Produsage?

It’s been a tough day, I have Mondays off from uni and had to tell myself to get this done and stop watching ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ for this weeks blog. But anyway, enough about me,
Today, this blog is about ‘Produsage.’
Whaaaaat the *expletive* is produsage!? you may ask
Yeah, I know.
I had never even heard of this term ‘produsage’ until last week. It’s pretty hard to form an opinion/stance on a topic you barely know about, but lets put it this way. The term produsage is a lot more common than people think, people just aren’t aware that there is an actual term for it. It refers to the way in which people can alter or make their own version of a particular topic or viewpoint. A major example of this is YouTube and Wikipedia. I mean, I could go into Wikipedia right now and say that Barrack Obama is actually a white 60 year-old female who lives in a shoe with 165 cats if I really wanted to. This is basically what produsage is. Or a parody of a song that someone has created, everyone knows about song parodies on YouTube, and if you don’t look them up. For example there are hundreds of ‘Tik Tok’ parodies by one hit wonder Ke$ha (Now that I think about it, what even happened to her?) and here’s one I found about Pokemon,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOQI-YHwvyU

This was taken off from LMFAO’s song ‘Party Rock Anthem’ the singing, not so great but the lyrics and costumes are pretttyyy gewwwd, in my opinion.
Anyway, if you’re still reading this and didn’t watch the YouTube video and get bored and go back and check Facebook, what I’m trying to say Wikipedia and YouTube are both engaged in the act of produsage- as it is productive usage. There are 4 other sub-terms of ‘produsage’ they are;
-Open Participation/Communal Evaluation
-Fluid Heterarchy

-Unfinished Artefacts/Continuing Process
-Common Property/Unfinished Rewards

The example of Wikipedia is relevant to these four terms and all make up the definition of produsage. When you think about editing something on Wikipedia; think of these terms and how they all relate.

But the main concern of this topic is to do more with the ethics and the future of produsage. What would happen if everyone were to change all the Wikipedia pages to false information, or rip off someone else’s ideas and make a YouTube video from it. The question is, where does this all stop? When does it all become too much, and who has a say of how much we can alter or change, as produsage doesn’t work towards the completion of products, but is based on the community and evolving the product. So where will we go next with this? It is something that will never be finished or at an end. It draws a community and like-minded people together and for something this important in the internet world, I feel like there needs to be more awareness and or security on such a big topic.

for more on this check out this website: www.produsage.org

Wikileaks and YOU

Okay, I’m going to be perfectly honest here and say that unlike what seems like the rest of the world, I don’t know a whole lot about Wikileaks. I know that it is a non-for-profit organisation and the front man is Julian Assange, a 39-year-old convicted rapist (lol, jokes) from Queenslander (wow, 39. He looks a lot older..), but other than that my knowledge kind of dwindles. So I’m going to do my best to come up with a substantial blog post around this topic, so bare with me.

Having little to no knowledge on this topic puts me at somewhat a disadvantage, but I’m going to throw this out there and say that Julian Assange and what he is doing with Wikileaks seems pretty important in my opinion. No one really knows where Julian Assange actually came from, but he seems like an alright guy? Doesn’t he? Maybe a bit mumbly and quiet but it’s the quiet ones you have to watch! True?

  

I think Wikileaks is actually doing the world a favour, he’s basically delivering factual evidence to the public, when we all have a right to know. In reality isn’t it the ‘whistle-blowers’ or ‘tattletales’ as they were called in primary school, the ones that should get most of the blame? Not saying that they’re doing the wrong thing either but isn’t hating Julian Assange pretty much a complete slap in the face for the “don’t shoot the messenger” saying. I mean, Julian himself isn’t writing/making these stories/videos and sourcing them to Wikileaks. So why is Assange getting all the blame and hate? Hundreds of reporters and journalists tell lies and stories much worse than Assange, or maybe its because what he is delivering is actually the truth is what people are more afraid of and people have no one else to blame other than him, as the sources are anonymous and most people don’t have the will power to go out and find out more information on what they’re seeing and find the source or stop the person/people involved in such bad behaviour, so I guess they send all their hate to Mr. Assange.

