TY - JOUR
AU1 - Sinnreich, Aram
AU2 - Latonero, Mark
AB - Abstract In this study, we analyze data from surveys conducted in 2006 and 2010, tracking changes in awareness, engagement and attitudes surrounding emerging digital cultural forms over this 5-year period. Our analysis, based on results from thousands of adults around the globe, shows that not only have remixes, mashups and other forms of “configurable culture” become mainstream phenomena, but also that the attitudes surrounding their cultural legitimacy are shifting. While copyright industries still promote a binary theft/permission framework, many people acknowledge the validity of some appropriation, and are actively negotiating the law's limitations. Yet, those most engaged in challenging dominant copyright narratives and exploring these emergent forms are those who hold the reins of cultural power: the young, educated and wealthy. An increasing number of emerging technologies and user practices are blurring the traditional lines between production and consumption of cultural products, resulting in profound social consequences (Jenkins, 2006; Bruns, 2008; Aufderheide & Jaszi, 2011; Shiga, 2007; Deuze, 2007; Gunderson, 2004; Lowood, 2006; Ondrejka, 2004; Taylor, 2006; Sinnreich, Latonero & Gluck, 2009). Users operating in digital, networked, and mobile environments are able to create, copy, appropriate, manipulate, edit, distribute, and consume audio and visual content in a multitude of new ways. The affordances of the personal computer, digital content, editing software, and Internet technologies have given rise to an ever expanding number of emergent cultural forms: Mashups, remixes, machinima, software add-ons, video game mods, and “photoshopping” are just some examples (Sinnreich, 2010). What unifies these practices is the inversion of the power hierarchy represented by traditional culture industries. Many of these technologies and practices do not fit neatly into, and often come into direct conflict with, the existing social institutions that regulate cultural creation and exchange. Recent battles over copyright, authorship, and ownership have become a familiar manifestation of this tension (Elkin-Koren, 2006; Kim, 2007; Lessig, 2004, 2008; McLeod, 2007; Ondrejka, 2004; Ross, 2006; Shiga, 2007; Vaidhyanathan, 2001; Wagner, 2003). Increasingly, individuals find source material for cultural expression within their mediated environment. Television programs, recorded music, film, video games, news media, political speeches, and advertising images – once considered “content” for the sole purpose of consumption via mass media – are now appropriated, reconfigured, mashed up, and redistributed to others within the networked mediascape – rarely with the permission of the owners of said content. Legacy media industries, such the music, television, radio, and film conglomerates, have relied increasingly on copyright law to secure their positions of control in recent years, thereby maintaining their dominant economic position as gatekeepers and arbiters of “legitimate” cultural exchange (Denegri-Knott, 2006). Historically, complex and capital-intensive production and distribution technologies and processes served as effective barriers to entry against unaffiliated individuals seeking to enter into the cultural marketplace in roles other than consumers. Recently, however, access to widespread, affordable digital technologies has enabled users to appropriate and manipulate commercial content on a massive and unprecedented global scale. Thus, individuals participating in these practices are effectively transformed from mass consumers to mass producers and distributors. The resulting social, legal, and economic tensions threaten to erode the very foundation of industrial and commercial exchange that has dominated the cultural landscape for the past century. Some scholars have identified this tension as a conflict between freedom and control (Herman, 2012; Lessig, 2004, 2008; Vaidhyanathan, 2004). Within this critical academic discourse is the normative assertion that the freedom of users to participate in cultural production and exchange should be fostered, while the control exercised by legacy media should be mitigated or overturned altogether. A number of analytical frameworks have been deployed to explore this conflict. Lessig (2004) describes the rise of “remix culture” and proposes an alternative to the dominant copyright regime, whereby users can employ Creative Commons licenses that communicate to others the terms by which their copyrighted content can be accessed, reconfigured, and redistributed without additional permission. Such models enable rather than inhibit emerging models of cultural production. Although the use of Creative Commons licenses has gained ground over years, there is a paucity of research on the aggregate makeup of these users (Kim, 2007). Other scholars promote the fair use provisions established in statutory copyright law in order to protect and extend the means by which users can participate in cultural production without commercial oversight (Aufderheide & Jaszi, 2008; Jaszi & Aufderheide, 2011). Other related concepts include “participatory culture” (Jenkins, et al., 2009), a term which highlights the democratizing implications of users entering into the realm of cultural production in contrast to traditional consumer culture, and “convergence culture” (Jenkins, 2006), which emphasizes the tension between old and new media configurations. Contrarian arguments include lamentations that professional and expert cultural production has become overrun by debased amateurism (Keen, 2007), and dire warnings that the humanity's very soul risks dissolution in the acid bath of digital collectivism (Lanier, 2010). Some negative reactions within the academy simply reassert the validity of traditional cultural power dynamics. For instance, a recent study of “copy culture” (Karaganis, 2011) employs the language of piracy, theft, authority, and copyright enforcement to discuss practices of digital appropriation. This article uses a framework we outlined in previous publications (Sinnreich, Latonero & Gluck, 2009; Sinnreich, 2010), employing the term “configurable culture” to describe the range of emerging cultural practices that have blurred the boundaries between traditional production and consumption in the wake of recent developments to global digital communications networks. These practices are “configurable” in that cultural information encoded via digital media can serve equally well as any link in the traditional “value chain” of cultural production, from source material to finished product, and also in that an infinitely broad range of modifiers and algorithms (in the form of “effects,” “plugins,” “add-ons” and so forth) can be applied to mediated expression