UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PAVIA

Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche ed Aziendali Corso di Laurea Magistrale in International Business & Economics

Prosumers & Internet: an empirical study on the use of How-to contents

Thesis by: Filippo Vescovo (filippo.vescovo@gmail.com) Supervisor: Prof. Birgit Hagen

Revised version - March 2013

Table of Contents
ABSTRACT (English).....................................................................................................5 ABSTRACT (Italiano).................................................................................................... 6 ABSTRACT (Trke)..................................................................................................... 7 INCIPIT........................................................................................................................... 9 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................... 11

1. Prosumption in consumer culture, society and Web 2.0............................... 15

1.1. Prosumption: finding a place in the consumer behaviour field........................... 15 1.2. The split of Prosumption into production and consumption.................................. 17 1.2.1. Prosumption as (traditional) Household Production....................................... 18 1.2.2. Prosumption as a Hobby................................................................................. 20 1.3. Prosumption as a trend tied with economy, culture and politics............................ 21 1.3.1. Prosumption as an economical, rational choice.............................................. 21 1.3.2. Prosumption as political and ideological choice............................................. 23 1.3.3. Prosumption as Art and the Craft Consumer.................................................. 25 1.4. Internet and new forms of Prosumption................................................................. 26 1.4.1. Internet as connector of Prosumers and platform for knowledge-sharing...... 27 1.4.2. Recent findings on Prosumption and Internet................................................. 29 1.5. Prosumption as a complex trend unsuitable to economics classical schemes...... 30

2. Prosumption and knowledge-sharing through internet: the rise of Howto contents..............................................................................................................31

2.1. Prosumption and the How-to knowledge-sharing.............................................. 31 2.1.1. What is a How-to and what is not................................................................... 32 2.1.2. Traditional (non-internet) forms of the How-to.............................................. 34 2.2. How-to contents: the translation of the How-to in the internet.............................. 35 2.3. How-to content and internets mass collaboration................................................. 38 2.4. Literature on How-to contents................................................................................40 2.4.1. How-to contents as tools for self-directed learning in on-line contexts.......... 40 2.4.2. How-to videos, sentiments and discursive formation..................................... 41 2.4.3. Studies on the field of Human-Computer Interaction..................................... 42 2.5. Prosumption through the use of How-to contents: a basic model...................... 45

3. Prosumption through the use of How-to contents: a quantitative research ... 51

3.1. Research design...................................................................................................... 51 3.1.1. Areas of investigation of the phenomenon...................................................... 51 3.1.2. Research method and instruments................................................................... 53 3.1.3. Preliminary interviews.................................................................................... 53 3.2. Demographic profile (Q1)...................................................................................... 54 3.3. Activities, Motivations and Contexts (Q2)............................................................ 55 3.3.1. Activities......................................................................................................... 56 3.3.2. Motivations......................................................................................................57 3.3.3. Context of use..................................................................................................64 3.4. Behaviours of the How-to contents Prosumer on the web (Q3)........................... 65 3.4.1. Intensity........................................................................................................... 65 3.4.2. Platforms......................................................................................................... 66 3.4.3. Format of the content...................................................................................... 68 3.4.4. Multi-tasking................................................................................................... 68 3.5. Participation (Q4)................................................................................................... 69

4. Research on How-to contents Prosumer: results and discussion................73

4.1. Collection campaign and population....................................................................... 73 4.1.1. Surveys collection campaign......................................................................... 73 4.1.2. Samples demographic profile (Q1)................................................................ 74 4.1.3. Sub-populations: Italians and Turks................................................................ 76 4.1.4. Users & non-users of How-to contents........................................................... 77 4.2. Activities, contexts and motivations (Q2).............................................................. 78 4.2.1. Activities for which How-to contents are used............................................... 78 4.2.2. Contexts of use................................................................................................ 84 4.2.3. Motivations......................................................................................................85 4.3. Behaviours of the How-to contents Prosumer on the web (Q3)........................... 92 4.3.1. Intensity of use................................................................................................ 92 4.3.2. Platforms......................................................................................................... 93 4.3.3. Format............................................................................................................. 94 4.3.4. Multitasking.................................................................................................... 96 4.4. Participation (Q4).................................................................................................... 97 4.5. Summary of the results and discussion................................................................... 100 CONCLUSIONS............................................................................................................. 103 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................................ 107 LIST OF TABLES.......................................................................................................... 108 LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................ 109 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................ 117

Abstract (English)
This research thesis looks at the new emergent trend of Prosumption through the use of the Internet, and in particular of the so-called How-to contents. A Prosumer is an economic actor who produces what he or she then consumes. How-to contents are knowledge-sharing tools which are descriptive, procedural and resultoriented, and that for these reasons are suitable to help Prosumers in their activities. The How-to contents Prosumer is seen here as an actor who belongs to two different contexts at the same moment: one is the internet, where he or she exploits the information of the content and participate to the web community and the other is the Prosumption activity itself, where information from the content is transformed into tangible activities. Based on the framework, an empirical research has been conducted. The research consisted of two parts: the first was a pool of nine qualitative open interviews with people that use How-to contents; based on these interviews, and on some previous researches on similar topics, an on-line survey has been conducted. Thanks to more than 1100 complete responses mainly young Italians and young Turks interesting insights on the phenomenon could then be explored. How-to contents Prosumption resulted a very diffused practice in both countries, where very similar types of activities could be observed. While cooking and IT-related How-to contents emerged as the leading trends, many niches such as beauty & mode resulted important as well, especially for certain demographic groups. Young users decide to undertake Prosumption activities for many different motivations, which sometimes take place simultaneously. Overall, the most popular resulted self-esteem, joy of creativity and problem-solving, but they are still highly activity-specific; economic factor resulted generally of lower relevance, except that for certain segments. As for the National subgroups, Turks surprisingly revealed to have more expert behaviour in their use of the content than Italians, with higher levels of multitasking, intensity of use and participation. As for the context in which these activities take place, while Italians use the contents quite exclusively in the leisure sphere, Turks tend to exploit How-to contents also in more formal institutions such as professional sphere and school.

Abstract (Italiano)
Questa ricerca di tesi guarda al nuovo ed emergente trend del Prosumption per mezzo di Internet, ed in particolare nel contesto dellutilizzo dei cosiddetti contenuti How-to. Il Prosumatore un attore economico che produce ci che poi consuma, e viceversa. I contenuti How-to sono invece strumenti per la condivisione della conoscenza che sono veloci, procedurali e focalizzati sul risultato, e che per tali ragioni si sono affermati come mezzo fondamentale per attivit di Prosumption. Il Prosumatore di contenuti How-to un soggetto che partecipa contemporaneamente a due contesti: da un lato internet, dove accede a contenuti How-to e ne estrae le informazioni necessarie per le sue attivit e nella quale partecipa alla comunit virtuale; dallaltra lattivit di Prosumption stessa, nella quale le informazioni ottenute in internet vengono trasformate in attivit di produzioni tangibili; nel descrivere questo nuovo tipo di Prosumer, entrambi i contesti e le loro connessioni verranno considerati. Sulla base di questo schema stata fatta una ricerca empirica. Essa stata condotta in due fasi: la prima, di tipo qualitativo, consistita in nove interviste aperte rivolta ad utilizzatori di contenuti How-to; la seconda, basata sulla prima e su alcune ricerche precedenti su argomenti correlati, ha visto la somministrazione di un questionario on-line sul tema. Grazie a pi di 1100 questionari - pervenuti in maggior misura da giovani italiani e turchi stato possibile descrivere diversi aspetti del fenomeno. Innanzitutto lutilizzo di tali strumenti per attivit di Prosumption si rivelato di estrema diffusione nella popolazione in esame, ed allinterno del trend globale si possono scorgere diversi sotto-trend, relativi a diversi profili socioeconomici, motivazioni ed interessi personali. Tra di essi, accanto ad alcuni trend globali come i contenuti How-to di cucina o computer, sono state riscontrate diverse nicchie, come ad esempio quella relativa a moda e bellezza. Per quanto riguarda le motivazioni, mentre la gioia del creare, la stima di s e problem-solving si sono rivelate generalmente di una certa importanza, il fattore economico si rivelato di minore entit. Turchi ed italiani hanno dimostrato inoltre diverse abitudini e modi dutilizzo, con i primi pi dinamici, esperti e partecipativi; allo stesso modo, mentre gli italiani intraprendono tali attivit soprattutto nella sfera del tempo libero ed hobby, i giovani turchi le vedono anche come strumento utile nella vita professionale o scolastica.

Abstract (Trke)
Bu aratrma tezi, yeni ve gelien bir trend olan Internet kullanm yoluyla reterek tketmek (prosumption) konusunu ve zellikle Nasl Yaplr adl ierikleri ele almaktadr. Ekonomide, reten Tketici (Prosumer), tkettiklerini kendisi reten kiidir. Nasl yaplr ierikleri, internetin aklayc, yntemsel ve sonuca ynelik bilgi paylam aralardr ve bu nedenle reten tketicilere faaliyetlerinde yardmc olmaya uygundur. Bylece, Nasl yaplr iceriklerini kullanan reten tketiciler, ayn anda iki farkl balama dahil olur: bunlardan biri internettir, kii ierik bilgisini kullanr ve toplulua dahil olur; ikincisi ise ierik bilgisinin somut faaliyetlere dntrld reterek tketme faaliyetinin kendisidir; bu yeni reten tketici trn tanmlamak iin her iki balam ve aralarndaki iliki gz nnde tutulacaktr. Bu ereveye dayanarak, deneysel bir aratrma yrtlmtr. Aratrma, iki blmden olumaktadr: birincisi nasl yaplr ieriklerini kullanan insanlarla yaplan niteliksel 9 ak grmenin birlemesidir. Akabinde, bu grmelere ve benzer konularda nceden yaplm olan aratrmalara dayanarak on-line bir anket yaplmtr. Tamamlanm 1100 anket sayesinde, -arlkl olarak gen talyanlar ve Trkler- bu olgu hakknda ilgin kavramlar kefedilmitir. Nasl yaplr ieriklerini kullanan reten tketiciler, her iki lkede de farkl demografik profile, kiisel ilgi alanlarna ve farkl sebeplere dayal alt-eilimler gsteren global ve dank bir eilim olarak sonulanmtr. Mutfak ve biliim teknolojileri ile ilgili nasl yaplr ierikleri nde olan eilimler olarak ortaya karken, zellikle belirli demografik gruplarda gzellik ve moda gibi belli alanlar da ne kmtr. reterek tketmenin en nemli nedenleri aratrma istei, kiisel geliim ve elenceli yaratma sreci iken, ekonomik etken baz dallar iin daha dk bir geerlilikle sonulanmtr. Ulusal alt-gruplarda, Trkler, bu ierikleri talyanlara gre daha resmi ve hobi ve bo zamanla daha az balantl olarak, daha uzman kullandklarna dair davranlar gstermilerdir.

Incipit
This is the generation of Moms whose daughters and sons were as often as not not taught how to cook, sew, garden, decorate, or clean. Their daughters and sons generation roughly that of the baby boomers capture our imagination because it is the first generation who in a fundamental sense does not know how to take care of themselves and who apparently seriously adopted the belief that a goodpaying job would do. J. McCracken (2001) You are addict, Televison Addict The First thing you do when you arrive at home is to turn on the television You don't create, You don't appreciate, It's a hudge fallacy You think you learn, Lots of thing, But you learn only bullshit Addict, Televison Addict You are addict, Televison Addict Where is your creation, Mister Television Where is your creation, Mister Television Pupajim Tv Addict lyrics (2009) The central idea is the rejection of the idea that you overcome problems by paying somebody else to provide a solution. Weve got used to experts, professionals, and business telling us that the way to do things whether building a wall, or learning about a subject, or getting entertainment is to pay other people, who know what theyre doing, do the task for us, because we couldnt really manage it ourselves. DIY culture says thats rubbish: you can do it yourself, and you can do it with more creativity, character, and relevance than if you got a generic or expert solution. And, importantly, it feels good to do it yourself: its really good for self-esteem a crucial dimension of personal psychology whereas getting it done for you is disempowering, and often frustrating, and less meaningful. D. Gauntlett (2011) It would appear that increasing numbers of people are rejecting these options and choosing instead to craft such products for themselves; that is, they are deciding to both design and make the end result. The very popularity of television programmes that feature food and cooking or the redesign and redecoration of household interiors or gardens, together with the many associated magazines and books, supports the suggestion that there exists a large population of consumers who want to be successful in creating their own aesthetically significant end products. C. Campbell (2005)
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More people will want to acquire skills for producing their own goods and services. They will attend day and evening classes in cooking, gardening, auto repairing and dozens of other subjects. "How-to-do-it" books, magazines, audio and video tapes, and computer-aided instruction will flourish. Some marketers will develop "cool lines" in which they will sell information over the phone on how to make or fix things. A. Toffler (1986)

New technologies are making it possible for consumers to find the necessary information to tackle needed projects or to turn into reality projects they always wanted to do. YouTube.com provides How-to-do videos that are been watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers. For example a video titled: How to Change Brake Pads: Checking the Rotor, Caliper & Wear Indicator for Brake Pads has 357,168 views in the last three years (YouTube). J. Leon-Jordan, A. Kuruvilla (2011)

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Introduction
This is a research thesis about how people use the internet to learn about how to do things, and then use this information to undertake activities on their own. By looking at todays social behaviours, when looking at ones freetime, there are many evidences of the fact that the internet is being used extensively as a source of information about nearly anything: news, friends activities, weather, events, words meanings and so on. Among these trends, it can be observed that people look more and more at the internet also as a source to learn how to do things: cooking, software usage, build a home for good insects etc. It is from the necessity of describing how to do things that it can be recognized the emergence of a very peculiar form of knowledge-sharing on the internet: the so-called Howto contents (HTCs). Thanks to these concise and result-oriented contents, it is much easier for people to learn how to perform a variety of different activities. For example, in this precise moment millions of people connected to internet are reading instructions about how to cook a Spanish tortilla, watching a tutorial that explains how to change oil in their car, and so on. After having easily reached video tutorials or illustrated instructions on platforms like Youtube.com and the blog of the carpenter, they are using their own hands to transform an idea, a project, a set of raw or half-processed materials into something tangible, valuable and ready to be consumed. They have many different motivations: some may do it as hobby, while others look to save money or just they cannot find the desired good in the market. However, they all share a common point: they are doing, creating, repairing by themselves, using their time, outside institutionalized contexts and by following the instructions of a How-to content. This work will approach this popular and revolutionary social trend by collocating it within the greater concept of Prosumption, which describes that behaviour by which consumers abandon their mere consumerist status to become also producers. The subject of the thesis is indeed a new kind of socio-

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economical entity: is not just a consumer of internet contents, nor a mere producer, but a sort of mix of the two. This study will attempt to describe this new economic actor, and while doing this, boundaries of many different disciplines will be inevitably invaded. This was not a choice, but rather a necessity that emerged while trying to interpret this figure which is complex by nature. The How-to contents Prosumer is, in fact, many things all at the same time: it is a consumer of internets contents, but also a producer of them as well, in particular on a web 2.0 optic; it is a collector of information, but also an interpreter of them; it is a producer by nature, but most likely it will also be the consumer of the items produced. In addition, this kind of Prosumer takes action in many environments at the same time, one on the world of bones and blood, the other on the world of bits. The objective of this research thesis is to track a general profile of the emergent figure of the HTCs Prosumer: who it is, what kind of activity does it undertakes and for which reasons? To give an answer to these and many other questions, an empirical research on young Italians and Turks has been undertaken. The study is composed of three main parts. The first consisted of some qualitative open-interviews, which helped in testing the theoretical framework, setting up hypothesis and detecting some crucial points that would help in the description of the phenomenon. The second part was quantitative, and in particular an on-line survey, which has been submitted to an international audience (in particular,

Italians and Turks). The last part consisted of the combination and interpretation of the results of both the qualitative and quantitative research, in an attempt to fulfil the research objective, which is the description of the Prosumption through How-to contents. The thesis is divided into four chapters: in the first two, concepts of Prosumption and How-to contents will be introduced and then discusses, concluding with the creation of a theoretical framework; in the last two, the same concepts will be translated into real research questions in order to design a qualitative and quantitative research, which results will be then discussed.

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In the first chapter the concept of Prosumption will be discussed. After having defined it, some of the most popular forms in which it takes place in our contemporary society, such as the household sphere, hobbies, politics and the internet will be presented. In the second chapter the second element of the thesis will be introduced, the How-to content. Here, after having explored the existing studies on How-to contents, a theoretical framework about Prosumption through the use of How-to contents will be presented. In the third, the research method and the preliminary results of the qualitative part will be discussed; in this way, four main areas of investigation of the phenomenon will be individualized: Who is the Prosumer?, Activities, contexts and motives, Behaviours on the web and then Participation. In the last chapter results of the research results will be discussed and compared to the theoretical framework and hypothesis made on the previous chapters.

Keywords: How-to, How-to content, Prosumption, DIY, Web 2.0, web content, consumer culture, consumer behaviour, prosumer behaviour, HTC. 13

Chapter 1 Prosumption in consumer culture, society and Web 2.0

In the first chapter, the author will start from the very concept of Prosumption, trying to define it within the field of consumer behaviour. This figure is basically seen as a consumer which is producing what he then consumes, a concept which does not fill well classical economic theories, but that is fundamental to economic systems and human societies. Here the phenomenon will be retraced, starting from its Agrariansociety roots until present times, where the figure of the Prosumer is clearly reemerging under new, complex and unprecedented forms.

1.1.

Prosumption: finding a place in the consumer behaviour field

Today the idiom Do-It-Yourself, usually written under its acronym DIY,

is widely diffused in society, both in the everyday-life and scientific lexicon. The term expresses a very basic concept, which is that an individual is doing something his own without making it done by somebody else. For example a person can repair cars engine DIY (instead of making it done by a professional mechanic) or make a medical diagnosis DIY (instead of going to a doctor); as it can be seen, this very general concept can be applied to almost everything. Furthermore, the same term is being widely used in different languages, such as Fai-da-te in Italian, Kendin-yap in Turkish and in Greek. Do-It-Yourself is being used also on the field of Consumer behaviour, expressing the phenomenon by which a consumer is providing for itself services which could otherwise (be expected) to pay a professional to do 1. This definition looks at the consumer as somebody in front of a clear choice: myself or market.
1

Watson and Shove [2005], p.3

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In this way, I have the possibility to buy a furniture or make it my own, roll a cigarette or buy it ready-to-use, organize my agenda or pay a secretary for me to do that. At a first glance though the distinction market/self-made seem suitable to be used as a measure of consumption behaviours, and indeed many studies of the 90s attempted to do so 2. However, as well demonstrated 3, reality is much more complex, and many different practices and economic actors would not fit this dichotomy: we have for example informal work, black market, unpaid work and also the so-called gifteconomy. Recognizing this multitude of economic practices, here the dichotomy market-myself will be refused and replaced by make it myself / Make it done by somebody else. Considered this, Do-It-Yourself will be redefined as:
Its when a person (or household) provides by itself what he or she then consumes.

