Producer & Consumer

The ability of the ordinary person to generate their own content alters the producer-consumer relationship. The producer-consumer relationship can be described as the linear flow of information as mentioned in the previous paragraph. However the alteration in this relationship is made obvious when the consumer can now assume the role of the producer. In terms of food blogs, the writers of such food blogs are ‘ordinary’ people who write about their experiences with food-related issues and yet when other people begin reading and consuming the words and ideas of these bloggers, these writers have now assumed the role of the producer. Looking at 101cookbooks.com, the author, Heidi Swanson clearly assumes the role of the producer when she offers her advice on how to go about preparing certain dishes. She provides detailed instructions and shares her opinions of recipes or food dishes. Drawing an example this entry, entitled “A Frozen Yoghurt Recipe to Rival Pinkberry’s Recipe”, she begins by offering her opinion that the recipe she has tried out was better than one that the LA Times had previously reported on. This is an example of her producing information after she had consumed the recipe from a cookbook and the review in the LA Times. As Schultz (2005) says, in terms of blogging, the producer is a power user, whereby she "serves as a redirector, a filter, amplifier, repeater, reporter and commentor of actualities", which is a reflection of what Swanson and the other bloggers are doing. The flow of information is no longer linear anymore because she now has the platform to voice her opinions about the information that she has consumed which then generates another stream of information.