Media: From passive consumers to active trollers

On December 25th 1990 Tim Berners Lee was able to implement the first successful communication between an HTTP client and a server via the Internet. Thus creating the World Wide Web (see reference). As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet (see reference).

However, today we have come a long way from what Tim Berners Lee imagined the WWW would be used for at one point. Simple asynchronous interaction mechanisms have been replaced by more complex collaboration based systems in order to create content and avoid delays in the process.



For example, Youtube is a collaborative environment, a so-called Web 2.0 product where user-added content creates value for the environment itself. A shift in the paradigm has occured. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams stated in their book (Wikinomics. How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything) that "customers become "prosumers" by cocreating goods and services rather than simply consuming the end product." (Tapscott & Williams, 2006)

The Youtube video above is an hour-long walkthrough on how the emergence of new mediums has affected our interaction patterns during the past five years, after the Youtube video-sharing environment was first launched in February 2005.

The legal representative for ABC, Stephen Weiswasser, stated that "you aren't going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the internet." (see the video for reference). He was wrong, obviously. New media infrastructures (such as Youtube, Facebook, MySpace etc.) have become a creative outlet for people who wish to express themselves in front of a global audience and gain recognition in the process.

The emergence of various internet celebrities such as Lisa Nova (see reference) and Liam Kyle Sullivan (see reference) is an indicator of new media development trends. Producing content individually has less limitations in terms of censorship and creativity. This is something that major networks usually try to control in order to provide standardized content in their programs.



The above videoclip has been viewed almost 20 million times. Charlie the Unicorn series was created by two friends: Jason Steele (animator) and Logan Whitehurst (musician). (see reference). This type of content may be unfit for television, but it's perfect for new media audiences.