itself as a form of second-order expression. As a result, institutions based on the assumption of a linear process of cultural production and assimilation face significant disruption. We distinguish this framework from the others we have discussed on a number of points. First, we do not view these changes as inherently democratizing or solely inhering to the consumer experience. While most of these new cultural ideas are “bottom up,” emerging from collaborative digital environments, they have also been employed strategically by the culture industries to extend their hegemonic positions. And while they offer participants the opportunity to stake new social positions and forge new political alliances, they also have the capacity to reproduce traditional biases and power dynamics, widening rather than narrowing the gulf between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Finally, while copyright and other legal mechanisms represent a vital site of conflict emerging from these new practices, we also acknowledge social mechanisms such as ethics, ideologies, and the marketplace as equally central nodes in the larger process of cultural regulation and resistance. Using this framework, this study seeks to understand and measure the tensions, conflicts, and emerging social positions surrounding the creation and exchange of cultural information in our digital networked society. To what extent are these debates and tensions about freedom and control in the cultural sphere measurably reflected in the behaviors, attitudes and opinions of the broader public? How do they differ among diverse social groups and regions? And how might these tensions be evolving as engagement with configurable practices broadens and deepens over time? In the summer of 2006, the authors fielded a survey instrument to U.S. adults to measure the engagement, awareness, and opinions regarding configurable culture in a variety of different spheres including television, film, recorded music, photography, and games. Some qualitative results from this survey were published in Sinnreich, Latonero, and Gluck (2009) and Sinnreich (2010). In late 2010, a largely identical survey was fielded to adults from a broader range of countries, which included additional subjects such as advertising, political speech, and news. In the 2010 survey, new questions were also added to determine whether privacy concerns play a role in the prevalence of remixing practices or attitudes about them. Drawing on boyd and Hargittai (2010) and Lenhart (2011), we sought to measure the degree to which privacy concerns contribute to proactive engagement with information disclosure, or curtail illegal configurable cultural activities. Additional questions explore the influence of age, gender, skills, and education on participation in configurable culture generally (Hargittai & Shafer, 2006; Hargittai & Walejko, 2008; Hargittai & Hsieh, 2010; Hargittai, 2010). This article is the first to share quantitative findings from either survey, and to contrast the two data sets. Methodology In July, 2006, we fielded a survey (completed by 1,779 respondents) dedicated to exploring the awareness, behaviors, and opinions of U.S. adults regarding configurable cultural practices across a range of media, including mashups, remixes (music and video), machinima (fan movies made with video games), and mods (fan-created video game modifications). In November and December of 2010, we fielded a mostly identical survey to adults in the US and around the globe,1 adding some additional questions on subjects including privacy, news, and advertising. As in the 2006 study, 2010 survey respondents were members of a larger panel previously recruited online by a California-based market research firm called Intellisurvey.2 The survey was programmed, hosted and administered online. Respondents were invited to participate in the web-based survey via e-mail, which may present some challenges in terms of generalizability. E-mail recruitment from an existing panel clearly limits the sampling frame, e.g., those who have access to e-mail and who regularly use the internet/web. However, given the costs of random-digit dialing in the domestic and (especially) the international contexts, these methods proved to be the best available option to recruit large numbers of respondents. The 2010 completed survey sample consisted of 3,055 adult, English-speaking respondents from dozens of countries including the US (36%), India (11%), Turkey (10%), Canada (5%), South Africa (5%), and the Philippines (5%). Respondents represented a diverse range of ages (41% aged 18–34, 43% aged 35–54, and 17% aged 55 and older), near parity between genders (44% male, 56% female), and a diverse range of income levels (52% below $40,000 per year, 25% between $40,000 – 80,000 per year, and 11% above $80,000 per year; the remaining 12% opted not to report their income). We gathered such demographic information not only to gauge the generalizability of our sample, but also for the purposes of performing cross-tabulation and other statistical analyses by age, gender, income, geography, and education level. The 2006 survey data were weighted by age and gender to reflect distributions reported in the 2000 U.S. census. Due to the 2010 U.S. sample's close similarity in age3 and gender distribution to 2010 census data, and the lack of readily available census data for the other countries represented, we opted not to weight the 2010 data. Despite the evident imperfections in online sampling methodologies, the similarity of our respondent demographics to census data, and the consistency between our 2006 and 2010 surveys, both offer promising indications that our data are representative of the larger population under study. Respondents were informed of the purpose of the study prior to taking the survey and signed informed consent forms per IRB protocols. Respondents were incentivized to participate by being entered into a lottery to win one of four $50 gift cards for an online retailer. No personally identifiable information was collected from any human subject by the research team. Respondents had the opportunity to abandon the survey at any time, as well as the choice not to answer any given question. Because this online survey was descriptive in nature, examining the broad themes outlined above rather than testing specific hypotheses or predictive models, we have followed similar studies using web-based surveys (e.g. Bosnjak & Tuten, 2001; Viegas, 2005; Sinnreich, Latonero, and Gluck, 2009) in opting not to report statistical significance and effect size in the results. Results Because configurable culture by definition undermines the practical distinctions between traditional categories of production and consumption, we designed and analyzed our survey in a way that