Basically, the person who undertakes a DIY activity is somebody who is doing instead of making it done by other actors; a person can build or buy the house in which he lives, produce bread his own or take it from bakery, cook the food or buy it from a fast food and so on. In todays society there can be found very different lifestyles, with more or less propensity toward DIY according to social, cultural and economic features of the environment.

The performer of DIY activities is at the same moment both producer and consumer, and its from this combination that the word Prosumer has been created. This term, generally attributed to futurist writer Alvin Toffler 4 (and today widely used among students of different fields, in particular economics), describes this entity as a human that embodies at the same moment both production and consumption concisely a man that consumes what he or she produces, and produces what will be then consumed. As it should be clear, DIY and Prosumption should be here interpreted as synonymous; indeed, in order to avoid redundancy of terms, here the term Prosumer will be preferred to the other.

2 3

Bittman [1999] Williams and Nadin [2010], Glucksmann [2005] 4 Toffler [1980]

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The figure of Prosumer can be then analyzed and seen from many different perspectives, given also the blurring boundaries around it. Prosumer is a concept that embeds both production and consumption, and for this reason it can be considered a concept much different from the traditional consumer. For the extent of this work, will be seen more as a consumer who is also producer rather than a producer who is consuming, and even if both sides will be discussed, the focus will be more on production than consumption. Also in the classical economic theories, individuals are seen both as producers and consumers, but they are two well-distinct entities, belonging to different spheres of life. In this way, a worker is producing while at his working company and consuming during the rest of his time. An example of this is the fact that GDP still does not account lots of non-market activities such as non-profit, associations and the work of the housewives 5. The concept of Prosumer goes beyond this in that people become producers in many contexts of life not just in the institutionalized ones and under many different forms: hobbies, non-profit activities, user-generated contents and household activities. In this sense, our approach will be much similar to the one of Atkinson, who takes a broad approach to Prosumption, which is seen as
covering a wide range of activities which are carried out for a variety of reasons (...) Looking more closely at this range of activities, it is actually quite difficult to see them as completely disparate endeavours. They appear instead to be a series of overlapping activities having varying proportions of creative input and a variety of motivations for undertaking them. 6

1.2.

The split of Prosumption into Production and Consumption

For the greatest part of history, Humans societies have been organized in

forms of Prosumption, in that people were consuming what they were producing and the contrary. As Toffler states:

Indeed, a growing part of statisticians are suggesting the introduction of these non-market activities to the account of the GDP, as Ironmonger [2001]. 6 Atkinson [2006], p.2 (note: the author refers to it as Do-It Yourself, which is considered here as synonim of Prosumption)

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 During the First Wave [before industrial revolution] most people consumed what they themselves produced. They were neither producers nor consumers in the usual sense. They were instead what might be called "prosumers. 7

However, this structure of the society changed with the long process of Industrialization, which brought to the creation of a Market society, where the specialization of work caused the concentration (and so the separation) of production and consumption.
It was the industrial revolution, driving a wedge into society, that separated these two functions, thereby giving birth to what we now call producers and consumers. 8

The economic theory and society in general followed this perception of new order: in peoples imaginary the factory is the house of production, the bowling places and the cafes became instead spaces identified with leisure and consumption. Even though this distinction is at least problematic 9, it can be observed how this idealization of consumption and production as distinct phenomena is still dominant in todays society. To better understand this, rather than the separation between production and consumption, it should be considered the concept of specialization of labour. According to this idea, individuals should specialize each on a certain activity; in this way, exploitation economies of scale / scope, would lead to greater efficiency of the production and thus surpluses, which are then exchanged with other peoples surpluses to access to goods and services needed. This is what it can be observed more or less while comparing present society to the Agrarian ones, with people passed by being a bit of farmer, a bit of doctor, a bit of craftsmen at the same moment to doctors, engineers, barbers, craftsmen and so on. However, reality is much more complex, and Prosumption is still present under many forms.

1.2.1. Prosumption as (traditional) Household production The starting point is the home sphere, where many prosumption activities survived the Industrial revolution and are still present in our days: it can still be observed a tendency toward in-sourcing for practices such as child care, cooking,
7 8

Toffler [1980], p.267 Ibid. 9 Ritzer and Jurgenson [2010]

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laundry, gardening and other general home-related works 10. These activities, once exclusive prerogative of housewives (see Figure 1), are today generally much more balanced among family members, at least for some Western societies.

Figure 1
Vintage Housewives
The image of the Vintage Housewife, a woman which takes care of house (by undertaking what we called here Household Productions), is still very popular in todays society, where it is used also for marketing and decorative purposes. Source: http://www.aintyomamasblog.com/itsgood-to-be-a-feminist-housewife/ (accessed on 24/11/2012).

In fact, when industrialization brought men to spaces of production like factories or shops, women usually remained at home taking care of the house, children and related activities. These activities, known with terms such as Household Productions or Unpaid Household Productive Activities are in fact very clear acts of Prosumption. As Kotler states,
The only prosumers [of the industrial society] are housewives who cook, clean, sew, knit and shop, while not getting paid for this. Prosumer activity is so undervalued that these societies don't include homemaker activities in estimating the gross national product 11.

Household Productions can be said to be also the firsts and most studied Prosumption activities, as works on the field of feminism 12, new household school 13 and finally by statistics studies on GDP 14 demonstrate. One of the latest studies on the topic, a research on the DIY habits in England, reveal us that todays society not only prosumes, but does it a lot, and in particular Household productions, which constitutes one of the most relevant forms of Prosumption 15.
10 11

Bittman [1999] Kotler [1986], p.1 12 Perkins Gilman [1889]; Reid [1934] 13 Becker [1981]; Ironmonger [1972]; Lancaster [1971] 14 Bryant, Zick and Kim [1992]; Ironmonger [2001] 15 Williams C.C. [2011]

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1.2.2. Prosumption as a Hobby If Household productions can be seen as a legacy of Agrarian society, it is with the Industrial revolution and the establishment of market society that a very new type of Prosumption could emerge: the Hobby. As seen, with Industrialization, living and working places became non-overlapping spheres of competences between men and women. However, it is in this context that it can be observed a sort of return of the man to the house sphere through masculine activities related to craft, home maintenance and various productive activities.
By taking over chores previously done by professionals, the do-it-yourselfer created a new place for himself [the man] inside the house. In theory it overlapped with a widening female household sphere, but in practice it was sufficiently distinct so that by end of the 1950s the very term "do-it-yourself" would become part of the definition of suburban husbanding. 16

In this sense, the Hobbyist-Prosumer born an a figure, like Household Productions, which is tied with household sphere, but with the difference of being masculine and something made willingly. Another feature of the first examples of Hobbies is the fact that they have arisen from a perceived need to give idle hands something to do, thus providing a productive and morally uplifting way of utilizing spare time 17.

Figure 2
Do-It-Yourself magazine
Do-It-Yourself was a British magazine very popular during the 50s and 60s and it represents one of the most popular Prosumption-Hobbies in the UK which is the Home maintenance. In the magazine there were lots of How-to articles, embryonic forms of webs How-to contents. Source: Do-It-Yourself magazine, September 1957.

Hobbies registered very important developments through years, and while they have surely lost that masculine feature, they preserve their leisure and
16 17

Gebler [1997], p.67 Atkinson [2006]

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practical dimension. Here it should be noted that the term Prosumption-Hobby has to be interpreted with the same rationale used for Prosumption in general, thus identifying those activities which belong to leisure time, but that are at the same related to the very act of production 18. If in the industrial society hobbies were quite concentrated to certain kind of activities, today they became of great variety, fact that will be confirmed by the empirical research.

1.3.

Prosumption as a trend tied with economy, culture and politics

After having discussed the role of Prosumption in traditional household

spaces and as part of an active and creative use of the leisure time, here some other forms of the phenomenon will be presented.

1.3.1. Prosumption as an economical, rational choice In certain circumstances, the act of Prosumption is much more a necessity rather than a choice. Atkinson refers to is as Essential DIY, in that it has not to do with leisure and creative activities 19. He brings the example of the post-war English working-class, which found itself not just impoverished, but also without the mere infrastructures, out-of-service due to the German V2 missiles. Pushed by necessity, but also by media, people started to rebuild effectively by home, with own hands. Even in our days, by enlarging the perspective to world society, there can still be found cases of Prosumption as a necessity, in particular in underdeveloped areas like Africa. Like Jennifer Walter, curator of Africa Make Fair states, while in most of the world DIY is synonym of leisure, creativity and amateur activity, in Africa is still a mean of survival 20. Going back to Western society, economic reasons are not usually to be identified in state of necessity like the previous examples, but more as money-

In this sense, even if activities such as reading, collecting, watching TV etc. can be somehow considered hobbies, they will not be considered Prosumption-Hobbies, given their low-creative, practical and making character. 19 Atkinson [2006] 20 Istanbul Design Biennal 2012, Africa Maker Fair Project, document titled Why we need to make by Jennifer Walters.

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21

saving and increase/keeping value of own stuff, as a recent research suggests 21. The concept of Consumer as Hero can well satisfy this type of character, which can be seen as a rational calculator, an allocator of resources who purchases goods and service in order to maximize its utility22. In the same way, instead of a consumer, it can be imagined also a Prosumer which produces things on its own as a way to save money, due economical necessity, or other for different economically rational motives. By looking at todays society, and in particular at some European countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain, some new and interesting trends toward Prosumption as economic-rational choice seem on the rise . Examples can be found in the growth of sectors like gardening, home baking and various home productions of consumer goods like ice-cream, yogurt and conserves; even if these emergent trends should not be considered an exclusive effect of the economic recession, studies suggest that economic reasons are of certain relevance, in particular to middle and low classes 23. Within a context where governments are cutting welfare services and people see salaries and jobs as diminishing, there can be recognized the emergence of a sort of austerity culture. One of the effects of this important trend is indeed the message easily traceable on the media that Prosumption can be a way to save money in time of crisis or even as a new paradigm of post-crisis society. A very Italian example can be seen in the emergence of books, blogs and How-to contents which have the clear objective of teaching people on How to save money in time of crisis, message that housewives like Mrs. Rossini expose through How-to contents in different media spaces, as in the Figure 3. In these contexts the motivations, in origin economical, become influenced also by cultural and political means, thus making this kind of Prosumer a little bit more complex than the framework of the Hero.

21 22

Williams C.C. [2008] Slater [1997] 23 Schuerkens [2012], Censis [2012], Coldiretti-SWG [2013]; similar trends can be treaced also on the other side of the Atlantic, as Packaged Facts research [2009] suggests.

22

Figure 3
Mrs. Rossini and the selfproduction of detergents (snapshot)
The video, an extract of TV Program Laria che tira gives space to Mrs. Rossini, who explains how to produce detergent DIY, a home production which has the objective to save money help surviving the crisis. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=9AyCd5XyCIU (24/11/2012)

Mrs. Rossinis Prosumption is then not just a mere form of money-saving, but represents also a choice against a consumerist society that brought us to a moment of economic downturn. These are the types of sentiments that can be found also on other trends related to Prosumption, impregnated of politics and ideology, that will be presented on the next paragraphs.

1.3.2. Prosumption as political & ideological choice As far as we know, Prosumption has been explicitly used for political reason for the first time during the Great War period in England, where essential DIY was encouraged primarily by propaganda espousing thriftiness and economy at home 24. However, the real born of Prosumption as a political output can be recognized with the born of DIY Ethic, a subculture belonging to the Punk movements of 70s and 80s. Here the Prosumption is seen as a political and lifestyle choice:
The central concept is the rejection of the idea that you overcome problems by paying somebody else to provide a solution. Weve got used to experts, professionals, and business telling us that the way to do things whether building a wall, or learning about a subject, or getting entertainment is to pay other people, who know what theyre doing, do the task for us, because we couldnt really manage it ourselves. DIY culture says thats rubbish: you can do it yourself, and you can do it with more creativity, character, and relevance than if you got a generic or expert solution. 25

24 25

Mucha [2011] Gauntlett [2011], p.56

23

DIY was indeed one of the core points of the Punk movement itself, and it took place under many different forms, from music to self-made skate-parks, from everyday-living to independent zines. A tangible example is given by Chris Anderson, director of the magazine Wired:
Like all garage rock & roll, all you needed to be in a band was an electric guitar and an amp. But what was new about the 1980s punk phenomenon was that the bands did more than just play; they also started to publish. Photocopiers were becoming common, and from them arose a zine culture of DIY magazines that were distributed at stores and shows and by mail. Cheap four- track tape recorders allowed bands to record and mix their own music, without a professional studio. And a growing industry of small vinyl- pressing plants let them make small- batch singles and EPs, which they sold via mail order and local shops. 26

Figure 4
How-to Guide zine
In the figure we have the front page of a zine published in the 80s, a very precious example of what the DIY Ethic was looking like, with anticapitalistic, anti-system ideologies. In particular, the zine reveal how DIY Ethic and How-to (respectively an ideology and a knowledgesharing tool) were already complementary much before internet. Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/29373 510/Diy-1 (accessed on 21/5/2012)

The DIY Ethic is not just an interesting example on the history of Do-ItYourself and Prosumption, but also a movement that put into work a long-time process that still influence an important and probably the most dynamic - part of what Prosumption became today. A clear example of it can be recognized in the Maker Movement, which might be defined as a sort of technology-based extension of the DIY culture.
26

Anderson [2012], p.11

24

Makers movement has both common and different points with its punk predecessor. Like in 70s, it has a sort of vision for society, which should leave a state of passivity and dependence inducted by the system of Market economy; in predicting this philosophy, it combines also other collateral movements like environmentalism, recycling and art. But what is really new is that it has a clear technological character. On the one side, there is the dominance of the idea of open-source, so of the mass collaboration, which takes place through the unprecedented possibilities given by internet. On the other, and related to the first, there is a much more networked structure behind it, which counts not only on the internet, but also on traditional media (like the MAKE magazine) and mass-events like Maker Fair and Burning Man Festival 27. Lastly, Maker movement is much more interested on technology rather than the political symbol of self-making itself, with a strong focus on mass collaboration, share of expertise and practical skills applied to creative and innovative projects. However, it would be wrong to state that anti-consumerist Prosumption has been completely substituted by this sort of techno-collaborative one. An example might be found on some trends especially in some European countries related to the so-called De-Growth Movement. They all share like for Punk movements - a sort of rejection to the logics of consumerist society, and while doing this, they suggest self-production as one of the pillars of their movements 28. 1.3.3. Prosumption as Art & the Craft Consumer 29 DIY as Art, a very dynamic and emergent trend of Prosumption, can be seen as the edge of DIY-Ethic, Prosumption-Hobby and the world of Craft / design. This movement explicitly recognize people the right to self-expression in a world of standardized objects and spaces. In these democratic spaces, people not just escape from capitalistic logics, but also free up their creativity and needs of making. This movement is quite popular in the present days and indeed is source

See article A Small taste of the Maker Movement by Bruce Byfield, on Linux Magazine 26th June 2011. 28 Pallante [2005]; see also the movement Universit del Saper fare (http://www.unisf.it/) 29 For a deeper look at DIY as Art, see Chen [2011]

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of inspiration for some international, well-known events such as Istanbul Biennial 2012, which states:
This is an exhibition about people who make things. The world of people who make things is in upheaval. If the last revolution was about making perfect objectsmillions of them, absolutely identical, produced to exactingly consistent quality standardsthis one is about making just one, or a few. Its birthplace is not the factory but the workshop, and its lifeline is the network. In the place of standardised, industrialised perfection, it embraces imperfection as evidence of an emerging force of identity, individuality, and non-linearity. 30

Starting from the world of art and design, we can enter the world of consumer behaviour with the figure of the so-called Craft consumer. In this model the assumption is that individuals consumes principally out of a desire to engage in creative acts of self-expression; within this context, craftwork is seen as a human and liberating, enabling individuals to engage in authentic, expressive and creative activity 31.

1.4.

Internet and new forms of Prosumption

In the past years an increasing number of students started looking at internet,

and in particular Web 2.0, as a field where many forms of Prosumption are taking place. As Ritzer states:
It is on Web 2.0 that there has been a dramatic explosion in prosumption. It can be argued that Web 2.0 should be seen as crucial in the development of the means of prosumption; Web 2.0 facilitates the implosion of production and consumption. 32

He brings many evidences of this, like Peer Production, production of videos and participation in social media. In particular he gives attention to the fact that in the Web 2.0 users are utilizing different participative tools which result in the creation of user-generated contents (UGC). These contents are themselves both a form of production and consumption, and it is in this context that the paradox of the Prosumer exploitation by the social networks on-line businesses takes place.

Istanbul Design Biennial Adhocracy introduction, available at http://istanbuldesignbiennial.iksv.org /adhocracy/ (accessed on 21/11/2012) 31 Campbell [2005] 32 Ritzer and Jurgenson [2010], p.19

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But internet is not just the place in which the brand-new Prosumption of UGCs takes place, but also the natural environment in which more traditional Prosumers species thrive. As the Institute for the Future suggests:
[Do-it-yourselfers] also tend to exploit the new online world and its tools for social connectivity, taking some of their self-organizing habits from the physical world and translating them into the virtual worldand vice versa. 33

Indeed, UGCs become also one of the ways in which traditional DIY activities are being re-constructed on the web, as will be discussed later.

1.4.1. Internet as connector of prosumers and platform for knowledgesharing In the previous paragraphs it has been discussed how internet is one of the motives by which the Maker movement is diffusing so fast and thus being so successful. As for internet, the idea is that the web is influencing the development of new schemes for Prosumption, and this is taking place especially in two ways: By connecting prosumers. With internet, many prosumers of different fields, regions, cultures are finally getting together through internet, thus organizing in communities with a Web 2.0 optic, which in some cases reach even world-wide dimensions; By giving an unprecedented sharing-knowledge tool. Internet is an incredible source of knowledge-sharing which is being exploited more and more in nearly every field of human society; the same can be said for different forms of Prosumption, providing Prosumers with the necessary knowledge.

The two factors are indeed deeply interconnected in that knowledge-sharing takes place more and more through social networks, in particular given the transition from Web 1.0 to 2.0. Examples are everywhere on the web, especially if we look at blogs, forums or social networks which are focused on DIY-like activities. In this way there can be found many blogs for almost any type of activity, where networks of people share specific technical knowledge about that
33

Institute for the Future [2007] p.39

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specific activity. An interesting example can be found in an Italian web community dedicated to lutherie, Liuteriaitalia.forumup.it. In this website, which has the form of a forum, there are present an impressive number of discussion classified for type of instrument (wind, brass, percussion, etc.), type of techniques (spray guns, inlay, etc.) and relative sub-categories. Along with the richness of contents, impressive is also the activity of the community (more than 20 active discussions with latest post on the last 10 days 34), in particular considering the niche nature of this type of activity. If somebody wants to learn about lutherie, improve some abilities or learn new techniques, this website would surely result of big help.

