contibution to new media

Both Axel Burns and Henry Jenkins (2006) talks about the fact that the users of today's media are no longer a passive audience but rather an active contributor. The way I see it this is a way to include everyone (as far as they have access to media) and a way of saying that two brains work better than one. When people get the chance to participate in for example software development it is not to make a finish product but to keep on improving what was started. This way an invention can always get better. As Axel Burns says it is an unfinished product which keeps on getting better through gathering knowledge.

One good example Burns uses is Wikipedia. It is an encyclopedia but it is never brought to an end and made a book out of it. Instead you can read an article on Wikipedia and if you feel that you know more about the topic than what the article say you can add what you know. But when everyone can participate it is easy to question the quality of the articles added to Wikipedia or to the other 'products' that invites the audience to contribution. In one way Wikipedia has fixed this with referencing (as you would reference any other article). But at the same time there have been articles published that should not have been. Again Wikipedia wants to be of good quality and says that they will block people who edit an article wrong. So even though everyone are invited to join there is a kind of quality check of what you are contributing.