data are a relatively new field in which existing theory seems inadequate and also because we wanted to cover a diversity of business models and it is still unclear which specific population is involved in the field of open data. In addition, theoretical sampling makes it possible to compare cases with regard to their subject and to generalize their findings. Moreover, one of the aims of this research is to extend the theory, which makes theoretical sampling an appropriate approach for our case study selection. To allow for theoretical sampling, a list of criteria was created to make explicit which characteristics the cases needed to have. The criteria were based on the operationalization of the open data process.

The cases employ open data and social media.

The cases represent a diversity of business models and topics.

The cases represent open data publication or use in the Netherlands.

Case study information should be available and accessible.

We opted for investigating a variety of business models instead of a large number of similar models. Based on these criteria, 12 cases were selected from an overview of cases found in the Dutch national open data repository (https://data.overheid.nl/) and by looking at award-winning apps (http://nationaleappprijs.nl/voorbeelden-van-apps/). By exploring different types of cases, we were able to compare them and identify their differences, similarities, and discriminating variables, ultimately arriving at a number of business models. All the cases were explored by performing desk research, which included studying websites, applications, and (policy) documents. For each of the cases the value proposition, architecture, network, and user value were analyzed.

Infomediary Business Models for Connecting Open Data Providers and Users in the Netherlands In this section, infomediary business models are derived by analyzing the cases in terms of value proposition, architecture, network, and finance. We used the four categories of the unified business model framework to describe the cases (Al-Debei & Avison, 2010). The category ‘‘value finance’’ is in business models solely focused on profit-driven companies. This aspect was extended to include public values that better serve public sector purposes. Table 1 provides an overview of this investigation.

Table 1 shows that the relationship between the use of open data, the value generation, and the use of a social media network was often not straightforward and was found to be subject to change.

Value of open data and the use of social media can be achieved in many different ways and by different stakeholders. For example, the development of new apps is often facilitated by hackathons initiated by the government, whereas the operation of these apps can be done by private or public organizations.

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The Interactive Historical app uses geo-location to A comparison of current pictures of a Combined funding from determine the location of the user and shows you governments, businesses, and place with older pictures of that historical films and pictures that were taken close same place, based on information social institutions. The app is by. Pictures and films can be viewed at that available at an app store and photos uploaded by users moment, and users can tag it and add relevant information. They can also upload pictures themselves. Users can share photos with other users using social media, such as Facebook and Twitter

The national air quality measurement provides Users can contribute to the app by Government funded, developed, information about air quality, such as the level of connecting their iPhone and and operated. Citizens are ozone, nitrogen, and the concentration of fine measuring the concentration of users and need to register to particles per geographical area fine particles where they are. This be able to interact information is aggregated with geographical information, and the data are opened to the public

Interactive historical information (http:// www.vistory.nl/)

National air quality measurement (www.lml.rivm.nl/ index.html)

(continued)

Funded by the government to improve the quality of living (provides public value)

Funded by government to stimulate learning about history and to ensure the linkage of history to actual geographical developments

Restroom finder is an app that uses open data to find Geo information to determine the Government provided the Government-operated, no revethe public restroom nearest to your location. nue, provides societal value incentives for the development location and user-generated input This app uses open data about restroom and operation of the platform. to compare restrooms locations, and users can plan their route to the Developed by hackers (private restroom. It concerns an app that was developed persons) and used by citizens during a hackathon

Government pays for the private sector data and makes it available

Car Spotter provides a private sector app based on payment per use (via short message service or computer)

Public Value (Value Finance)

Restroom finder (http:// www.wcvinder.nl/)

Solar atlas information Solar atlas information shows whether houses are Interactive app in which users can The Dutch government funded, (http://www.zonatlas.nl/) suitable for generating solar energy by means of adapt calculations and designs of developed, and operated this solar cells on the roof. This assessment is made by solar cells; information aggregator model to realize its policy combining private sector data, including weather in which data from various objectives data, data about the sunray setting, data about the databases are combined angle of inclination of roofs, and data about the shadow situation. This app is public sector initiated to encourage the adoption of solar energy

Car Spotter is a company that provides information Processing information by connecting The company is the business about the value of cars based on data found in the to a source database and showing model developer and public vehicle administration combined with the results operator, and citizens are additional information from car manufacturers paying customers and estimations about cars from the car market

Value Network

Car Spotter (www.carspotter.nl)

Value Architecture

Value Proposition

Name (Website)

Table 1. Overview of Business Models.

