the importance of user - producer dialogue in shaping new media technology

Experiments along the bazaar-route: the importance of user-producer dialogue in shaping new media technology Per Hetland Per Hetland Per Hetland Per Hetland The Internet for all? The Internet for all? The Internet for all? The Internet for all? Technological mediation involves representation and inscription in the world. 1 One may therefore claim that engineers become sociologists through their development of hypotheses about what other people want and need. As a result, a large part of the work of innovators becomes the writing of user-values into the technical content of new objects and then the enrolling of other actors in support of these inscriptions (Cal-lon 1987). These inscriptions, however, do not only apply to the artefacts as such but also to the situations in which they are used. In this way mediation translates and converts. I have earlier argued that science and technology mediation takes place in accordance with three different communication routes: (1) the direct route, (2) the middleman route and (3) the bazaar-route (Hetland 2002). The direct route is associated with a clear definition of who is the sender and who is the public. It is the expert who popularises or problematises the scientific and technological knowledge for the general public. The middleman-route is associated with a notion that the expert does not understand the media's possibilities and limitations, or does not have time, or does not see the news value of the research material. Professional communicators therefore become necessary. The bazaar-route is an expression for a complex communication situation. What is relevant knowledge and how this is understood by different actors is the object of a dialogue.