Multi-layered Identities by Social Media and Prosumption Practices in Digital and Participatory Communication
Abstract
Digital and social media systems/environments are a result of collective knowledge by the wisdom of crowds and Web 2.0 participatory cultures. They reveal the digital convergence of media, communication and content production/consumption (prosumption) by mediation, remediation and mediatization. Especially, prosumption activities by the complexity of user agency in social media create user-generated content and context as new sources of information flow among online and offline communities. Prosumers’ social media practices not only show their creativity and identity dynamics but also educate about brands, products and services, lifestyles and personalities, as well as social and political issues among online communities by interactive conversations and transmedia storytelling. Their active and critical participations facilitate a restructuring of the power/knowledge relationship between production and consumption, and advocate a new global economic form of prosumer capitalism within social media ecosystems. This article explores a study of prosumption dynamics via users-as-prosumers’ practices and perceptions and reactions toward digital advertising and marketing in social media and digital communication. Besides, it exemplifies the use of business and video ethnography to empirically investigate prosumers’ behaviors and multi-layered identities via everyday social media practices.
Downloads
References
Baym, N. K., & boyd, danah. (2008). Socially mediated publicnss: An introduction. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 13(3), 210–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x
Beer, D., & Burrows, R. (2010). Consumption, Prosumption and Participatory Web Cultures: An introduction. Journal of Consumer Culture, 10(1), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540509354009
Belk, R. W., & Kozinets, R. V. (2005). Videography in marketing and consumer research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 8(2), 128–141. https://doi.org/10.1108/13522750510592418
Briggs, T. (2010). Social Media’s Second Act: Toward Sustainable Brand Engagement. Design Management Review, 21(1), 46–53. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1020883340?accountid=16720
Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2009). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Campbell, C. (2005). The Craft Consumer: Culture, craft and consumption in a postmodern society. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(1), 23–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540505049843
Cetina, K. K. (2005). Complex Global Microstructures: The New Terrorist Societies. Theory, Culture & Society, 22(5), 213–234. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276405057200
Ebner, M., Holzinger, A., & Catarci, T. (2005). Lurking: an underestimated human-computer phenomenon. IEEE MultiMedia, 12(4), 70–75. https://doi.org/10.1109/MMUL.2005.74
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor.
Goriunova, O. (2017). The Lurker and the Politics of Knowledge in Data Culture. International Journal of Communication (19328036), 11, 3917–3933. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=126813114&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Hjarvard, S. (2008). The Mediatization of Society: A Theory of the Media as Agents of Social and Cultural Change. NORDICOM Review, 29(2), 105–134. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=35749327&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s Consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Jansson, A. (2013). Mediatization and Social Space: Reconstructing Mediatization for the Transmedia Age. Communication Theory, 23(3), 279–296. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12015
Jayasinghe, L., & Ritson, M. (2013). Everyday Advertising Context: An Ethnography of Advertising Response in the Family Living Room. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(1), 104–121. Retrieved from http://10.0.4.62/668889
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press.
Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54(3), 241–251. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.005
Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.
Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Mariampolski, H. (2006). Ethnography for Marketers: A Guide to Consumer Immersion. Sage Publications.
Meikle, G., & Young, S. (2012). Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Moeran, B. (2006). Ethnography at Work. New York: Berg.
Muller, A. (2012). Virtual communities and translation into physical reality in the ‘It Gets Better’ project. Journal of Media Practice, 12(3), 269–277. https://doi.org/10.1386/jmpr.12.3.269_1
Nonnecke, B., & Preece, J. (2000). Lurker Demographics: Counting the Silent. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 73–80. https://doi.org/10.1145/332040.332409
OECD. (2007). Participative Web: User-created Content (OECD Committee for Information, Computer and Communication Policy Report).
Plangger, K. (2012). The power of popularity: how the size of a virtual community adds to firm value. Journal of Public Affairs (14723891), 12(2), 145–153. Retrieved from http://10.0.3.234/pa.1416
Press, A. L., & Williams, B. A. (2010). The New Media Environment: An Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.
Ritzer, G., Dean, P., & Jurgenson, N. (2012). The Coming of Age of the Prosumer. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 379–398. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211429368
Ritzer, G., & Jurgenson, N. (2010). Production, Consumption, Prosumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer.’ Journal of Consumer Culture, 10(1), 13–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540509354673
Russell, C. (1999). Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Anchor.
Thorpe, H., & Rinehart, R. (2010). Alternative sport and affect: non-representational theory examined. Sport in Society, 13(7–8), 1268–1291. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430431003780278
Törrönen, J. (2014). Situational, Cultural and Societal Identities: Analysing Subject Positions as Classifications, Participant Roles, Viewpoints and Interactive Positions. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 44(1), 80–98. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12029
van Dijck, J. (2009). Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Media, Culture & Society, 31(1), 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443708098245
White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday [Online], 16(9). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i9.3171
Williams, D. L., Crittenden, V. L., Keo, T., & McCarty, P. (2012). The use of social media: an exploratory study of usage among digital natives. Journal of Public Affairs, 12(2), 127–136. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1414
Woermann, N. (2012). On the Slope Is on the Screen: Prosumption, Social Media Practices, and Scopic Systems in the Freeskiing Subculture. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 618–640. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211429363
Yeo, T. E. D. (2012). Social-Media Early Adopters Don’t Count: How to Seed Participation in Interactive Campaigns by Psychological Profiling of Digital Consumers. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(3), 297–308. https://doi.org/10.2501/JAR-52-3-297-308
Yeo, T. E. D. (2013). Viral Propagation of Consumer- or Marketer-Generated Messages. In R. W. Belk & R. Llamas (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Digital Consumption (pp. 273–283). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Copyright (c) 2019 Sunny Sui-kwong Lam
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in the JDMI agree to the following terms:
-
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0. This licensing allows others to share the work with no changes and acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal, but not for commercial use.
-
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
-
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after publication, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
Copyrights to illustrations published in the journal remain with their current copyright holders.
It is the author's responsibility to obtain permission to quote from copyright sources.
Any fees required to obtain illustrations or to secure copyright permissions are the responsibility of authors.
Additional Information
All correspondence concerning contributions, books and other review material should be sent to: deca-jdmi@ua.pt