Even if the theme of networks is very important for the discussion, and indeed it will constitute a relevant part of the research, the central theme remains the share of knowledge. To put it in a microeconomics view, this knowledge can be seen as one of the input factors (others can be time, raw materials) needed to produce the output, which is the bread produced at home, the service performed DIY or any other possible self-produced item. In this way, by comparing the pre- and post-internet scenarios, it becomes clear that the input knowledge becomes much more abundant and cheap: with just a click and a rapid research on a search engine or a website people can easily reach a content that describes the activity that is going to be undertaken. In a more punctual analysis it can be observed that the factor knowledge does not consists only of the instructions present on the hypothetical content (explicit or formal knowledge) but comprehends according to the specific case also a certain degree of tacit knowledge, which is not sharable via internet or with any other support with present technologies (except that for the fantastic world of Matrix, where knowledge is transmitted via USB). However, explicit knowledge still consists on an more or less according to the specific activity important part of the whole knowledge factor. A good example of the adoption of internet as knowledge-sharing tool for DIY purposes can be found in designers and object makers, as pointed out in a blog about this topic:

34

Accessed on 10/2/2013.

28

By embracing Internet technology, object makers and craft enthusiasts have the opportunity to educate the general public and to redefine the semantic challenges that we face today. Internet technology is a great equalizer and thusly, it provides an opportunity for the en masse distribution of ideas. Today we have the tools to alter the status quo via unbridled democracy. 35

The topic of the knowledge-sharing of Internet in DIY contexts gains even deeper importance if we look at it on a Web 2.0 perspective, where peer-to-peer tools (live chats, comments boxes or mail/private message) give the opportunity to have a more interactive and then effective share of knowledge among users.

1.4.2. Recent findings on Prosumption and Internet The issues discussed in this chapter suggest that the interception between Prosumption and the Internet seems to be the key to understand the future of the trend. Indeed, this is also the picture that emerges from a very interesting research conducted by the Institute for the Future on the DIY trend in the US 36. According to the results of the survey, the new-generation Prosumers are well-skilled at on-line sociability, thus able to exploit and contribute to the Webs circulation of knowledge in relation to these activities. In the new Prosumer described by this work, many of the sub-trends described on the previous paragraphs are present. The most relevant is probably the connection with the universe of the alternative economy, an idea which comprehends all of the off-the-market forms of economy like associations, informal groups and families. Furthermore, these individuals show relevant otherthan-corporate values, in line with the profile provided by the paragraph 1.3.2. Among the activities, it can be noted an interesting propensity toward home-related works like gardening and home-maintenance; and self-expression activities like drawing, photography and music. In substance, the emergent profile defined by this study put the focus on similar points as the one presented in the previous paragraphs: a mosaic of many micro-trends which have different impacts in each individuals, but that contribute to the creation of what is being globally indentified here as Prosumption behaviours.
Quote from the Blog of Dennis Stevens about redefining Craft, posted by Dennis Stevens on 6-82004 and available at http://www.redefiningcraft.com/ (accessed on 4/1/2013). 36 Institute for the Future [2007]
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1.5.

Prosumption as a complex trend unsuitable to Economics

classical schemes
As seen, todays societies are ones of Prosumers in very different forms and contexts. This great variety contains even opposite meanings, such as economic necessity versus leisure, and consumerist modes versus political anti-capitalistic choices. However, while being differentiated on these dimensions, Prosumers share a common point, which is that they are producers not only during formal contexts but also outside them, like in the household or hobbies spheres. This view can be said to be in sharp contrast with the classical economic theory and in particular with the concept of Division of labour (see ch. 1.2). In fact, according to such theories, Prosumption would not have motive to exist, in that Prosumers do not exploit economies of scale nor of scope, thus resulting much less efficient than an hypothetical system in which all the individuals are perfectly specialized on some mansions or productions. Indeed, this is not just the classical view of the capitalistic system, but also the pattern of development suggested by the contemporary school of thought know as commercialization thesis, by which a fully-specialized society is something inevitable, inescapable and irreversible 37.

The Prosumers that are being described on these pages are in fact new and dynamic actors that explicitly or implicitly refuses to outsource a service or product to do it themselves, even if they are not specialized, nor professionals. While the concept of division of labour suggests that people should produce with the greatest specialization in order to seek efficiency and the use the surplus to consume more, here it is argued that instead people should rely more on own capabilities, and just make their own, even if there is no expert knowledge or scale economies to be exploited. As Xie observes, Prosumption constitute an important aspect of quality of life 38, and this is certainly true. However, scope of this work is not to explain the good features of Prosumption, but rather to study and decode this big trend which is already changing the face of contemporarys societies.
37
38

Gough [2000]; Kovel [2002]; Slater & Tonkiss [2001] Xie [2005], p.11

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Chapter 2 Prosumption & knowledge-sharing through internet: the rise of How-to contents

After having defined and described the phenomenon of Prosumption, its latest developments on the field of internet has been presented. In this chapter the discussion will turn to a particular form of knowledge-sharing called How-to content, which is becoming the dominant way through which new internet-Prosumers are collecting and sharing information for their activities. At the end of the chapter concepts of Prosumption and How-to contents will be combined in order to describe how How-to contents are being used for Prosumption activities.

2.1.

Prosumption and the How-to knowledge-sharing

In the paragraph 1.4 it has been described how the advent of Internet

impacted Prosumption in many ways, and in particular by providing a common platform for knowledge-sharing and networking. In the attempt to link knowledge-sharing in the internet with Prosumption activities, the first topic to face is the type of knowledge involved. As seen, the Prosumption universe is all about activities in which certain practical skills are being used: its cooking mastery, ability to deal with software, capacity to sew and so on. At the same moment, by being so general, different levels of expertise are involved. In this way, there can be beginners, amateurs or even professionals for each category of Prosumption. Given that the subject will be a certain particular activity, it can be imagined a specific form of knowledge which tries to describe and transmit this specific type of ability. To say it in an easier manner, something that describe how to do something.

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For this reason, the design of information can be expected to be descriptive, technical and instructional. It is from the necessity to share knowledge with these peculiarities that How-to content (HTC) did emerge as one of the most popular content of the Internet, and without doubt, the privileged format for people who wants to learn about how to do things. Before concentrating on the How-to content of the internet lets first have a short overview of the traditional How-tos, which can be seen as the progenitors of it.

2.1.1. What a How-to is and what is not How-to, whether in the world of bits or the real one, is a way of knowledge-sharing with some peculiarities 39. They are: Being descriptive: a How-to content describes How-to-do something, and it does that by explaining processes, techniques, skills and tools involved in that particular activity. Being sequential (or procedural): instructions are set in a step-by-step sequential order; Being result-oriented: the very objective of a How-to is the result , and for this reason it focuses on the explanation of How-to-do something rather than lingering on the Why? or theoretical frameworks. Being a form of knowledge-sharing, How-to is a concept that can be related to the field of education. Knowledge, as widely accepted is being created and transmitted through a great variety of forms and institutions, with some of them formal (for example, primary and secondary schools, universities) and others informal (work, community, family context) or non-formal (associations, seminars) 40. Within this picture, How-to should not be seen as an institution, but rather as a form through which knowledge can be transmitted, and in particular one with the features above listed.

The definition given here has been made by author, but has been inspired by the work of Torrey et al. [2007], probably the first focused on this topic. 40 http://www.oecd.org/education/highereducationandadultlearning/recognitionofnonformalandinformallearning-home.htm (accessed on 9/1/2013)

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Indeed, How-to is a form which can be found in all of the institutions listed above. In the classrooms of technical schools, for example Italys ITIS or IPSIA, How-tos are recurrently used during technical or laboratory lessons. In chemistry laboratory classes, for example, students follow teachers or books How-to instructions in order to synthesize polymers or to use spectrophotometer to detect flours on water 41. How-toes are also used in non-formal contexts, such as numerous seminars which take place in associations and seminars and that have the precise scope to teach about how to undertake a particular project, like how to produce a pullover 42. Finally, they are present in informal contexts as well: it is the mother who teaches to son how to cook in family sphere or the veteran who teaches apprentice how to make a precise craft work. Whether the institution in which it takes place, How-to is a form of knowledge-sharing which fits perfectly the needs of Prosumption activities in that is result-oriented, and basically explains the necessary procedures to have something being done. The explanation of how to repair an engine, how to cook a particular food, how to produce any everydays object are all examples of Howtoes 43. Related words of How-to can be said to be recipe or instruction, as in the following meanings:
Recipe (noun): a set of instructions for making or preparing something. 44 Instruction (noun): a message describing how something is to be done. 45

Indeed, it is very unlikely to find a How-to with the term How-to, but rather, with high probability, with one of the terms above or other specific expressions (for example tutorial).

41

http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/norme/programmi/chimica.html#ANALISI CHIMICA, ELABORAZIONE DATI E LABORATORIO (accessed on 9/1/2013) 42 http://www.unisf.it/ (accessed on 9/1/2013) 43 Actually we have already seen some example of How-to in the thesis, like Figure 2 (How-to about some works related to house), 3 (How-to manual in a Punk zine) ,3 (a video-tutorial about production of detergents) 44 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/recipe (accessed on 26/11/2012) 45 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/instruction (accessed on 26/11/2012)

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2.1.2. Traditional (non-internet) forms of the How-to How-to, being a so general concept, can obviously take place under various forms: it is the mother explaining to her son step by step how to use the washing machine, an article about how to build a particular furniture, or a craftsman explaining to its apprentice how to create a particular type of craftwork. However, there can be distinguished two basic types of How-to: the transcribed and the nontranscribed ones. In the first there can be found all the sources that can be used for more than one time (so writes, videos, graphic representations, audio tracks, etc.), in the second there are again the face-to-face How-tos. Of course, focus of the thesis is on the first ones, by which on-line How-to contents represent somehow the very last version, and in which the fact of being transcribed in bits means that they become accessible by a much wider audience. In the following Figures two example of Traditional, transcribed forms of How-to are presented: they can be seen as ancestors of todays bits-made How-to contents.

Figure 5
The Practical Mans Book of Things to Make and do
This popular collection of Home-related DIY activities book has been published in the 30s and well represents one of the first examples of books on DIY rich in How-to articles. The segment of DIYbooks is still very relevant today. Source: Atkinson [2006]

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Figure 6
Barry Bucknell at Barry Bucknells DIY TV Program (snapshot)
Barry Bucknells TV program on the BBC about DIY was very popular in the UK of 50s. His program is one of the first examples of the concepts of DIY and How-to reaching television. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= O5W9RaJBzYw (accessed on 26/11/2012)

2.2.

How-to contents: the translation of the How-to in the internet

world
A How-to content (HTC) is a How-to made of bits. Lets see how a recent research on the topic has defined it:
Is an online content that describes how something is done. (...). They are characterized by a sequential description of procedural information. 46

HTCs can be said to be the digital version of the How-to concept described in the previous paragraphs. This means that, instead of being a cassette, a writes or a couple of pictures on a paper, they are basically made of bits, and eventually located on the internet. How-to contents are and arguably always been 47 a very popular content of the web. As an example, YouTube.com, which is the worlds first content-hosting platform 48 has one of its largest categories in How-to videos, with millions of views every day (see Figure 7). Same thing can be said for other popular content-hosting platforms such as Pinterest.com and Scribd.com. If the video-hosting website is the most relevant case, for sure it is not the only one, and

Torrey et al. [2007] Since the mid-90s (mass-adoption of Internet) the history of HTC can be said to be basically parallel to one of Internet and the web contents in general. In this sense, How-toes have been mostly article and pictures, presented on a Web 1.0 logic (so, on a top-down approach) until the first part of 00s. With the explosion of the video as a web content in the mid-00s, How-to were also one of the main contents experimenting this trend, as YouTube.com experience attest. 48 http://www.statscrop.com/websites/top-1000/ (accessed on 27/11/2012)
47

46

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lots of How-to-focused blogs, communities and social networks are there to demonstrate the great success of the HTCs worldwide. Within this context, it should be recognized also the great variety of this type of content. First of all there is the format, which is usually that of video or article. In some cases, there can be found combinations of different formats. An example can be found in the Italian website Giallozafferano.it, a famous platform which offers tutorials about kitchen. Here, there is a web-page for each recipe, where there is an article and some photos of the dish which preparation is described. In some of them, the article and the pictures are accompanied with a short video where the procedures are explained and implemented by a person. Other variables of the HTCs are the level of expertise, narratives style (i.e. documented story vs recipe; funny vs technical etc.) and many others: in fact, the panorama of the Howto contents, like more in general of the web, is an extremely dynamic one, with new models and forms being created with a very high pace. For this reason, a taxonomy of the HTCs will not be a research objective; however, some features of the contents like format or type of platform - will be investigated, in order to have a better picture of the phenomenon. In the following Figures, four examples of HTC are being presented.

Figure 7
User-generated HTC video tutorial on YouTube
YouTube is the most popular platform for HTCs, in particular video-tutorials. The great majority of them are usergenerated, like this one that explains how to repair a bicycle chain. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGq siikp_yo (accessed on 30/11/2012)

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Figure 8
HTC with pictures and text
Very popular are also the HTC as text articles, which are usually accompanied with some pictures or drawings, like in this tutorial on how to uninstall a Toolbar from computer. Source: http://malwaretips.com/blogs/re move-babylon-toolbar/ (accessed on 30/11/2012)

Figure 9
UG-HTC made using software Camtasia
Camtasia is a software which is mainly used for the creation of HTC-videos for topics of IT; the results are eventually shared on the net, like the snapshot here. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=FkOC1WXiyr0 (accessed on 30/11/2012)

Figure 10
HTC on Forums
Another very popular form of HTC can be found in forums, where users explain how to do something; the knowledge-sharing is very dynamic and participative, given the easiness of interaction between members of forum. Source: http://forum.kaspersky.co m/lofiversion/index.php/t2 45456.html (30/11/2012)

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2.3.

How-to contents and internets mass collaboration

How-to content, as seen, is a special way of knowledge-sharing, but taken

alone is totally useless, like a book forgotten somewhere and never read. What is special about HTCs is that: Being on the Internet, they can be accessed by a huge audience; Because they describe how to do something, they can be used for Prosumption activities, filling a knowledge gap or simply by inspiring people willing to undertake a particular activity; Being on a web 2.0 environment, where Internet is more and more a Participatory platform, HTCs are dynamic and can be changed, enlarged, discussed with other users and so being much more effective than static forms of knowledge-sharing; The good features of HTCs are already well recognized, as the following extracts attest:
HowTos (HowTos, HowTos, or whatever you prefer to call them) are excellent problems solvers: they provide quick, easy-to-follow and non-overwhelming solutions to one or another problem that pop-up during daily routines. People love them, especially then theyre free, regardless whether its a step-by-step guide or a couple of minutes long video. 49 Ever had one of those moments when you really wished you knew how to do something specific? If only there were someone you could ask Thanks to the social web, particularly niche blogs and expert-driven communities, its easy to find knowledge, insights and guidance direct from the pros, no matter what the topic area. In fact, online tutorials and how-to sites have been around almost as long as the web itself. 50

In order to reconcile HTCs with Prosumption, the first thing to clear out is why so much people decide to access these contents and use their information in Prosumption activities. If these contents are, as said, a form of knowledge-sharing, this means that they are carriers of a certain knowledge: on how to cook a dish, on how to solve a softwares problem, and so on. Once created, the content will be somehow located in the web (for example, uploaded on YouTube) and then the
49

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/massive-list-of-howto-sites-howto-search-engine/ (accessed on 27/11/2012) 50 http://mashable.com/2009/02/18/how-to-guide/ (accessed on 27/11/2012)

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audience will have the possibility to access it and eventually modify or share it. A number of users will most probably use the information carried by the content and use them to learn about how to do something. In this way, it can be observed the creation of sort of circulation of knowledge which might be defined as informal, in that it is out of formal institutions and in a non-professional, spontaneous manner 51. These are in fact the characteristics of the blogs, forums and social networks where a big part of HTCs are being shared and used by people. The fact that this type of informal learning is becoming so popular on the Internet gave birth to the idea of cultures of knowledge.
No matter if they solved Rubiks cube several times, or just started trying, users all share the same common space where knowledge is shared, negotiated, modified and shared once again. While the quite commonplace and recreational activities such as applying make-up, learning how to wolf whistle or solving the cube may not in themselves be world-altering, all of these discursive processes taken together illustrate that increasingly larger groups of people are today taking part in cultures of knowledge far removed from formal educational settings. 52

The consequence of this, is that HTCs result as knowledge-sharing tools used commonly in informal learning contexts in the internet, and for activities which take place usually outside of formal institutions. In other words, people use informal learning tools such as HTCs for informal activities. However, it is not said that thing will not change, and as Jenkins says:
Right now, we are mostly using this collective power through our recreational life, but soon we will be deploying those skills for more serious purposes. 53

Which is saying that, at least for now, informal collaboration in the internet is being exploited mainly for informal production, but that has the potential to contaminate more institutionalized (serious) parts of our life. The seeds of this kind of future might be found on the concepts of Networked learning or Massive Open Collaborative Courses (MOCCs), topics that go beyond the scope of this thesis and that for this reason will not be discussed here.

51

http://www.oecd.org/edu/highereducationandadultlearning/recognitionofnonformalandinformallearning-home.htm (accessed on 30/11/2012) 52 Lindgren [2012], p.168 53 Jenkins [2006], p.4

39

While this suggestion is in line with the first hypothesis that HTCs (and particularly, user-generated ones) are mainly used for what has been defined here as Prosumption, some empirical evidences are still needed, and for this reason context of use of HTCs will be one of the areas of our research (par. 3.2.3).

2.4.

Literature on How-to contents

Even though How-to contents are very popular on the internet, there are very

few specific studies on them. The most relevant among them are the works on the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), but there are some interesting research also in the fields of Communication and Education. In this paragraph a rapid exploration of these studies will be made, with particular attention to HCI field, which will be crucial in building a theoretical framework on HTCs and their role in Prosumption activities.

