Social Media: A New Dawn of the Internet or History Repeating Itself?

The formative years of the Internet were dominated by the optimistic perspective that we could transcend our superficial attributes. No longer would sex, race or ethnicity play a dominant role in defining an individual’s voice. Rather, the quality of an interaction was measured by what was said, not who said it. This perspective, sometimes referred to as dematerialization (Sassen, 2004), also found its place in the sphere of political economy. McChesney (2000) described this perspective: “As the argument goes, if everything is in the process of becoming digital, if anyone can produce a site at minimal cost, and if that site can be accessed worldwide via the Web, it is only a matter of time before the media giants find themselves swamped by countless high-quality competitors. Their monopolies will be crushed.”

As the Internet continued to evolve as a technology and diffuse into a broader population, it became increasingly relevant to the commercial world. As corporate influence began to pervade the medium, the optimism in its democratizing potential began to wane, per McChesney’s prediction. For him and numerous other political economy theorists, the notion that the Internet would level the playing field between the corporate sphere and the everyday user was a whimsical dream that began to take a backseat to the realities of global capitalism.

In recent years, however, there has been a revival of that early optimism in the Internet’s potential to democratize society, in large part, based on the increasing prominence of participatory forms of media, collectively referred to as ‘social media.’ According to research by Hitwise (Hopkins, 2006), social networking site MySpace is responsible for more traffic flow into the HMV.co.uk music portal than both the Yahoo and MSN UK search engines. What’s more, Spannerworks (2006) recently reported that social media platform Wikipedia appears in the top 20 Google search results for 88 percent of searches for the top 100 global brands.

Clearly, social media is present and growing in scope and use. According to Mayfield (2006), social media outlets share several key principles: participation, openness, conversation, community and connectedness. In spirit, Mayfield’s definition resembles Rheingold’s (1993) sentiments of virtual communities, constructed nearly thirteen years prior: “Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.”

There are two clear distinctions between the world that Mayfield describes and that the one that Rheingold once did. First, in the thirteen years that separate Rheingold’s observations on virtual communities and Mayfield’s observations on social media, the reach of the Internet has vastly expanded. According to Madden and Lenhart (Pew, 2005), there are nearly 150 million American adults who currently use the Internet. The medium has evolved from a dominion for tech-savvy Silicon Valley engineers to an everyday household item. Secondly, the manner in which the general public uses the Internet has dramatically changed, put simply, from consumption to production. In late 2005, Madden and Lenhart (Pew, 2005) reported that 57 percent of teens who use the Internet could be considered content producers in some way or another. In 2006, Fox and Lenhart (Pew) reported that 12 million American adults keep a Web log, or blog. Also to note, this explosion in user-generated media, which underlies most social media platforms, is not limited to text; it is a multimedia phenomenon, as well. In April of 2006, it was reported that 35,000 new videos were being posted daily by ordinary users to Web portal YouTube. In February 2006, YouTube attracted 9 million visitors who viewed 176 million pages (Liedtke, 2006). According to the Institute for the Future in California’s Paul Saffo (cited in Kluth, 2006), “people no longer actively ‘consume’ media but actively participate in them, which usually means creating content.”

Today, once again, the commercial sector is trying to get its arms around social media and move beyond an ‘internet strategy’ to a Web ‘2.0’ or ‘social media’ strategy. The question remains, however, what are the new dynamics that exist in today’s online landscape, and how can they effectively be applied to and optimized for business communications today?

Deconstructing Power Relationships in Web 2.0

In an attempt to explore today’s social media paradigm and understand the power relationships and influence that exist within social media platforms, I drew from theoretical work in field of political economy of communications (PEC) and studied the power dynamics within Newgrounds, an online community comprised of independently-produced flash animations. Surprisingly, after a semi-structured interview methodology to study the perspectives of thirteen Newgrounds members, it was clear: While some delineation persisted, Newgrounds’ roles of production and consumption became less rigid; the shift on the micro-level was not dissolution of power relationships, contradictory to the aforementioned social media paradigm, but rather, a recalibration of power.

