Mark Deuze
International Journal of Cultural Studies 2007 10: 243
DOI: 10.1177/1367877907076793
Abstract .
This article maps the emerging practices in media professions like journalism, advertising, marketing communications and public relations in adapting to a new global environment, characterized by an increasingly participatory media culture. Among creatives and brand managers in ad agencies ‘interactive advertising’ is at the center of the contemporary buzz.
Marketers in the cultural industries brainstorm about the potential of upstream marketing, while in public relations the opportunities of two-way symmetrical communication are explored. Editors of news publications increasingly jump on the ‘citizen journalism’ bandwagon. All these trends are part of the same phenomenon: a convergence of the cultures of media production and consumption. In this essay, these developments are discussed in terms of their potential impact on consensual assumptions about the nature of media work, seen through the lens of the combination of individual creativity and mass production, also known as creative industries. .
Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to attempt to answer the question why this convergence is considered so crucially important at this particular point in time, and how the case studies and model presented in this article may contribute to a research agenda on new media work occurring within the context of creative industries.
Even to consider building a new program in media production research based on the interchangeability of mediamaking and using requires partly letting go of some well-established, deep-rooted and arguably valid assumptions about the impact that a mass media-centric culture has had on us.
To some extent a political economy of media should still emphasize the powerful hold that multinational corporations have over multiple public spheres, shaping popular reality with a deliberate focus to sell audiences as target demographics to advertisers.
On the other hand, this one-dimensional view of media power has changed, as the agricultural metaphor of production and consumption is increasingly becoming an untenable assumption on which to base our understandings of media content, effects and particularly media work.
Beyond corporate co-optation and audience resistance lies a new model for understanding the changing nature of media in everyday life.
Further research could focus on how professionals and amateurs collaborate, how their roles converge, and what the results of these practices are in the emerging new media ecology, on the level of economy (new and improved returns on investment), technology (development of new hardware and software enabling open media), politics and legislation (creative commons copyright laws, audience encoding rights and open source) and global culture.
Works cited in this article have charted the nature of this new media work as unpredictable, uncertain and constantly changing, which trend can be signified by – paraphrasing Zygmunt Bauman (2000) – a ‘liquid’ media work.
The liquidity of contemporary media work is exemplified by the patchwork career (Lutz, 2000) of a portfolio worklife (Handy, 1998 [1989]) or rather work-style (Deuze, 2007), signaling a continuous blurring between the boundaries of work, life and play, as well as between production and consumption.
The case studies as mapped on to the model used in this article suggest that media work is something that is increasingly shared with those who one used to work for: audiences.
The culture of industry therefore can be seen as spilling over on to the creative process of consumption. A product reviewer on Amazon, a modder on csnation.net or a blogger on Bluffton Today now also wields the power of the industry’s privileged position of authorship.
Further research should shed light on how these ‘liquid’ media professionals give meaning to working in an industry that expects them to treat their publics as consumers as well as co-creators of content, an industry that is struggling to define its ambiguous role as partner as well as profiteer in a participatory media culture, and as the traditional authoritative voice in public discourses (thus excluding any meaningful role for users of its services other than as audiences). I would like to argue that this kind of research agenda serves two specific purposes.
- First, it makes us aware what it means exactly when we say that the ‘brave new world’ of work (Beck, 2000) is so much different or similar to the past, and thus it will help us to articulate much more precisely how ‘the’ media are what they are – integrating journalism, advertising, marketing, public relations and all other media professions into a critical analysis of media work.
- Second, it will assist us in preparing students in media and (tele-) communications departments all over the world to enter a world where what they have learned enables them to become ‘prosumers’ (Toffler, 1980). In other words, we have to train people to stay inside The Truman Show. And make the best of it.
NOTES ed GGA
Jenkins typifies the emerging media ecology in terms of a convergence culture, defining the trend as:
[…] both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottomup consumer-driven process.
- Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce viewer commitments.
- Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other users. (2004: 37)
Participatory media production and individualized media consumption are two different yet co-constituent trends typifying an emerging media ecology – an environment where
- consuming media increasingly includes some kind of producing media, and
- where our media behavior always seems to involve some level of participation, co-creation and collaboration, depending on the degree of openness or closedness of the media involved.
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