2.4.1. How-to contents as tools for self-directed learning in on-line contexts As seen, users of HTCs are informal learners who exploit information and internet networks in order to discover how to do things. This type of learning can be classified as self-directed learning (SDL) or auto didacticism, in the sense that it takes place outside formal institutions and basically by yourself 54. Even if the focus of the thesis is not on the learning part of the process so on how Prosumers learn from the How-to contents the studies of this field are still of a certain relevance to our debate. While on the past paragraphs it has been looked at How-to contents and Prosumption as social trends, students of SDL try to investigate the potential of this tool for learning purposes 55. In particular, some studies suggest that among the knowledge which users look for on the internet, technical knowledge, and in particular How-to contents are being used extensively for many different types of activities. For example, in a recent study on sewing in the US, the use of HTCs emerged as one of the most popular SDL tools used by

54 55

Knowles [1975], p.18 Mathai [2002], Rager [2006]

40

respondents 56. Similar findings has been achieved by a study on internet use on rural areas in the US, where people - especially adult segments - were using internet and HTCs (recipes) as a support to technical activities and hobbies 57. Another recent study focused on craft learning and multimedia had important results regarding the effectiveness of HTCs (even if this term has not explicitly being used in the research) as a form of SDL 58. Objective of the study was to investigate how craft skills and in particular the production of knives - may be elicited and embodied in multimedia learning resources. After having produced what the author called learning material to be intended here as a How-to content - starting from the dispositions of the craftsman, an independent, HTCbased learning process has been tested. Results has been beyond any expectations, and self-directed learners which used How-to contents could produce artefacts of good quality and high level of creativity. These results are important not only because they confirm the popularity and the effectiveness of the HTCs, but they also may encourage them as a source of learning which can help or even substitute traditional forms of education for the near future. 2.4.2. How-to videos, Sentiments and discursive formation 59 Another very recent research, this time focused on YouTube users gives an interesting understanding of the sentiments, contexts and linguistic around HTC video-tutorials. As said previously, YouTube, given its world-wide popularity, represent without doubt the most utilized platform for How-to contents, and for this reason can be considered an important representation of the phenomenon as a whole. With his research on 24,000 comments (10,000 of which on 10 How-to tutorials), Lindgren arrived to many important findings. First of all, by comparing the comments on How-to videos with ones on other topics, he observed that comments and linguistic of the first ones were much more positive than in others, attesting the collaborative and helpful environment around the HTCs.

56 57

Langel [2011] Hiemstra [2006] 58 Wood [2009] 59 Lindgren [2012]

41

The second and more complex part is about discursive network analysis, which is about linking the words used and positioning them in relation to each other. From the analysis of the databases comments, the author identified four clusters: the first one was about posing questions about finding and knowing things, the second about the production side, and the last two about help and exchange of knowledge. This interesting study gives us some important insights about the world of How-to contents: It is generally a collaborative and positive ambient, at least more positive than others about different topics (i.e. commenting on news); Around the HTCs it can be recognized an establishment of media-circuits based on common interests, where collaboration takes the form of constructive criticism or refining the techniques proposed in the tutorials; There are different grades of interactions and collaborations, which starts from viewing the video without leaving any messages (higher in number) to contributing alterations, enhancements or add-ones to the original tutorials (fewer); The focus is the endeavour (so the Prosumption activity, such as folding a T-shirt, picking a lock, etc.) rather than homogeneity of the sociodemographic characteristics of the group; Increasingly larger groups of people are today taking part in cultures of knowledge far removed from classical educational settings (as in the discussion about informal learning, par. 2.3).

2.4.3. Studies of the field of Human-Computer Interaction HCI, which stands as Human-Computer Interaction is a relatively new field of study which may be located at the edge of Computer science, behavioural science and many other fields of science 60. It is in HCI that can be found the most relevant and specific studies on the How-to contents.

60

https://hci.ist.psu.edu/ (accessed on 6/3/2013)

42

In order of time, the first study has been made by a research team led by Cristen Torrey and published 2007 61; the paper is focused on the creators of UGHTC (User-generated How-to contents). They discovered that the main activities of these actors were the retrieval of knowledge (as hobbyists work through problems) and the creation of knowledge (by documenting processes of Prosumption). A relevant insight of the research is about inspiration, so how a project is being started. Among others, they found that main drivers resulted problem-solving (solve a problem that we were personally wanting solved), inspiration by other participants works, lack of the desired product in the market and economical reasons (save money). The second interesting aspect is the way in which knowledge circulate, which can be through structured and collaborative networks (online forums and newsgroups) or through search engine and more general websites like Wikipedia.

The second research paper, led as well by Torrey, put this time the focus on users rather than creators of HTCs, and in particular on YouTube videos about craft activities 62. Once again, the authors observe that HTCs are being used as a source of knowledge and inspiration for craft activities which are like in the previous moved by various motives and that take place in different contexts. One of the focus was on how information is codified and used for the very practical process: participants had to make the knowledge tangible and see what happens physically to the materials, which sometimes differs from the video to the reality of users. The last research question was about how participants engaged in social learning around their craft practice; here the researchers could find many different types of communities: crafting-focused (focused on technical aspects), socializingfocused (connecting is more important than craft itself), knowledge-focused (oriented around bringing different types of knowledge and artefacts to one another).

The third research on HTCs, made by the Carnegie Mellon HCI Institute is more focused on DIY Culture and the way in which members of on-line
61 62

Torrey, McDonald, Schilit, Bly [2007] Torrey, McDonald, Churchill [2009]

43

communities collaborate 63. While investigating about the way in which users interact, authors observed similar results to the study of Lindgren, so an inverse correlation between level of interaction of the specific participative tool and the popularity of that specific participative tool. As regarding the motivations to undertake DIY projects, findings are shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11 Motivations for Prosumption projects

Source: Kuznetsov S., Paulos E. [2010]

The fourth and most recent research on HTCs, a collaboration between two Dutch universities, is more focused on How-to contents related to problem-solving, and in particular text tutorials for some well-diffused software programs 64. First of all there is a confirm of the positive and collaborative nature of the web communities (which host the contents), with more than half of comments providing praise, encouragement and thanks to authors. Secondly, the study gives us a more accurate view of how HTCs are being integrated in the Prosumption process.
while users follow the step-by-step instructions, unlike a scripting system, each user performs a step based on their personal understanding of the instructions, intent, and the purpose of the step. A user may carry out the instructions precisely as described, or they may follow a different route to achieve the same goal.

63 64

Kuznetsov, Paulos [2010] Lafreniere, Bunt, Lount, Terry [2012]

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Table 1 Main findings on the use of How-to Contents*

#
1

Finding

Work

HTC is becoming one of the most important forms through which Studies on SDL Self-directed learning takes place in the internet environment; furthermore, HTCs result in some cases very effective tools for learning about manual activities (i.e. sewing). While HTCs simply provide the knowledge about a particular Torrey 2007 activity, the Prosumption activity that takes place behind it can be Torrey 2009 characterized by very different motivations and contexts according Hughes 2009 to the person; motivations are very context- and activity-specific. The platforms in which HTCs are embedded are generally Lindgren 2012 characterized by positive and collaborative environments, focused Lafreniere 2012 on knowledge-sharing and P2P support. Given the free-accessibility of the contents on the internet, and the Kuznetsov 2010 very heterogeneous identities of the users (experts, amateurs, beginners), also the barriers between different disciplines are lowered, thus promoting interesting innovations on one side, and a more blurring boundary between experts and non- on the other. Users that participate to HTCs-communities show different level of Torrey 2007 participation, with the use of different participatory tools; among Kuznetsov 2010 them, the ones with lower levels of participation (i.e. like/dislike) Lindgren 2012 are much more popular than high-participatory ones (i.e. publish own HTCs). HTCs are seen as creation (or sharing) of knowledge (for users Torrey 2007 with higher level of participation) and retrieval of knowledge (for more passive users of HTCs, who just retrieve the information). HTCs are de-codified by users in order to use them for the activity Lafreniere 2012 which are describing; this process is something personal, with different interpretation and adoption of the information. In on-line communities it can be observed that HTCs are not only Torrey 2007 seen as an important way to share knowledge, but also as a mean Kuznetsov 2010 of socialization among its members.

* - This recap-table has been created by the author of the thesis.

2.5.

Prosumption through the use of How-to contents: A basic

model
Having widely introduced both the concepts of Prosumption and of How-to contents, the ties between them and the extant research, a basic model that explains the process of Prosumption through the use of How-to contents will be here

45

presented. The scheme can be seen as a synthesis of the bibliography and the concepts discussed in previous paragraphs. Two considerations before starting. First of all, this work has the peculiarity of being a general work on HTCs in relation to Prosumption, and so it has to be able to explain different types of use that can take place inside it. For example, on the previous paragraphs, as seen, there are How-to contents for very different types of Prosumption activities, such as DIY communities (the second work of Torrey et al.), problem-solving of software (Lafraniere) or sewing (Langel). To create a general framework about the phenomenon, this will have to be able to explain such different activities.

The framework is represented graphically in Figure 12, where three main elements can be individualized: The Prosumer (at the centre) The How-to content (the white screen on the left) The Prosumption activity (the symbol with the hammer on the right)

Figure 12 Prosumption through the use of How-to contents, the Model 65

65

Figure has been made in collaboration with graphic designer Darko Ditrih (darkoditrih@tiscali.it)

46

The Prosumer is a person that as discussed in par. 1.1 is both producing and consuming what he or she has produced. This Prosumption activity, which is represented in the figure with the hammer symbol, takes place in a context called Prosumption activity context, which is represented with a blue set. Here it can be noticed that Prosumer is linked with the Prosumption activity by two arrows: one represents the production act, and the other the consumption of what has been produced. For example, if the Prosumer is cooking some food, this activity can be seen as production, while, the act of eating the cooked food will represent the consumption part. The blue set represents the context in which Prosumption activity is taking place: for which reasons is he undertaking the activity (economical, leisure, etc.)? What is the type of activity? The Prosumer, however, is not only prosuming the food that he is cooking and then consuming. At the same moment, in fact, he is accessing to the internet in order to retrieve information about how the food should be cooked. This type of information is embedded on a How-to content represented on the figure with a white screen - where procedural and result-oriented instructions are given (par. 2.1). In this way, the Prosumer will follow the directions of the content and in this way he will be able to cook that specific dish; this act is represented by the arrow named exploit information. This retrieval of information takes place on the green set, which represents the internet context, and so the platform used, the type of format of the content and all the other features related to Prosumers actions on the internet (related to that specific activity). While on the internet environment, the Prosumer is not just retrieving the information an act that could be compared to consumption but is also interacting with the community in which the HTC is present: he is commenting the content, rating it or just asking to the community some details which resulted not clear; this second character is represented by the second arrow called Participation. This last activity can indeed be seen as a form of production because comments, ratings and more in general interactions with the content and its platforms should be seen as productions of content, and indeed are generally

47

considered of big value for such communities or websites 66. It should be noted here that, as internets total users are not yet adopting a web 2.0 use (so, participating actively), in the same way not all of the users of HTCs will necessary participate in the community where they exploit the contents. As in the example presented, it might be that the protagonist will just take a look at the content, extract the information and then close it without any participative act.

To sum it up with the example of the cooking activity, there will be a person lets call him Luca - who wants to cook a specific dish but does not know how to do it. For this reason, he will access to the internet, and in particular a How-to content, where the necessary procedures are being explained. Luca will then exploit the information and transform it into a real productive activity: the production of the dish. Eventually, Luca would eat the food that he could cook by his own. But the process is not ending here: the relationship of Luca with the internet environment is not static: he is not just exploiting (consuming) the content, but he also contributes to it with acts of rating, sharing, commenting and so on. It might be argued that Luca is not just prosuming in the real world (so the blue set), but also on the internet side (green set), where he is both consuming (exploit information) and producing (through participative tools) How-to contents. In this way, Luca can be seen as a sort of two-time Prosumer: one on the real world, one on the internet context.

After having presented the general scheme of Prosumption through the use of How-to contents, lets now look at the elements that may describe and differentiate one type of this activity to the other. On the blue set the one relative to the Prosumption activity the discussion may start from some of the topics discussed earlier: what kind of Prosumption activity is this? In which type of context and for which reasons is it being undertaken? The description of what happens on the blue set is related with the discussion of the first chapter, where many different types and contexts of
66

Ritzer and Jurgenson [2010]; see also the topic of prosumption in relation to user-generated contents discussed in par. 1.4.

48

Prosumption have been discussed: as an economical choice, as a leisure activity, as a political activity and so on. The green set, on the contrary, describes what happens on the internet side, and so the topics discussed in the second chapter. In which types of platforms is the How-to content located? How is the information being created and shared on the web? What is the level of participation of the Prosumer on the internet? In the next chapter, while presenting an empirical research based on this scheme, these and some other points that describe the two contexts and the phenomenon in general will be discussed in depth.

49

Chapter 3 Prosumption through the use of How-to Contents: a quantitative research

Starting from the framework presented in the previous chapter, here a quantitative research on four different topics of the phenomenon will be exposed: Demographic profile, Activities, motives and contexts, Behaviours on the web, Participation. The research, which combines a preliminary, open-interview qualitative session and an on-line survey, will try to investigate these four aspects of the phenomenon.

3.

3.1.

Research design
In the last chapter it has been set up a framework which describes in general

terms how HTCs are used in Prosumption processes. Now the design of the research will be presented. The proposal is to start from the findings of the qualitative researches and the framework to individualize some strategic research areas, which will be then investigated with proper qualitative and quantitative methods. In this paragraph they will be briefly presented.

3.1.1. Areas of investigation of the phenomenon Four areas of research have been identified. The first question to face (Q1) will be who is the HTCs Prosumer? Here the objective will be to collect some data about respondents sociodemographic profile, in order to understand if they are of certain influence in relation to such behaviours. The second area of investigation (Q2) will focus on the Prosumption activity itself; here respondents will be asked to list the Prosumption activities for which they use HTCs, the context in which it takes place and the motivations behind them.
51

 The third area of research (Q3) will be what is called Behaviours on the web and is complementary to the previous in that here the investigation is focused on the internet context so the retrieval and use of How-to contents rather than the Prosumption activity itself. Here the focus will be on the description of behaviours of Prosumers on the internet side, such as channels used, multitasking and format. The last question (Q4) will be about Participation on the internet; what is the relation between HTCs Prosumption and Participation? Is the Prosumer mere exploiting the Cultures of knowledge of the web or it also contributes to them somehow?

These themes can be seen in relation to the scheme proposed on the previous chapter. In particular, while Q1 is dedicated to the identity of the Prosumer itself, Q2 will focus on the green set dedicated to the internet context and Q3 to the blue set of the Prosumption activity context. It might be observed that the last two areas are of very different nature: part of the research will work on the internet side and part on the Prosumption side, like the profile of HTCs Prosumer which is being investigated here, which retrieve information by How-to contents on the internet and use them in Prosumption activities in the real world.

Figure 13 Relation between framework and research structure 67

67

The figure has been made in collaboration with graphic designer Darko Ditrih (darkoditrih@tiscali.it)

52

Q4 works again on the description of the relations which belong to the green set, but is focused on a very particular aspect that will be discussed more extensively in paragraph 3.5. This correlation between the framework and the research is summed up in Figure 13. While in the remainder of the paragraph research methods will be presented, in the rest of the chapter the four areas of investigation will be explored.

3.1.2. Research method and instruments The research instrument that have been used is a survey, and in particular an on-line questionnaire. Target audience is that of young users of internet, and in particular Italians and Turks 68. The choice of the on-line questionnaire has three main reasons: Possibility to reach a vast audience; Cost efficiency; Time efficiency; To reach a wider audience (and in case, explore geographical differences), the proposal is to open the questionnaire to an international audience, thus proposing it in different languages (Italian, English, Turkish). As for the collection of the questionnaires, social networks will be used, and in particular Facebook, Twitter and Eki Szlk (a Turkish social network). The idea is to create some web pages or posts dedicated to the survey on the respective social networks, and then share them with the web community. Results and details of the collections campaign will be discussed in par. 4.1.1.

3.1.3. Preliminary interviews 4. To create the questionnaire, a specific scheme has been followed. After

having decided the research questions, some face-to-face interviews have been conducted. The idea was that making this preliminary step would have helped in creating more effective and punctual questions for the quantitative part and at the same moment have a greater and direct insight of the topic.
The choice of Italians and Turks is connected to the research campaign, which is based on social networks; researcher preferred to use channels which are known, and for this reason Turks and Italians resulted the target audience.
68

53

Table 2 Pool of interviewees

Pseudonym
Yamur (Y) Can (C) Marco (M) Antonia (A) Federico (F) Silvia (S) Stefano (St) Mattia (Ma)* Fani (Fa)*

Gender / Age Country

F / 23 M / 19 M / 25 F / 53 M / 34 F / 30 M / 25 M / 22 F / 24 Turkey Turkey Italy Italy Italy Italy Italy Italy Greece

HTCs topics
Kitchen, Make-up Software / IT Machine repair, Gardening, Yogurt Kitchen, Gardening Kitchen, Gardening, home-related works Kitchen, Baby products Craft Videogames / Technology Kitchen, decorations

* - interviews made with Skype

The interviews style were of semi-structured in that the interviewer introduced the topics and stimulate the debate and basically let interviewee talk about the areas seen above. The interviews took place between November and December of 2012. The results of these open-interviews will not be discussed here, but will be recalled in the next paragraphs, during the discussion of the four topics of the research. In Table 2 a short profile of the interviewees is given.

3.2.

Demographic profile (Q1)

The first part of the questionnaire will be about the demographic profile of

respondents. As anticipated, the target audience is that of internet users, but given the channels that will be used for the campaign (generally social networks), it might be expected that respondents will be generally young and young adults. It has been decided that four basic information will be asked to our respondents: Age; Sex; Nationality; Profession; As for age, given the collection campaigns instrument (social networks) and more in general the space where the survey will take place (so, internet), it can
54

be expected to have a generally young population, polarized around the segment 20-30. As for Nationality, target audience will be of Italians and Turks, but the questionnaire will be proposed also in English, in order to have the potential to catch also respondents who do not belong to these two groups. As for Profession, a multiple choice question will be used. In order to have a quite accurate idea of our respondent, seven items will be available: working (30 or more hours a week), working part-time (8-30 hours a week), Housewife (full time at home), Student (full time), Retired, Temporarily unemployed (but seeking), Permanently unemployed. The question and the items have been taken by a manual on Marketing research 69.

3.3.

Activities, Motivations and Contexts (Q2)

In the second area of research the focus will be on the Prosumption activity,

and in particular the topics, the motives for which such activities are being undertaken and the contexts. Here the basis to start the discussion can be found in the first chapter, where many different forms of Prosumption have been described. A universe of Prosumption has been presented: Household productions, Prosumption-Hobby, Prosumption as political activity, Prosumption as a form of art and as a result of economical, rational choice. If we can find many different types of Prosumption activities, what we need to understand then is if there is a certain link between some of them and the use of How-to contents. To decode peoples Prosumption activities, it has been decided to focus on three points here: Activities for which HTCs are being utilized; Context in which they are used; Meaning of these activities.

They will be discussed one by one in the following paragraphs.

69

Hauge [2011], p.143

55

3.3.1. Activities This area of the research is crucial. Here the question is about which types of activities people are undertaking while using HTCs. Open interviews suggest information technology and kitchen as the most popular segments, but given the little number of respondents, this evidence is not sufficient. For this reason, it has been decided to conduct a little in-sight research using Google Trends (http://www.google.com /trends/), a website of Google in which data about the keywords used by people in the search engine are available. This means that, even if these data do not explain what type of HTCs people are actually accessing, they give a taste of what people are looking for. It might be expected that people using HTCs are, in a relevant part of cases, searching for it with a searching engine to do that, and in particular Google, at least if we consider EU and US. For example, if somebody will look for keywords like how to repair laptop, this person can be looking for a shop where to repair it or alternatively some information on actually how to repair it, so a HTC on the topic. Given that the surveys target audience is of Italians and Turks, this research has been made using keywords in Italian and Turkish. How to (come or nasl in the two languages) alone has not been sufficient to have some results, so other keywords have been added. Thinking about Prosumption activities, proper verbs such as create, make, repair, do, build have been used. Results can be seen in Table 3.

