Project leader: Prof. Dr. Gebhard Rusch

Project assistant: Henning Groscurth

The project focuses on socio-media processes in prosumer media-cultures across the World Wide Web. The term "prosumption" refers not only to the latest mash-up media but also to a new way of communicating and handling media: Freely configurable mash-up media that are generated on an ad hoc basis are taking on a whole new form across all the traditional categories for the production, distribution and reception of stabilized social and media structures. This produces prosumer mash-up cultures and is driven by the enforced technological process of digitalization and the mass-market rendering of information by means of digital editors, aggregators and other software tools, from RSS feeds to news & entertainment pipes. The result is the ongoing fusion of socio-media production, distribution and reception contexts within a cross-media world of "digital presumption". At this point, mash-up cultures leave the multimedia of "Web 2.0" – including all the individual media they simulate – behind them. Prosumer activity is no longer a question of expressing interest in the original information by traditional means; nor does it deal with the multimedia networking of individual snippets of media: The principle driving force is the cross-media hybridity of mash-ups. This throws up new perspectives on media history, as well as new theoretical and empirical challenges for research that treats the mash-up media as both indicator and symptom of the next leap forward in the mediatization of our society.

Research field: Contexts

Publications

Groscurth, Henning (2011): Mashup Medien. Überlegungen zu ihren distributionsmedialen Eigenschaften. In: Abresch, Sebastian/ Schaumburg, Christina/ Wolf, Mario (Eds.): We take what you made. Zur Theorie und Praxis digitaler Nutz(nieß)ung. Siegen: universi, forthcoming.

Rusch, Gebhard (2008): Mediendynamik. Explorationen zur Theorie des Medienwandels. In: Navigationen, 7 (1), pp. 13-94.

Presentations

Groscurth, Henning: Mashups als Form von Dienstbarkeit. Presentation at the Workshop "Medialität, Genese und Dynamik des Mashups", 2011-09-27 until 2011-09-28 in Siegen, held 2011-09-28.

Groscurth, Henning: Mashups als Form von Dienstbarkeit. Presentation at the "Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaften", 2011-07-05 until 2011-07-08 in Potsdam, held 2011-07-05.

Rusch, Gebhard: Vom Kunstwerk zum Mashable Web. Typische Rekursionen innerhalb von Mediengeschichte. Presentation at the Workshop "Medialität, Genese und Dynamik des Mashups", 2011-09-27 until 2011-09-28 in Siegen, held 2011-09-28. 

Rusch, Gebhard: Mash-Up-Medien. Presentation at the University of Bremen, ZeMKI Forschungskolloquium Medienkultur, 2011-05-05 at the University of Bremen.