would be attuned to these differences without overdetermining them. Thus, we developed a schema that divided respondents' relationship to cultural forms and behaviors into three broad categories: awareness, usage, and engagement. Awareness means that a respondent has heard of a given practice, such as mashing and remixing (exemplified by the survey question “Which of the following practices have you heard about before?”). Usage suggests that the respondent has accessed the products of configurable practices, such as mashups and remixes, in the context of traditional consumption (exemplified by the survey question “Have you used or consumed the following in the last year?”). Finally, engagement means that the respondent has entered into the grey area between production and consumption, by altering or interacting with cultural information to some degree (exemplified by survey questions such as “In the past year, which of the following music-related activities have you engaged in?”). Awareness and Usage: From the Marginal to the Mainstream The survey instruments in both 2006 and 2010 recorded respondents' awareness levels and usage habits for a variety of configurable cultural practices. Where possible, we compare the data from the 2006 survey to those from the 2010 survey, although additional questions were added to the latter. While the 2006 survey included only U.S. respondents, the 2010 survey includes both U.S. and non-U.S. respondents, as detailed in the methods section above. In the cases where identical questions are asked in both surveys, we are able to make inferences regarding the longitudinal changes in awareness and usage over the 4-and-a-half-year period. Additionally, for the 2010 data, we are able to draw conclusions about regional differences between the populations surveyed. For all regions and time frames, the data show discrete quantitative tiers of awareness and usage, which suggest a dynamic spectrum between what we term marginal (0–14.9%), emerging (15–34.9%), and mainstream (35% and above) cultural phenomena. Although there are some examples of research attempting to measure mainstream versus marginal culture (Hug, 2003; Doran & Littrell, 2012), the literature did not suggest widely agreed upon statistics in this area. Thus, these threshold percentages were based on emergent trends in the data, rather than on an existing theoretical framework, and we use them primarily in order to benchmark longitudinal and geographic differences in levels of awareness and usage. Future comparative research would be necessary to further refine our analysis of these thresholds. Awareness To measure awareness, both the 2006 and 2010 surveys asked participants whether they had heard of various configurable cultural practices across a range of media platforms (see Figure 1). Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Awareness of Configurable Culture, 2006 & 2010 Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Awareness of Configurable Culture, 2006 & 2010 The data show a steady rise in awareness among U.S. respondents between 2006 and 2010 for many categories. For example, awareness of music mashups rose from 24.1% in 2006 to 31.4% in 2010, and awareness of music remixes rose from 51.5% to 62.6%. In every category, awareness was higher among non-U.S. respondents than among Americans. Blogs and music remixes are clearly mainstream, with over 50% of respondents reporting familiarity with these forms in both 2006 and 2010. Awareness of digital photographic manipulation (e.g., “photoshopping”) is also high, with nearly 50% recognition among all three surveyed groups. TV/Film remixes, with mainstream awareness levels among non-U.S. respondents (49.3%), remain an emerging phenomenon for U.S. respondents (31.8% in 2010, up from 27.6% in 2006). Anime Music Videos (AMVs) exhibit a similar pattern, with mainstream recognition only outside of the US. Other practices, such as machinima and video game mods, remain marginal (and have even dropped in awareness) for Americans while achieving emerging status outside of the US. For example, machinima awareness was 18.4% among non-U.S. respondents and about 11% among U.S. respondents in both 2006 and 2010. None of the configurable cultural practices we asked about was sufficiently unfamiliar outside of the US to achieve marginal status. Usage Respondents were asked whether they had consumed or used a range of configurable cultural products within the last year. Overall, levels of consumption are lower than those for awareness (see Figure 2). Usage of blogs can be described as mainstream in both 2010 U.S. (39.1%) and non-U.S. (48.5%) respondents. Yet we see significant regional differences in use level for other categories. For example, remixed music is squarely mainstream for non-U.S. respondents (42.5%), yet it remains emerging for 2010 U.S. respondents (18.9%). Similarly, the data show that a far greater percentage of 2010 U.S. respondents (44.4%) than non-U.S. respondents (18.4%) have consumed no configurable cultural products whatsoever. Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Usage of Configurable Culture, U.S. and Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Usage of Configurable Culture, U.S. and Non-U.S., 2010 Engagement: From consumption-adjacent to production-adjacent In addition to awareness and usage, respondents were asked a series of questions about their engagement levels with seven different media- and topic-specific categories: Music, Film/TV, Video Games, Images, Politics/News, Software, and Social Media. In general, practices that we have referred to as “production-adjacent” in prior research (e.g., those which require a higher degree of expertise or effort) were more likely to be marginal. Conversely, “consumption-adjacent” practices (e.g., those which require a lesser degree of expertise or effort) were more likely to be emerging or mainstream. Those engaging in production-adjacent activities tend to be people with access to what one might call “the means of configuration,” comprised of the requisite tools, expertise, cultural capital, and social networks to reappropriate and redistribute culture digitally. On the other end of the spectrum, those engaging in consumption-adjacent practices also have access to digital networked environments; however, they lack the ability and/or the desire to participate at a “deeper” level. This very distinction challenges overly optimistic assumptions and hyperbole about the necessarily transformative qualities of a monolithic participatory culture. Below, we discuss a number of practices reflected in the dataset. Wherever possible, we report 2006 data in addition to 2010 findings. For music, accessing songs via video streaming sites (41.4% U.S., 58.9% Non-U.S.), customizing a play list (34.8% U.S., 51.6% Non-U.S.; 21.6% in 2006), burning a CD (33.3% U.S., 58.7% Non-U.S.), and ripping a CD (27.3% U.S., 42.9% Non-U.S.) are mainstream behaviors outside the US and mainstream or emerging domestically. Using a music recommendation engine (17.9% U.S., 30.1% Non-U.S.) is an emerging practice in the US and elsewhere. Practices such as sharing a playlist with others (13.5% U.S., 30.8% Non-U.S.; 8.3% in 2006), sharing music files (11.8% U.S., 29.1 % Non-U.S.; 9.8% in 2006), using software or mobile applications to identify a song (8.7% U.S., 16.7% Non-U.S.) and karaoke (9.3% U.S., 24.4% Non-U.S.; 12.4% in 2006) are marginal behaviors in the US and emerging elsewhere in the world. Finally, production-adjacent practices such as making sample-based music (3.3% U.S., 8.5% Non-U.S.; 3.2% in 2006) and deejaying a set (2.4% U.S., 5.3% Non-U.S.) are marginal practices in every region (see Figure 3). Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Music Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Music Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 For film and television-related activities, accessing bonus features (33.4% U.S., 30.1% Non-U.S.; 23.6% in 2006) and using a digital video recorder (20.7% U.S., 18.4% Non-U.S.; 10.9% in 2006) are emerging behaviors, while sharing digital video files with others (9.6% U.S., 26.3% Non-U.S.; 6.5% in 2006), copying a video to a DVD from a computer (11.7% U.S., 42.7% Non-U.S.), commenting on a blog about film or television (9.7% U.S., 16.3% Non-U.S.; 5.8% in 2006), updating a status or tweeting about a film or television show (10.4% U.S., 12.8% Non-U.S.) and remixing video (2.6% U.S., 7.0% non-U.S.; 2.0% in 2006) fall into the marginal category among American respondents (see Figure 4). As with music, the higher the level of expertise or effort required, the less prevalent a practice tends to be. Figure 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Video Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Video Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 For video games, no configurable cultural practices have yet become mainstream. Customizing a character or environment using game options (15.8% U.S., 24.1% Non-U.S.; 7.4% in 2006) is the only is an emerging category. Using a “cheat” (12.7% U.S., 20.5% Non-U.S.; 11.8% in 2006), watching video clips of games online (14.1% U.S., 33.5% Non-U.S.), and using software add-ons (7.8% U.S., 17.8% Non-U.S.) are marginal in the US but emerging elsewhere. Finally, downloading additional game content (DLCs; 6.7% U.S., 14.2% Non-U.S.), participating in virtual worlds (6.4% U.S., 11.8% Non-U.S.), “modding” games (2.7% U.S., 5.2% non-U.S.), and blogging (6.5% U.S., 12.6% Non-U.S.; 5.7% in 2006), tweeting, or posting a status about a video game (5.6% U.S., 9.5% Non-U.S.) are marginal activities in every region (see Figure 5). Figure 5 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Video Game Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 5 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Video Game Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 For image-related practices, basic fixes (e.g., redeye correction; 41.8% U.S., 56.1% Non-U.S.; 32.6% in 2006) and sharing photos online (48.9% U.S., 63.2% Non-U.S.; 26.5% in 2006) are mainstream. “Tagging” personal or geographical data to photos (19.5% U.S., 32.3% Non-U.S.), using advanced manipulation software such as Photoshop (18.4% U.S., 38.0% Non-U.S.; 13.6% in 2006), ordering photo-based products (15.3% U.S., 17.4% Non-U.S.; 6.4% in 2006) and blogging (15.0% U.S., 30.0% Non-U.S.; 9.2% in 2006), tweeting, or posting a status about a picture (14.9% U.S., 22.8% Non-U.S.) fall into a cluster of emerging practices (see Figure 6). As seen in the other categories, the more complex the activity or knowledge of additional platforms required, the more marginal the scores. Figure 6 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Photo Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 6 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Photo Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 A new category was introduced in the 2010 survey – remixing, reconfiguring, and appropriating political and news-related content. Some behaviors, such as using social media to obtain news (25.6% U.S., 51.2% Non-U.S.) and sharing a story via social media (22.9% U.S., 37.3% Non-U.S.) are marginal for Americans and mainstream elsewhere around the world. Other activities, including signing online petitions (30.3% U.S., 25.8% Non-U.S.), signing up for tailored news alerts (20.9% U.S., 30.2% Non-U.S.), participating in online citizen journalism (11.2% U.S., 24.5% Non-U.S.), connecting to a politician or cause online (18.2% U.S. vs. 14.9% Non-U.S.), and commenting on news or politics on a blog (14.4% U.S., 22.1% Non-U.S.), are emerging or nearly emerging among both U.S. and non-U.S. respondents. Finally, activities such as online activism and remixing political footage remain in the marginal category for all categories of respondents (see Figure 7). Figure 7 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable News and Political Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 7 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable News and Political Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 For configurable practices involving computer software, customizing a computer desktop or phone with a picture (38.5% U.S., 56.9% Non-U.S.; 27.1% in 2006), customizing programs by changing their preferences or options (34.6% U.S., 47.9% Non-U.S.; 20.7% in 2006), and changing a browser's default homepage (34.1% U.S., 52.1% Non-U.S.; 22.7% in 2006) are mainstream practices. Installing plugins (23.5% U.S., 38.2% Non-U.S.; 13.4% in 2006) is mainstream outside of the U.S. but an emerging behavior among Americans. Marginal practices for Americans such as sharing software (6.1% U.S., 18.1% Non-U.S.; 4.3% in 2006) and blogging about software applications (7.3% U.S., 16.3% Non-U.S.; 4.7% in 2006) are emerging practices in other regions, while activities such as modifying software code and unlocking “Easter eggs” – or intentionally hidden prizes coded into software – are universally marginal practices (see Figure 8). Figure 8 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Software Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 8 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Configurable Software Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 As with other categories of configurable cultural engagement, social media practices span the spectrum from mainstream to marginal. Creating online personal profiles (46.6% U.S., 63.1% Non-U.S.) and sharing user-generated content (33.5% U.S., 50.2% Non-U.S.) are both common practices around the world. Other practices, such as playing