Media Work E-Book

Mark Deuze

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: DMS - Digital Media and Society
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 452

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The media are home to an eclectic bunch of people. This book is about who they are, what they do, and what their work means to them. Based on interviews with media professionals in the United States, New Zealand, South Africa, and The Netherlands, and drawing from both scholarly and professional literatures in a wide variety of disciplines, it offers an account of what it is like to work in the media today.

Media professionals face tough choices. Boundaries are drawn and erased: between commerce and creativity, between individualism and teamwork, between security and independence. Digital media supercharge these dilemmas, as industries merge and media converge, as audiences become co-creators of content online.

The media industries are the pioneers of the digital age. This book is a critical primer on how media workers manage to survive, and is essential reading for anyone considering a career in the media, or who wishes to understand how the media are made.

Leseprobe

Media Work

Digital Media and Society Series

New technologies are fundamentally altering the ways in which we communicate. This series from Polity aims to provide a set of books that make available for a broad readership cutting edge research and thinking on digital media and their social contexts. Taken as a whole, the series will examine questions about the impact of network technology and digital media on society in all its facets, including economics, culture and politics.

Mark Deuze: Media Work in a Digital Age

Tim Jordan: Hacking

Media Work

MARK DEUZE

polity

Copyright © Mark Deuze 2007

The right of Mark Deuze to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2007 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2IUR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5811-7

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10.25 on 13 pt FF Scala

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

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The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Contents

Preface

1   Liquid Life, Work, and Media

2   Creative Industries, Convergence Culture, and Media Work

3   Media Professions in a Digital Age

4   Advertising, Public Relations, and Marketing Communications

5   Journalism

6   Film and Television Production

7   Game Design and Development

8   Conclusion: Liquid Media Work

Notes

References

Index

Preface

Manpower is a temporary employment agency founded in the United States in 1948, and currently operates over 4,400 offices in seventy-two countries and territories. The company offers permanent, temporary, and contract recruitment, employee assessment and selection, as well as training, outplacement, outsourcing, and consulting services to hundreds of thousands of enterprises.1Manpower’s corporate slogan – “creating opportunities for all people to participate in the workforce” – sounds like an empowering rallying cry for all who want to be employed, who want to be able to participate in the global economy. At the same time, the enormous success of agencies such as Manpower signal a world of work that provides anything but security, stability, or guarantees for participation. This world of work thrives on contingency: whatever happens today has few or no predictable consequences for what will most likely happen tomorrow. One’s future – as a contracted employee and thus as a successful consumer – is structurally dependent on something not yet certain. Work is conditional, but the conditions for work are beyond your control. You can excel in what you do today, but if investors pull out tomorrow – you are without a job. You can have a brilliant moment during a meeting on Friday, but if on Saturday the stock of your company collapses, you will find yourself checking Monster.com – a jobhunting site with affiliates in twenty-one countries – on Monday.

What people are doing online is a good indicator of how everyday life for a working professional (or those seeking to become one) in today’s new capitalist economy has changed. It is not just work that has become contingent – contingency stretches across all walks of life and impacts all social institutions. A growing number of singles – quickly becoming the dominant species in contemporary society – seek, and sometimes find, love online. A popular online matchmaking service, Match.com, launched in 1995, currently has more than fifteen million members in more than 240 territories on six continents, and operates more than thirty online dating sites in seventeen local languages.2 Finding love online gets mediated by simple mathematical formulas linking one’s self-reported and constantly tweaked or updated characteristics and preferences to those of millions of others, thereby making the selection process of a mate contingent as well. Other popular sites online combine matchmaking, employment-seeking and other social networking-based services, effectively enacting the convergence of all walks of life. An illustrative example of such hybrid and interconnected online services is MySpace.com, a social networking website offering its approximately seventy million registered users blogs, profiles, groups, photos, music, videos, and an internal e-mail system. MySpace was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorporation in July 2005. By March 2006 the social network was growing by an average of 250,000 new members daily.3

