Crowdsourcing

Participatory Culture, the consumers are no longer just the viewers of content, but also creators. Previously we were a Read-Only culture, viewing the media but lacking the capability and availability to also write this media. The internet has rapidly advanced us into a Read/Write culture in which many fans also produce their own content based on their favourite medias. Consumers are now Prosumers.




Henry Jenkins has described this culture as a strong supporting community based around creating, sharing and mentoring to make a contribution to a social community, allowing members to feel their contribution matters.

This contributions often have capability to go viral through the word of mouth from Tastemakers. Tastemakers are people with a large online or social media presence, a share from these people will often inflate a piece of media to proportions it would not have received under normal circumstances. Kevin Alloca shows us a good example in the form of the now infamous "Double Rainbow" video on YouTube that burst viral by the hands of Jimmy Kimmel.

Crowdsourcing is a possibility through these large communities of prosumers. Crowdsourcing is the collaborative effort to provide information, content or services to one piece of work. Though it can also apply to things such as Crowdvoting, Petitioning or Crowfunding. KickStarter is a great example of Crowdfunding, in which people can back a project and help fund it, usually also receiving an incentive in the process.

Crowdsourcing has been used to create amazing pieces of media such as The Johnny Cash Project, which allowed anyone, anywhere, to submit a single frame towards a music video, hosted on the site http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/
You can view any and all of the submitted frames and view the video in a variety of different ways such as the highest rated, most recent or random frames.