Table 3 What Italian and Turkish HTCs Prosumers look for?

Keywords
How + to + make How + to + repair How + to + build

related themes (Italy)*

curriculum, computers backup iphone, window, car, cd, tv, pc

related themes (Turkey)*

video, food, pc-cracking, meatballs, make-up, game, car, telephone, pc (same as make)

How + to + create website, a blog, a video, a game

house, bomb, nativity scene

This research has been made on 6/2/2013 from Google Trends website. * - results here are presented as translated in English;

56

From these results it seems that Turkish and Italian Google users look on the internet for information about how to do many types of activities. Even if most of them are related to technology, there are also topics related to food, domestic appliances repair and make-up. This experiment should not be considered exhaustive, in particular if we consider that many other activities have specific keywords such as cooking for food, sewing and so on. However these results might reveal part of the responses that will come from surveys respondents: are they looking for the same activities as here or there is something more? By repeating the experiment using different languages, national specificities arises. For Romania the most popular activity has been how to tie the knot while for Spain people are looking for how to make bread, bracelets or coats 70. In the questionnaire, in order to well catch respondents activities, it has been decided to propose the question as open-ended. This choice will imply that, once collected, answers will be codified and classified in some classes of activities.

3.3.2. Motivations As discussed in the first chapter and demonstrated by many works 71, the choice to prosume reflects a wide set of motivations, which concur simultaneously and that are not always easy to be detected. However, it can be noted that researches about Prosumption motivations have yielded different results, with distinctive sets of motivations for each field of Prosumption. For this reason, it can be expected that with varying motivations, also the profile of the Prosumer and the context will vary. How then these motivations will be operationalized in the online questionnaire? Given that it is expected a relatively high number of different responses, making open questions would not be the best way to follow. As a first step it has been conducted an exploratory study which combined existing researches and some open interviews in order to track some recurrent and general motives of Prosumption. In the on-line questionnaire, it has been decided to ask respondents to

70

Romenian keywords: [cum + se+ face]; results: [nod cravata] Spanish (Spain) keywords: [cmo + hacer]; results: [pan, jambon, punto] http://www.google.it/trends/ (accessed on 6/12/2012) 71 Xie C. [2005], Williams C.C. [2008], Kuznetsov and Paulos [2010]

57

list the last activity for which they have used a How-to content in order to focalize them to one single activity. Then, referred to that specific activity, it will be asked to rate the importance of each of the motivations on a 5-point Likert scale. In this way, for each type of activity, it will be possible to determine how each of the specific motivations are important. Scales anchors will be: very unimportant, of little importance, moderately important, important, very important 72.

For motivations, the study was organized in three steps: 1) Look at some studies that attempted in revealing why people prosume, and then group together these motives; 2) In the preliminary face-to-face interviews (see chapter 3.1), make open questions about why respondents do prosume; 3) Group together motives from the two sources and transform them in multiple choice question for the scope of the on-line questionnaire.

Open-interviews confirmed firstly the fact that decisions to prosume are generated by multiple motivations. Secondly, while some of the motivations of researches have been confirmed, others emerged, broadening the set of motivations to be investigated on the survey. Here there are the 10 groups of motivations that have been tracked down, accompanied by a short description. At the end of the paragraph, a table will sum up the sources (whether scientific work or face-to-face interviews).

Rational Economic actor or Hero (1) As already discussed in par. 1.3, this profile is seen as a rational calculator whose decision to self-produce is based on economic considerations. Save money, increase the value of it, alternatives are too expensive are all examples of explanations that a this type of Prosumer would find to motivate his activities. This profile of Prosumer should also include the Prosumer-out-ofchoice, which is the one who has the necessity to prosume, like the examples seen
72

Anchors are suggested by D.F. Polit, C.T. Beck [2008], p.478

58

in paragraph 1.3. In a research about Home-improvement activities, Williams got answer like: I could not afford it, I didnt have a choice, it was too expensive 73. Similar motivations will be indeed included in our survey. To conclude with this preliminary description, it might be said that this type of reason, once considered the main driver of consumption (and economic activity in general) from classical economics 74, has revealed to be marginal in some precedent studies on Prosumption 75. However, it might still result important for certain categories of activities or demographic profiles.

Lack of alternatives (2) In some cases Prosumption is due to necessity, but this is not of economic nature, but is rather due to unavailability of the precise good or service. As an example, one of the interviewees stated that in his self-production of Greek yogurt, he had to produce it his own because very little number of supermarkets have them, and these are far from his house. In this way, he could learn about how to make the product on his own by watching some video-tutorials on the web. Similar results can be found on the research conducted by Williams 76. In other cases, alternatives are available, but the actor does not trust them, or they are not satisfying to him (they dont do a good job, it exists, but I dont trust it). An example of this was Silvia, who does not trust some products for babies (especially food products) which are available on the market, so she is producing them at home. Some of the recipes and methods that she is using have been learnt by some How-to contents belonging to an internet blog 77.

The media-manipulated or Dupe (3) This type of actor is described as passive, manipulated and exploited by the market forces, especially through media 78. Even if similar profiles were not present among interviewees, there can be found examples in some recent studies
73 74

Williams [2011] Slater [1997] 75 Williams C.C. [2008], Kuznetsov and Paulos [2010] 76 Ibid. 77 http://www.equazioni.org/ 78 Slater [1997]

59

on Home improvements in England, where some Prosumers resulted influenced by very popular TV programs about the topic 79. The dupe has also a theoretical base in the consumer behaviour field, especially seen in contrast with the economicrational actor seen above 80. Here it should be noted that this type of motivation might be in some cases not easy to be recognized autonomously respondents, and so it may result underestimated. by

The self-identity seeker (4) This actor, theorized by the post-modernist school, is seen as a manipulator of the symbolic meanings of the products in order to create or maintain a given impression, identity or lifestyle 81. In the questionnaire the item will focus on some of this profiles behaviours, such as the acts of personalization. This type of profile is present both in the work of Williams and KuznetsovPaulos, with statements such as I do it to personalize my things, to make that similar to what we are and so we can show others what we are 82. An example of self-identity seeker among our interviewees was Fani, which uses HTCs to learn how to make decorations, an activity which has the purpose to personalize her house.

The self-expression and creativity seeker or Craft Consumer (5) This motivation is collateral to the previous, but differs in some points. Here the focus is not on the identity or personalization, but rather on the pleasure and/or necessity for the actor to manage and work on some things and to have control over them. As Campbell states, here individuals
consume principally out of desire to engage in creative acts of self-expression. (...) they bring skill, knowledge, judgement, love and passion to their consuming in much the same way that it has always been assumed that traditional craftsmen and craftswomen approach their work.
83

79 80

Mintel [2006] Slater [1997] 81 Featherstone [1991], Firat and Venkatesh [1995] 82 Kuznetsov and Paulos [2010], Williams C.C. [2008] 83 Campbell [2005]

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Here what matters to the individuals is the mere process of doing, which gives them pleasure, not the end product or the social imagine that emerge by the activity itself.

Self-esteem motivations (6) From some face-to-face interviews, but also from the work of KuznetsovPaulos, it emerges a profile of self-esteem-seeker. People learn to do things because they feel they are not just independent and powerful if they can master some new abilities, but they become somehow better-off while learning. Here respondents are likely to agree with statements such as I did it to improve myself, learn new stuff, I did it for myself. This type of motivation can be individualized in what Maslow defined as self-esteem motivations in his hierarchy pyramid of needs 84. According to theory, self-esteem can be divided into two sub-groups: desire for strength, confidence to face the worlds and reputation, prestige, recognition in society. In order to detect Prosumers who are undertake activities for self-esteem motivations, three items will be proposed. The first two are related to the first sub-group, the third to the second one: As a way to improve myself and my skills; To become independent; To impress others.

The ethic-led prosumer (7) In the paragraph 1.3 it has been observed how politics and ideology influenced activities of Prosumption in many ways throughout history, and are still present in todays society. Are people using How-to contents with such purposes? One of the respondent, Marco stated that in some of his home productions there is something political in the sense that he feels that his activity has a more profound meaning and this meaning has something to do with a choice against the system. Similar motivations can be found on the numerous activities which are being undertaken by supporters of the De-growth (and similar) movements,
84

Maslow [1943]

61

where self-production of consumer goods (i.e. detergents, cosmetics, yogurt) and food is seen as a tangible choice against the consumerist society85. As for Italy, some associations linked with the idea of the De-growth not only promote Prosumption, but also provide the knowledge-input for such activities with both live courses or how-to contents 86.

The problem-solver (8) This profile sees Prosumption as the most logical thing to do, with no real joy, economical need or political motive. In the face-to-face interviews this resulted the most popular answer. Can, for example is not very enthusiast about using HTCs for computer-related issues: he uses it to solve daily issues... Thats it, no big deal. This motivation might result, in fact, overlapping with others, but here the focus is on the relationship cause-effect: there is a problem there is a need to solve the (Pro it sumption) activity must be done in order to accomplish the result, How-to contents will be exploited in order to learn how to do it; even if other motivations might be important here, the aspect of the problem-solving result dominant in comparison with others.

Pastime (9) Kotler on his paper written on the 86 - stated that one day, due to the decreasing working hours, an increased free-time will be one of the incentive for people to move toward Prosumption. Some evidences seem confirming the prevision of the economist, especially for European countries, where in the last thirty years the total number of hours declined significantly87. The connection between freetime and Prosumption is for sure of great interest, especially if considered in a framework which include economical and social factors. As for the profile that is being described here, the assumption is that there is a necessity for people to find a way to employ the freetime in a productive way. Antonia, one of the interviewees, stated that after the retirement she found herself with big spaces of freetime in which she basically did not know what to do.
85 86

Pallante [2005] See http://www.unisf.it/ (accessed on 1/2/2013) 87 Alesina and Giavazzi [2006]

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In this sense, the activity of gardening represent for her both an enjoyable hobby and a way to employ freetime.

Table 4 Motivations to prosume and sources

Kuznetsov et al.* [10]

Kuruvilla et al. [11]

Watson et al. [05]

Torrey et al.* [07] X X X

Williams* [11]

Mintel* [06]

(1) Rational economic actor (2) Lack of alternatives (3) The Dupe (4) The Identity-seeker (5) The Craft-consumer (6) Self-esteem (7) Ethic & politic (8) Problem-solver (9) Pastime (10) Tradition & behaviour

X X

X X

X X X X X X X

X X X X X

X X X X X X

X X X X

X X

X X X X X

X X X

X X

* - indicate the works in which results are based on empirical research, others are theoretical. Source: made by the author of this thesis.

Traditions and personal behaviours (10) Here the main source is the work of Xie 88, which is concerned about the role of contexts, behaviours and traditions in food Prosumption activities. In his research, Xie demonstrated the importance domain-specific values (in contrast with global ones), established values and of past behaviours in the decision to undertake such activities. This type of Prosumer is then moved by family or cultural traditions and behaviours. For example, if in ones family has the tradition to cook at home at Christmas dinner, this would influence the choice of that person to decide to cook its own (so, to prosume) at that occasion. Similarly to familiar behaviours, there can be personal behaviours, which will be the second item referred to this group of motivations.

88

Xie [2005]

63

Interviews
F M, A Y, Fa St, M (4) St, M (4) A (4)

Kotler [86]

Mota [11]

Xie* [05]

These are the 10 motivations that have been detected. Considered all their sub-question, they will be translated in a total of 16 items for the questionnaire. The items and their relative groups can be seen on Table 5.

Table 5 Recap of motivations to prosume and relative questions for the

questionnaire
N^ 1

Motive
Rational economic choice (The Hero) Lack of alternatives Manipulated by media (The Dupe) Self-identity seeker Creativity and joy of activity (Craft consumer) Self-esteem

Item(s) on the questionnaire*

- to make money - to save money - I had to: I cannot afford it or it is too expensive for me
- because the object (or service) is not available in the market

2 3 4 5
6

- because I dont trust the market alternatives - because of media influence - as a way to express and personalize myself - because of the joy of creativity - as a way to improve myself and my skills - in order to impress others 7 8 9 10 Ethic and politic Problem-solving Pastime Tradition - to become independent - because of ethical or political reasons - to resolve a spontaneous problem - to pass freetime - because of family and cultural traditions - because of personal behaviours
* - In the questionnaire, these items are related to the question How important has been the following motivations when you decided to undertake that particular activity?; Likert scale and anchors used are discussed earlier in the paragraph.

3.3.3. Context of use The second question of this research area will be the context of use. Here there is a strong link with the concepts of par. 2.3, where it has been discussed the contrast between formal and informal contexts of economic production. From the discussions of the open interviews it emerged that How-to contents and related activities can be generally located into three types of context: Hobby and Freetime Problem-solving Professional sphere
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In the previous chapter (par. 2.3) it has been argued that How-to contents are mainly used on what it has been called informal contexts, so for activities outside formal institutions (i.e. workplace, school). Is this true or actually people use this instrument also in different contexts? Is there a relation between the context in which they are used and the demographic profile? The question for this topic will be a 5-point Likert scale where it will be asked How often do you use How-to contents in the following contexts of your life?, with the contexts listed above as items. As anchors it has been used the set Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, Very often 89.

3.4.

Behaviours of the HTCs Prosumer on the web (Q3)

The third research question is related to the green set, so to the internet

context. Here the interest is on the way in which Prosumers retrieve, access and use the How-to contents. In particular, this section will be focused on four aspects: Intensity of use; type of platform; type of content; multiple use of different How-to contents for the same activity (multitasking);

3.4.1. Intensity As for intensity, the objective will be to understand what is the frequency with which respondents use How-to contents. In the interviews, respondents declared to use them generally between some times a week and one or more times a month. In the survey the question will be presented on a multiple choice style, with about once a day, one or few times a week, one or few times a month, less than once a month as choices.

89

This set of anchors has been used in the work of L.M. Anderson [2008]

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3.4.2. Platforms Platform is also a crucial factor. As introduced earlier (par. 2.2), How-to contents can be found in many different internet-contexts; the most relevant ones will be here briefly presented. Blogs A blog is a space of discussion consisting of users entries (typically called "posts"); these are displayed in a reverse chronological order, with the most recent post at the top of the page. Blogs are very popular platforms for HTCs, which are generally user-generated, in that informal users create and then post them. One of our respondent, Silvia, uses this type of platform 90 to access to contents about child care. Forums Is an online discussion site where people can communicate in the form of messages, which are called posts. Forums are very popular as well, and here the peculiarity is that contents are shared almost exclusively under the form of text. Like blogs, also here the contents are almost always user-generated (i.e. Figure 10, p.37). Video-hosting website Is a website which is focused on sharing videos. The benchmark here is YouTube, one of the most popular websites of the world; however many national websites are gaining relevant audience as well 91. At the contrary of forum, in this type of platform HTCs are almost exclusively under the form of video. In these platforms contents are generally user-generated, but we still can find both videos made by specialized companies (or relative freelances) or even extreme cases of collection of non-UG-HTCs made for advertising reasons 92. As for the pool of interviewees, YouTube resulted overall the most popular platform. HTC-specialized websites This form of platform clearly overlaps the others, but has the difference to be well-focused on HTCs. In the past years lots of HTC-focused websites became very popular, as the success of websites like Ehow.com and Howtodothings.com attest. A peculiarity of these platforms is that
In particular: http://www.equazioni.org/ (accessed on 7/12/2012) On the specific case of Turkey, see the success of Vidivodo.com and Zapkolik.com; performances checked at statscrop.com (accessed on 8/3/2013). 92 http://howto.tv/ (accessed on 7/12/2012)
91 90

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their HTCs are generally not user-generated, but rather made by paid professionals or free-lancers. Usually these websites have a national dimension probably linked with the language in which the contents are presented - like many examples suggest 93. Companys websites The last segment is probably the least interesting for the purposes of the thesis, but it represent still an interesting trend within the topic of HTCs. On the web it can be observed that HTCs are being utilized in websites of some big companies as a sort of collateral content with the clear purpose of enriching 94 and increasing the interest toward platforms (or relative products) that usually are not much more than informative 95; in addition, some of these contents have the purpose to show in practice how the companys products can be used 96. Other types of platform The examples presented here should not seen as a taxonomy or a classification of the platforms that host How-to contents. In fact, as it may be argued, one website can be seen as more than one of them at the same moment. An example is constituted by the social networks, which may cross nearly all of the platforms presented here. YouTube, for example, can be classified both as a social network and as a video-hosting platform. This fact is due to the great dynamicity of the web, where schemes are in a continuous change. Within this context, a very new type of platform is entering the universe of How-to contents, the Wikis 97. HTC-wikis present two clear characteristics: their contents are generally user-generated and (for the moment) on a text format. The first aspect is related to the typical open source nature of the concept; the second is due to the fact that while a text can be easily modified by many different users and for many times, same thing is not possible for the video.

Even if the types and the examples presented here do not cover the total spectrum of the channels in which HTCs can be found, they can still give a variegate picture of it. For this reason, they will be adopted as items in the question
http://www.uzmantv.com/ (Turkey) http://www.giallozafferano.it/ (Italy) http://www.mastoremata.gr/ (Greece) http://vse-sam.ru/ (Russia) 94 http://www.ilike-italy.it/ and http://www.greenme.it/ (accessed on 7/12/2012) 95 http://www.obi.de/decom/home.html (accessed on 7/12/2012) 96 http://www.bostik.it/bostik/fai-da-te/fatti-da-voi (accessed on 7/12/2012) 97 http://www.wikihow.com/ and http://en.howtopedia.org/ (accessed on 7/12/2012)
93

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about the topic that will be presented in the questionnaire, in the form of a checkbox. Because of the fact that the list might not be exhaustive, a space for indications by respondents will be available as well.

3.4.3. Format of the content As introduced in the second chapter (par. 2.2), it can be observed that HTCs take place under many formats, sometimes even on a combination of different formats. The most popular at the moment are text and videos, with the second on the rise, led by global internet trends. Format is expected not to be an exogenous feature of the HTC, but rather influenced by the topic or personal users preferences. To investigate this topic, a two-items (Video, Text), 5-point Likert scale about the intensity with which each of these formats are used will be presented. Like for questions on contexts (par. 3.3.3), anchors will be Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, Very often.