Manpower, Monster, Match, and MySpace are not examples of a life increasingly lived online – but rather must be seen as case studies of how contemporary life gets expressed through (new) media. Such a life is deeply connected to other people’s lives all over the world, yet socially isolated at the same time as life’s context has become contingent. Social bonds get expressed through all kinds of networked media at home, at work, and at play. The personal computer, the cell phone and the (portable) game console signify a world saturated by media where age-old ideas of what it means to be part of a community, to have a job or to pursue happiness have become unstable and uncertain. Media are not just pervasive and ubiquitous – we also develop intense relationships with our media. Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass (1996) have shown how people treat and respond to media artifacts (computers, televisions, cell phones, and so on) in just the same way as they treat and respond to other people in everyday social interaction. The rules which people apply to everyday social interaction apply equally well to their interactions with media. These interactions are increasingly shaping and influencing almost every kind of social arrangement: how and where we work, we communicate and socialize, we play. In doing so, we apply to mediated experiences the same rules and conventions as to face-to-face or otherwise “real” experiences.

The seamless and generally taken for granted nature of media in everyday life to some extent explains how our use of media often disappears: when asked, people tend to grossly underestimate how much time they spend with media. Contemporary media usage studies in wired countries such as Japan, the United States, The Netherlands, or Finland tend to reveal that people spend twice as much time with media than they think they do – up to twelve hours a day. Media have become such an integrated part of our lives that most of the time we are not even aware we are using media. American researchers describe this kind of almost constant immersion with media technologies and content from multiple sources simultaneously available through shared or shifting attention as concurrent media exposure, rather than popular industry-terms such as media multitasking or simultaneous media usage, emphasizing how important it is to avoid implying that our engagement with media is necessarily deliberate or attentive (Papper et al. 2004). It has become automatic.

All of this ultimately means that an understanding of what people do in their everyday lives must take note of the crucial role media play therein. Media do not just influence us in terms of how we spend most of our time, how we organize and give meaning to our social networks, or what we may think about world events; media have also become a crucial part of today’s global economy. The industry of media – from the revenues it generates, the ways it manages its workflows to the particular kinds of people employed as culture creators – can be seen as a role model or benchmark of how the globalizing economy is organizing itself. Some of the key elements of what it is like to work in the media today are symptomatic of how people all over the world are increasingly experiencing their work-lives. Understanding media is much more than being able to wield a remote control, to navigate the features of a personal computer successfully, or to get reliable results using an online search engine. It is also more than being able to read between the lines of a newspaper article, or to decode the subtle seductions of a television commercial or soap opera cliffhanger. Understanding media must include a critical awareness of the particular characteristics of making media. This not just to inform and assist those vying for a successful career as a reporter, advertising creative, television producer, or game developer. This to empower anyone entering the current and near future global cultural economy, where media as ubiquitous and pervasive devices, as tools for social organization and as accelerators of everyday experiences provide the dominant frame of reference for what Zygmunt Bauman (2005b) effectively describes as contemporary “liquid life.”

The basis of my argument in Media Work is the notion that the current lives of people all over the world and most particularly in Western capitalist democracies cannot be understood without an understanding of media – albeit not so much through the content of media, but through the way all elements of work are organized in media as an industry. Following the work of Scott Lash and John Urry (1994) and others, I consider the management of creativity, the culturalization of work, and the processes of giving meaning to one’s professional identity in the creative industries (of which media are part) crucial indicators for life as lived in contemporary liquid modernity. This is a time where most people experience their lives as a perpetual whitewater, living in a state of constant flux and uncertainty. In order to get at the heart of the human condition in the context of a life lived through, or rather: in the media, I primarily lean on the social theory of Zygmunt Bauman.4 Bauman was born (1925) in Poland and, since 1971, has resided in Leeds, England. Although he has been a prolific author for most of his career, his works since the late 1990s on the human condition in contemporary late, second or what he calls “liquid” modernity strike at the essence of what it means to live in the world today. During the process of writing Media Work professor Bauman was kind enough to see me at his home (on 29 May 2006), which interview significantly helped me on my way. Throughout the book I reference his work as a means to ground my analyses about media and society in the increasingly fluid and unstable character of everyday lived experience – both as a reminder of the fleeting nature of my assumptions and the complex and multiple meanings my concepts and arguments have for the people involved: media workers.

