DIY Media and Collaboration

With the continual development of new technologies in today’s society, DIY media and collaboration are emerging more and more on the Internet in a number of domains such as online publishing, open source software, media sharing, creative practice, reviews, social bookmarking, geotagging, knowledge management and DIY advice just to name a few. DIY media and collaboration is making pathways for people to develop new skills in professional areas of work, with information reaching a larger audience and in a variety of different ways. It is the production of individuals in a collaborative environment, shared with millions of users around the world. There are some main principles with the production of DIY media and Collaboration, where online communities become content creators. The distribution of the content is created by a wide community of participants, with equal movement between leaders, participants and users of the content. The content continually remains unfinished and the process of content creators continues with other user continually addressing, reinterpreting and evolving the content produced by other users. There is no ownership within these sites and participation is based on merit, as the content is continually collaborated.

DIY media and collaboration removes the boundaries, with collaboration of more participates in numerous environments. Some websites within the domains or DIY media and collaboration are becoming regular website names in the everyday activities of Internet users. For example of blogs and open news sites like Slashdot, Indymedia and Ohmy News are becoming regular online publishing access sites. With media sharing and creative practice, more and more people are logging on to sites like Flickr, YouTube, Jumpcut and Current.tv, Wikipedia is a well know knowledge management website to most Internet users. Social bookmarking and geotagging sites are becoming more popular like del.icio.us, digg, Google Earth and Frapper. These DIY media and collaboration websites are becoming more popular with the everyday Internet users as forms of both professions use and recreation use.

Bruns talks about the challenges for established content industries in his DIY Media and Collaboration podcast. For example with “citizen journalism: undermines authority of mainstream news media, provides alternative views.” With this come possible opportunities between industry and communities to harness the DIY media and collaboration process and work together to continually create collaborative content.