Daniel M. Koo
10/15/2015

New forms of media have given non-professionals capabilities where they can create and distribute content. This separates itself from what larger, “professional institutions,” can offer and distribute. This is mass amateurization. More often than not, mass amateurization is associated with what’s referred to as, web 2.0 technologies, or blogs and citizen journalism. This also includes, photo and video-sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube. Writer Clay Shirky has said Web 2.0 allows anyone to do complex things that lead to accomplishments that would otherwise seem intimidating within a traditional setting of an institutional model.
When talking about user generated content, it can be very difficult to put a definition to what someone may mean. Technically when Steven King writes a book on his laptop, that is user generated content. When a man or a woman writes a post of Facebook or Twitter it is also considered user generated content. This document you are reading is user generated content as well. But there is a difference, Steven King will be paid for his book, the average person will not make anything off of a post on the internet, nor a post of a picture, or a home video. But people can still look at your things, read them, view them, and enjoy them.
Web 2.0 additionally includes entire websites as well as applications, and among all of this there’ve been a variety of digital tools. These tools can encompass internet tags, search trackbacks, and social media hashtags. During the early 2000’s, and partly due to the fall of money costs of creating and distributing media, these new forms of media became widely available. Now, mass amateurization is a social, all-encompassing activity, where posts, pictures, memes, and articles can flow through a pipeline of consumers to be shared amongst one another.
In mass amateurization there is no institutional hierarchy, meaning that there is no one to teach you how to function online. There is only a large network of informal group-collaborators that through their interactions can teach one another of online culture as it is today and as it changes. People all over the world become part of the same experience. Ultimately, amateurs can collaborate with each other without the drawbacks or obstacles we think of when institutions are involved. And this is all due to the idea and reality of mass amateurization. Among said obstacles can be, money costs, training, directing, coaching, advising, and organizing.
Although, in the case of mass amateurization, obstacles are nearly nonexistent, it’s as easy as three key strokes to release self-made media for nothing. Everything from blogs to various social media posts can generate traffic. In the case of this, the more traffic the better for some, but is this attention really all that good? In this day and age it appears as though people post things on the internet to do nothing more than cumulate the largest number of “clicks,” that they can. This attention grabbing exercise is something people do whether just for themselves, or for a website that posts news articles.
Some user generated content goes in this negative direction for reasons of fame, and it completely abuses the positive side of mass amateurization. Mass amateurization can be something people use to express new and interesting ideas like observations or even short stories and experiences. This is why applications like Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat exist, so that we can share our experiences with family, friends, and the world. Not surprisingly though there are people who use these portals for attention seeking. Such as those who post pictures of themselves performing sexualized acts or standing in those types of poses. These people wait for clicks, likes and shares to know that they’re being looked at, and to feel as though they have some form of fame.
In the book, Here Comes Everybody, author Clay Shirky, who was mentioned earlier, talks about social tools. These tools are things like blogging, Twitter, Flickr, and Wikipedia. These are outlets that support group conversation as well as group action in a way that previously could only be achieved through companies or large businesses. Just like how the printing press increased individual expression, and the telephone increased communications, Mr. Shirky puts forth the argument, with the advent of online and social media tools, people from all over can form social groups without the previous restrictions of time and cost. But whether or not this advancement is a good thing or a bad thing is up to the general public.
Personally I agree with this, and believe that it’s just the next change in how people function throughout their daily lives. The internet has become an integrated part of our lives to the point where we carry windows into the net in our pockets everywhere we go. It’s forever etched into society, that much is obvious.