Exploring Italian Micro Web TVs: how high-Tech bricoleur redefine audiences?

The media landscape is undergoing radical changes, especially related to the process of digitalization and information circulation through the internet, which increases the number of web channels and the opportunity to access them using multiple devices, and decreases the expertise needed to produce them. In this new digital, multi-channel environment, radical innovation, diversification and media hybridization are revolutionizing television. For over fifty years the way that television is watched and produced has not changed significantly. Today the roles of producers and audiences have blurred because users are able to upload their contents independent of traditional intermediaries, and to create their own Web TV platforms in an inexpensive way. Claude Lévi Strauss in 1962 developed the concept of the bricoleur opposed to the concept of ingénieur. According to the author, the bricoleur is able to use any available tools stocked from previous experience in order to complete a project, even if these tools were not intended for the specific goal. Drusian and Riva (2010) have applied this concept to the digital context describing the features of a new communication actor: the bricoleur high-tech. In this paper, drawing on the concept of the high-tech bricoleur, we will investigate two different Italian Web Television projects, CrossingTv, a micro WebTV created in Bologna in 2006, and FEMI, the Italian federation of Micro web TVs created in 2008. These initiatives both require the bricoleur, but they differ with regard to aim and results. Through the exploration of these two case studies, this paper shows in which ways these Web TV experiences differ from traditional television, specifically, how these new TV platforms clouds the distinction between media producers and media consumers. Our findings highlight a paradigm shift in how television is produced: content is generated collaboratively through recursive feedback between producers and audiences. We conclude by outlining some future directions for the study of this medium