social games (21.6% U.S., 30.9% Non-U.S.), following or “liking” brands and celebrities (32.4% U.S., 28.2% Non-U.S.), and sharing one's geographic location (21.6% U.S., 28.9% Non-U.S.) are emerging practices, both in the US and elsewhere. Practices such as linking two or more social networks (9.5% U.S., 23.1% Non-U.S.) and collecting points and rewards for social media interactions (12.7% U.S., 20.9% Non-U.S.) are marginal in the US but emerging among non-U.S. respondents. Finally, contributing to a collaborative internet project (e.g. Wikipedia) is a marginal social practice for both U.S. (7.4%) and non-U.S. (9.8%) respondents (see Figure 9). Figure 9 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Social Media Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Figure 9 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement With Social Media Practices, U.S. & Non-U.S., 2010 Age and Configurable Culture As in our 2006 survey, 2010 respondents in different age groups tended to report differing levels of awareness and engagement with configurable cultural practices, as well as differing opinions regarding the validity of these practices. Specifically, younger people are generally more aware, more engaged, and more likely to see mashups and remixes as “original” than their elders. Yet there is evidence that the age gap is closing. Though most age groups have increased their overall awareness and engagement levels since 2006, the eldest are catching up the most quickly, perhaps approaching a saturation point already achieved by younger demographics in earlier years. Age and Awareness When we gave survey respondents a list of configurable cultural practices across a range of media (e.g., music, video, software), and asked which of them respondents had heard of, U.S. respondents over 55 years of age (72.8%) were only about two-thirds as likely as 18- to 25-year-olds (91.6%) to respond affirmatively to any of the answers in 2006 (see Figure 10). Today, that gap appears to have closed, with awareness levels among 55+ respondents reaching 80.8%, or about nine-tenths the awareness levels of the younger age group (89.6%). Outside of the U.S., this gap is almost nonexistent, with 96.2% awareness among 18–25 year-olds and 93.6% among those aged 55 and over. Figure 10 Open in new tabDownload slide Levels of Awareness of Configurable Culture Figure 10 Open in new tabDownload slide Levels of Awareness of Configurable Culture Age and Engagement The age gap also appears to be eroding when it comes to engagement with configurable culture, although engagement levels among younger respondents have continued to grow steeply (predictably, saturation occurs more slowly when it comes to engagement than with awareness). When we asked respondents about their engagement in a range of practices across several different media, we found this trend to be consistent. For instance, when we asked respondents which configurable music-related activities they had engaged in within the past year (e.g., ripping, burning, sampling, and sharing), 18- to 25-year-olds (62.7%) were nearly four times more likely than those aged 55 and over (16.1%) to respond affirmatively to at least one activity in 2006. In the 2010 survey (see Figure 11), that gap had narrowed considerably, with younger respondents (87.5%) only about half again as likely to engage as their elders (56.4%). As with awareness levels, the gap is even smaller outside of the US, where a greater degree of saturation has brought engagement among the youngest respondents (92.5%) within a stone's throw of the oldest (80.2%). Figure 11 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement Levels in Music-Related Configurable Cultural Forms Figure 11 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement Levels in Music-Related Configurable Cultural Forms Similarly, when we asked respondents about their engagement in video game-related configurable cultural forms (such as cheats, modding or sharing a game), the age gap continued to diminish despite considerable overall growth in engagement levels. Unsurprisingly, given the more marginal, youth-oriented, and technologically challenging nature of video games relative to music, these engagement levels tended to be lower than those for musical practices. In 2006, the youngest U.S. adults (37.3%) were more than twelve times as likely as the oldest (2.9%) to engage in such practices, while in 2010 younger respondents (56.2%) were almost three times more engaged than older respondents (19.2%). As with the other categories of awareness and engagement, non-U.S. respondents exhibited a far higher degree of engagement with video game-related practices. However, the age gap remained similar to that among U.S. respondents, most likely due to the fact that saturation has not been reached (see Figure 12). Figure 12 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement Levels in Video Game-Related Configurable Cultural Forms Figure 12 Open in new tabDownload slide Engagement Levels in Video Game-Related Configurable Cultural Forms Age and Opinion As with awareness and engagement, we found age to correlate strongly with opinions about configurable culture. Specifically, when we asked the question “To what extent do you consider mash-ups and remixes ‘original’?”, younger respondents were far more likely to say that some or all uses were original than were older respondents. In our 2006 survey, for instance (see Figure 13), almost four-fifths of respondents aged 18–25 conceded that appropriation-based cultural products can be original, while nearly half of respondents 55 and over rejected any possibility of originality. Figure 13 Open in new tabDownload slide Opinions About Configurable Culture by Age, 2006 Figure 13 Open in new tabDownload slide Opinions About Configurable Culture by Age, 2006 It would be natural to infer from these data that either (a) younger people are more accepting of change or ambivalence than their elders, and therefore less resistant to configurable culture, or (b) the younger cohort, having been raised as “digital natives” (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008), are, and will remain, more receptive to these practices. However, the reality appears to be a bit more interesting. In our 2010 survey, we gave respondents the ability to select “prefer not to answer” as an alternative to the other three responses (see Figure 14). Judging by comparison between the 2006 and 2010 data sets, most of the younger respondents who opted not to answer in the latter year appear to be those who would have opted for “original” in the earlier survey, while among the older respondents, the “prefer not to answer” response appears to have cannibalized the “never” responses. We interpret this to mean that younger respondents, forced to