Personally, I think having this technology, and people like this at our disposal now compared to back in World War I or II will make us more aware of what is happening in the world makes us more likely to contribute our time and effort into bettering it and putting our minds together to get something constructive out of it.  Having information like this private for politicians just asks for conspiracy theories and hatred. At least, having Wikileaks gives us that small piece of mind that somewhere out there in this world there are people who care what the public see and want us to be informed. Also, knowing that Assange and his accomplices are doing this for no profit, and have invested over thousands of dollars into this organisation must mean they must just want the public to know what we don’t already. 

Julian Assange; An Accurate Portrait

eExtremists

'Extremism is characterized by dogmatic intolerance, expressed mildly or violently, and inclines toward an inflexible obedience to an accepted authority, shaped by a common ideology or sense of group unity' (Gardner, 1997). Or Contributing editor Richard H. Ward describes it as "part of a broader effort to better understand the motivational, psychological, and sociological aspects of those who would attack societies throughout the world."

Looking through the Wikipedia page of Extremist Groups; there is a list of over 100 extremist groups across the globe,

There are many forces which drive white extremist groups, some of those being;
-Racial Purity
-Anti-Semitism
-Political Hegemony
-Anti-Liberal
-Anti Government (Conspiracy Theorists) 

Extremists use all forms of social media and social networking websites to get their view across, this is similar to digital activists as using the internet helps connect like-minded people with similar interest all across the globe, regardless of physical location.
The internet helps in various ways for these extremist groups; it brings an international audience to selective groups or minorities, it helps with the recruitment of members and the group has maximum image control. Which means they can select how their group is portrayed and control images sent about their group.

Internet is the prime means of communication and marketing in the world. The Internet’s unprecedented global reach and scope combined with the difficulty in monitoring and tracing communications make it the prime tool for extremists and terrorists.

Sites such as Facebook and YouTube have both seen a huge proliferation of extremist use with the greatest increase coming from overseas, particularly Europe and the Middle East. The CD-ROM report, released annually, is designed to assist law enforcement, public officials, educators, parents and the news media to better grasp the scope of hate.

On 4 December 2005, a group of volunteer surf lifesavers was assaulted by a group of young men of Middle Eastern appearance, with several other violent assaults occurring over the next week. These incidents were widely reported and commented on in Sydney media. An initially peaceful crowd gathered in the morning of Sunday, 11 December 2005, and, by midday, approximately 5,000 people gathered at Cronulla beach to protest against a recent spate of violence against locals. This was supposed to be seen as patriotic and heroic but instead it turned into a nasty riot ending up in many injuries and attacks. Then in 2009 came the Australia First Political Party.
The Australia First Party (AFP) is a minor far-right political party in Australia that is federally registered and is also registered to contest local elections in New South Wales, the Party is led by Jim Saleam. This is today seen as an extremist group as it is driven by racial purity and many other factors listed above. According to the programme of the Party, Australia First has eight core policies;

-Ensure Australia retains full independence 

-Rebuild Australian manufacturing industries  

-Control foreign ownerships

-Reduce and limit immigration  

-Abolish multiculturalism  

-Introduce Citizen's Initiated Referendums  

-Strengthen the family  

-Strive to rebuild a united Australia

As you can see what is listed is highly racist, why shouldn’t people of a cultural background be able to live happily in Australia?
It disgusts me seeing Australians so patriotic and wearing the Southern Cross like a badge of honour and disregarding any other culture that isn’t Australian.
Australia already is a multi-cultural nation, take Melbourne for instance. Melbourne is the most diverse and cultural destination of Australia, Melbourne wouldn’t be half of what it is today without other cultures and races with their input in todays society.
Some Australians need to be more open minded about other nations and allow other people to live in this country without making it seem like something illegal or bad. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremist_Groups

http://web.docuticker.com/go/docubase/30595