Producing the Internet

Should contemporary media culture be understood as a culture that offers unprecedented freedom for producing participators – so-called “produsers”? Or should it rather be understood as a culture in which various forms of user participation in fact are conditioned, or even manufactured, by organized, professional producers?

Considering the increasing research attention that has been paid recently to various notions of mediated participation, most often with reference to social networking media or “web 2.0”, questions such as these are important to ask. They call attention to the need to both critically discuss and investigate the supposedly transformative potential of emerging media culture, which is based to a great extent on the applications that we have learnt to refer to as “social” media.

The contributions to this book, thirteen chapters from international scholars, add to our critical understanding of these new forms of media. They all draw on various theoretical concepts – such as producers, community, and participation – used when analysing media culture. But they also share a critical interest in problematizing and analysing the forms of power built into this culture.

The printed edition of  Producing the Internet is out of print. A pdf of the book is available for download.

Content

Introduction
Tobias Olsson

I. Producing Social Media Platforms. Power and Organization

Social Media and Capitalism
Christian Fuchs

Social Media Platforms as Producers
José van Dijck

The Participatory Organization: Alternative Models for Organizational Structure and Leadership
Nico Carpentier

II. Transforming Media Producers

Dirty Work: Why Journalists Shun Reader Comments
Dino Viscovi, Malin Gustafsson

Transmedia Storytelling and a Young Audience: Public Service in the Blogosphere Era
Ulrika Sjöberg, Ingegerd Rydin

Cross-media Production Networks: Comparing Organizations in Public Service Broadcasting Programmes
María Isabel Villa

III. Producers of Communities/Communities of Producers

Bringing up Bg-mamma: Organized Producers between Community and Commerce
Maria Bakardjieva

The Producer as Vendor: Producing Public Space in a Virtual World
Stina Bengtsson

The Civic Potential of the Digital Horse
Anna Lund

IV. Producing the (Un)Civic Web

Contingencies of Online Political ‘Produsers’: Discourse Theory and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Movement
Peter Dahlgren

Creating the Civic Web: Exploring the Perspectives of Web Producers in Europe and Turkey
Shakuntala Banaji, David Buckingham

Adopting Social Media in the Corporate Sphere: The Tricky Route to Monetization of Facebook Fan Pages
Anders Svensson

Biographical Notes