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(continued)

Broad range of public values

At this moment, the website of the municipality of Nijmegen provides 36 data sets. The website provides an overview of the data sets that the municipality provides in different formats. The only possible interaction between the data provider and the user is via e-mail

Open data Municipality Nijmegen (http:// www2.nijmegen.nl/ content/1130026/ open_data)

Government funded and operated. Companies and citizens are possible users of the data.

10,000 schools provide information about most Delivers transparency. If users This app enables schools to add data Operated and developed by a primary, secondary, and special education schools want large files with overviews and offers the possibility to company and supported by in the Netherlands. The information is based on compare schools with each other various public agencies. of many schools, they can buy data from the schools inspectorate and Citizens can use the data to them via http://www.dezaakon management information provided by the compare the quality of schools derwijs.nl/? portfolio_itemÂź schools. The schools are compared on various duik-in-onze-database aspects, including the type of school, religion, environment, and the number and background of students and teachers

10,000 schools (http:// www.10.000scholen.nl)

Open data repository providing access to a large number of data sets

Users can show on a map where burglaries, theft, This is an interactive app for a single Police and citizens create Private company independent of and other crimes have taken place and can purpose, namely the comparison content. Developed and the government. The initiative subscribe to receive e-mails about certain crimes of crime between different places. operated by a private company has some sponsors and places in their own neighborhood. In this way, an overUsers can add crime information, some advertisement on its view of the crimes per area can be compiled. which is aggregated and can be website Users can add data and use the data, for instance viewed using a geographical map in selecting a place to live. The Dutch Police uses the data to detect patterns in crime and to develop intervention policies

Public Value (Value Finance)

Criminal chart (www.misdaadkaart.nl)

Value Network

9292ov.nl provides data from various transportation This app aggregates information from Developed, operated, and funded Funded by public transport organizations in the Netherlands, including data various organizations about by a company which is a companies and offered to about trains, buses, and trams. Users can use a modalities like bus and train to collaboration between all make travel planning easier website or download the app and plan a trip using calculate routes public transport organizations their preferred modalities in the Netherlands

Transportation planner (9292ov.nl)

Value Architecture

Value Proposition

Name (Website)

Table 1. (continued)

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Data.overheid.nl provides over 5,400 data sets on An open data repository from which Government funded and various topics. The website mainly shows an users can request data sets operated. Companies and overview of data sets, without any services that citizens are possible users of allow for the reuse of the data. Data sets can only the data be uploaded by the public sector. The portal enables very little user interaction; only requesting a data set and discussing it via Twitter are enabled

Statistics Netherlands provides considerable An information repository and Government funded and statistical data on many different topics. information aggregator in which operated by an independent Integrated services and tools are provided for data from various databases can be public agency dynamically selecting, visualizing, and analyzing combined and compared by users data. Social media are used to engage data and where users can process and providers and data users and to discuss data sets visualize data

Engage provides different types of data and tools for A service platform in which users can Development is funded by the data providers and data users (e.g., citizens, request data sets, work on data European Commission and researchers, and companies) to collaborate in sets in groups with other users, developed and operated by data use. Integrated services and tools are and upload and link derived data various (semi-) public and provided for data users who can view, visualize, sets. Data from various databases private organizations analyze, curate, extend, and link data sets and can be combined and compared. other items. Anyone can upload data sets. Social Users can add and discuss data media are used to engage data providers and data users and to discuss data sets. A ranking system is included to rate data sets, and motivation can also be included.

