Tracking Prosumption Work on eBay

Abstract

Ritzer suggests that we are witnessing the emergence of a prosumer society where early forms of prosumption (the gas station, the automatic teller machine, McDonalds, etc.) are now being universalized across industries, product and service categories, and geographies. This essay presents the results of a qualitative study of the lived experience of “doing prosumption,” in particular, how prosumption work in user-generated media environments is experienced by prosumers over time. For the purpose of this investigation, the authors conceptualize eBay as a space for the social production and consumption of desire, where, akin to the concept of prosumption, the consumer of these experiences is also, at least in part, a producer of the same experiences. The authors argue that the experience of prosumption changes over time even as the frequency of using eBay as a marketplace may not. The data suggest a trajectory from “enchanted prosumption” to “disenchanted prosumption” as, over time, the collective social production and consumption of desires, daydreams, and fantasies give way to a sense of eBay as a place for routine, efficient, and habitual buying and selling activities. In the final analysis, the authors argue that the disenchantment of and through eBay is a function of the routinization of the self and the rationalization of eBay as technological structure. Hence, the authors extend recent theorizations of the de-McDonaldizating effects of user-generated Web 2.0 spaces by suggesting that the dimensions of McDonaldization built into the technological structure of such spaces can encourage a slow re-McDonaldization of the user experience, albeit not universally. In sum, a longitudinal view of prosumption in user-generated online spaces cautions those studying new media spaces, not to underestimate the power of the McDonaldization processes.