Long tail TV revisited: from ordinary camera phone use to pro-am video production

Pro-Am live video producers broadcast events on a regular basis. They are here selected for an ethnographic study since their continuous content generation can teach us something of what it takes for amateurs, who currently struggle with mastering the video medium, to become proficient producers. We learn from media theory that Pro-Ams are distinguished from professionals in terms of inherent skills and identities, and have therefore focused on these characteristics. We add to this research by showing on-going challenges that the former face in their production, i.e. how their learning practices, such as learning through instructions, are situated and related to particular settings. Learning and development of skills were done as organizations, rather than as individuals. Furthermore, the recurrent nature of both events and broadcasts appears to be an important condition for establishing the terms needed to carry out a production, and to learn the skills of a producer. This understanding may explain in part why accounts in previous research, of single users struggling with the affordances of live video, point to such difficulties in mastering the medium. The findings guide design to better support activities contiguous with the set-up of the production, rather than the broadcast per se.