CHAN Yan Zhi Angie, SID: 20031966, Blog Post 1.

The author relates the online economy to a “social factory” (Andrejevic, 2008, p.30) in which the consumer is an interactive individual that is actively involved and is in part responsible for his media viewing practices. Some work processes, such as audience research, marketing processes and building brand loyalty, has been re-allocated away from the producer to involve the consumer. The participation of viewers becomes a form of labour work, producing feedback on viewer preferences for producers, customising viewing experiences and building consumer loyalty in media products.  Viewer participation undoubtedly generates value but may not often be duly reciprocated. The work that they do are generally unpaid and the influence they have over decisions in media productions is limited. Despite so, viewer participation increases and as the author argues, is motivated by a desire to establish one’s identity as an intelligent and critical viewer, and to differentiate oneself from the passive viewers.

I would expect this trend of greater viewer participation to continue to grow and the opportunity to commercialise it would go not unnoticed. Current trends continue to configure the labour of consumers within media production processes. In fact, a major media company in China, Alibaba Pictures, is capitalising on the labour work of viewers, their respective fan base and is considering to give them recognition and monetary rewards. The firm aspires to rework the current supply chain of content to include more involvement from consumer-producers. This may seem positive news for posters at online forums and fan fiction writers, but on second thought, the collective and collaborative characteristic of creative endeavours may make it difficult to correctly account for writing credits and monetary rewards. It may turn out to be the case where Alibaba Pictures, acting as the broker for such labour work, will retain rights over intellectual properties and thus preserve its hegemonic position as a dominant media producer.

There are similarities in both articles where consumers are encouraged to participate more but upon examination of a larger context, their labour work are generally being exploited and have little impact on benefitting themselves. My question in response would be that in view of the greater democratisation of the media industry, in what way can viewers ride on the trend to alter the power relations between themselves and producers to their own benefit?

Word Count: 387 words

References:

Andrejevic, M. (2008). Watching Television Without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans. Television & New Media, 9(1), 24-46.

Lin, L. (2015, Dec 1). Writers? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Writers, Says Alibaba Pictures VP. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/12/01/writers-we-dont-need-no-stinkin-writers-says-alibaba-pictures-vp/