When We All Become News Producers: The Blurring Line Between Creator and Consumer
The old map of the information world was clear: there were journalists who wrote, editors who curated, and us, the readers, who sat back and received it. Today, that map is a tangled mess. A housewife uploading a cooking video to Reels can suddenly become a recipe reference for millions. A student recording a traffic jam from an angkot window can ‘report’ the event faster than national television. We are no longer just consuming information; we are producing it, whether we realise it or not.
This phenomenon is not merely a passing technological trend. It marks a shift in how we think about who has the right to ‘speak’ in the public sphere and who deserves to be trusted. Three sub-themes attempt to dissect how this shift occurs in our daily lives.
From Spectator to ‘Produser’: The Birth of a Hybrid Role
The most fitting term to describe this situation comes from Australian media academic Axel Bruns, who introduced the concept of the ‘produser’—a portmanteau of producer and user. Bruns explains that in collaborative projects like Wikipedia or citizen news sites, users engage in a continuous process of building and refining existing content, rather than just passively consuming it. Interestingly, this involvement sometimes happens without the user’s awareness, for instance, when our shopping habits on a marketplace help shape product recommendations for others.
In everyday life, examples are scattered everywhere. The five-star review we write after buying shoes on an online shopping app, the ‘honest review’ video of a skincare product we upload to social media, or even just replying to a tweet with a personal opinion—all of these are small forms of produsage. We do not realise that every time we type a long comment in a news discussion column, we are actually helping to construct the public narrative, not just receiving it.
Participatory Culture: When the Crowd Helps Write the Story
American media researcher Henry Jenkins offers an equally relevant term: participatory culture. He describes how new media encourages audiences not just to watch, but to participate in creating, discussing, and disseminating content together, blurring the lines between the media industry and its fan communities. This concept explains why a story can ‘live’ far beyond its creator’s original intent.
Just look at how a regional song can suddenly go viral because of a citizen-made remix, or how a social issue can snowball simply because thousands of people create content with the same hashtag—from personal testimonials and memes to homemade infographics. Even the family WhatsApp group becomes a microcosm of this participatory culture. An article shared by an uncle or aunt can change form, be loaded with opinion, or even be re-edited before being forwarded to another group. All of us, without any journalistic qualifications, become part of the story’s distribution engine—for better or for worse.
When the Algorithm Decides Who Gets Heard
But there is one thing often missed in our celebration of this creative freedom: who actually manages the stage? Dutch digital media researcher José van Dijck reminds us that the platforms we use daily are not just neutral containers. She highlights the shift from mere connectedness between users to a connectivity that is engineered and automatically managed by the system, which ultimately becomes a business model in itself. In other words, the algorithm quietly determines which video appears on our feed and whose opinion feels ‘more correct’ because it appears more often.
The effect is tangible. A hoax video about a natural disaster can go viral faster than an official clarification from the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG), simply because the content is more dramatic and favoured by the algorithm. A single emotional negative review from a customer can determine the reputation of a small food stall more than a hundred satisfied customers who chose to remain silent. Herein lies the irony of the modern produser: we feel we have an equal voice, yet there is a machine behind the scenes determining whose voice is heard more loudly.
Freedom That Demands New Responsibility
The disappearance of the boundary between producer and consumer of information certainly brings a breath of fresh air—anyone can now speak up, create, and correct skewed narratives. But this freedom comes with a responsibility that was once shouldered only by a handful of journalists and editors. It is now borne by all of us, every time our finger presses the ‘share’ button. Being a produser of information is not just about having the opportunity to speak, but also about the willingness to verify before disseminating, and to realise that the screen we hold is not a neutral mirror, but a stage whose lighting has been quietly arranged.