Statistics Netherlands (www.cbs.nl)

Engage (www.engagedata.eu)

Value Network

National Dutch open data portal (www.data.overheid.nl)

Value Architecture

Value Proposition

Name (Website)

Table 1. (continued)

Improving the utilization of open data

Improving policy making

Broad range of public values

Public Value (Value Finance)

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Examining the value architecture for the 12 cases reveals that using information from one or more sources and processing and aggregating this information are important architectural components.

The information can be directly used by citizens or for comparison.

The value network analysis shows that several roles can be identified from the 12 studied cases.

First, the government plays an important role by stimulating open data initiatives and facilitating the operation of business models. Most business models are stimulated and run by the government. For instance, governmental agencies organize hackathons to stimulate the creation of applications, fund the maintenance of the business model, or operate the business model. As such, the government plays a crucial role and the idea of reducing the role of government to only the opening of data while the private sector takes care about the use (see Robinson, Yu, Zeller, & Felten, 2009) is still an illusion. Second, a few business models are operated by private companies. The role of business can include the development and operation of the business model. Third, citizens play a role by providing content to the business models (user-generated content). For instance, in the ‘‘Interactive Historical Information’’ application, citizens can add pictures that are related to content which is already available. Business models can also integrate citizen opinions on certain topics or improve applications. For example, citizens can report on wrongful information in the ‘‘Misdaadkaart’’ application, in this way interacting with the app.

Sometimes the business models are supported by both government and businesses or societal organizations. For businesses, there seem to be few benefits of running independent business models, unless they want to contribute to public values or enhance their existing service offering by providing additional functionalities. The latter can help to retain users and make visits to their websites more attractive. Generating euro revenues from these business models is difficult, because open data licenses often do not allow the provider to charge money from the users. The way companies can generate money is by enriching their existing business models using open data and making them more attractive. This can help to attract new customers and retain existing ones. The only way to generate money seems to be to charge for advertisements, for telephone interactions using short messaging service messages, and for e-mail interactions and payments via the Internet.

Instead of generating revenue, these new business models are often aimed at generating public values. Some businesses consider this a task of the private sector, and some citizens are personally very motivated to do this kind of work. Most of the new business models are indeed founded and operated by public organizations and nongovernmental organizations. Government roles include stimulating open data initiatives, operating business models, and providing funding. Business roles include developing and operating the business model.

The social interaction forms were found to be quite diverse. Some apps did not support any form of interaction. Service platforms, on the other hand, integrate with existing social media and/or provide their own social interaction features, including rating data sets and facilitating comments and discussions about the use of the data. Users can share their own experiences and data via these platforms.

Several cases have different ways of retaining users. In some, users can only use the data and cannot upload or manipulate it themselves; whereas in other cases, users can provide content and the service platforms are flexible and allow users to manipulate the data. As such, the role of users varies from merely reading content to actively contributing to the content. Although apps provide a prestructured user interface, are based on a predefined view of the data, and already have processed the data for a certain use, service platforms provide the flexibility for users to view the raw data and to manipulate and visualize it. In summary, we found that the six business models differ based on two main variables.

1. Level of access to data: the level of prestructuring can be viewed as providing users access to raw data or predefined views. If data are predefined, the data can only be viewed but not manipulated, and no alternative views can be generated. Apps are typically used to display 350 Downloaded from ssc.sagepub.com at Selcuk Universitesi on February 3, 2015

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information (e.g., weather information) in a user-friendly manner, but one cannot use the raw data (e.g., to make his or her own weather predictions). On the other hand, open data repositories and service platforms provide access to the raw data, giving the users the opportunity to reuse the data more freely.

2. Level of dialogue: The level of interactivity can be one-way communication of data, in which users can only view the data, to full interactivity in which users can rate the data, provide feedback on the quality, and add information to it.

Based on these variables, we derive atomic business models as shown in Figure 2. The level of access is written in the text about how the data is processed. Whether the app is one way or two way is depicted by a one-directional or two-directional arrow.