3.4.4. Multi-tasking In the context of the How-to contents, the term Multi-tasking should be interpreted as the phenomenon by which a user accesses more than a How-to content at the same moment or for the same project. There are evidences of this phenomenon both from the open-interviews (specifically, Fani and Can) and from one of the works of Torrey discussed earlier 98. Multi-tasking is an interesting way in which How-to contents are used: users are not satisfied with a single content, but they want to compare more than one in order to be sure to choose the most appropriate, the most popular or just the one that they believe being best. Fani, one of our interviewed persons, admitted that while she has to cook a particular dish, she tends to use more than one tutorial in order to compare the procedures and the ingredients used, in particular when she is not sure about the way to cook it.

98

Torrey et al. [2007]

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3.5.

Participation (Q4)
In the model presented on the previous chapter (par.2.5) we have seen how

the Prosumer not only exploits information from internet, but also participate and contribute to the creation and development of webs global knowledge. In this way, a sort of parallel Prosumption takes place this time in the internet context - where people both consume and produce contents. This production of content takes place through the so-called participatory tools, which are basically instruments that make users able to create and share (and so, to participate to the web community) contents on the web. Some common examples are: Rating: the tool by which a user can give a vote to the content; Like/dislike: the tool by which a user can say if he or she liked or did not like the content; Commenting spaces: the tool by which a user can put a comment to the content; they can be both question, answers, indications and so on; Private messages: the tool by which a user can communicate with other users in a private way; Sharing of own contents: is not a particular tool, but represent the fact that users can create contents such as pictures, photographs or articles and share them on the platform on their own.

Participation is a crucial aspect for any web community, and in particular for the ones based on How-to contents. The first reason is that highly participatory communities produces more contents, and so they have a larger supply of contents. Quantity not necessarily corresponds to quality, but still bigger (in term of quantity of contents) communities have higher probability to target more of the peoples needs. Secondly, the more participative is the community, the higher will be its problem-solving potential, and so its effectiveness. Overall, a community where users are highly participative will be also richer in contents, and so more successful. On the contrary, a community where users tend only to exploit contents, will produce less contents, with lower levels of traffic and, in general, success. For example, like/dislike might not seem a feature that would influence the value of a content, but actually a content with thousands of like is much more
69

valuable than one with few. A tutorial about how to repair window which has been rated by many users is more valuable than one which has no votes. In the same way, a tutorial with lots of answers and comments will be better than one without them, because the new user might find further suggestions on the comments part, or just an answer to a question that he would have posed.

The role of the participation in Prosumption-oriented web communities has been investigated in the paper of Kuznetsov-Paulos, as discussed briefly in par. 2.5. The research found out that in these communities people use a wide variety of participatory tools, as the Figure 14 shows. Figure 14 Use of participatory tools by members of some DIY communities

Source: Kuznetsov & Paulos [2010]

In the figure, participatory tools are ordered in terms of popularity, from the top to the bottom, on a decreasing order. For example, while comments resulted very popular, very few are the users that create and share videos of their own projects. This graphic is very interesting because it suggests that while lots of the users are disposed to use participatory tools which need low effort and time (ones on the top), the ones that request bigger efforts (ones at the bottom) are generally used by few people. By evaluating the use of participatory tools by HTCs Prosumers, it is possible to imagine two different profiles: one who is very participative and another one who has no interest in participating, but rather sees HTC as a mere source of knowledge to be exploited.
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This distinction may be seen as collateral to the dichotomy Web 1.0 Web 2.0, which is based as well on the degree of participation and creation of value by the same users. In this sense, we can identify two types of Prosumer: HTCs Prosumer 1.0, who generally does not use participatory tools and sees internet as a mere source of information (of input) for his or her Prosumption activities. HTCs Prosumer 2.0, who has a higher adoption of the participatory tools and sees internet not only as a source of information, but also as a field in which it is possible to participate to it.

As for the survey, level of Participation will be investigated in a way similar to the work discussed earlier: respondents will be asked to evaluate the intensity with which they use a set of participatory tools. They will be: Rating; Like/dislike; Commenting; Sending private messages to other members; Share pictures of own projects; Share HTCs on the format of text; Share HTCs on the format of video. These items will be proposed on a 5-point Likert scale, where respondents will be asked to indicate the frequency with which they use such items. Anchors are as for questions on Format and Context Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, Very often.

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To conclude the chapter, Table 6 is presented, where the questions of the survey are summed up.

Table 6 Areas of research and measures proposed

Research Area
(Q1) Demographic profile

Measures
Age Sex Nationality Profession Type of activity Motivations

Indicators
Year of birth multiple choice: student, full-time worker, parttime worker, retired, housewife/husband, unemployed, permanently unemployed. open question 5-point Likert scale: how important is each motivation? (17 items)
Very unimportant, of little importance, moderately important, important, very important

(Q2) Activities, motivations and contexts

Contexts

5-point Likert scale: how often are HTCs being used in the specific context? (3 items)
Never, seldom, sometimes, often, very often

(Q3) Behaviours on the web

Intensity Platforms Formats Multitasking

once a month, less than once a month

multiple choice: how often do you use HTCs? (4 items) about once a day, about once a week, about

checkbox (8 items) 5-point Likert scale: how often the HTCs that you use have these formats? (2 items)
Never, seldom, sometimes, often, very often

seldom, occasionally, to a considerable degree, almost always

multiple choice: how often do you use more than one HTC for the same activity? (4 items)

(Q4) Participation

Participatory tools

5-point Likert scale: how often do you use the following tools of participation on HTC platforms? (7 items)
Never, seldom, sometimes, often, very often

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Chapter 4 Research on the How-to contents Prosumer: results and discussion

In this chapter the results of the research will be presented and then compared with the theoretical framework and the expectations. Like the research has been structured around four areas of investigations, in the same way here we will discuss them in different paragraphs, even if they will inevitably intersect each other continuously. The data have been analyzed with software Microsoft Excel and IBM SPSS.

4.

4.1.

Collection campaign and population

The survey has been published on the internet using an internet-based

company specialized in on-line surveys called Fluidsurveys.com. The period has been of almost one month, starting on the 19th of December 2012 and finishing on the 15th of January 2013. The total responses received has been 1628, of which 1111 completed (68,2%). Of these 1111 completed surveys, 10 has been eliminated because of invalid values.

Table 7 Responses to the survey, recap

COMPLETE SURVEYS INCOMPLETE SURVEYS INVALID TOTAL 1101 517 10 1628 67,6% 31,8% 0,6% 100%

4.1.1. Surveys collection campaign To achieve a good number of questionnaires, it has been decided to exploit as much as possible Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Eki Szlk. This strategy resulted quite effective, at least in relation with the target (1k complete questionnaires), which have been achieved and surpassed in less than the expected
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time (one month). In the remainder of the paragraph a short description of the collections campaign will be given. After having activated the URL link of the questionnaire, three different events have been created on Facebook, one for each of the languages of the questionnaire (Italian, Turkish and English). On each event page, it has been described the topic of the research and the context (research for a graduation thesis, etc.) and then the URL of the link to access to the surveys web page. In addition, invited persons were asked to invite other friends to the event-page in order to increase the number of total respondents. To begin, personal friends of the author have been invited to the event, about 100 for the Turkish and for English group and about 300 for the Italian group. The strategy worked quite well, and two of the three groups increased a lot, as it can be seen in the following table.

Table 8 Increase of the number of invites to the survey-event on

Facebook between start and after 3 weeks
Group (language) Italian Turkish English Total 19th December * 315 97 110 495 8th January 2214 1967 251 4450

It has been estimated that around 73% of total respondents accessed to the surveys webpage from Facebook 99. The reminder 27% of responses came in big part from other social media, where strategies similar to the one described have been undertaken.

4.1.2. Samples demographic profile (Q1) The first area of research is focused on the demographic profile of the Prosumer. Here respondents were asked to indicate their age, nationality, occupation and gender.

61% of the total surveys URL sources could have been tracked; percentage is referred to this sample (which is assumed here to be representative of the total population of the questionnaire).

99

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The great majority of the 1101 respondents resulted of young and young adults, with 78% of respondents under-30; the interval with the highest concentration resulted the 22-25 (37,1% of total). The youngest respondent was 15, the oldest 73. This result is in line with expectations, especially if we consider the research campaign, which took place in social networks, and in particular in eventpages where invited people were generally young. The distribution of population based on age can be seen in detail on the following Graphic.

Figure 15 Distribution of Age, complete surveys

450 400 350

Number of samples

300 250 200 150 100 50 0

Age

In order to undertake statistical operations, variable age has been divided in three sub-groups: young (15-24) young adults (25-34) adults (35 or more) The second demographic variable was Occupation, which was articulated on a checkbox with 7 items. As expectable from the distribution of age, the first group resulted students (49%), followed by full-time workers (32,2%) , parttime workers (8,4%) and unemployed (7,8%). The remaining three items (housewives/househusbands, retired and permanent unemployed) registered very low frequencies. To avoid problem of statistical nature, it has been decided to
75

incorporate permanent unemployed in the group of unemployed and to not consider the other two categories 100. The distribution of variable Occupation variable is shown in Figure16.

Figure 16 Occupation, complete surveys

1,1% 0,8% 0,6%

7,8% 8,4% 49,0% 32,2%

Student Working Working Part-time Unemployed (but seeking) Housewife Retired Unemployed (permanent)

As for the variable Gender, it can be observed an interesting prevalence of female over male, 59% against 41%. As for variable Nationality, results are in line with expectations (and the target groups), with two big sub-groups in Italians (50,9%) and Turks (40,1%). The remaining 9% is composed of respondents of 34 different nationalities; given their fragmentation, they will be merged into a single group that will be called other nationalities.

4.1.3. Sub-populations: Italians and Turks As just seen, inside surveys population there are two macro groups based on variable Nationality: Italians and Turks. To be able to compare them, we need to understand if they can be considered similar enough in order to use this variable for future calculations. To understand this, demographic variables have been compared to the variable Nationality.

Respondents belonging to these two categories will not be considered on the regressions or other statistical methods that using variable Occupation.

100

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While for Occupation and Gender no relevant differences emerged, for variable Age there is evidence of a significant difference, due to different distributions of age: while there is an important part of Italian respondents on the segment of over 35 (19%), for Turks this resulted very low (6,6%). If we would eliminate the segment of the over 35 for both Turks and Italians, then the two subgroups would become homogeneous: in order to avoid such problems and be able to compare homogeneous groups, while using variables Nationality and Age, only categories 15-24 and 25-35 will be considered.

4.1.4. Users and non-users of How-to contents At the beginning of the questionnaire, after having explained and given examples of the How-to contents, respondents were asked to indicate whether they use or not such a content on the internet. A very dominant 79,3% of answers resulted affirmative and 21,7% negative. This fact is of great relevance for the research in that it confirms the great popularity of the use of How-to contents, and in particular among young parts of population. Both respondents of yes and not were asked to compile demographic section; in this way there is now the possibility to understand if any of these variable influence the use (or non-use) of HTCs. To evaluate the relationships between HTC usage and demographic variables, the SPSS option Crosstabs has been used. With this option it is possible to compare two variables and calculate many statistical parameters. Given that the variables considered here are all categorical (also Age, which has been transformed in three categories), to understand if there is a relationship between them, a Pearsons Chi squared test has been undertaken. Among these variables, the only relevant relationship emerged with the variable Nationality (Pearsons Chi-squared = 34,603; df = 2; P-Value < 0,000). This fact is due to a moderately lower tendency of Turks to use the How-to contents in relation both to Italians and Rest of the world. In fact, if we consider frequencies for categories 15-24 and 25-34, we observe a percentage of users of 88% and 83% for Italians and Rest of the world, this percentage falls to 72,6% for Turks.
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4.2.

Activities, contexts and motivations (Q2)

This section represents somehow the core of the research in that it tries to

answer the questions what activities, for which motives and in which contexts HTCs are being used?.

4.2.1. Activities for which How-to contents are used. In the survey respondents were asked to list at least one (maximum three) activity for which they use How-to contents. Given that the question was open, answers resulted of great variety. To be able to analyze them, these activities have been grouped into 8 categories, each of which contains activities related to a particular topic, such as Kitchen or Beauty. To see in detail the rationale used in the grouping process, and some examples of the activities, see Table 9. The eight groups of activities are presented in order of quantity. In the following graph the percentages of activities are displayed.

Figure 17 Sectors of activities for which HTCs are being used, total
responses
7,3% 32,2%
Kitchen Software Art & craft Beauty Home-related Electro & mech works Hobby Other

6,3%

6,5% 7,0% 9,2% 9,8%

21,8%

Note that the values of the figure are ratios referred to the total responses, not to the total sample 101. In this way we have that, for example, 32,2% of total responses resulted Kitchen, but it was the 71% of the total respondents that indicated this topic among one of the three spaces available. In the reminder of the paragraph these categories will be briefly discussed.
101

Again, this difference is due to the fact that respondents were asked to list more than one activity.

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Before starting the discussion of the single categories, it should be noted that when changing the Nationality, the percentages of activities remain fairly stable (again, to compare sub-groups the group of over-35 has not been considered). This fact suggests that the trends described here may have a global rather than national character. In order to confirm this assumption, further research including other nationalities is suggested.

With one-third of the total activities indicated, and with a presence in 71% of total respondents, Kitchen resulted by far the most popular activity for which HTCs are used. This data confirms both the results of open-interviews, where kitchen resulted the most popular topic, and the great success of these contents on the web. As for our sample, we cannot catch a particular demographic profile of the Kitchen HTC users, even if a slight tendency of women over men as expectable - is present. By looking at internets panorama at least by focusing on Italy and Turkey there can be found lots of popular websites that provide How-to contents about cooking. For sure one of them is again YouTube.com, which is the third most seen website both in Italy and Turkey and has a very huge number of videos about the topic 102. In this sense, it would be interesting to access to the data of the company in order to have a better knowledge about the phenomenon of HTCs for this specific topic. Along with YouTube, there are many alternative websites which are focused on the provision of HTCs about cooking; they usually operate at a national level, such as Giallozafferano.it (86k daily visitors) in Italy and Nefisyemektarifleri.com (10k) for Turkey103. These and few others are the websites focused on the topic that are able to attract big numbers of visitors, but behind them there can be found hundreds of websites usually blogs focused on teaching how to cook. In contrast with the examples given above, which can be seen as real companies, they are made by amateurs in a more informal manner.

102

A punctual data here is not available, but with a simple research on the website it can be noticed both the quantity of videos and the number of visualizations. 103 Data come from Statscrop.com, accessed on 29/1/2013.

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Table 9 Classification of activities for which HTCs have been used, total
respondents GROUP
(1) Kitchen & surroundings (2) Software & Internet

Sub-groups
- Kitchen - Cakes - Cocktails - Software - Internet - Smart phones

Description
Respondents of this group accessed to HTCs in order to learn about making a dish, a cake, a cocktail or similar things (i.e. how to make sweet cream, how to cut a rabbit). Here HTCs are related with the software side of electronic-digital appliances (usually computers or smart phones). Here respondents used the HTC to learn about the use of a particular software (Photoshop was the most popular), about operative systems functionalities or functions related to antivirus. This group comprehends also the ones who looked about particular internets activities such as how to download a film or how to open a blog. This is the group of artists and craftsmen. Here it can be observed a great variety of answers, some of which present a more artistic taste (i.e. how to make a paint, how to create an artistic object), others more artisan (how to make a particular sewing technique). The HTCs of this group are related to all of the activities connected with beauty and mode, such as make-up, hairstyle and fashion (i.e. how to dress for a particular occasion) In this group there are activities which are related with house-sphere, such as home-maintenance (repair my fridge, paint the wall), gardening, baking and homeproductions (produce a home-made detergent, produce a cosmetic). Here there are activities related with electronic circuits, mechanical components or general repairement of devices. This group comprehends also the activities related with installation or repair of components for cars, motorcycles or bikes. These activities are related to hobbies and freetime activities such as music (how to play a particular song), sport (how to make exercises of gym), videogames (how to pass a level in a videogame), photography (specific technique for photography), or simply the ones who answered hobby. This group include some residual groups such as school & science (how to make a physical experiment), medical (how to make a medical operation), bureaucracy (how to open a bank account), Maps & travel (how to go somewhere) and Cravat (how to tie a knot).

(3) Art, Craft & Creative works

- Art & Craft - Sewing

(4) Beauty & Mode (5) Home-related activities

- Make-up - Hairstyle - Mode - Home maintenance - Gardening - Home productions - Baking - Electronic works - General repairement - Car work - Music - Sport - Videogames - Photography - Hobby - School & science - Others - Medical & sex - Bureaucracy - Maps & travel - Cravat

(6) Electronic & mechanical works (7) Hobby & freetime

(8) Other

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The popularity of Kitchens HTCs should not be interpreted as a phenomenon limited to the internet sphere. By looking at other media in particular magazines and television it can be observed a very relevant presence of spaces dedicated to kitchen, and in particular on how to cook. As for the main countries of our research, we have found that both in Turkey and Italy TV programs about cooking are of high popularity104, and increasing spaces on this topic seem to occur also in the industry of magazines. The environment of the platforms about Kitchens HTC is however very dynamic, and considered also its great potentiality to which this research add other evidences new models should be expected. An example can be found on Recipefy.com, a social network which in contrast with previous models has a much more participatory nature. To conclude this parenthesis on Kitchens HTCs, we can state that it is by far the most popular Prosumption activity for which this particular content is being used. The relevance of this trend suggests further research on the topic, and in particular with the combination of data and relations between different types of media. The second most popular topic resulted Software and Internet, indicated by nearly half of total respondents, which represents the 22% of total activities. Here the majority of respondents typed simply software or in couple with learn how to use, learn abilities of, installation and use. Others also indicated which software, and in this way Photoshop emerged as the most popular one. This category comprehends also the software operations with PC, such as managing antivirus and formatting. Another relevant part of answers of this group are related to activities related to the software side of smart phones, with answers like how to uninstall android, reset/upgrade blackberry. Like it was for Kitchen, there cannot be observed relevant connections with demographic profile; only variable Gender resulted relevant, with a slight tendency toward male.
104

As for Italy see the article Fornelli scatenati in TV nel period natalizio, M. Caterini, in Panorama.it 11-12-2012, retrieved from: http://societa.panorama.it/televisione/Fornelli-scatenati-in-tv-nelperiodo-natalizio (30-1-2013); As for Turkey see TVdeki mutfak programlar reyting topluyor, in Zaman, 3-10-2012, retrieved from: http://www.haberaktuel.com/tv-deki-mutfak-programlari-reyting-topluyor-haberi-636389.html (30/1/2013)

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By looking at the process of How-to contents Prosumption as a whole, this category of How-to contents differ from all the other contents in that here the processes of accessing to the content and the implementation of the instructions take place in the same physical place, which is the laptop (or in case, the smart phone). For example, while Kitchens HTCs Prosumers would retrieve the information with a proper appliance and work with food ingredients, ladles and pots, the ones belonging to this group use the computer (or in case, the smart phone or similar appliances) both for the retrieval of the HTC and for the Prosumption activity itself. One of the implications of this fact can be found in the design of the content, with the emergence of Camtasia models similar to the one presented in paragraph 2.2 (Figure 9). As for researchers personal experience, HTCs about software have been extensively used to learn about the statistical software used to analyze the data of the survey (SPSS) that is being discussed here.