In this book I explain and contextualize the changing nature of media work: what it is like to work in the media today, and how the particular organization of work shapes the professional identity of those employed in the creative industries. I assume how these people manage and give meaning to their life through their work has something to say for all of us, as the current global economy in what most call our information age increasingly turns towards (the production of) culture to reorganize the status quo. Although media work gets carried out in a bewildering variety of contexts, my analysis focuses primarily on those markets, companies, and professionals directly involved in the creative process of making what is called “mainstream news” in journalism, “tentpole movies” in the film industry, and “triple A titles” in computer and video game development. Based on a review of the scholarly and trade literatures, practitioner and journalistic weblogs and e-zines, and in-depth interviews with media workers in five countries (Finland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States), I deconstruct what media work means in the four key media professions: advertising (including marketing communications and public relations), journalism, film and television production, and computer and video game development. The interviews were conducted by the students in my classes, and in the classes of my colleagues and friends in these countries: Risto Kunelius (Finland), Addie de Moor (The Netherlands), Verica Rupar (New Zealand), and Herman Wasserman (South Africa).

The aim of the book is not only to prepare media students to become competent media practitioners, but to also enable students to become competent citizens in a media-saturated “hyper-reality,” where meaningful distinctions between public and private life, work time and non-work time, local and global, or lived and mediated reality are fading. Studying and understanding the issues framing the way people inside of the media industry give meaning to their “work-styles” provides a window to a world that is quickly becoming culturalized: an economy in which culture has grown into a vehicle of and for economic interests. The structure of the book moves from a broad macro-level overview of the social, cultural, economical and technological developments currently disrupting and shaping much of everyday life in (over-)developed nations around the world to a detailed micro-level analysis of the work-styles of individuals in the games, film, television, advertising, and game industries.

My work on this book has benefited greatly from the input, feedback, encouragement, criticism, and storytelling of many friends and colleagues currently employed as media workers or engaged in the academic investigation of media production. I am extremely grateful for their comments and deeply indebted to their work. It has been an absolute privilege to research and write this book and thus be able to connect with some many amazing and brilliant people. First of all my thanks to Zygmunt Bauman, whose work – even though he doubts that I can make such an assertion before I am an old man – fundamentally influenced and shaped my view of the world and my potential role in it. Another major source of intellectual stimulation and mentorship is Henry Jenkins, whom I cannot thank enough for his encouragement in engaging with the material in this book. A third colleague I would like to single out is Henk Blanken, who is a constant source of insight and enthusiasm. This book has benefited greatly from our concurrent work on PopUp (2007), which book was an absolute joy to co-author with him. Beyond interviews, numerous media professionals made the kind effort to read through critically and discuss my chapters on their respective fields of work: Brian Steward, Joan Johnson, Paul Caine, Hans van Gils, Heather Scott, Tonya Maxwell, Christian Allen, Jason Della Rocca, and Steven Krahnke. On the academic side, I am indebted to the insights and comments from Harmeet Sawhney, David Waterman, Lee Sheldon, Addie de Moor, Jaap de Jong, Verica Rupar, Herman Wasserman, Koos Zwaan, Chase Bowen Martin, Jennifer Johns, Aphra Kerr, Susan Christopherson, John Hartley, Toby Miller, Carlos Volkmer Castillo, Risto Kunelius, and David Domingo. I also would like to thank the people at Polity for their enthusiasm and hard work on this project and the Digital Media and Society series, particularly Andrea Drugan and Susan Beer. Finally my thanks to Betsi and Martha for their patience with my endless rants about all the ways in which our scholarly discipline faithfully ignores, unfairly criticizes, or simply misrepresents the lived reality of media work.