All infomediary business models can be developed and operated by either public or private organizations. The business model might be initiated by public events (hackathons) but operated by private party, yet when a best practice is adopted the roles can be reversed. The following six business models were identified.

1. Single-purpose apps provide real-time services such as information about weather, quality of restrooms, vehicles, houses, and pollution. These apps often provide a single function, based on one type of open data provided. The app processes the data and presents it visually for the ease of the users.

2. Interactive apps: In addition to single-purpose apps, this type of business model provides users the opportunity to add content. Ratings are often included, as is additional information such as complaints.

3. Information aggregators take many published open data sources and combine and process them for subsequent presentation to the users. An example is a transportation planner that aggregates information from various transport modalities and companies. Often interoperability is a challenge that requires agreements among data providers.

4. Comparison models: This type of business model aggregates open data from various sources for the purpose of comparing the performance of entities with each other. For example, it can be used to compare schools and other public organizations. The data can originate from official sources (school inspection) or from users (criminal chart) and used by citizens (in determining a school for their children or a place to live) and public organizations (in developing measures to improve schools or for crime interventions).

5. Open data repositories are used by governments to publish their information. These can be national open data portals or more specialized portals, such as websites of statistical agencies. The essence is that these portals are relatively closed and only a limited number of public organizations can publish open data on them. There is little to no user interaction, and the focus is on being able to indiscriminately open data sets. Searching for open data is a key aspect, although it is often difficult to find the right information. They can provide basic functionalities for processing and visualizing data.

6. Service platforms: These platforms provide all kinds of features for searching, importing, cleansing, processing, and visualizing information. Service platforms often contain open data repositories or are connected to open data repositories that function as the data source. Service platforms can vary in the level of openness; some are based on payment (e.g., www.junar.com) whereas others are free of charge (www.engagedata.eu).

These atomic business models can be combined to represent the cases. For instance, the Solar Atlas case shows that a single-purpose app, an interactive app, and an information aggregator can be combined in one case. Combining the business models may result in more value, as users can 351 Downloaded from ssc.sagepub.com at Selcuk Universitesi on February 3, 2015

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App

Aggregated informa on

App

Data

Data

Data

Data

Data

Business model 1: Single purpose apps

Business model 2: Interac ve apps

Compared informa on Data

Data

Business model 3: Informa on aggregators

Service pla orm

Open data repository Data

Business model 4: Comparison models

Data

Data

Data

Business model 5: Open Data repositories

Data

Data

Data

Data

Business model 6: Service pla orms

Figure 2. Visualization of the six identified infomediary business models for connecting open data providers and users.

then use open data in different ways. Table 2 shows the mapping of the cases in relation to these six atomic business models.

Discussion There is a large variety of business models facilitated by social media and fueled by open data. The goal of opening data is to make the data available for use. However, there is often a large number of 352 Downloaded from ssc.sagepub.com at Selcuk Universitesi on February 3, 2015

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Table 2. Overview of the Six Business Models Identified in the 12 Cases.

SinglePurpose Apps

Name (Website) Car Spotter (www.carspotter.nl) Solar atlas information (http:// www.zonatlas.nl/) Restroom finder (http:// www.wcvinder.nl/) Interactive historical information (http://www.vistory.nl/) National air quality measurement (www.lml.rivm.nl/index.html) Transportation planner (9292ov.nl) Criminal chart (www.misdaadkaart.nl) 10,000 schools (http:// www.10.000scholen.nl) Open data Municipality Nijmegen (http://www2.nijmegen.nl/ content/1130026/open_data) National Dutch open data portal (www.data.overheid.nl) Statistics Netherlands (www.cbs.nl) Engage (www.engagedata.eu)

X X

Interactive Information Comparison Open Data Service Apps Aggregators Model Repositories Platforms X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X X

X

X X

X

X

X X X

X X X

X X

X X

X X

barriers preventing open data from immediate use (Janssen et al., 2012; Zuiderwijk et al., 2012).