A Political Economy Perspective from the Ground Up

Practically speaking, the PEC approach encompasses a broad range of theories and perceptions. According to Mosco (1995), “political economy is the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources.” Similarly, Mansell (2004) explains that the approach is fundamentally based on understanding the circumstances that have lead to systems of production and distribution of media and communications under capitalism and the influence of such circumstances in which cultural commodities are consumed. To help illustrate the characteristics of the political economy approach to media and communications, Wittel (2004) provides a list of assumptions that form the basis for this approach:

1. Culture, communications and media are thought of as industries.
2. Culture, communications and media are considered objects that carry symbolic value and are considered commodities that can be produced, distributed and consumed.
3. Production and consumption of media, culture and communications are viewed as being distinct practices.
4. Those who control the means of production and distribution of media, culture and communications possess greater power than consumers.
5. Those capable of higher levels of reproduction and distribution are considered more powerful than those capable of lower levels of reproduction and distribution.

In an opinion shared by a number of other academics (Van Couvering, 2003), Wittel explains that the traditional political economy approach may not be adequately suited for new forms of media because much of the theory behind it was developed within a broadcast paradigm of media and communications in which a strong delineation between production and consumption was appropriate. Since the emergence of new media technologies, according to Wittel, the old boundary between production and consumption becomes even more fragile and blurred. Those ‘fragile and blurred’ lines between production and consumption serve as the main area of focus for this research project.

Background: Newgrounds

Newgrounds is a Web portal that distributes Adobe Flash animated films and games among users. The site was started by Tom Fulp in 1995 as a Web platform to publicize his early works. Over the next decade, it evolved into a flourishing online community, which continues to focus on Flash-driven films and games. According to Fulp, there are currently over 1 million registered members of Newgrounds and roughly 500,000 unique visitors each day.

The main Newgrounds portal provides members and others with the opportunity to submit and view flash content, as well as participate in various interactive features. For example, users are encouraged to vote on flash animations and share comments via a comments module. Newgrounds also dedicates a portal to audio files, which resembles and works similarly to the flash portal.

Newgrounds also hosts a bulletin board system (BBS) that allows registered users to read and respond to existing discussion threads, as well as create new discussion threads. The forums are patrolled by a number of moderators who have the ability to ‘lock’ threads, or prevent members from commenting on threads; delete threads or individual posts within a thread; and/or ban users from the forum.

While any user can visit the portal and view its vast collection of multimedia content, Newgrounds requires a free registration for full participation. Registered users, or members, are encouraged to vote on flash submissions and, in exchange, receive ‘experience points,’ all of which are then deposited to user accounts. (Note: a user cannot deposit more than ten experience points into their account each day.) Once a user has gained a sufficient number of experience points, he or she ‘levels up’ and builds influence for future votes.

Methodology

Traditionally, the political economy approach has lent itself to methodologies focused on studies of production (Deacon, 2003). As previously mentioned, there is often insufficient consideration of the role played by the ordinary user, although the landscape is shifting. One of the leaders of this shift is Maria Bakardjieva, who used the ‘ordinary user’ as the fundamental unit of analysis in her research. Other factors that have lead to greater focus on the ordinary user include an increasing awareness of the economic role played by the ordinary user in media processes and the increasing connections and blurred lines between systems of production, distribution and consumption (Mattelart & Mattelart, 1998). However, there is widespread recognition that more attention is needed to assess the qualitative experiences of ordinary users (Wittel, 2004). Relying on work by Negri (1999), Wittel calls for a shift in perspective in the study of political economy toward greater analysis of user subjectivity. As he states, “A political economy from below needs a methodology from below.”

In order to study the issue of power from the ground up, this research project used a semi-structured interview method or, as Lindlof (1995) terms it, “conversations with a purpose.” In total, thirteen users were interviewed, six of which could be classified as producers, or those within Newgrounds that focus on production of multimedia content. The other seven were classified as ‘ordinary users,’ or those who have little or no experience with multimedia production and primarily visited the site to consume new content or participate in the discussion forums.

Newgrounds’ User Base: Ordinary Users and Producers

Though not fundamental to this research, the typical Newgrounds user is a young male (age ranging from 14-22) who “enjoys video games and animation,” according to Tom Fulp, creator of Newgrounds. Out of 13 users who were interviewed, only CremeFresh18 was female, and three, Fulp, Bitey and Lokken, were over the age of 22. All of the other interview participants fit into Fulp’s demographic prediction.

As far as time spent on Newgrounds, there was a clear gap between producers and ordinary users. Ordinary users spent between one-to-seven hours each day visiting the site, while producers spent between twenty minutes and one hour visiting the site each day. The number of years of membership ranged across users from one to five years, though most had been non-registered users for several months prior to membership registration.

General Observations

In traditional political economics of communications, Wittel explains, production and consumption of media, culture and communications are viewed as distinct practices; those who control production and distribution possess a certain degree of control over those who are labeled as consumers. So what happens to roles of production, distribution and consumption on Newgrounds?

Interestingly, evidence reveals a similar delineation between user roles when asked to identify their roles, though based on additional probes, it appears that content ‘consumers’ have more control than what those labels inherently, and traditionally, denote.

According to Tom Fulp, Newgrounds’ producers “submit their games and movies,” whereas a ‘typical’ or ‘ordinary user’ is involved in content protection and participation in the forums. When users who were pre-screened as producers were asked about their role within Newgrounds, they tended to identify themselves solely as producers, and most explicitly mentioned their inactivity across some of the site’s more community-oriented spaces. Additional evidence showed that producers within Newgrounds primarily view Newgrounds as a distribution platform for their work. Sarkazm, for instance, said that the site’s viewing traffic was its primary benefit. Similarly, Bitey responded that the primary gain from content submission was the “enormous exposure” that he’s received.

Similar to the manner in which pre-screened producers perceived themselves as producers, users pre-screened as ‘ordinary users’ perceived themselves as such. CremeFresh18, for instance, literally responded that she was just a ‘user’ and, interestingly, highly valued the community-oriented spaces, most notably, the forums, and viewed them as the portal’s primary appeal. When asked about his role within Newgrounds, Gumonshoeorig described himself as a “regular who is well respected on the BBS.” Similarly, Kazera169 spends most of his time on Newgrounds on the forums.

Rise of the Ordinary User

In Newgrounds, ‘consumers’ of media are, essentially, ‘users’ of media. The researched activities of ordinary users within Newgrounds supports the belief that, on the Internet, media consumption or media consumers is no longer an appropriate label; within Newgrounds, indeed, the user is empowered.

Here’s how:

Blamming and Protecting

Within Newgrounds, specifically, users influence positioning of content by voting on the content, as well as by ‘blamming’ and/or ‘protecting’ content, unlike what you’ll find among traditional media systems. When a user submits an entry to Newgrounds, it is added to a submission queue and labeled ‘under judgment,’ and registered users vote on whether or not the submission remains on the portal by rating it on a scale of one through five. An entry that receives a median score of less than five is ‘blammed,’ or removed from the site; one that receives a median score of two or higher is ‘protected’ and positioned on the site based on its genre and score. Submissions that receive extremely high scores are placed on the front page of Newgrounds and often receive awards, such as an editor’s pick, weekly user’s choice and/or daily feature. Users who vote on submissions that match those judged by the community as a whole receive blam or protection points, which improves users’ voting power influence.

Blamming and protecting, clearly, empower the ordinary user. As SalviaMuscaria stated, blamming is important because it allows users who do not produce flash animations to be a “contributor to things.” Research also indicates that users who contribute quite frequently can achieve greater status within Newgrounds. When one of the producers, Jeremy Lokken, was asked about the benefits to having a high level within Newgrounds, he responded that users with a high level have a “strong voting presence when determining if a flash cartoon or game should stay in the Newgrounds portal.”