The remaining six categories are quite similar in number, from the 9,8% of Art & Craft activities to 6,3% of Hobby and freetime. The first of them, Art & Craft, was indicated as one of the top three activity by 22% of respondents. This is a category that, even if it does not belong to a particular demographic profile, had on the list of its activities a clear propensity toward manual skills, art and creativity. Examples of Art & Craft activities are build a guitar, realize a cosplay, I have drawn a portrait, creations with ropes.

Beauty, samples fourth most popular category (9,2% of total responses) resulted of particular interest. HTCs of this group were generally related to hairstyle, make-up, nail-art, beauty and mode: a universe of activities which belongs generally to the female universe. This fact is confirmed by the demographic profile, which is clearly of women (97%). For this category an interesting Italian example can be found in the successful story of Clio Zammatteo, a professional make-up artist who could become famous thanks to How-to contents about make-up in the web. This girl started with a channel on YouTube 105, where in four years she uploaded more than 400 videos
105

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClioMakeUp (accessed on 1/2/2013)

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(most of which tutorials); these tutorials which combine informal linguistic with simple and understandable techniques could well target Italian young women and girls: with time, the channel could gain a certain popularity, and today it counts more than 100M of total visualizations. Like for the discussion for Kitchens HTCs, also Clio make-up jumped from a media channel to the other, with the launch of a television program in the February of 2012. The segment of HTCs about Beauty & Mode is a very dynamic one, in particular among young women and girls, and might have the potential to become in the future a channel for marketers of beauty or mode sectors to approach audience in a more innovative way. The group Home-related activities presents a profile which is polarized on over-35. Overall, this fact sounds quite logical if we consider the type of activities that are embedded in this category. Most of them are related with house maintenance, activities which are more likely to be done by a person who owns the house (over-35) rather than another who is probably renting it or lives with parents (under-35) 106. On a second look, it should be noticed that among sub-categories there is the so-called home production, which is referred to consumer goods such as beer, yogurt, bread, marmalade, detergents and similar. This is a very interesting trend which confirms some recent studies on the emergence of behaviours toward the self-production of consumer goods (see the discussion of par. 1.3.1). This topic will be further discussed on paragraph 4.2.3.

The category of Electronic & Mechanical works resulted the sixth most popular, with 6,5% of total responses. Here there can be found many different works, which are generally amenable to repairement or installation of electronic or mechanical devices. Examples are repairement of car, fixing my phone, fix my hard disc. The profile of the this categorys HTC user is one of man, generally under-35. This data sounds logical if we look at the subjects which are subject of these works: smart phones, personal computer, mp3 and similar; all devices which are likely to have higher adoption among young categories of population.
106

This fact confirms what has emerged by two previous researches on the theme, where both age and ownership were variables that influenced positively such activities. These works are: Baker and Kaul [2000] and Pollakowski [1988]

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If we except Others, the last category resulted Hobby & Freetime. In this section there can be found activities related to this sphere of life such as travelling, photography, sport, music and videogames. These last two categories had the peculiarity to contain very different types of activities; this suggests that even if there are some categories which are very popular and massively diffused, at the same moment there are many niches that might become more important in the future.

4.2.2. Contexts of use Another crucial question was the context in which HTCs are being used. This question has first of all the objective of confirming or rejecting some hypothesis that have been made on the theoretical part (par. 2.3), where it has been argued that HTCs generally belongs generally to non-formal contexts, and in particular to activities linked with the idea of leisure. After having made the open interviews, three main areas have then be individuated: hobby & freetime, professional sphere and everyday problem-solving; these were also the three items of a 5-point Likert question in which respondents were asked to rate them in relation to their personal use of HTCs. As expected, Hobby & freetime resulted the most important context in which HTCs Prosumption takes place, registering highest percentages for often and very often, and just 12% of seldom or never.

Table 10 Context of use of HTCs, total respondents

CONTEXT HOBBY /FREETIME PROFESSIONAL PROBLEM-SOLVING never 2,5% 13,6% 6,3% seldom 9,9% 20,6% 18,8% sometimes 24,9% 28,1% 31,4% often 37,1% 25,8% 31,0% very often 25,7% 11,9% 12,5%

The unexpected result comes from Professional sphere, which has been indicated with sometimes or higher frequency by two out of three respondents. Even if this resulted the last in order of importance, it should be considered still an
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important context in which HTCs are being used. Overall, this result should be interpreted as while a great part of HTCs are used in leisure time or to solve spontaneous problems, some of them are also being used in more formal contexts like school or professional spheres. In order to evaluate significance between variable Context and demographic variables, items never, seldom and sometimes have been merged together and same for remaining ones in another group. By combining the variable Context with demographic ones, interesting differences for the variable Nationality emerged (only under-35 have been considered; Chi-squared = 25,399; df = 2; P-Value < 0,000); here Turks resulted significantly more inclined to use HTCs in professional contexts in comparison to Italians and Rest of the world. How this fact may be explained? The logic would suggest that Turks see How-to contents and in general the knowledge of the web not only as a tool which is useful for freetime activities, but also a reliable resource that can help in more serious contexts. While these different usages of the How-to contents may find their roots in the differences between the two cultures, part of the solution can be found on the specific activities for which the contents are used, as will be observed in the next paragraph when we will discuss about the different motivations for which Turks and Italians use HTCs about Kitchen.

4.2.3. Motivations The third page of the questionnaire was dedicated to the motivations that influenced the choice to prosume. First it has been asked respondents to indicate the last activity for which they have used a HTC, or alternatively, a recent one that they would have remembered well. This question had the objective to put the focus of the respondent on a specific activity, given that the following question was a sort of check-up of the motives (16 in total, see Table 5) that contributed to the decision to undertake that activity. Motives have been articulated on a 5-point Likert scale and distributed randomly for each survey in order to avoid respondents bias (which might have been of a certain relevance given the number of the items).

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Before investigating the relations between motives and other variables, lets first take a look at the aggregate data.

Table 11 Motivations that influenced the decision to undertake the

activity (for which HTC has been used), % HTC users
MOTIVATIONS
Very Unimportant

Of little Moderatly Very Important Importance Important Important

To make money (-) To save money Alternatives too expensive 2 Good was not available Don't trust alternatives 3 Media Influence (-) 4 Self-expression & personalizat. 5 Joy of creativity (+) 6 Improve myself (+) Impress others Indipendency (+) 7 Ethical / Political (-) 8 Problem-solving (+) 9 Pass Freetime 10 Family / Cultural (-) Personal behaviours

71,8% 40,2% 46,5% 44,2% 50,5% 61,3% 28,3% 11,2% 7,5% 32,0% 23,7% 67,2% 18,3% 19,9% 59,4% 24,3%

10,6% 15,6% 16,0% 17,3% 18,5% 19,1% 12,7% 6,1% 6,0% 24,3% 12,7% 13,5% 8,1% 16,4% 20,4% 14,6%

7,6% 19,6% 18,4% 17,5% 17,5% 12,8% 23,0% 15,8% 18,2% 21,0% 21,0% 8,3% 16,4% 24,7% 11,3% 24,9%

7,0% 16,8% 13,7% 14,3% 8,8% 5,3% 21,4% 33,1% 33,1% 15,6% 24,9% 6,3% 29,7% 27,3% 6,0% 25,8%

3,0% 7,8% 5,3% 6,7% 4,7% 1,5% 14,5% 33,9% 35,3% 7,1% 17,7% 4,7% 27,5% 11,8% 2,9% 10,4%

From this table it emerges that, in general, the most popular motivations are the ones related to the profiles of Craft consumer (number 5 on the table), Selfesteem (6) and Problem-solver (8). At the contrary, the least popular motivations resulted Rational economic actor (1), The dupe (3) and Tradition and personal behaviours (10). These results confirm in part what have been discussed for context, where leisure and problem-solving resulted the most popular spheres in which prosumption activities are made. However, if these numbers are interesting in that they give a first and general panoramic view of the phenomenon, it should be noticed that the activities to which they refer to are very different one to the other. In this way, an activity of creating an artistic artefact would be much different than the resolution of a spontaneous problem of a certain software. Indeed, motivations resulted to be highly activity-specific, so strongly dependent to the category of activity.
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To understand if relations between categories of activity (Last activity) and motivations were present, a multinomial regression with software SPSS has been made, using variable Last activity as dependent variable and all of the variables of motivations as independent. While including all of the variables, the model presented a very high significance (P-value < 0,000). By looking at the single variables see Table 11 it can be noticed that 5 of the 16 variables resulted with a P-Value higher than 0,050, which means that these variables are not significant in the explanation of the dependent variable. For this reason, the regression has been repeated without including such variables; by doing that, P-Values of other variables improved.

Table 12 Multinomial regression Last activity and Motivations

variables, Likelihood Ratio test, total HTC users*
Variables Model Fitting Criteria -2 log Likelihood of reduce of Model Intercept to make money to save money alternatives too expensive good was not available dont trust alternatives media influence self-expression & personalization joy of creativity improve myself to impress others ethical/political reasons problem-solving to pass freetime to become independent family traditions personal behaviours 2575,750 2588,484 2585,251 2552,020 2562,013 2566,961 2596,110 2579,850 2583,477 2552,478 2555,761 2568,863 2597,047 2557,971 2557,795 2576,281 2561,641 28,820 41,553 38,320 5,089 15,082 20,031 49,179 32,919 36,546 5,547 8,830 21,932 50,116 11,040 10,864 29,350 14,710 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,649 ,035 ,006 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,594 ,265 ,003 ,000 ,137 ,145 ,000 ,040 Chisquared df P-Value Likelihood Ratio test

* - Regression has been made with software IBM SPSS

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Said this, we can concentrate on the significant variables in order to understand which are the motives that stimulated our respondents to undertake a such activities. This will be done by looking at the Odds ratio (and relative confidence interval) of each activity, for each (significant) motivation variable.

As for Kitchen, joy of creativity resulted the most important motivation, with Odds ratio equal to 2,292. The picture of these users is then of people who see this type of activity first of all as a joyful act, a moment to express creativity and have fun. While repeating the regression considering only Turks, save money emerged surprisingly as the most important variable (Odds ratio = 2,645). How this difference between young Italians and young Turks can be explained? A solution might be found on the different behaviours toward food consumption for the two sub-groups. Turkish group is composed of young respondents generally students who live in big cities; these people tend to outsource a relevant part of the food that they consume, in particular to fast-foods or home-delivery companies 107. Even if punctual comparison studies do not exist (or are not known), this tendency of young Turks to outsource food preparation seems to be significantly higher than Italians (also due to the clearly lower penetration of the segment in consumer behaviours). In this sense, for young Turks it can be supposed that there is the emergence of a sort of trade-off between fastfood and Prosumption, where the second is motivated mainly by economical issues such as money-saving. Even if this assumption cannot be confirmed by the data that could have been collected in this research, it might represent a starting point for future investigations, which will necessarily need to be focused on the segment of foodpreparation.

For the category Software, the motivation save money emerged as the most relevant one (Odds ratio = 2,061). If this fact is in line with expectations, the same cannot be said for the variable problem-solving and personal behaviours, which were expected to be important but that resulted of very low importance.
107

Akbay et al. [2007]

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The reason of this can be due to the presence of some sub-categories of respondents inside this group that can have very different motivations to undertake a certain activity. It should be recalled, for example, that in this category there are HTCs relative to very different activities such as how to open a blog, how to install android on my phone or how to format my PC; most probably, even if they all belong to the universe software, they emerge from very different motivations. In this sense, a more punctual research on HTCs about software & technology would certainly give a clearer picture of the phenomenon.

As for the third category, Art & Craft activities the main motivation resulted joy of creativity, which had a very high Odds ratio (2,541). Like it has been discussed for the previous category, also this one contains a great variety of activities such as painting, production of collectibles, lutherie, small presents, model building, rebinding, tattoo and so on. These activities are characterized by a certain degree of manual skills and creativity, and in this sense the a high value of joy of creativity may be seen quite logical.

The fourth category of the study, Beauty & Mode had its most important motivation in media influence (Odds ratio = 2,361) and again save money (2,087). Media influence can be seen as an extension of the way in which media influences modes and beauty styles in that people start looking for tutorials or instructions on the internet in order to implement such trends by creating hairstyles, nail arts or make-ups by their own. However, this decision to undertake such activities has also an economical component, as the importance of the motivation save money suggests. In fact it should be the demographic profile of respondents, which is of young girls, in most part students; due to shorter money availability we can imagine that these girls prefer to use a tutorials on the internet and take care about their beauty in a Do-It-Yourself way. As said for other categories, further research on this specific segment (and sub-segments) is suggested. In particular, along with joy of creativity and media influence, it would be interesting to understand the role of personalization,

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which has not been included in the regression, but that resulted one of the most important motivations in the descriptive statistics.

The fifth category, Home-related activities, had four relevant motivations in joy of creativity (Odds ratio = 2,364), save money (2,084), ethical & political (2,141) and no trust for alternatives (2,029). We should think to this category as very similar to the ones of some studies seen in the chapter about Home productions, where we talked about typical activities related to the home sphere such as repairement, maintenance on the one side, and housewifes activities such as laundry, cleaning and so on. In particular, if we look at the study of Williams 108 on the subject, we can observe very similar motives, with the author distinguishing between willing DIY (in this case, joy of creativity) and unwilling DIY (save money and no trust to alternatives). What is new in our study is the emergence of this political & ethical reason, which was not present in the research that we have just cited. Should we consider activities such as baking, gardening, window repairement as influenced by some sort of political & ethical reasons? The answer is yes, and we might find the root of this phenomenon on the discourse made about DIY as political (see par. 1.3), where some self-production activities symbolize some sort of action against the idea of consumerist society. Two evidences of this will be now presented. The first comes from one of the interviewees, Marco, which declared that some of his DIY projects such as gardening and yogurt were meaning to him a sort of demonstration that he could produce those goods himself without been forced to buy them from market, thus making him not-aligned with the system. As a macro trend, movements of De-growth and related have self-production (autoproduzione in Italian) as one of their pillars, and indeed lots of initiatives in this sense can be observed, especially in Italy (see discussion of par. 3.3). This assumption of self-production as anti-consumerist action gains more relevance if we consider some of the suggestion made by respondents on the text box that was available in the survey at the end of the page about motivations; in sentences like fight to GDP and approaching the De-growth philosophy can be clearly
108

Williams 2011

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perceived the link between self-production and de-growth philosophy. This type of Ethical Prosumer certainly calls for further research, in particular in light to its growing relevance in some European countries.

For the category Electronic & mechanical works we observe a very strong relation with the motivation save money (Odds ratio = 3,265). The prevalence of this motivation may be due to two aspects: 1) profile of the respondent, which is generally young, and so with lower budget; 2) type of activities, which are much more related to the resolution of a problem (generally a broken device or the installation of some electronic components) rather than leisure or hobby.

Table 13 Motivations that resulted relevant for each category of activity

Category (1) Kitchen (2) Software (3) Art & Craft (4) Beauty (5) Home-related activities Motivations - Joy of Creativity - Save money (for Turks) - Save money - Joy of creativity - Media influence - Save money - Joy of creativity - Save money - Dont trust alternatives - Political & Ethical reasons - Save money - Joy of creativity

(6) Electronic & Mechanical works (7) Hobby & Freetime

As for Hobby, joy of creativity (Odds ratio = 2,410) emerged as the only significant motivation, and this is easily explainable by the leisure nature of this type of activities. As for the last segment - Others - no significant motivation emerged. This can be explained by the high heterogeneity of the category.

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To conclude this paragraph, it should be noted that, while overall the profiles of the Craft consumer and the self-esteem resulted the ones with higher popularity, each category had some dominant motivations, with a recurrent presence of two main profiles as the Craft consumer and the Hero. This fact attest the activityspecific nature of motivations, which need to be further investigated with more category-focused research.

4.3.

Behaviours of the How-to contents Prosumer on the web (Q3)

The term Behaviours on the web is related here to some measures which

describes the behaviours of HTCs users, such as intensity of use, platforms utilized, format of the content and multitasking. By exploring these parameters, we will be able to have a better idea of the behaviours of the HTCs users in relation to the internet context, represented by the green set in the model (par.2.5).

4.3.1. Intensity of use To investigate the intensity with which HTCs are being used, a multiplechoice question has been proposed. The results can be seen in the following graphic.

Figure 18 Intensity of use of the HTCs, total sample

50,0% 45,0% % on total respondents 40,0% 35,0% 30,0% 25,0% 20,0% 15,0% 10,0% 5,0% 0,0%

44,2% 31,7% 19,7%

4,4%
One or few times a day One or few times a week One or few times a month Less than once a month

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The most numerous groups resulted one or few times a month (44,2%) and one or few times a week (31,8%), suggesting that HTC remain a sort of tool which is used occasionally. To investigate about possible influences of demographic factors to this variable, contingency tables with relative Chi-squared test have been made. As for Age, Occupation and Sex no relevant dependence emerged. As for the variable Nationality (again, made without considering portion of population of over-35), a certain dependence has been detected (Chi-squared = 17,332; df = 6; Pvalue = 0,008); this is due to a higher intensity of use of HTCs among Turks of the sample, which registered higher frequencies both for about once a day (5,7% vs 3,7%) and one or few times a week (38,3% vs 28,8%). This is an interesting data, in particular if compared with the data of HTC usage, where Italians had higher values. Overall it can be conclude that, even if the instrument of HTC is (slightly) more adopted by young Italians, the Turks use it with a higher frequency.

4.3.2. Platforms As for platforms, the objective was to understand the channel used by respondents to access HTCs. After the open interviews and some researches on the internet, we discovered some dominant types of channel; in the survey we asked respondents to indicate at least one (maximum three) of the channel used by them by choosing from a set of seven options. We added the options dont remember and other, with the second tied with a open space available to respondent to indicate the specific address or the type of platform.

Figure 19 Channels used to get access to HTCs, total sample

Other Don't remember Company HTC-specialized Blog Video-hosting Forum 0 100 200 300 400 Number of respondents

22 7 71 544 405 641 446

500 600 700

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Video-hosting platforms resulted the most popular channels to access HTCs, as they have been indicated by three out of four respondents. This data is in line with our expectations (see discussion on par. 3.3.2.), where the great popularity of content-websites like Youtube.com. The second most popular platform (used by 62% of respondents) is the HTC-specialized website, a group which comprehends a vast quantity of websites which are focused on HTCs. This data is confirming the important successes that more and more internet-businesses that are betting on HTCs are having on the net. Here in fact we talk about business because the peculiarity of this type of channel in relation with others is that it are usually organized like a company, and so driven by profit rather than what we have called cultures of knowledge (see par. 2.3), where the system is instead based on free collaboration between users. With similar frequencies, Blogs (46%) and Forums (51%) resulted of important relevance. Among them, we have that male are more likely to use the second form, while female prefer to use Blogs. As for companys websites, as predicted the frequencies are very low, like that for Dont remember and Others. Respondents of this last choice were asked to type the name of the platform or its typology. Even if the number of them was very low (22), it is interesting to note that nearly half of respondents indicated Google, like one who admitted specifically I type on Google, and then doesnt matter what will come out. These answers make us think that, at least in some cases, the act of sourcing HTCs takes place through search engines without accessing directly to a particular channel, confirming the observations of one of the researches discussed 109.