render a judgment about cultural practices about which they are unfamiliar, will most likely give it the benefit of the doubt, while older respondents in the same situation will reject the unfamiliar cultural practice. This is significant; due to the fact that older people tend to be less familiar with these practices, it means that reflexive judgments about them across all age groups are biased negatively. It also suggests that the distribution of informed opinions has much greater parity among different age cohorts than it would first appear from the data. Figure 14 Open in new tabDownload slide Opinions About Configurable Culture by Age, 2010 Figure 14 Open in new tabDownload slide Opinions About Configurable Culture by Age, 2010 This argument is further supported when we leave age out of the picture altogether and segment opinions by rudimentary exposure to configurable culture (see Figure 15). Among those who say they have heard of mashups, anime music videos, or machinima, the distribution of opinions is very similar to that for 18–25 year-olds. Yet among those who say they have never heard of any configurable cultural product, regardless of age, the distribution is more similar to that of older respondents, with roughly a third (35.9%) reserving judgment and another 28.9% rejecting any chance of originality (and therefore cultural validity). Figure 15 Open in new tabDownload slide Opinions About Configurable Culture by Exposure, 2010 Figure 15 Open in new tabDownload slide Opinions About Configurable Culture by Exposure, 2010 Gender, Awareness and Engagement There is near parity between genders in terms of overall awareness of configurable culture, with 92% of women and 93% of men reporting that they've heard of at least one of the many forms we listed on our survey. However, there appears to be a significant gender gap in when it comes to engagement in configurable culture (see Figure 16). For every major category of media we examined (e.g., music, video, news, games, etc.), men's engagement levels outstripped women's. The gaps were greatest in more technologically demanding categories, such as video games (18.0%), video (14.6%) and software (11.9%), while they were smallest in categories such as social media (1.8%) and images (5.8%). Figure 16 Open in new tabDownload slide Gender Differences in Awareness and Engagement, 2010 Figure 16 Open in new tabDownload slide Gender Differences in Awareness and Engagement, 2010 Income, Usage and Engagement We also examined the relationship between income and configurable culture awareness, usage and engagement, focusing on 2010 American survey respondents.4 Income was not a consistent predictor of awareness; by and large, middle-income respondents showed slightly greater awareness of configurable cultural forms than did either the poorest or the wealthiest respondents. However, respondents above median income levels reported considerably higher degrees of usage and engagement than those below median income levels, and these figures tended to climb along with income. We cross-tabulated income with usage levels for four configurable cultural forms in four different media: music remixes, video remixes, video game mods, and photoshopped images. As Figure 17 shows, usage climbed with income for each of these forms, most consistently in the higher income brackets. Figure 17 Open in new tabDownload slide American Usage of Configurable Cultural Forms by Income Figure 17 Open in new tabDownload slide American Usage of Configurable Cultural Forms by Income Configurable culture engagement levels also tended to be higher for those in higher income brackets. Figure 18 shows the percentage of respondents who reported engaging with at least one configurable cultural form within each of these media categories: News and Politics, Images, Video Games, Film and Television, and Music. Figure 18 Open in new tabDownload slide American Engagement With Configurable Cultural Forms by Income Figure 18 Open in new tabDownload slide American Engagement With Configurable Cultural Forms by Income Configurability and Cultural Power In addition to examining the relationship between configurable cultural behaviors and demographics, we are also concerned with the capacity of these new forms and practices to contribute to shifts in the balance of cultural power. Specifically, theorists such as Jenkins, et al. (2009) and Lessig (2008) have celebrated the democratizing potential of remixes and mashups, and warned about the potentially chilling effects of copyright law, while others such as boyd and Hargittai (2008) and Brandimarte, et al. (2012) have debated whether engagement with configurable culture and social media poses risks to privacy, and whether giving users tools to control the disposition of their personal data can mitigate those risks. We addressed both of these issues in our 2010 survey, asking respondents about their use of Creative Commons licenses, as well as their level of concern regarding online privacy and their experience modifying privacy settings at websites. Copyright and the Commons Although there is a growing awareness and general concern regarding copyright's role in regulating cultural behaviors around the world (Latonero & Sinnreich, forthcoming), the use of Creative Commons licenses by both producers and consumers is still relatively uncommon (see Figure 19). According to our research, only 5.3% of U.S. adults have ever licensed their own work under a Creative Commons license, and 13.1% have searched for products that are open licensed or in the public domain. Outside of the US, these figures are two to three times more prevalent; 17.3% of our non-U.S. respondents reported licensing their work under Creative Commons, and 31.7% of them have searched for, or used, openly licensed and/or public domain works. Figure 19 Open in new tabDownload slide Use of Open Licenses, U.S. and non-U.S. Figure 19 Open in new tabDownload slide Use of Open Licenses, U.S. and non-U.S. Figure 20 Open in new tabDownload slide Demographic Profile of Creative Commons Users, Relative to Survey Baseline Figure 20 Open in new tabDownload slide Demographic Profile of Creative Commons Users, Relative to Survey Baseline As with many other aspects of configurable culture, those respondents who embrace open licenses tend to be from demographic segments that have greater access to both technology and the cultural capital to make use of it for creative purposes (see Figure 18). Specifically, respondents who applied open licenses to their own work and those who searched for others' openly licensed or public domain work tend to be wealthier, better educated, younger, and far more likely to be male than the overall population.5 Privacy On the whole, Internet users are very concerned about their privacy, with a mean score of 