Pew and the Content Creators

Lenhart, Amanda, & Madden, Mary (2005). Teens content creators and consumers. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Report. Retrieved on November 19, 2006, from: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Content_Creation.pdf

This is yet another report by the folks at Pew that includes a plethora of facts. However, this time, the facts are related to online teens, the media materials they use, and the content they create on the internet. According to the authors, Content Creators are defined as "online teens who have created or worked on a blog or webpage, shared original creative content, or remixed content they found online into a new creation" (p. 1). Dede (2005) calls this process of remixing content "Napsterism." The authors (Tapscott and Williams) of the book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, also refer to these content creators, and view them as prosumer "N-geners"(p. 52). While Tapscott and Williams cite the number of teens who can be classified in this category, they also recognize that the content creators are not "content to be passive consumers"; instead, these individuals "increasingly satisfy their desire for choice, convenience, customization, and control by designing, producing, and distributing products themselves" (p. 52). Tapscott and Williams conclude that in order to benefit from the content creators, businesses will have to be reconfigured.

Another "fact" that stood out in the Pew report was related to the percentage of youth who download music and videos. According to the Pew report, "teen boys of all ages are more likely than teen girls to report music downloading" (p. 11). The latest ECAR study (2007) of undergraduates reached similar conclusion.What's interesting is that the research presented in a book by Miller and Slater (2001) titled, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach mentions that teens in Trinidad avidly download music from the internet - it's not just a U.S. phenomena.

The section of the Pew report that outlined the results about legal and illegal music downloads was also of interest. In the report, the authors state that "75% agree with the statement that, 'Music downloading and file-sharing is so easy to do, it's unrealistic to expect people not to do it" (p. 13). This point was reiterated by Tapscott and Williams who talked to teens who were "high on music, low on cash, and convinced that 'information wants to be free'" (p. 57).