Mass amateurization

Mass amateurization refers to the capabilities that new forms of media have given to non-professional users and the ways in which those users have applied these capabilities in order to create and distribute content that may compete with larger, professional institutions. Examples include the rise of blogs and citizen journalism, photo and video-sharing services such as Flickr and YouTube, user-generated encyclopedias like Wikipedia, and distributed accommodation services such as Airbnb. The term was popularized by American media theorist Clay Shirky. .

These new forms of media became widely available during the first decade of the 21st century due in part to the fall of transactional costs of creating and distributing media. Mass amateurization is a social, cumulative and collaborative activity, wherein ideas will flow back up the pipeline from consumers and they will share them amongst themselves. There is no institutional hierarchy in mass amateurization. There is only an informal group of collaborators working to solve a problem.

Background

Clay Shirky

Mass Amateurization was first popularized by Clay Shirky in his 2008 book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. In that book, Shirky notes that with blogging and photo-sharing websites, anyone can publish an article or photo that they have created. For example, mass amateurization of journalism and photography, require a new definition of what credentials make someone a journalist, photographer, or news reporter. This mass amateurization threatens to change the way news is spread throughout different media outlets.

Mass amateurization can also be described as a technological and cultural phenomenon that allows ordinary people access information-disseminating technologies that would have previously only been available to professionals. Specifically, Shirky cites collaborative projects such as Wikipedia and Linux. It can also be applied to blogging, photo-sharing, and tagging.

Mass Amateurization and the Internet

The Internet fosters disintermediation and new forms of collaboration.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia allows for the mass amateurization of encyclopedic authorship. Anyone with an email address can share their knowledge with the world. Mass amateurization allows amateurs to directly compete with encyclopedias such as Encyclopædia Britannica.

Flickr

Flickr allows amateur photographers to publish their photographs at no cost. Flickr also allows users access to a community of photographers that might have previously been only accessible to those paying for photography classes. In this space, users can receive criticism of other experience photographers and hone their talent.

You Tube

YouTube represent the epitome of the mass amateurization of video. Amateur filmmakers and hundreds of other hobbyists can share videos with the world at no cost. The ability to publish videos and films was formerly reserved for those professionals who could afford to own and operate television stations.

Airbnb

Airbnb has allowed for the amateurization of mass hospitality. Users of the site can find places to stay during their travels without having to patronize professional institutions.

Citizen Media

Mass amateurization is considered to be "the principal threat" to all newspapers, as opposed to other, institutionalized newspapers. Other media industries in general have suffered from the fall of transactional costs and the advent of "communication tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities." In particular, the mass amateurization has led to an increase in international news reporting that would not be financially justifiable in the professional model of publishing.

In some instances, there has been an overlap between professionals and amateurs where professional organizations will utilize media produced by amateurs. One example of this is when a professional news outlet is sent firsthand footage of a "newsworthy" event that would otherwise be unavailable. However, other crossovers are not always so useful. In 2005, the Los Angeles Times attempted to offer its online readers access to its "Wikitorial", which allowed users to edit and contribute the website's editorial page. This led to widespread vandalism throughout the article and eventually its removal .

Social Media

In modern news, social media has become a major source of amateur reporting. Key examples of this include Arab Spring and the death of Osama bin Laden. This section will detail some examples like those above and include, merge, or lead into citizen journalism.

Institutions vs. Collaboration

One of the results of mass amateurization is that it often results in amateurs being able to compete with professional institutions. In a 2005 TED Talk, Shirky claimed that amateurs in a state of collaboration have great advantages over those who are members of an institution.

Concept

Institutions are created as answers to problems and they rely on a professional class of people to do work. These professionals are often brought together at a great cost and inevitably some people with the right professional skills will be left unhired. For example, photographers who are hired, paid and gathered under the supervision of a larger, professional institution. Not all of the best photographers can be hired and therefore the institution misses out on other sources of photographs.

Institutions are also profit-driven. Specific tasks must be completed by certain deadlines or the institution will lose money. If a car company were to allow its workers to work on only what they wanted when they wanted, they would go out of business. In order to function, institutions must remain commercially viable. This is not the case with non-commercial collaborative efforts, which involves a less structured process.