3.92 on a scale from 1 (not at all concerned) to 5 (extremely concerned). These scores vary widely by country, with respondents from the Philippines (4.6) and South Africa (4.5) expressing the greatest concern, and those from the United Kingdom and Turkey (each 3.3) expressing the least concern (see Figure 21).6 Figure 21 Open in new tabDownload slide Levels of Privacy Concern, by Country Figure 21 Open in new tabDownload slide Levels of Privacy Concern, by Country Internet users are nearly all aware that they leak some personal information online, but they differ regarding the types of information that they believe is available. When we asked “Which of the following pieces of information about you are available on the Internet to anyone who searches?”, about four out of five respondents conceded that their name and gender would be easy to discover, but only about one out of five believed that their personal videos or purchasing habits were available (see Figure 22). On average, for any given piece of information, about 13.6% of respondents said they didn't know whether it would be available or not. Interestingly, this “don't know” figure is nearly twice as high for U.S. respondents (19.2%) as for non-U.S. respondents (10.7%). Figure 22 Open in new tabDownload slide Internet Users' Beliefs Regarding Availability of Personal Data Figure 22 Open in new tabDownload slide Internet Users' Beliefs Regarding Availability of Personal Data As we have already discussed, age is a factor in awareness, engagement, and attitudes concerning configurable culture. However, age is not an appreciable factor when it comes to privacy concern; the mean level of concern was approximately 4 on a scale from 1 to 5 for each of the age groups we surveyed (Figure 23). On the other hand, age is a significant factor when it comes to taking action with regard to privacy; while 7 in 10 respondents aged 18–25 reported that they've monitored or modified their privacy settings on a web site, only about four in ten aged 65 and older reported having done so. In other words, while privacy concern is universal among the online adult population, the older a person is, the less likely he or she will do something about it. Figure 23 Open in new tabDownload slide Privacy Concern and Modification by Age Figure 23 Open in new tabDownload slide Privacy Concern and Modification by Age Like age, education level had a linear relationship with respondents' likelihood to monitor or modify their privacy settings on websites; specifically, the better educated respondents were, the more likely they were to modify their settings, and the less likely they were to say they didn't know whether they had done so (see Figure 24). However, unlike age as a factor, education also correlated with the level of overall privacy concern among respondents. Those with doctoral-level degrees were far more concerned than most (mean value of 4.31 on a scale from 1 to 5), while those with a high school education or less were the least concerned (scores of 3.84 and 3.71, respectively). Interestingly, income was a far less successful predictor of privacy attitudes and behaviors than country, age or education. Overall levels of concern were nearly equivalent across income levels, and the likelihood of privacy modification hovered in the vicinity of 60% for each income group below $100,000 per year. Above this level, privacy modification spiked sharply, with 68.5% of those earning $100,000-$150,000 and 79.3% of those earning above $150,000 modifying their settings. Figure 24 Open in new tabDownload slide Privacy Concern and Modification by Education Level Figure 24 Open in new tabDownload slide Privacy Concern and Modification by Education Level Conclusion In this study, we have demonstrated that configurable cultural practices, which employ digital networked technologies and collapse the traditional distinction between production and consumption, have grown in awareness, usage and engagement among Americans in recent years. Our study also shows that configurable culture has global reach, and that, if anything, its impact is greater outside of the US than within it. Though these practices can be categorized in three tiers of popularity, which we refer to as marginal, emerging and mainstream, their overall prevalence is very high, with roughly 7 in 10 Americans, and 9 in 10 respondents from elsewhere, reporting some form of active engagement with at least one of these practices. Although the category-blurring nature of configurable culture has been celebrated for its potential to undermine traditional social power dynamics, especially as regards patterns of participation in media and communications (Jenkins, 2006; Lessig, 2008), we have found that various social disequilibria persist in the levels and modes of adoption of these forms. Specifically, we have found that nationality, age, gender, and income tend to vary with degrees of expertise, awareness, usage, engagement, and opinion regarding the cultural practices we investigated. On the whole, younger people are far more likely to know about and engage with configurable culture than their elders. However, these age gaps narrowed considerably in the years between 2006 and 2010, and the gaps are far smaller outside of the US than within it. Perhaps our most interesting age-related findings are those regarding opinions of configurable culture, with young people far more likely than their elders to concede that appropriation-based work such as mashups and remixes are always or sometimes “original” and therefore culturally valuable or valid. While this may seem like a straightforward cohort-based distinction, our addition of a fourth, “no answer” response option in the 2010 survey shows that the distinctions may not be as great as they seemed in our initial 2006 survey. Comparing the results from the two datasets, the “don't know” option appears to have diminished “always original” response rates among the youngest responses by about half, and to have diminished “never original” responses among the oldest respondents in roughly the same proportions. To put it plainly, it appears that younger people who don't know enough to render an opinion tend to err on the side of granting legitimacy, while older people tend to do the opposite. Given the strict permission/violation copyright narrative perpetuated by dominant media industries (Lessig, 2004; Sinnreich, 2013), these findings can be taken as a sign that apparent generational disagreements over law and policy can be understood in a more nuanced context as varying levels of, and responses to, ignorance of emerging cultural forms. This interpretation is cemented by our cross tabulation of the opinion data by exposure to configurable cultural forms, showing that the gap between those who have heard of at least one