A main question is whether these business models result in more or less openness of the data. Bluntly put, the level of openness is the highest when data are opened in such a way that it can be manipulated and processed by users, implying that the business models do not predefine a certain view on the data. Yet, this has the disadvantage that users have to do all the work of processing, interpreting, and making sense of the data. This can create too high a threshold for users, as they often do not have the time and capability to conduct these activities. The higher the level of prestructuring, the easier it becomes for users to access the data (just by using an app). In particular, business models operated by private organizations ensure easy access and use. The disadvantage of this is that users are passive and tend to consume data in the same way as passive viewers consume radio or television programming, instead of engaging in dialogues and trying to find new ways of using open data. For this reason, we suspect that the whole spectrum of infomediary business models is needed, as they each target different open data users and different use purposes.

Some users have the capability, knowledge, and time to search, process, and make sense of data, whereas others just want to have quick answers and easy access to functionality and data. A high level of predefined views lowers the threshold of use at the expense of higher costs and less or no innovative use (except when going back to the source of data). For users, it is easy to access the data and view the results without having to execute complicated tasks. Providing less structure and access to raw data increases the barrier of use, as this requires higher skills and capabilities on the part of the users. Typically, researchers, experts, policy makers, and others who are well educated can make use of these business models. For these user groups, this gives more freedom and can result in novel uses of the data.

Users have different capabilities and prefer different types of business models. Even a single user might prefer an app for his or her daily business but prefer the use of a service platform for specific in-depth analyses. Coexistence of business models is likely, as they target different user segments.

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Our framework allows one to distinguish between different customer segments, which are critical factors in business model coexistence.

Many of the business models are based on collaboration among various organizations in the ecosystem. Governments stimulate the development and exploitation of business models by organizing hackathons, and public organizations can operate a business model. Typically, hackathons are stimulated, supported, and sponsored by public organizations, and they aim to stimulate the development of innovative ideas and apps to be exploited by businesses. Public organizations, too, can exploit new business models. For example, the development and operation of the solar atlas by public organizations is done to stimulate the adoption of solar cells. In this way, citizens can easily find out what the possible yield of solar cells is on the roof of their house, simply by entering their address information.

Within the ecosystem, organizations specialize in certain aspects. In this way, economies of scope can be obtained by sharing operational facilities and functionality. A typical example is using Facebook and other social media as interaction platforms instead of creating their own social media functionalities. Economies of scale can be obtained by having a large user base. In general, it appears that no single organization can perform all functions and business models effectively and efficiently, meaning that dependencies and collaboration are necessary and inevitable in ecosystems. Often collaboration is required between public and private organizations, as they provide complementary value-adding activity. For example, governments providing real-time weather or pollution data should ensure scalability, availability, service levels, and other necessary conditions to ensure that the apps operated by companies can function uninterrupted. Another example of such a dependency is that using social media to retain users is typically an activity that private parties are good at and governments not. Governments can use the business models operated by companies to target a larger user base. Governments should serve all citizens, including the nondigital, whereas private parties can focus on a certain group and make it attractive for users to join a community.

It is not likely that governments will be able to create social communities such as Facebook or Twitter. Public organizations should therefore consider building alliances with organizations that exploit social media business models. When designing a business model, organizations should adapt an ecosystem view to understand how added value can be created for users by taking advantage of already existing models and making use of them. Developing a business model requires making a conscious decision regarding the position in the value network of the ecosystem. Duplication of existing functionalities is often not feasible, as the customer base and number of users create the value and cannot be easily replicated, although functionality can be copied easily. Several business models we researched were developed by recombining new functionalities with elements already in existence, such as Facebook. In fact, much of the functionality might already be available, and leveraging existing business models and making use of the ecosystems are key to the development of new infomediary business models.

