If you haven't heard the word Produser before, don't feel bad, you're not alone. It's a reasonably new term that supersedes the old word Prosumer. It's also second cousin to Produtzer and Prosumption. Yes folks, this is still English we're talking here. Let me give you the buzz about it...
Advancements in technology and an explosion of social media has created huge shifts in how media content is created and consumed. Traditionally, the production chain was a linear process: with a content producer such as a musician creating something (a song), a distributor being responsible for getting it out there, and the consumer buying and using it. But that isn't necessarily the way it is done nowadays. Now almost anyone can combine these three processes together and become...you guessed it...a Produser!! Here's a picture of what the process looks like... 
This form of user-led content contributes to an environment known by the term Produsage - coined by Axel Bruns, a social media researcher and lecturer who has written quite a lot about the phenomenon. Bruns says "There is an absence of producers, distributors, or consumers, and the presence of a seemingly endless string of actors acting incrementally as content producers by gradually extending and improving the information present in the information commons, the value chain begins and ends (but only temporarily, ready for further development) with content." 
Here's a link to Brun's blog, one to an introduction to Produsage and one to a website with lots of articles about Produsage. I've even located a slideshow of a lecture for you. And here's a photo of Axel (ditch the bit under the chin Axel). But I know what you're thinking....just what does it all mean?
Well... what it means is that instead of being merely passive consumers of media, people are actively participating in taking existing content, perhaps modifying it, adding to it, stitching bits and pieces of different content together and producing and distributing 'new' content. These produsers occupy a hybrid position as both consumers and producers of media artefacts. Modern technology enables users to easily create and distribute their own goods. YouTube, The Sims, Second Life, Wikipedia and open-source software are major examples of user-created content produsage, where the consumers are also the producers.
Produsage is not just a new form of content production. The shift has changed the whole conventional producer - consumer relationship. Produsage is a continuous creation of knowledge and art by collaborative communities of produsers. It affects culture, the economy, society and democracy. Produsage embraces an open, participatory culture with new forms of governance and ownership - a fluid hierarchy of shifting and subjectively-based meritocracy. Blogs, collaborative online publishing and news sites are other examples of produsage.
Weird Al Jankovic is also a produser. Weird Al takes other people's content, modifies it by adding his own special brand of satire and parody, and redistributes it as his own new creation. If you haven't heard of him you can check him out on Wikipedia (another produsage example) or YouTube (another one) where His song 'White and Nerdy' has had over 53 million views, you can also see it here. Al's version 'You're Pitiful', of James Blunt's 'You're Beautiful' apparently had Blunt's blessing, but was stopped from being released by Blunt's recording company. You can read about it and can listen to it here, it's pretty clever. A couple more examples of produsage are a video clip of soldiers in Afghanistan doing their take on Lady GaGa's 'Telephone' video clip, and here's a music video clip that proves not all produsers necessarily have talent...... Just as well it's free ;-)
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