China's digital publishing industry is currently large in both output value and the number of users but it has difficulty in transforming the ever-growing reading data into commercial profits, which curbs its development in depth and quality. Therefore, a new developmental pattern of digital publishing is required to address this issue and keep its growth. The extensive use of mobile terminals and social applications has created a community network for users to find, support, share and discuss digital content products in groups. The effect of the community network amplifies individual behaviors to be a community will which makes the consumption of users possible. Hence publishers need to construct a new publishing pattern based on the community network as well as the effect of community networks. Media theorist Paul Levinson proposed the concept of a ″new new media″ to describe this media-social environment and thought that free expressing was the fundamental attribute of the ″new new media″, which indicates that the mobile Internet technology can strengthen real interpersonal relationships. Henry Jenkins, a fan culture scholar, deemed ″participatory culture″ an important part of social culture, which means consumers show strong and independent desires to participate in the production, consumption and meaning construction of content products. Although the former pays more attention to the comfort of physiology demands while the latter emphasizes the fulfilling of psychological needs, these two theories have a similar human-oriented intrinsic logic, which is also consistent with the user centralism of digital publishing. Therefore, they point to a participatory publishing mode to make profits by making full use of reading data. Participatory publishing claims that the decision, creation and sharing behaviors of users caused by the effect of community network should be incorporated into each link of publishing. The products of participatory publishing reveal personal ingenuity and integral appreciation of community network correspondingly. Participatory publishing consists of collective decision-making, users generating and media convergence distribution. Collective decision-making appears when users of community networks play as gatekeepers of publishing via spreading, evaluation and payment functions in the ″new new media″, so that users can choose which works are first-class or can to be printed. Thus, the duties of traditional editors gradually shift to providing services, building platforms and playing roles as ″lighthouses″. Crowdfunding publishing, as a typical form of collective decision-making, can gather the power of fans quickly and assess the market risk of selected topics. Users generating is that users' personal experience and non-professional works released on ″new new media″ are adopted as publishing resources. The accumulation of users' participation behaviors enables users generating to be a permanent mechanism from individual practices. Fictional writing and knowledge sharing are two major forms of user creation. Fiction writing, similar to authors' writing, owns large potential commercial value for Intellectual Property design. Knowledge sharing shows an entirely different way of obtaining and using knowledge to solve problems. Media convergence distribution, as one of the key promotion means currently, is a marketing strategy emphasizing the convergence between new media and old media as well as online and offline. Media convergence distribution is usually achieved through man-man sharing and brand-stuck consumption based on the credit of community network. There are three common convergent methods for publishers. Traditional publishing houses recommend new books on platforms of ″new new media″, traditional newspapers and periodicals take advantage of community network to shape purchase channels, and we media sell physical products, especially books with the help of the effect of community network from fandom. In conclusion, messages, knowledge and talents presumably flow from high to low, minority to majority when participatory publishing reflects the best capacity and wisdom of community members, considering that community network is an open, flowing and interactive system. To some extent, it shows a trend of democracy, equality and freedom in the cyber-world. Crowdfunding decision-making, co-writing and collective wisdom, as factors of participatory publishing, may improve the quality of the whole community.
引用本文:
陈洁 吴申伦. 发挥社群网络效应 构建新型参与式出版[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2018, 4(4): 173-184.
Chen Jie Wu Shenlun. Exerting the Effect of Community Network in Constructing New Participatory Publishing. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2018, 4(4): 173-184.