CHAPTER ONE

Liquid Life, Work, and Media

In contemporary society, argues Zygmunt Bauman, work is the normal state of all humans; not working is abnormal.1 Life has come to mean: work. People spend more time in institutions of higher education hoping to have a better chance in the highly competitive global economy. Work dominates our thinking about life. Choosing not to work is not an option, and the unemployed tend to be seen as people who either need our help (to be schooled or retrained for necessary jobs as defined by current market demand), or deserve our loathing (as those who do not pay taxes, and exploit the welfare system of the state). People’s efforts and energy go into developing a blend of work and lifestyle: a workstyle, where life becomes a way of working and a way of being at work.2 Ulrich Beck (2000) points at the fundamentally ambivalent prospects of current “workstyles” as marked by uncertainty, paradox, and risk. The risk of finding and keeping a job has become a strictly individual risk, as most governments and employers in the world today are retreating from collectively negotiated labor and welfare regulations, instead focusing on keeping a core of experienced employees and outsourcing, off-shoring, or sub-contracting work. Indeed, tem porary employment agencies today are among the largest employers in the world. Contemporary workstyles are best understood in a contemporary context where, as Gillian Ursell (2000: 805) writes, the size of permanent staffs quickly diminishes, casualization of the labor force increases, entry to the labor market is more difficult and less well rewarded or supported, average earnings have dropped, and working terms and conditions continue to deteriorate.

People in all sectors of the economy have to come to terms with the challenges and opportunities of contingent employment, precarious labor, and an overall sense of real or perceived job insecurity. Work has become contingent, as the success in keeping a job increasingly depends on developments beyond the control of employee or employer: the fluctuations of the global economy, the unpredictability of the wants and needs of consumers, the rapid shifts in new technologies for the workplace, and in-vogue management styles aiming for short-term innovation and change rather than long-term investment or the cultivation of routine. Labor has become precarious, as it seems to be disappearing fast: it is off-shored to different parts of the world as businesses go global, it gets augmented or automated by sophisticated technologies, and it is temporary as production processes fragment across multiple places and professionals. This does not mean people cannot find solid jobs anymore, nor that everyone must accept that getting fired is an inevitable part of what being employed is all about. It does mean that most if not all people feel their job is continuously on the line (even when such a fear is produced by a manufactured insecurity generated by increasingly market-driven policies and proclamations of prominent politicians). As Joan Greenbaum (2004) argues, since the 1990s the link between jobs and secure employment has been permanently cut.

Fueling people’s fear for their career are trends in economic policies around the world, as the governments and employers of the twenty-first century tend to favor a further deregulation or outright cancellation of welfare, benefits, and other types of support for workers. This effectively shifts the provision of these services to external parties, such as commercial companies. Individual employees have become personally responsible for negotiating, securing, and maintaining their own individual support structures. In doing so, individuals cannot turn anywhere else for help – unless they are willing to pay for this help out of their own pocket, and take matters into their own hands. Fueling this trend are policies in for example the United States and Great Britain that transfer welfare into “workfare,” where those who cannot find jobs and seek state support are placed in unpaid positions with public agencies. Such practices essentially create free labor for the state in return for benefits, and contribute to a gradual phasing out of full-time jobs by public agencies, hiring workfare participants instead. In countries like Denmark and The Netherlands a notion of “flexicurity” has become a political staple since the late 1990s in an attempt to strike a balance between workforce flexibility and social security. The policy combines unemployment benefits with imposed reeducation programs and guided job searches. Contemporary labor laws enable companies to use temporary employment contracts more (and much easier) than they could in the past without being necessarily required to hire permanent workers. Similarly, politicians in developed nations tend to advocate delays in the pensionable age of workers as a solution to the rapid aging of the world population, coupled with what Chris Wilson (2001) considers a global demographic convergence of declining mortality and fertility rates in rich as well as developing countries. Not only do these developments emphasize the centrality of work to a contemporary understanding of life, it also reminds us of how, following Beck, the risks involved with survival in today’s society are redistributed away from the state and the economy towards the individual. The relationship between employers and the employed has become based on individualized, short-term, and contingent contracts rather than on companies assuming some kind of formal responsibility for the permanent employment and career development of the worker. This system has increased competition between individual workers for jobs, instead of between companies for laborers, which process keeps average wages down, and increases an overall sense of insecurity among especially younger workers and junior employees.