Making Media: Production, Practices and Professions

2026 - second semester

Media as a global, integrated whole

The idea that media systems, industries, and content are interconnected worldwide, forming a single, deeply interdependent global media environment rather than separate national spheres.

Media universe (media technology and entertainment universe)

A way of describing the broad ecosystem of technologies, companies, platforms, and content that together make up contemporary media and entertainment.

Media industry – difficulty of definition

The media industry is hard to define because almost any organized activity around content, data, or communication can become an “industry,” and what counts as a media industry can change within a few years.

Gatekeeper companies in media

The powerful firms (platforms, studios, networks, tech giants) that control resources, access, and visibility, and therefore largely determine what gets produced, funded, and distributed.

Creator economy

A growing economic sphere where individuals (creators) try to make a living through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch, often by monetizing audience attention and brand deals with companies (e.g. Spotify with podcasters, YouTube with creators).

Political economy approach to media

A perspective that studies how media, money, ownership, labour, and power are connected: where ideas and formats come from, who funds them, who owns rights, who works on them, and how value is created and distributed.

Questions in a political economy lens

Typical questions include: Is a project original or a franchise? Who financed it (investors, funds, taxes, sponsors)? Which companies and workers are involved? Where is it produced, and how is the production organized?

Format and genre as commercial strategy

The practice of designing media products so they are familiar (genre, format, procedure) yet not identical, so audiences recognize them and investors feel safer, while still allowing some novelty.

“Narcissism of minor differences” (Freud)

The idea that groups or products that are very similar tend to focus intensely on small differences between them; in media, many shows or formats resemble each other but emphasize tiny distinctions to stand out.

“Life in media”

A way of describing how our everyday lives are deeply shaped by media systems and how media work is embedded in wider networks of cooperation, institutions, and infrastructures.

Strict hierarchy in the media industry

The structured chain of command in many media organizations (from executives and producers down to assistants and freelancers), which shapes who has decision-making power and who does the more precarious work.

Making media – general definition

Making media refers to the professional production of media across different industries, including how content is created, organized, distributed, and sustained as work and as a career.

Three dimensions: production, practices, professions

“Media production” concerns how industries and organizations make content; “media practices” are how professionals actually work and “make it work”; “media professions” are the relatively distinct fields such as journalism, advertising, games, television, music, and social media entertainment.

New digital intermediaries

The powerful tech and platform companies (e.g. Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Tencent, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify) that now sit between media users and producers and shape how content is produced, distributed, and experienced.

Platformization

The process by which media production, distribution, and consumption become dependent on digital platforms, whose technical and economic logics shape what gets made and how it circulates.

Hybridization of media work

The blurring of boundaries between roles (e.g. journalism and advertising, content and marketing) so that media workers increasingly have to produce, promote, distribute, and sell content at the same time.

Affordances of digital media for makers

The possibilities digital media offer for experimentation, transmedia storytelling, extended reality, co-creation with audiences, and participation by many more people worldwide in media making.

Power shifts in media industries

A shift of power away from traditional professional media institutions toward platforms, data-driven systems, and sometimes audiences, changing who can decide what is made and how.

No formal entry requirement to media work

There is no strict formal barrier to entering most media work, which helps attract many students and young people but also contributes to intense competition and oversupply of workers.

Attractiveness vs. reality of media careers

Media work appears glamorous and exciting, but behind the image lie stress, rejection, underpayment, instability, and the constant need to self-present and “stay in” the industry.

Informality as a depoliticizing device

The informal nature of media work (network-based, flexible, project-driven) is celebrated as freeing and creative, but it also makes it harder for workers to organize against exploitation.

Precarity in media work

The condition in which media workers face unstable jobs, irregular income, and uncertainty while trying to build careers in a highly competitive global industry.

Affective labour in media work

Media work requires managing and performing emotions (enthusiasm, positivity, passion) and suppressing negative feelings, both for internal workplace dynamics and external image.

Passion and overwork

The entrepreneurial rhetoric encourages workers to see media making as their identity and passion, which normalizes long hours, overwork, and unpaid or underpaid labour.

Entrepreneurial mindset in media

A way of thinking that treats media workers as self-driven entrepreneurs responsible for their own projects, networks, and careers, which can support creativity but also individualizes risk.

Four core pressures: content, connectivity, creativity, commerce

Media workers must constantly balance producing content, enabling connectivity with audiences, expressing creativity, and meeting commercial demands to sustain their work.

Agency of media workers

The capacity of media professionals to negotiate and balance these pressures, build networks and peer communities, and find room for autonomy within commercial and platformized systems.

“Global production, local work”

The idea that while media industries and markets are globally interconnected, media work itself is experienced and organized locally, in specific cities, clusters, and communities.

Emotional exploitation yet “dream job”

Even when work involves exploitation (unpaid/underpaid work, arbitrary rejection), many workers still frame it as a dream job they are lucky to do, with passion providing emotional fuel.

Four myths/mistakes

Growth is good, in other words bigger = better; gospel of going global, a local medium; content is king, consuming and making media (connection/data producing) drives us to media; the cult of convergence

Exploitative vs explorative innovation

In media, exploitative innovation means improving and optimizing existing formats, genres, and workflows (making current shows, channels, or content types more efficient or profitable), while explorative innovation means experimenting with new formats, technologies, or audiences that don’t yet have proven models (higher risk but potentially transformative).

