PROSUMPTION: THE MAKING OF A ‘NEW’ MEDIA AUDIENCE

Abstract: This article offered a critical analysis of the ‘produser’ phenomenon. Specific to the Web 2.0 environment, it represents the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing contents in pursuit of further improvement users, to the field of media audience study, opening up new ways to see audiences as active cultural producers. It is argued that in this new mediascape, audience are flexing their muscles against the power of media producers to define the terms of their engagement. Hailed for creating a cultural shift, convergent media has realigned the roles of audiences and producers in profoundly new ways. Framed on the Uses and Gratifications theory, the paper examined how the emergence of computer-mediated communication has revived the significance of uses and gratifications of audiences. It concluded that convergent media can, and have transformed the traditional ‘audience’ experience, making many people who are not really produsers to take advantage of multiple media platforms to extend their mediated practices.

Keywords: Produser, audience practices, Web 2.0; convergence.

Published: November 2017

Issue: Vol 1 (1) 2017: PLASU JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION STUDIES