They call themselves an odd couple. One is is a professor of media and communication at Queensland University of Technology and the other is a Clinical Assistant Professor at USC Annenberg’s School for communication and journalism. And together they – Professors Stuart Cunningham and David Craig – coined the term ‘Communitainment’. They were recently in India when they spoke with Anuka Roy on their coinage, the rise in OTT (Over The Top) and VOD (Video On Demand) platforms and more.
You both come in from a land where communitainment has proliferated? While the anytime access of content is a huge plus, what is that has led to the widespread acceptance of platforms like OTT and VOD?
Stuart Cunningham (SC): The big underline driver is the whole digital infrastructure that has emerged in the world and has made way for content-makers. The internet, originally a pure communication platform, has now become a platform or a critical infrastructure also for rich content.
David Craig (DC): Besides the technological and the industrial platforms, there is the cultural impulse. The truth is there have been typically a lot of underrepresented voices, topics, genres of content that are not seen in traditional media. We make a stark distinction between digital and social which we believe has not fully been understood by our colleagues. If you are a content creator, content and the kind of communal activities that occur in these social networking platforms, can be and needs to be quite different from what you see in traditional media content. It is about sharing time online with your favourite friends that may number in the millions. In other words, community, communal, communication make communitainment.
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Do you know who Superwoman is? Or what AIB stands for? If your answer to all these questions is no, then may be you are living under a rock! The common link between the above is that their claim to fame is through social media platforms.
The entertainment industry has undergone a tectonic shift. With the rise of ‘social media entertainment’, a proto-industry has been formed by new digital platforms that are defined by intense interactivity with content and the community that consumes this content. The Godrej Culture Lab hosted an event – Communitaiment- Mapping The New Screen Ecology Of Social Media Entertainment on May 27 which dealt with this rising trade. This term has been coined by Prof Stuart Cunninghamof Queensland University of Technology and Prof  David Craig of University of Southern California.
Their presentation used video to make the audience understand how social media entertainment works. They explained the four pillars of communitainment- communication, commutent, commodification and community. “Subscription as revenue model is growing. YouTube Red is a live example of it,†said Cunningham about how revenues are generated in this new ‘industry’. Both professors said that the concept of vlogging (video blogging) has not caught up in our country but the future is bright.
Craig spoke on Tyler Oakley as a case study. Oakley is an American YouTube and podcast personality, humorist, author and activist. “He used his popularity to raise funds for a project which helped the homeless youth of America, of whom a majority belongs to the LGBT community,†said Craig about how people are not always looking for commercial gain but social gain as well.
In conclusion, they said it is about using the various social media platform effectively and content has to be platform specific, the same content cannot be used for every platform.
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In India, while we have all major entertainment players hopping onto the OTT/VOD bandwagon, the numbers are still small thanks to bad connectivity and high costs. Do you think that’s the biggest stumbling block to the acceptance of these platforms with the masses?
SC: They are very big stumbling blocks. Most of our research in US, the streaming capacity is very well developed and so very distinct. So, you have got Netflix, for example, in 130 countries around the world which started as a DVD mail order business and that is a digital service. They are interested in the interactive modes; they are interested in selling you professional, mainstream content via another means. Over here in social, you have got social interactivity that David’s been talking about.
DC: We have been taking an ecological approach. So, while technology is important and cost is important and let us not forget regulation is important – regulation not only about net neutrality giving access to these platforms but also censorship and political constraints about what you can and cannot say in these platforms and also sub censorship as well as trolling. The kind of backlash you have to be weary of, we were in conversation with Indian content creators who have seen frighteningly horrific backlash to the kind of content they post on their platforms. But again there is that cultural impulse of trying to fill in those numerous spaces around subjects and topics. Here in India, of course, most of the content online is in English or Hinglish, there is not a lot of Hindi but there is now opportunity for all these other languages. You have 28 languages here, so there are all these opportunities for the languages but also for other forms of community. LGBT, progressive Muslims, game players – these are all spaces to be seen, start to fill up in communitainment elsewhere, we think it will happen here as well.
SC: But there is as you say big obstacles and the obstacles are the differences between urban educated people and the vast rural areas of the country where access to 4G mobile is still many years away. And, it is also a gender question. We think that most of the people in this communitainment space in India are overwhelmingly male educated urban, there is a long way to go to see a broader range of social participation.
Any type of content that you think that works particularly well on these platforms?
DC: The type of content that works here in India is specific to the nature of the content that already exists. For example, first two categories we have identified here in India is professional independent music, so the OMLs (Only Much Louder) of the world and standup comedy. Neither of which had much opportunity to flourish in traditional media and Bollywood. So, that is here and is very much from a very elite professional kind of trained creator. In the US, where there is much more diversity around content what we have seen is distinctly social media content innovation. Vlogs (Video blogging), gameplay, the DIY (Do It Yourself), which is much more participatory and communal is what we have seen in the United States. And, again, we think that the US is not necessarily imposing that but rather it just suggests that there is still whole raft of communicative kind of practices that are yet to emerge in India because the lowest hanging fruit is music and comedy. But you certainly are seeing food, beauty, design and lifestyle emerge, which again is connected with your celebrity-driven culture which is very distinct around the nature of Indian culture, sub genres and alternatives genres are emerge as we seen in the States.