example and those who haven't, regardless of age, is far wider than the gaps in cohort-based analyses. Our findings about configurability, gender, and income raise some concerns regarding self-efficacy and social equality. While men and women appear to know about configurable culture in equal numbers, the enduring gap in engagement, especially when it comes to technology-centric media such as software and games, suggests that even if they have an equivalent level of access to digital technology, women tend to have a lower level of expertise and/or perceived self-efficacy in relation to such technology. Similarly, the fact that income tends to vary with usage and engagement, but not awareness, suggests that full participation in digital culture still requires a degree of social power conferred by wealth. This provides further support for critiques of “digital divide” research (e.g., Mossberger, et al., 2003; Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008) that complicate the traditional measures of access and exposure to new technologies by suggesting that expertise and self-efficacy are vital elements of social equality as well. Our investigations of copyright and privacy in the context of emerging digital technologies suggest similar findings regarding the persistence of traditional social inequities. Users of Creative Commons licenses tend to skew younger, wealthier, better educated, and more male than the overall population, problematizing the premise that such licenses may serve to democratize cultural power. In regard to privacy, despite the universally high level of overall concern respondents reported, younger and better educated respondents were far more likely to exhibit expertise regarding the concrete threats to privacy posed online, and also more likely to have taken concrete action to counter these threats. Echoing the international disparities in awareness and engagement, respondents from outside the US showed a greater degree of sophistication with both copyright and privacy concerns than did their American counterparts. We speculate that the different regulatory regimes between US and other nations, varying amounts of media reportage on copyright and privacy issues, and even a degree of selection bias in our survey recruitment process may contribute to these apparent discrepancies. Additionally, the greater age gap in awareness, usage and engagement with configurable cultural practices for American respondents than for those outside the US both offers an explanatory mechanism for the overall divergences between the two groups, and raises some troubling questions about the cultural and technological disenfranchisement of older members of American society. Further research on cross-national comparisons of media practices and ethics in relation to copyright (Ess, 2009) would help to explain further these regional distinctions. A limitation of this study is that our survey panelists were not randomly selected from a national and international sample frame. This limitation was mitigated by the considerable size of our respondent bases in both 2006 and 2010, the demographic diversity of our respondent base, the overall demographic similarity of our U.S. respondents to the general population as reflected in survey and census data, the longitudinal consistency of our findings, and the consistent recruiting, fielding, survey design and data analysis methodologies we employed. It is our ambition to continue fielding this survey for additional comparative analysis in future years, thereby tracking the continuing evolution of configurable cultural practices around the globe, and better understanding the social changes that accompany these shifts. Notes 1 Of our 3,055 respondents, 2,701 chose to report their nationality; in all, 92 different countries were represented, with 10 or more respondents from 26 different nations representing every populated continent. 2 Information about Intellisurvey can be found at http://www.intellisurvey.com. 3 Mean US survey respondent age: 45.1; Mean U.S. adult age: 44.9. 4 We didn't compare data from the 2010 and 2006 surveys because of changes in our methodology for capturing usage. We also opted to focus solely on American respondents because the variant national median income levels among respondents would make a broader analysis far more complex. 5 On a country-by-country basis, these disparities are even greater; they are mitigated in these figures because non-Americans, who are most likely to use open licenses, also tend to earn less than Americans do. 6 Interestingly, these levels of concern don't appear to correlate consistently with actual privacy levels in these countries, as the relatively unconcerned UK has recently been called “the most surveillance-intense country in the democratic world” by Privacy International, while the same institution rates conditions in highly concerned South Africa as relatively benign. References Aufderheide , P. , & Jaszi , P. ( 2011 ). Reclaiming fair use: How to put balance back in copyright . Chicago : University of Chicago Press . 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( 2005 ). Bloggers' expectations of privacy and accountability: An initial survey . Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , 10 ( 3 ), article 12. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Wagner , R. P. ( 2003 ). Information wants to be free: Intellectual property and the mythologies of control . Columbia Law Journal , 103 , 995 – 1034 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat About the Authors Aram Sinnreich is an assistant professor at Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information, in the department of Journalism in Media Studies. He is the author of two books, Mashed Up: Music, Technology and the Rise of Configurable Culture (2010) and The Piracy Crusade: How the Music Industry's War on Sharing Destroys Markets and Erodes Civil Liberties (2013), both from University of Massachusetts Press. Address: 4 Huntington St., New Brunswick, NJ, 08901. Email: sinn@rutgers.edu Mark Latonero is the research director and deputy managing director at the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, and a research assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Address: 3502 Watt Way Los Angeles, CA 90089. Email: latonero@usc.edu Author notes * Accepted by previous editor Maria Bakardjieva © 2014 International Communication Association
TI - Tracking Configurable Culture From the Margins to the Mainstream
JF - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
DO - 10.1111/jcc4.12073
DA - 2014-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/tracking-configurable-culture-from-the-margins-to-the-mainstream-QSrkmTlNd2
SP - 798
EP - 823
VL - 19
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -