http://mcs.sagepub.comMedia, Culture & Society DOI: 10.1177/0163443708098245 2009; 31; 41 Media Culture SocietyJosé van Dijck Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated contenthttp://mcs.sagepub.com The online version of this article can be found at: Published by:http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at:Media, Culture & Society Additional services and information for http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://mcs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navPermissions: http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/31/1/41 Citations at UNIV OF MARYLAND on October 16, 2009 http://mcs.sagepub.comDownloaded fromUsers like you? Theorizing agency inuser-generated contentJosé van DijckUNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM –MEDIA STUDIESIt’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’sabout the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channelpeople’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the manywresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that willnot only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. (TimeMagazine, 16 December 2006)When Time designated ‘you’ as Person of the Year 2006, the editors paid trib-ute to the millions of anonymous web users who dedicate their creative energyto a booming web culture. The cover story heralded the many volunteers fill-ing so-called user-generated content (UGC) platforms. After decades of vili-fying the passive coach potato, the press now venerates the active participantin digital culture. But just who is this participant? Who is the ‘you’ in YouTubeand what kind of agency can we attribute to this new class of media users? Areusers indeed, as Time wants us to believe, the ‘many wresting power from thefew’ – a collective power that will ‘change the way the world changes’?Traditionally, media scholars have theorized the agency of media recipientsin close connection to the type of medium. Whereas the study of film yieldedvarious concepts of spectatorship, television prompted a conceptualization ofaudience both as viewers and consumers. With the emergence of Web 2.0applications, most prominently UGC platforms, the qualification of ‘user’gradually enters the common parlance of media theorists (Livingstone, 2004).Users are generally referred to as active internet contributors, who put in a‘certain amount of creative effort’ which is ‘created outside of professionalroutines and platforms’.1Since the 1980s, the term ‘prosumer’ has beenMedia, Culture & Society © 2009 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London,New Delhi and Singapore), Vol. 31(1): 41–58[ISSN: 0163-4437 DOI: 10.1177/0163443708098245] at UNIV OF MARYLAND on October 16, 2009 http://mcs.sagepub.comDownloaded fromdeployed by various academics to denote how users’ agency hovers betweenthe bipolar categories of producer versus consumer, and of professional ver-sus consumer. New hybrid terms such as ‘produser’ and ‘co-creator’ havemeanwhile entered academic parlance to accentuate users’ increased produc-tion prowess (Bruns, 2007). As this article will argue, user agency is a lotmore complex than these bipolar terms suggest; we need to account for themultifarious roles of users in a media environment where the boundariesbetween commerce, content and information are currently being redrawn.To illustrate the complexity of user agency, the recent development ofYouTube serves as a case of inquiry. Started as a video-sharing site in 2005 andrun by three students from a Silicon Valley garage, the financially flailing buthugely popular site was bought up by Google in October of 2006 for theunprecedented sum of $1.6 billion. Obviously, Google’s acquisition was notabout bringing innovative technology into the home, as its own GoogleVideowas already running on superior software; it was about bringing in communi-ties of users. In less than a year, YouTube became an (independent) subsidiaryof a commercial firm whose core interest is not in content per se, but in thevertical integration of search engines with content, social networking andadvertising.YouTube’s case perfectly illustrates the need for a more comprehensiveapproach to user agency, including perspectives from cultural theory, eco-nomics and labour relations. User agency is cast by cultural theorists as par-ticipatory engagement, in contrast to the passive recipients of earlier stages ofmedia culture. Economists and business managers phrase user agency in therhetoric of production rather than consumption. And in terms of labour rela-tions, users are appraised in their new roles as amateurs and volunteers vis-á-vis those in the professional leagues. If we want to understand howsocio-economic and technological transformations affect the current shake-upin power relationships between media companies, advertisers and users, it isimportant to develop a multifarious concept of user agency. Users like ‘you’,as I will argue, have a rather limited potential to ‘wrest power from the few’,let alone to ‘change the way the world changes’.The cultural perspective: recipients versus participantsWith the emergence of Web 2.0 applications, cultural theorist Henry Jenkins(2006) sees a definite paradigm shift in the way media content is producedand circulated: ‘Audiences, empowered by these new technologies, occupy-ing a space at the intersection between old and new media, are demanding theright to participate within the culture’ (2006: 24). The result is a participatoryculture which increasingly demands room for ordinary citizens to wieldmedia technologies – technologies that were once the privilege of capital-intensive industries – to express themselves and distribute those creations as42 Media, Culture & Society 31(1) at UNIV OF MARYLAND on October 16, 2009 http://mcs.sagepub.comDownloaded fromthey seem fit. When ‘old media’ still reigned, media recipients had little directpower to shape media content and faced enormous barriers to enter the mar-ketplace, whereas ‘the new digital environment expands the scope and reachof consumer activities’ (2006: 215). Jenkins, like other media theorists,applauds the technological opportunities seized by grassroots movements andindividuals to express their creativity and provide a diverse palette of voices(Deuze, 2007).