George Lazaroui explains that mass amateurization "is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities,"

thanks to "an explosion of Internet tools designed to make media authoring easier."

The effectiveness of mass amateurization via digital culture is made possible because "digital culture fosters community while at the same time can be fueled by isolation. "

Collaborators and Power Law

Collaborators are not formally organized, they do not carry titles relating to their collaboration, and collaborators can have any level of skill. In Clay Shirky's example, users on Flickr fall into the definition of collaborators and they, without any institutional guidance, figured out how to solve the problem of organizing photographs.

To further illustrate his point he references what is commonly known as the 80/20 rule; also known as power law distribution. By harvesting the efforts of multiple amateurs, one can end up with a more valuable result than if one had relied on the traditional institutional model.

This distribution dictates that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the content. With power law, the most active contributor is far more active than the second most active, who is far more active than the rest. Here, most producers only contribute relatively minor additions. In this distribution, the mean, median, and mode are typically very different in a power law curve.

Due to this contrast in production among contributors, traditional hierarchy is replaced with a heterarchial format wherein distinct roles are blurred.

Another advantage that collaborators often have over professionals thanks to low transactional costs is that there is no need for amateurs to be in close physical proximity in order to solve problems.

"The principal threat to all newspapers is not competition from other newspapers but radical changes in the overall ecosystem of information. Many people in the newspaper business missed the significance of the internet (the only threats they tended to take seriously were from other professional media outlets). The media industries have suffered from the recent collapse in communications costs. The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing."

According to Leadbeater, "committed amateurs" can devise effective solutions so long as they get access to the knowledge and resources they need. These resources are now more readily available today due to low transactional costs and recent technological innovations in media creation.

Criticisms

Availability

While there is an abundance of content created by amateurs and collaborators, the capacity to digest this content has been slow to respond. "Material published in a content-rich environment is destined to remain obscure..." and therefore the benefits of mass amateurization are not as accessible to society as they could be.

Originality

Lazaroui makes the case that most amateurs are not doing any original research. Instead they rely on professional institutions to report the news and then simply "amplify" the story. He also points out that formal news gathering institutions have grown aware of the value of original reporting that does happen and are harnessing that power for their own use. An example of this would be CNN's iReport. He charges that amateur reporters "need to focus on making this content accessible and interesting to new audiences," rather than aiding professional institutions in their news monopoly.

Reliability

In 2004, Encyclopædia Britannica editor Robert McHenry referred to Wikipedia, which allows for anyone to edit its articles, as a "faith-based encylopedia". Citing an article on Alexander Hamilton, McHenry argues that however reliable an article may be, it is always open to be altered by someone who is uninformed .

Quality

Mass amateurization is a multi-faceted phenomenon that works under different conditions than professional organizations. In most cases, those who contribute content do so voluntarily and without monetary compensation. At the same time, amateur productions are often not high quality compared to their professional counterparts. This can be seen by comparing an amateur blog on blogspot to one created by a staff writer for the New York Times. This is similar to the criticism by McHenry when comparing Wikipedia to Britannica.

See Also

Power Law

Commons

Clay Shirky

Citizen Journalism

Barefoot College

Amateur professionalism

References

Bibliography

Endfield, Georgina H.; Morris, Carol (February 2012). "Exploring the role of the amateur in the production and circulation of meteorological knowledge". Climate Change 2012 (113): 77.

Glaister, Dan (21 June 20015). "LA Times 'wikitorial' gives editors red faces publisher = The Guardian" . Retrieved 19 February 2013.

Lazaroui (2010). "The Creation and Communication of a Shared Social Reality". Economics, Management, and Financial Markets 5 (3): 257-265.

Leadbeater

McHenry, Robert (15 November 2004). "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia" . TCS Daily. Retrieved 19 February 2013.

Shirky, Clay (2005). Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration (Video). TEDTalksDirector. Retrieved February 18, 2013.

Shirky, Clay (2008) "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations"

Shirky, Clay (December 2011). "Institutions Confidence and the News Crisis" . Retrieved February 27, 2013.

Wolske, Martin, Eric Johnson, and Paul Adams. "Citizen professional toolkits: empowering communities through mass amateurization." (2010).