Consumers as Producers: Information Decomposition Exploiting the Prosumerist culture

Introduction

Emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have demonstrated manifold ways to revolutionalize the way information is fabricated in this digital era in terms of its production, dispensation in addition to its manipulation, thus, unparalleling the human brain to accommodate the same. This results in a rapid amplification of the information processing skill of an individual to compete with his/her cognitive chattels inquiring the appropriate filtering of the plentiful information to accelerate access to germane content. These technologies have fashioned an information catastrophe that necessitate a measure of control to govern the ecology of information. As Klapp (1986) has fittingly avowed that the quality of information is judged not by its precision and clarity alone, but how it acts upon receivers. Contrarily, these elements may not turn out to be a trouble-free task in the digisphere as communication becomes ineffective when the content generates an absolute loss of its meaning. In the perspective of the escalating accretion of information in the digital epoch, the momentous rationale behind this meaning lag can be associated with the ‘facts’ that mount up and surpass its subsistence (Klapp, 1982).

‘Decomposition’ has become branded as an imperative process in the digital ecosystem involving a succession of diverse knowledge workers; one set taking over after the last one has consumed what he/she can, and in doing so, extending the control of information seeking behaviour. Rapid explosion of happenings around the world unparallel one’s cognitive ability to process and coalesce rightful information. Klapp (1986) expected that before settling large questions, we go on to new ones, dissatisfied with what we know, no wiser than before. In the meanwhile, information floods on, demanding that something be done (as cited in Walter, 1989, p.6).

Information becomes decomposed when it becomes irrelevant for the consumer. Burgeoning social media and user generated content authorize anyone and everyone to be a fabricator of its content without effectual governance. This decay in the constructive information crops up when multifarious sources are given autonomy to amend a specific section of sector-specific information resulting in the loss of inimitable content personalized for the user needs.

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Thus, the information society is on the threshold of becoming an insignificant society if this situation persists. In consequence, decomposition takes the form of a cognitive process in which an individual’s information processing skills corrodes or disintegrates when two or more individuals under similar state of affairs happen to be the architects of the same content as they encounter the information offered to them, thus giving rise to a complex media environment where the meaningful content relapses.