4.3.3. Format The format of the HTCs is a crucial aspect of the phenomenon. As seen, two main formats has been detected: video and text, with text comprehending articles, posts and other input which include also images. Respondents were asked about how often the HTCs which they use are into one format or the other, and the
109

Kuznetsov and Paulos [2011]

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question was articulated on a 5-point Likert scale. Text resulted preferred to video, with higher frequencies at often and very often; however, the difference between the two format is not very big. We then compared this variable with Platforms in order to catch some kind of relations. As expected, 90% of the respondents who declared higher utilization of video selected Video-hosting websites (i.e. YouTube) as one of the top three channels utilized.

Figure 20 Behaviour toward format of the HTC used, total HTC users
40,0% 35,0% 30,0% 25,0% 20,0% 15,0% 10,0% 5,0% 0,0% Never Seldom Sometimes Often Very Often

35,4% 30,7% 28,6% 29,3%

Video Text

% on total HTC users

24,9% 16,3% 9,9% 4,4% 1,3% 19,4%

This data suggests that even if a great part of the HTC videos are sourced by YouTube or similar, this is still not the whole story. In fact, by looking at other types of channels, we discover that both Blogs and How-to-specialized websites are starting to replace (or, alternatively, proposing in parallel) text with video. An example is, again, Giallozafferano.it, the most popular HTC-specialized website of Kitchen in Italy, which offer recipes in both of the two formats. As for those respondent who admitted to use more frequently the format Text than Video, they identified HTC-specialized websites as the most representative channel with 68% (second and third are Forum, 55% and Blog, 52%). As for the comparison Italians vs Turks, the proportions resulted quite similar, and both of the sub-groups tend to utilize Text more than Video. The same can be said for the other demographic variables, which resulted notsignificant in the explanation of the Format.

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4.3.4. Multitasking Here it has been asked to respondents about how often they use more than one How-to content for one activity; the question was structured in a multiple choice with four points, each of which corresponding to a different level of intensity. By combining the variable with the demographic variables, a strong evidence of dependency with Nationality emerged (Chi-squared = 29,713; df = 6; P-value < 0,000). The motive of this fact can be understood by looking at the following graph, where frequencies of Turkey and Italy are presented. As it can be seen, Turks tend to multitask on the use of How-to contents more than Italians, with higher values both for to a considerably degree and almost always.

Figure 21 Frequency with which more than one HTC is being used for the
same activity, Turks vs Italians (under 35)
35,0%

31,9% 27,2% 20,8% 12,7%

31,0%

% on total Turks, Italians

30,0% 25,0% 20,0% 15,0% 10,0% 5,0% 0,0% Seldom

29,1% 27,1%

20,1%
Italy Turkey

Occasionaly

To a considerably Almost always degree

These results can be somehow be seen in line with the variable Intensity, so that Turks have the tendency both to use HTCs more frequently than Italians, and multitask more as well. Together, these facts may suggest a more expert use of the How-to contents by young Turks; this different behaviours call for further investigations and research.

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4.4.

Participation (Q4)
In this section respondents were asked to indicate how often they use some

particular participative tools in relation to How-to contents. This question was inspired in part by the paper ok Kuznetsov-Paulos 110 on internet DIY communities, as discussed in par. 3.5. Like in that work, the question is presented here in a 5point Likert, here with seven items, each of which represents a tools for participation that can be found in most of the channels through which HTCs are being accessed. In particular, these tools differ in what have been called degree of participation. With this term it is intended that to use them, different level of efforts in terms of time and involvement are necessary for the tool to work. For example, the tools like-dislike and rating are quite easy: you just need a click on a link; others, like post your own HTC video consist usually in a much longer process in which the user has to register and eventually edit and upload the video on the internet. Like in the research cited above, it can be observed that as the degree of participation of the tool increase, the amount of users decrease.

Figure 22 Use of participative tools, total sample

Cumulated percentage, on total HTC users 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Like Rating Commenting PM share pics share text HTC share video HTC
never seldom sometimes often very often

110

Kuznetsov & Paulos [2011]

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The items on the graphic are disposed in order of popularity, from the top to the bottom. We can note that the same order might be valid more or less - for what we called degree of participation, with low participative tools on the top and high at the bottom. As introduced in the previous chapter (see par. 3.5), participation is of particular importance for HTCs because lots of the HTCs present in the web are user-generated (UG), which means that have been made by non-professionals, and generally under no-profit conditions. The highest is the degree of participation of a user of How-to contents, the more the same can be tagged as a Prosumer, because it both consumes the content (by exploiting information) and produces feedback, rating, comments or in very few cases own How-to contents. In particular, we should look at the first ones as a types of Prosumption which increases the value of the content, while the second create a content which was not existing before. To sum it up, participation is for sure one of the key of success for modern platforms that share How-to contents. As for the sample of the survey, it can observed that respondents are generally not very participative, with values under 40% for the first three tools and high rates of never for the high participative ones on the bottom. As for the different grades of popularity in accordance with the degree of participation, this may be said in line with previous works, as a comparison with Figure 13 reveals. Unexpected are, instead, the very low values that the tools on the bottom received: less than 10% of respondents share own videos or text with a frequency of sometimes or more. This fact suggests that in the context of How-to contents, audience is still more passive than proactive in that a minority participate actively to the web community. However, it should be recalled that the survey had a very general character: by repeating it with a focus on certain web communities (like for the work of Kuznetsov-Paulos), most probably higher values of participation would have emerged. Interesting results emerges when comparing Turks and Italians, where the first resulted significantly more participative than the seconds, as it can be seen in Figure 23.

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Figure 23 Participative tools, % of sometimes or higher intensity, Turks vs

Italians (under 35)
share video HTC share text HTC share pics PM Commenting Rating Like
0,0% 10,0% 20,0% 30,0% 40,0%

3,0% 6,5%

11,4% 16,1% 20,3% 17,2% 11,1% 25,6% 38,6% 50,0% 58,2%

60,0% 70,0% Turkey Italy

22,0% 29,5%

47,3%
50,0% % on total sample, "sometimes"

The percentages are related to the sum of the percentages of the respondents that answered sometimes, often and very often. How can this greater participation of Turks over Italians be explained? If we consider this result in relation to the findings on Multitasking and Intensity, we have a confirm of the assumption made on par. 4.3.4, where we stated that Turks seem having a more expert adoption of the How-to contents and relative platforms.

Overall, the topic of the Participation remains of crucial importance for the success of a web community, and it will be more and more in the future, as the internet complete its migration from Web 1.0 to 2.0. Even if some business models like the cited Ehow.com - could gain important successes by creating in first person (or through free-lancers) the contents, participation of the community was still crucial. For this reason, participation in knowledge-communities will constitute one of the main topics for marketers and students of this field.

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4.5.

Summary of the results and discussion

The research gave us an interesting picture of the young Turkish and Italian

HTCs Prosumers, with insights on the nature of the activities for which they have being used, on some specific behaviours and participation. In this paragraph the most relevant facts will be summarized.

First of all, the most exciting evidence of this research is that a great majority (near 80%) of young Italians and Turks use How-to contents, which confirm the relevance of this global trend and the good performances of this type of contents on the net. The topics for which HTCs are being utilized are of great variety: Sport, Home bakery, software management, physics experiment, creations with ropes, medical issues and so on and so forth. Within this coloured picture, we can detect some global trends such as Kitchen and Software, which resulted among top three topics for respectively 71% and 50% of our respondents. Behind them, smaller and more polarized trends emerged, such as HTCs about Beauty and mode (for young women), Home-related activities (generally for over 35) and Electronic & Mechanical works (for under-35). While comparing out two sub-populations, we found out that Turks and Italians registered almost identical values for each category, suggesting that such trends may have a global character. In this sense, further research considering also other nationalities is suggested. In order to understand the nature of these kind of activities, besides topic, we asked about the contexts and the motivations related to them. As expected, for each activity there is more than one motivation, but some of them emerged as of greater importance, such as joy of creativity, problem-solving and selfesteem. The first of them is of particular interest in that it confirms the great importance of the Craft consumer profile among the universe of Prosumers; on the contrary, users seemed not very affected by economical reasons while choosing to undertake such activities, except for save money, which resulted of certain relevance for certain groups of activities. Overall, motivations and dynamics of the trends detected here are very activity-specific, as for each categories different motivations and demographic
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profiles seemed to emerge. However, these findings have a general character in that they look at the phenomenon of How-to contents Prosumption as a whole. For example, the category Beauty and mode, which could have been distinguished well from others, contains at least three sub-trends, dedicated to the creation of clothes and accessories, make-up and hairstyle. For these reasons, the suggestion for future researchers on this topic is to focus on a single category, and dig into it, considering the sub-trends inside it and eventually treat them separately.

The second part of the research was focused on the behaviours of users relative to the web. We found out that that HTC is a tool used with different intensity, usually between once a week or once a month. Among our subpopulations, relevant differences emerged: while Turks have lower percentage of Italians on the use of HTCs, the ones who use them tend both to register higher intensity and higher multitasking rates. Another topic related to the area of behaviours was the type of platform used, and here video-hosting platforms emerged as the most popular channel with three out of four people that indicated it as one of top platforms used. Second was Howto content specialized websites, an interesting data that confirms the great success of some of the websites cited on the second and third chapter. As for Blog and Forum, which registered as well important numbers, we observe a certain polarization in terms of gender, with male preferring Forum and female Blogs. Another topic was the format of the HTCs, and here text resulted still more popular than videos, but the second ones are following very close. The last topic of investigation was Participation, where we had interesting results as well. While, overall, we had a confirm of the results of precedent papers on the existence of an inverse relation between degree of participation and intensity of use, overall the parameter resulted quite higher for Turks in relation to Italian sub-group. Overall, Italians and Turks present partially different approaches to the phenomenon. First of all, while Italians use HTCs and prosume in great part in contexts related to leisure and hobbies, for Turks also more formal moments like school or professional sphere can be important. This fact is reflected on the
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different intensity of each motivations, with generally higher values in self-esteem and money-saving for Turks and greater relevance to joy of creativity for Italians. These difference are then reflected also on the internet context, where young Turks seem to have higher level of expertise on the tool, with higher values for the variables intensity, multitasking and participation.

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Conclusions
This research thesis explored the emergent trend of Prosumption through the use of How-to contents (HTCs) on the internet. The work, structured on four chapters, had the objective to give a picture of this complex phenomenon in general terms; in this sense it may have merit of giving a general view of the subject and identification of the main trends (and some niches) inside it, but at the same moment the inevitable disadvantage of not being able to describe them extensively one by one. In the first chapter many examples about how people prosume on many different ways and different spheres of life have been given. This variegate picture is in contrast with some classical views, for which society can be categorized into production or consumption, and where people need to produce in order to save money and spend it to buy goods and services from specialized people. Here a well-different reality is presented, where people are not just simple producers and consumers, but rather both of them at the same moment. This is particularly true for the internet era, where people share, shuffle, modify and create contents which are both produced and consumed by individuals. In this sense, it is of big relevance the emergent trend of the How-to contents, a form of knowledge-sharing through which people can learn how to do things, thus empowering them to become producers of what they consume in many different ways. As discussed in the second chapter, How-to contents are characterized of being concise, procedural and result-oriented; characteristics that let them well intercept the needs of aspirant prosumers who look on the internet about how things can be done. This flux of knowledge can then be seen as a type of informal knowledge, which is transmitted from user to user outside institutions or without profit logics. Going back to the very system of the Prosumption through the use of HTCs, after having explored some recent researches on the topic, findings and concepts presented has been summarized by setting down a general scheme that describes the way through which HTCs are utilized for Prosumption activities.
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The HTCs Prosumer is a quite complex entity in that it is a consumer of How-to contents on the internet, but at the same moment, while using participation tools or by creating own contents, it becomes a producer of HTCs itself. In the meanwhile this figure exploits the knowledge of the net of the contents in order to produce something concrete: its a dish, a maintenance work at home or an activity related to software. It is thus producing something its own, and most probably, this is something that it will be for his own consumption as well. On the basis of this scheme and the theoretical considerations of the first two chapters, an empirical research on the topic has been undertaken. The third chapter is dedicated to the description of the design of this research, which is focused on behaviours, activities, contexts, motivations and demographic profile. The research consisted of two parts. The first was a pool of 9 face-to-face open interviews in which some general topics have been discussed in order to have a concrete insight to the things we were discussing. At the same moment, these interviews helped in the design of the second part of the research, which was instead of quantitative nature. In the fourth chapter, results of the quantitative research have been discussed. The research, which was conducted through an internet survey, was quite successful in that it could reach target objectives of number and composition of the population, with a total of 1101 complete questionnaires, and two important subgroups as young Italians and young Turks. The emergent picture is that of a great variety of activities, with the dominance of some global trends such as the HTCs about Kitchen and Software. The Prosumption activities for which HTCs are being used, are usually related to hobbies and freetime, but also problem-solving resulted of a certain importance. As for young Turks, there are signs that indicate the use of HTCs in more institutional contexts such as school or professional spheres. From the indication of the respondents, three main motivations to undertake prosumption activities emerged: joy of creativity, problem-solving and self-esteem. The first is of particular interest in that it is a confirmation of the so-called Craft consumer, a new concept of Prosumer which is not moved by classical factors such as economical,
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media or manipulation of social symbols, but that is undertaking an activity for the simple joy of actually doing it. Motivations, like demographic profile, resulted indeed very activity-specific, and this could help in the recognition and description of some of the main trends in the universe of the How-to contents.

As for the research area dedicated to internet, HTCs resulted a tool which is used with a certain grade of continuity, generally weekly or monthly. Respondents source this type of content generally on video-hosting websites (i.e. Youtube.com) or HTCs websites (i.e. Giallozafferano.it, Uzmantv.com), but also Blogs and Forums resulted very popular, with female more likely to use the first and males the second. Turks and Italians revealed some interesting differences on their general behaviours about HTCs; in particular, while Italians are more likely to use the tool, the Turks that use them present higher intensities and are more likely to use more than one content for the same activity. This fact is in accordance with the results of Participation, where Turks resulted significantly more participative than Italians, and thus more prosumers also on the internet side.

Overall, the picture of Prosumption through HTCs that emerges from this work is of a big trend which certainly influences consumer behaviours and traces possible future scenarios where people, through internet and its liquid and participate knowledge, will be more and more able to provide by themselves products and services related to everydays life. While some global trends have been discussed here, further research of the topic is suggested, with particular attention to the combination of HTCs with other media channels and to the subtrends behind global trends.

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List of Abbreviations
DIY Do-It-Yourself GDP Gross Domestic Product HCI Human-Computer Interaction HTC How-to Contents MOCC Massive Open Collaborative Courses P2P Peer-to-Peer SDL Self-Directed Learning UG User-generated UGC User-generated Content UG-HTC User-generated How-to content

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List of Tables
Table 1 Main findings on the use of How-to contents................................................... 45 Table 2 Pool of interviewees.......................................................................................... 54 Table 3 What Italian and Turkish HTCs prosumer look for?....................................... 56 Table 4 Motivations to prosume and sources................................................................. 63 Table 5 Recap of the motivation to prosume and relative questions for the questionnaire..................................................................................................................... 64 Table 6 Areas of research and measures used................................................................ 72 Table 7 Responses to the survey, recap..........................................................................73 Table 8 Increase of the number of invites to the survey-event on Facebook between start and after 3 weeks....................................................................................................... 74 Table 9 Classification of activities for which HTCs have been used, total respondents........................................................................................................................ 80 Table 10 Context of use of HTCs, total respondents..................................................... 84 Table 11 Motivations that influenced the decision to undertake the activity (for which HTC has been used), % HTC users........................................................................ 86 Table 12 Multinomial regression Last Activity and Motivations variables, Likelihood Ratio test, total HTC users.............................................................................. 87 Table 13 Motivations that resulted relevant for each category of activity..................... 91

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List of Figures
Figure 1 Vintage Housewives..................................................................................... 19 Figure 2 Do-It-Yourself magazine............................................................................... 20 Figure 3 Mrs. Rossini and the self-production of detergents (snapshot)....................... 23 Figure 4 How-to Guide zine....................................................................................... 24 Figure 5 The Practical Mans Book of Things to Make and Do.................................... 34 Figure 6 Barry Bucknell at Barry Bucknells DIY TV Program (snapshot).............. 35 Figure 7 User-generated HTC video tutorial on YouTube............................................ 36 Figure 8 HTC with picture and text............................................................................... 37 Figure 9 UG-HTC made using software Camtasia........................................................ 37 Figure 10 HTC on Forums............................................................................................. 37 Figure 11 Motivations for Prosumption projects........................................................... 44 Figure 12 Prosumption through the use of How-to contents, the model........................46 Figure 13 Relation between framework and research structure..................................... 52 Figure 14 Use of participatory tools by members of some DIY communities.............. 70 Figure 15 Distribution of Age, complete surveys.......................................................... 75 Figure 16 Occupation, complete surveys....................................................................... 76 Figure 17 Sectors of activities for which HTCs are being used, total responses........... 78 Figure 18 Intensity of the use of HTCs, total sample.....................................................92 Figure 19 Channels used to get access to HTCs, total sample....................................... 93 Figure 20 Behaviour toward format of the HTC used, total HTC users........................ 95 Figure 21 Frequency with which more than one HTC is being used for the same activity, Turks vs Italians (under 35)................................................................................ 96 Figure 22 Use of participative tools, total sample......................................................... 97 Figure 23 Participative tools, % of sometimes or higher intensity, Turks vs Italians (under 35).......................................................................................................................... 99

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Acknowledgements
In this nearly one-year project, many different people have helped me in the creation of this thesis, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all, also the ones who will not been explicitely nominated here. The first thanks goes to my family, and in particular to my parents Antonia and Eraclio, who supported me both economically and morally through all of the works phases. Along with them, I want to thank Yamur Eser, continuous source of inspiration and support. I wish to thank my supervisor Prof. Birgit Hagen for her crucial collaboration; my friends Emanuele Fiocco, Mehrdad Shalilian, Alessandro Greppi, Mr. Rossin, Darko Ditrih, Ali zgr Kara, Tommy Logan and Taylor Canoles for their precious suggestions and direct support with different researchs issues. A special thanks goes to the boys and girls of Via Volta, a family that both inspired and supported me througout my days in Pavia. To conclude, the success of surveys campaign would not have been possible without the big help that many friends and unknown people gave me by sharing the link of the survey through internet and social networks. To this regard, a speial thanks goes to the web communities of MDF and Eki Szlk.

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