consumers as producers.
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Remember a while ago I mentioned a blog post and a comment about “I don’t want to have a conversation with my toothpaste”? Well I’m preparing to give a lecture on branding and web 2.0 to a group of university students and when I was putting some thoughts together yesterday I came across it again.
Here’s the link.
I was reading through the Forrester social media report from February and it got me thinking once again about the use of the term conversation and the marketing industry employing certain words and phrases to constitute a discourse. Coincidently I am working on a chapter at the moment about consumers and producers or rather consumers as producers. I’ve been nurturing this idea for some time, but approach it with my discourse analyst hat on. Discourses I believe are something we do, they are performed and as such have an effect because they shape the way we think and act, but there is a metaphysical paradox, because they are self fulfilling. After all if we say something is being talked about – it’s being talked about. I’m arguing consumers as producers constitutes a discourse in its own right.
Because I am so busy writing it up, I’ve decided to pass on submitting a couple of abstracts for upcoming conferences in the Summer, which is a bit pants. I simply don’t have the time at the moment. Boo. However the end is in sight now and, my supervision meeting last week gave me a lot of confidence that the work is up to speed and meeting the right standards. I have agreed to the lecture though and am REALLY looking forward to it. It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to speak in front of a large audience and, undergrads first thing in the morning can be challenging. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
Finally, an oldey but a goodey. At the beginning of my PhD I cam across a short article by David Gauntlett about completing a PhD, so I reread it last week. There are loads of guides on the market on how to survive, or how to write a thesis and, I’ve had a flick through a few. In retrospect none hit the mark as far as I’m concerned, but David’s article is pretty spot on.