Conclusions A whole range of new business models is emerging, adding value by making use of open data and combining it with social engagement. Business models are the logic behind creating public value for society and/or revenue for companies. Open data and social media-driven web 2.0 business models are a new phenomenon based on a collaborative-based system of governance characterized by an interplay between public and private elements. The impact and promises of open data should come from the development of new infomediary business models positioned between open data providers and users. In this article, we have aimed to identify the variety of infomediary business models driven by open data and social media in the Netherlands. The case studies revealed that there is a large number of infomediary business models driven by social media and the opening of data. Based 354 Downloaded from ssc.sagepub.com at Selcuk Universitesi on February 3, 2015

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on an extensive analysis of case studies, we identified six types of business models, that is, singlepurpose apps, interactive apps, information aggregators, comparison models, open data repositories, and service platforms. The whole spectrum of infomediary business models is needed, as they each target different open data users and different purposes of use. The two main differentiating variables of these intermediating business models were found to be the following: 1. Level of access to data: The level of access to raw data differs considerably among business models. Apps often provide a predefined view on data, providing easier usage at the expense of higher costs and less innovative use, whereas access to raw data often increases the complexity of use but gives more freedom and can result in novel data usages.

2. Level of dialogue: Some business models simply present open data, while others provide the opportunity for user-generated content or dialogue with other users and providers. In the various business models, social media are sometimes used for rating and discussions but rarely to stimulate dialogue or influence policy making.

There is a variety of new business models: some are based on a single data source, whereas most of them are based on integrating data and using existing social media. Public data are worth more if you give it away (Kroes, 2011), but the cases show that it can become even more valuable when combined with social media to include user-generated content and opportunities for dialogue. Hybrid models in which public and private organizations are involved were found, and each organization contributes to value creation. This suggests that an ecosystem view should be adopted to understand how added value can be created for users by taking advantage of already existing models and social media. For practitioners, the variety of business models implies that they should not focus on a single model or app. Instead, entrepreneurs should consider various types of business models and can use the models presented in this article to derive the business model that fits best the open data users and circumstances. Furthermore, the uncertainty and developments suggest that existing business models should be reassessed continually to ensure a fit with the environment.

The business models concept adopted in this article helps to describe relationship between those who provide the data, generate the value, and use the data. Well-articulated ‘‘business models’’ can be used for understanding and translating open data into public value. As the business models are part of an ecosystem, we recommend adopting an ecosystem view in the value network dimension.

Both researchers and practitioners should adopt an ecosystem view when investigating open data and social media. The unified business models are adopted to account for both public value and revenue. A fundamental change in the nature of value creation is happening, and it is likely that new innovative forms of business models will emerge in the coming years. Service platform business models will likely gain more functionality, and apps will likely be developed more easily and will offer more functionality than the single functionality they often offer nowadays. These developments suggest the need for a regular reassessment of the business models found in this research in which the models found in our research can be used as reference models. As business models provide an abstract view, as such we also recommend making detailed analyses to understand the operation model and implementation decisions. Finally, we recommend analyzing the paths resulting in the development of business models. Some business models are initiated by users to deal with a concern, others by businesses to generate (more) revenue, and some by hackathons organized by governments or businesses. This can provide insight for businesses and policy makers to stimulate the development of new business models.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Funding The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper is related to the ENGAGE FP7 Infrastructure Project (An Infrastructure for Open, Linked Governmental Data Provision Towards Research Communities and Citizens), which started in June 2011. The authors would like to thank their colleagues of the ENGAGE project for their input toward this paper.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the project.

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Author Biographies Marijn Janssen is a full professor of ICT and governance at the Technology, Policy and Management Faculty of Delft University of Technology. He is a director of the interdisciplinary master program Compliance & Design Management. He is an associate editor of Government Information Quarterly (GIQ) and the International Journal of E-Government Research (IJEGR), serves on several editorial boards, and is involved in the organization of a number of conferences, including IFIP EGOV and ICEGOV. For more information visit www.tbm.tudelft.nl/marijnj.