Additionally, evidence shows that experience points and level influence users’ public perception within Newgrounds. For instance, when asked about his position within Newgrounds, wastedwizard123 said that he was ranked 390th out of a million among those who blam.

Posting

Ordinary users are also empowered and improve their status by forum participation within Newgrounds, and nearly all ordinary users that participated in this research noted its value. For example, WastedWizard213 said that his 2,500 posts in the forums improved his social standing within Newgrounds. Similarly, Kazera169 said, “There are quite a few people who only review movies and songs. They don’t seem to be as active on Newgrounds, and usually don’t contribute as much,” a sentiment echoed by Wastedwizard123, “Most of the people on the forums are the people most dedicated to Newgrounds.”

The perceived importance of the forums is likely attributed to the underlying perception that Newgrounds forums are a more democratic system of participation than those found in traditional systems, as evidenced by Kakashi623, who referred to the forums as the “voice of Newgrounds,” while SalviaMuscaria stated that the forum “brings things together [on Newgrounds].” With that, it’s safe to say that the value of forums comes, partly, because of users’ frustration with the sometimes biased ranking system, which favors those who’ve had a longer history on Newgrounds. As Smeergo stated, “It’s not nice having a feeling that it will take at least 3 months to change your [level], whereas 5,000 posts can easily be reached within that time.” Similarly, Kakashi623 mentioned, “you can level up by depositing but I stopped at level 9 because I couldn’t be bothered to deposit every day.” Indeed, there are not only power differences between producers and ordinary users in the portal but also those that exist among ordinary users in the flash portal, which are less apparent in the forums.

Formation of Crews

Ordinary users achieve influence and generate additional power via participation in ‘flash crews,’ a collective of Newgrounds members who have willingly agreed to join and support a particular crew. When a member of a flash crew submits a piece of content to the portal, all of the other crew members vote positively for the submission, which increases its chances of being placed within the site.

While crews often educate and motivate newer, less experienced members in the group, flash crews pose a threat to the portal’s overall quality. As Kazera169 explains, “A lot of flash groups just make terrible and usually offensive flashes to try and irritate someone.” In other words, a Newgrounds member could potentially receive prominent placement within the site regardless of the actual quality of his or her work.

Growth Potential

Most users originally joined Newgrounds with little or no media production experience; however, after some time, many ordinary users have become producers. Lokken, for example, one of the first contributors to Newgrounds, had originally come to the site with no knowledge of media production but quickly became interested in the process and began experimenting with Macromedia Flash (the software used to produce flash animations). After seven years, he is now one of most recognized multimedia producers on Newgrounds. When asked how his experience with Newgrounds had helped him develop as a Flash artist, he responded: “I’ve taken inspiration from the portal a number of times…Without my involvement with Newgrounds, I don’t think I could have had that good fortune.”

Newgrounds, clearly, serves as an educational tool for members. Considered an ‘ordinary user’ not too long ago, Wastedwizard123, for example, has recently become involved with the production and submission of audio content, and when asked about his motivations, he said that he was interested in “get[ting] some feedback and see[ing] if they were any good.” His most recent audio submission has received one of the highest votes in the portal, a coup that he attributes to “advice from other people.” Newgrounds has influenced his overall interest in music, and without the online community, Wastedwizard123 doubts that he would have carried on with audio production.

WastedWizard123 is not alone; six out of seven of the other ordinary users interviewed had participated in the development of content for the site at least once, and most had participated in the development of several submissions.

Does Use Empowerment Result in Better Content?

Research indicates, it depends on who you ask. While producers, most of whom participate in Newgrounds’ forums and feedback mechanisms, view the portal as a tool to facilitate the development of production skills vs. an entertainment channel, they are often chastised for their contributions. According to Fulp, “Members who submit great games and movies tend to get a lot of respect, although they can also draw a lot of negative criticism from the “haters” who don’t think they earned it.” To no surprise, producers indicated a sense of protectiveness and insult as a result of the democratic nature of Newgrounds. When asked if there was anything he would change about Newgrounds, Lokken responded that he wished “the majority of the reviewing audience was mature and had an open mind.” Similarly, when asked how he could tell if he had done a good production job, Sarkazm responded, “By the number of insulting reviews from shocked, offended and completely mislead Newgrounds viewers.”