SC: We are very interested in identifying distinctive Indian genre. If you can help us and point us in the direction of content that may not be very popular elsewhere, we are very interested in distinctly Indian cultural approaches to online participation and interaction as well as content forms and genres.
DC: The one particular content that is coming from the margins that we have noticed that here is a rapid growth in women in this space. We would not necessarily term the Indie music or standup comedy as an alternative, only in terms of genre but not in terms of voice. In terms of voice, we are seeing it initially with women harnessing these platforms to finally start raising awareness about these issues. Most importantly, they are doing it through entertainment and very curiously enough with the support of advertisers and brands who understand that they can no longer sell their products to millenials who are on these platforms and they need these influencers to not only to use and promote the products but do so in the context of social issues, authenticity and if it aligns with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).That is where a lot of these alternative voices are able to commercialise and make money out of what they are doing.
SC: One of the important things that we are stressing here is that these are people who are making enough money to make it a viable career option. This is one of the distinctive things we are trying to really focus on. When YouTube started 10 years ago, the US started to offer 55% of the advertising income from popular YouTube content to the creator it created a new industry. And, while YouTube is not the leading platform here, it has been the driver of this new industry, the sort of emerging proto-industry, commercialising new kinds of content. We think that is a really distinctive and important part of what we are searching.
There has been some original content introduced by a few platforms, but with limited viewership numbers, there is a fear that that pipe will dry up eventually.
DC: Drying up? You have 1.2 billion people here and the youngest society on the planet, about to get 4G access on mobile technology that gets cheaper every year. You are looking at the very tip of the iceberg right now. On the contrary, it is about to explode. I do not know what the better metaphor is, Indian communitainment is about to catch on fire. We will be having a completely different conversationnext year in terms of what our research is looking at. This incredible proliferation of new voices, content and enlarge audiences. It is important to understand we are looking at multiple platforms too, it is not just Twitter, YouTube, Whatsapp, it is Snapchat Vine, Vimeo, Tumblr, Periscope and now of course the second thing is aliveness- broadcast live online, Facebook live, Snapchat , Periscope- they are all game changers and they are going to happen in the next year.
On social media, with so many clicks or like farms around, the popularity of people and products and services are always looked at with suspect.
SC: This where the idea of communitainment is very important. One part of it is community. Community means that if you are online and creating content, an advertiser or brand comes to you and says will you promote my brand we think that the people who follow you your fans would really like our product. The first thing the creator has to ask themselves is, if I endorse this product, if I allow it to be associated with me, will my fans accept. It is not just single person or company’s decision, it is what about the fan base, what the community thinks is acceptable and there are number of examples out there of people doing something like this and finding their fan base would not accept. It is not always authentic. So, authenticity and community are far more important in this content industry than it is in top down. The idea that advertisers and brands have always controlled over us, you do not see this over here. It is very clear that the successful content makers will only go for brands and align themselves with brands to fit their community base.
DC: The minute the influencers see themselves as celebrities doing endorsements is the minute they will lose their community and that is where the power comes from.
You have used the term ‘mapping the new screen ecology’. What exactly is it and what are the parameters of mapping it?
SC: The ecology of new screen, we are trying to say, who owns the platforms, and how are they relating to other platforms.Are they competing? Are they cooperating? What is the relationship between the new platforms in the old media? Do they have existing co-ownerships? This is all we call political economy. Political economy to this ecology, there is all the intermediaries help to make the connection. A lot of these are called multi-channel networks. So, new organisations and agencies have grown up to play match maker between content and brands. You have got that infrastructure; the content creators. Are they professional content creators? Are they new beginners, amateurs? That is very important. And, you have got the whole question of how global is this? These platforms, most of them have originated in the States, so, is this just another form of media imperialism? Or is it different from the old days? Not in India, which has the largest film industry in the world. But in rest of the world Hollywood dominates. So, is this another form of media imperialism because US platforms have come in to other countries; where we would argue that this is very different scenario because the content is all local.
DC: As academics we are trying to take a macro systemic look at this space rather than on the lines of platforms and ownership, content distribution or advertising typically from one perspective. We tend to have very clearly worked out ways of analyzing traditional media.Those same content and conceptual ideas do not particularly apply here because of the different nature of the platforms, content, role of the creators and power of the community.
While it is difficult to predict the future due to technological advancements every day, but if we want you to use the crystal ball, what would you say is the road ahead in terms of platforms, content and other mediums?
SC: David has already pointed to the fact that we think this phenomenon is going to be on the point of growing very rapidly in this country as it has in China and many parts of the world. So, I think we are in the end of the first stage. First stage was very US-centric,the next stage is, how all this is going to play out in the rest of the world. Around the world 2 million YouTube content creators are earning money from this platform. It will be different in India because there will other platforms that will be just as big if not bigger. But that gives you a sense of the growth of this ecology.
DC: One thing to say is that, remember, the mass communication model of the 20th century around linear media, which we did not call linear until we had interactive media, has been built around very highly capitalised expensive gatekeeping kind of operations that have tampered down the cultural impulse that we all have in every society. To have our voices heard, to tell our stories, for which we can now find ways to actually make a living doing on these platforms should not be discounted when we talk about the future of the platforms, creators and these intermediaries like the Culture Machines and OMLs. You have got 1.2 billion people here who need their voices to be heard and some of whom will be able to do so in such clever ways. Â It is going to be really interesting and exciting thing to watch.