Anneke Zuiderwijk is a researcher in the ICT section of the Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management at Delft University of Technology. Her research focuses on the development of a socio-technical infrastructure that improves the use of open data. For more information visit http://www.tbm.tudelft.nl/over-faculteit/afdelingen/iss/sectie-ict/medewerkers/anneke-zuiderwijk-van-eijk/.

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Article

Best Practices in Social Media at Public, Nonprofit, Education, and Health Care Organizations

Social Science Computer Review 2014, Vol. 32(5) 571-574 ª The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0894439314525024 ssc.sagepub.com

Gohar Feroz Khan1, Mark C. Hoffman2, and Tomasz Misztur3

Abstract Interaction facilitated by social media is becoming an integral part of life in contemporary society, tweaking the human psyche’s deep need to connect. Having changed the creation, sharing, and consumption of information, it must be inevitably integrated into the operation of most human organizations. While some organizations readily adapt themselves to social media, the majority have struggled. This special issue of the Social Science Computer Review investigates different aspects of social media use in government, nonprofit, education, and health care organizations.

Keywords social media, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, best practice, public administration, nonprofit management, education, health administration, emergency management

Introduction Interaction facilitated by social media is becoming an integral part of life in contemporary society, tweaking the human psyche’s deep need to connect. Having changed the creation, sharing, and consumption of information, it must be inevitably integrated into the operation of most human organizations. While some organizations readily adapt themselves to social media, the majority have struggled. While many public-serving organizations are trying to embrace social media, these government, nonprofit, education, and health care organizations have complex legal and ethical environments that create special concerns and constraints. For these organizations, social media can be a challenge to perceived nonpartisanship and fairness; student, patient, victim, or client confidentiality; facility security; employee productivity; protection of intellectual capital; information and reputation management; and regulatory compliance and enforcement processes.

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Korea University of Technology & Education, Cheonan, South Korea Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA Cracow University of Economics, Krakow, Poland

Corresponding Author: Mark C. Hoffman, Grand Valley State University, 401 Fulton Street West #236C DeVos, Grand Rapids, MI 49504, USA. Email: hoffmanm@gvsu.edu

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What Is Social Media?

In the literature, several definitions of social media have been presented. For example, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p. 61) define social media as ‘‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.’’ Based, in part, on the work of Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silvestre (2011), Khan (2013) defines social media as ‘‘an Internet-based technologies/tools/concept that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content while letting users establish (at least one of these) identity, conversations, connectivity (i.e., presence), relationships, reputation, groups, and share contents’’ (p. 2). Social media consist of a variety of tools and technologies such as Wikis, blogs and microblogs, content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites, folksonomies or tagging services, virtual game worlds, and all other web 2.0 platforms that help create and exchange of user-generated contents (Khan, 2013).

Toward Better Use of Social Media This special issue of the Social Science Computer Review journal investigates different aspects of social media use in government, nonprofit, education, and health care organizations.

Public-serving organizations face the return-on-investment (ROI) question when planning their social media strategy. Will the investment be worth it? Deirdre McCaughey and her associates examine social media’s ROI for hospitals. They found a positive relationship between hospital use of social media and patient rating of their hospital experience and their willingness to recommend a hospital.

Once a public-serving organization has decided to engage in social media, the question becomes one of strategy. Using Kent and Taylor’s (1998, 2002) dialogic principles as a framework, Daejoong Kim and his associates study the use of websites, Facebook, and Twitter by nonprofit environmental organizations. They conclude that these organizations should allocate human and financial resource to social media to manage the interactive features of social media. This should be done within a comprehensive strategic plan.

If public-serving organizations decide to encourage employees and volunteers to participate in social media, resistance might be encountered because of the perceived risks in participating.

Perceived risks often include personal embarrassment, loss of privacy, wasting time, and hostile feedback. Khan, Swar, and Lee look at both perceived risks and perceived benefits associated with social network services. Employees of government research and planning agencies were asked about their perceptions of risk and benefits of social networking, and about their personal use of and satisfaction with social networks. The findings indicate that the perceived benefits had a stronger influence than perceived risks on use and satisfaction. Still, the authors recommend that public-serving organizations that wish to promote use of social media might reduce risk concerns by having a sound social media strategy, training employees on legal issues, and limiting access to selected social media tools.