In any case, most producers said that the portal’s content has improved over time, which is not surprising, given the voting process and inherent democratic nature of the portal. “The threshold for quality is becoming increasingly high,” Fulp said. Similarly, Lokken explained that “something that would stick in the portal in 2000 might not do so well today.”

At the same time, many of the ordinary users believe that the overall quality of content had actually decreased. Kakashi623, for example, mentioned that he had stopped reviewing flash content because “the time and quality people put in their flash have dropped through the years.” The divide between perceptions on the overall quality of content within Newgrounds further supports the argument that a division continues to exist between those are classified as media producers and those who are classified as Internet users.

This conflict in perception reveals to a critical lesson for communicators: While it may be necessary to engage ‘ordinary users” vs. producers in order to influence online social media platforms, their opinions and nature appear to be more skeptical than others.

Conclusion

Based on the research findings, it’s clear that we’ve moved away from the traditional political philosophy. At the same time, today’s social media paradigm is well supported, though has its flaws. Consider the following take-aways as you head into 2007:

1. Consumers have a tendency to evolve into users.
2. A distinction continues to exist between producers and ordinary users, though evidence reveals that these groups may be intertwined in new and complex ways.
3. Through consistent participation over a long period of time, certain users acquire a great deal of power within a community and can have a disproportionately high influence on shaping the community.
4. Both social media producers and users are growing in influence in both the on- and offline worlds. According to this research, Newgrounds’ members’ ultimate goal is to achieve success in the mainstream media industry. As Die_Coke, explains, “If you get good enough the trick is to give up the drug, LEAVE NG and make some cash out of your skills.” This sentiment was echoed by many of the other producers. As Fulp explains, “The exposure [from Newgrounds] leads to advertising revenue for their websites, sponsorship and licensing opportunities for their creations, and job offers for companies looking for talent.”

To wit: Fulp collaborated with another producer on the site to create the flash game, ‘Alien Hominid,’ which is widely considered one of the most popular flash submissions on Newgrounds. The game achieved such visibility it prompted Fulp and his collaborator to develop a console version of the game, which was commercially released in 2004. According to Fulp,

I like to think that Alien Hominid serves as inspiration to anyone with a dream of making video games. It shows how far Flash has come, that a Flash programmer and artist can use their skills to make a game for console platforms. As Flash continues to improve, it becomes more and more viable as a platform to produce mainstream, marketable games. More and more companies will be looking to Flash artists for fresh ideas and new characters.

It remains to be seen how social media influences power within society; however, to engage in what’s considered Web 2.0 today, it’s time to shift the way you think about PR and pay more attention to ordinary users who, research shows, is where it’s at.

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Jiyan Wei is a member of the Vendor Council and advisory board of the Society of New Communications Research and product manager with Vocus, where he assists with the development of new media strategies and provides oversight for PRWeb. Jiyan obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 2000 from Georgetown University, where his areas of focus were English culture and performance, and classical music. He completed a Masters of Science in media and communications at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2006, where his dissertation studied power dynamics in online communities. He is an active member of the Social Media Club, Advertising, Marketing, and PR Society of the LSE (AMP) and currently maintains a blog, Ether Breather (www.etherbreather.com), focused on culture, media, and technology.
As vice president and head of v-Fluence’s newest Chicago-based company location, Nina Shariff leads the technology practice and focuses on product development and business growth. She works to grow key product lines, including a proprietary Web site analysis tool that documents site attributes and compares them to current best practice standards, as well as language analysis. Nina has more than seven years experience in journalism covering the PR and Web content beats and has worked as a freelance writer and contractor for several Web site development, search engine marketing and online monitoring projects. She graduated with honors from the University of San Diego with a B.A. in Business Administration and a minor in Philosophy.