Richard Landers and Rachel Callan are concerned about the dark side of social media. They create taxonomies of beneficial and harmful workplace social media behaviors. They found that behaviors identified as harmful by employees were indeed harmful. However, behaviors identified as beneficial were not beneficial. This disheartening finding suggests a limited value in permitting workplace access to social media and a need for a plan to use social media productively in a work environment.

Maybe one of the most tantalizing public-serving uses of social media is in emergency management. Erik Snoeijers, Karolien Poels, and Colombine Nicolay examine student reaction to university crisis information received through social media. They were unable to confirm expected differences in behavior generated by Twitter and Facebook messages. However, they did find that a message sent by a named person, like a dean, leads to more reactions than the same message sent from a generic university account.

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Using Ryan and Deci’s(2000) self-determination theory as a framework, Xuequn Wang looks at the use of social media by students after China’s Ya’an earthquake. His research suggests that emergency managers may want to consider the connection between social media users’ motivations and desired behavior when constructing their messages.

Hosung Timothy Rhee and Sung-Byung Yang are interested in a different type of crisis management. They want to investigate the best way for an organization to handle serious negative publicity.

They look at two cases involving health industry products, Lipitor and Oxyelite Pro, to gage consumers’ reaction to information. Two aspects of this study are intriguing. First, it suggests what an organization should or should not say after it receives negative publicity. Second, it is a good example of using social media as a data source. In this case, the content analysis of social media is used to measure consumer reaction.

A growing global issue is the growth of open data, that is, large government data sets made publicly available. There is a dearth of research on the costs and benefits of open data and almost none at all on how open data interacts with social media. Marijn Janssen and Anneke Zuiderwijk are interested in this dynamic intersection, particularly the business models that facilitate access to the data. In illuminating the relationships among those who provide data, generate the value, and use the data, the authors’ conclude that data can become more valuable when combined with social media to include user-generated content and opportunities for dialogue.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). User of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53, 59–68.

Kent, M. L., & Taylor, M. (1998). Building a dialogic relationship through the World Wide Web. Public Relations Review, 24, 321–340.

Kent, M. L., & Taylor, M. (2002). Toward a dialogic theory of public relations. Public Relations Review, 28, 21–37.

Khan, G. F. (2013). The government 2.0 utilization model and implementation scenarios. Information Development. (pre-publication version Retrieved from http://idv.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/06/ 0266666913502061.full) Kietzmann, J. F., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54, 241–251.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78.

Author Biographies Gohar Feroz Khan is an assistant professor at Korea University of Technology & Education (KoreaTECH).

He earned his PhD in information and telecommunication technology management from KAIST. His research is published in Online Information Review (OIR), Government Information Quarterly, and Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Scientometrics, Information Development, and Asia Pacific Journal of Information System (APJIS); e-mail: gohar.feroz@kut.ac.kr.

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Mark C. Hoffman is an associate professor and the director of School of Public, Nonprofit and Health Administration at Grand Valley State University. He has published in Administrative Theory & Praxis, Government Information Quarterly, Public Voices, and Public Administration Review. He has also authored and coauthored a number of book chapters. He received the 2002 William and Fredrick Mosher Award for best article by an academician appearing in Public Administration Review; e-mail: hoffmanm@gvsu.edu.

Tomasz Misztur is a research assistant at the Cracow University of Economics (CUE) in Krakow, Poland. He is also a software developer with the Berlin-based FlavourSys Technology GmbH., making software for collaborative video. He has published in edited volume Knowledge, Economy, Society: Transfer of Knowledge in the Contemporary Economy and in the journal Inzinerine Ekonomika—Engineering Economics; e-mail: miszturt@uek.krakow.pl.

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網路社群研究 資訊傳播學碩士班 105 學年度下學期