Editorial logic

The decision-making logic in media organizations that prioritizes professional norms and values (e.g. newsworthiness, accuracy, narrative quality, public interest, brand identity) when choosing what to produce and how to present it, even when this conflicts with short-term commercial or data signals. Colleagues and bosses are the primary source.

Market logic

The logic that prioritizes revenue, ratings, audience size, subscriptions, and advertiser appeal; content and formats are evaluated mainly in terms of their ability to attract paying customers, advertisers, or investors and to fit sustainable business models. What sells well is produced.

Data logic

A way of organizing media work where analytics, metrics, and algorithms (clicks, views, watch time, engagement scores, recommendation systems) strongly shape decisions about what gets made, how it is optimized, and how it is distributed.

Convergence logic

The logic of designing content, business models, and organizations so that different media (TV, online video, games, social media, etc.) and technologies work together, enabling cross-platform storyworlds, shared IP, and integrated production in a “converging digital world.” Decisions governed by collaboration with audiences.

Platform logic

The logic where powerful digital platforms (e.g. YouTube, Netflix, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify) sit between users and producers and structure visibility, monetization, and formats; media makers adapt their content, schedules, and strategies to the technical and economic rules of these platforms. In-between everything we want and use.

Experience good (media)

A type of product whose quality or value can only be judged after consuming it; audiences do not know in advance what they will get from a new media product, making success hard to predict.

Trust good (information media)

A kind of media product (especially news and information) where even after consuming it, audiences must trust that the information is correct, because they cannot easily verify it themselves.

Risk management through diversification

In media industries, companies spread risk by diversifying content, formats, and markets, hoping that the success of some products will compensate for the failure of others.

Licensing proven content as risk reduction

Instead of producing everything in‑house, media firms often license content that already succeeded elsewhere to reduce production and audience risk.

Project networks and latent organizations

Media production often happens in recurring project teams (“latent organizations”) whose core composition changes little over time, creating reliability and shared routines across different projects.

Trust as alternative to hierarchy

In flexible project networks, trust and reputation in close professional circles function as a substitute for strict hierarchical control: people cooperate because bad behavior harms their future opportunities.

Pockets of creativity

Parts of the production process that remain deliberately open and unpredictable to allow creative work, contrasted with routinized steps that can be strictly managed and optimized.

Compulsion to innovate in media

Media companies constantly feel pressured to create innovative products to stand out and potentially earn temporary monopoly profits, even though audience acceptance of innovations is highly uncertain.

Life in media as mixed reality

Our everyday lives combine physical and digital experiences, as we constantly move between online platforms, apps, and offline settings, resulting in a “mixed reality” life in media.

Global market and local playgrounds for makers

Digital tools enable a global market for media makers while also fostering local spaces where diverse communities and voices can experiment and participate in media production.

Data logic as demand predictor

Using large datasets on people’s preferences, clicks, and subscriptions to forecast which projects might become hits, guiding decisions about what to develop, greenlight, or promote.

Data logic as content creator

The use of algorithms and AI systems to automatically generate media content (such as news stories, marketing copy, or background music), partially automating parts of the creative process.

Limits of data-driven decision making

Even heavily datafied companies like Netflix still cannot reliably predict which productions will succeed, so the classic “nobody‑knows” problem of media markets persists.

Just-in-time production in media

The adaptation of manufacturing-style “just-in-time” philosophies to media work, where content is produced and delivered continuously and quickly in response to shifting audience demand.

Media work as affective labour

Media work relies on workers’ emotional investment and on producing content meant to evoke strong feelings in audiences, often requiring people to manage and perform emotions as part of their job.

Profitable vs loss-making paradox

The global media market generates enormous revenues, yet many companies struggle to make consistent profits because production, technology, marketing, and debt costs are so high. Spend a lot to earn a lot, but what you earn goes back to earning.

Creative vs datafied paradox

New platforms and business models can give media makers more autonomy and creative options, yet at the same time they bind makers to the rules, algorithms, and monetization systems of powerful tech companies.

Switched on and off

constantly being in a job and out of a job, or both at the same time. This refers to the phenomenon where media professionals manage fluctuating employment, often facing periods of active work and inactivity concurrently, affecting their job security and identity.

Impact and disconnected paradox

The challenge media professionals face between creating impactful content while also feeling disconnected from their audience, leading to a struggle in achieving meaningful engagement and feedback.

Artisanal and industrial paradox

Crafting something, but at the same time the inner workings can be organized and industrial, creating something beautiful, but commercial. Every type of media work is highly industrialized, formalized, and structured.

Informal and militarized paradox

You can do something the way you’re supposed to but also add ‘flourishes'. The informality makes it fun, however there is a strict hierarchy.

Dynamic and routinized paradox

Most days are different, however routinized, because it is deadline driven and time sensitive.

Collective and fragmented paradox

Media professionals are always working as a collective, but also working on different projects. This freelancing in turn is what you’re doing alone.

Empowering and Exploitive paradox

A phenomenon in media work where jobs and creative endeavors can provide emotional fulfillment and a sense of agency, yet simultaneously involve exploitation in terms of unpaid labor, underpayment, and precarious working conditions.

Freedom and dependence paradox

Media professionals often experience a sense of freedom through their creative work and autonomy, yet they are simultaneously dependent on platforms, audiences, and market demands which constrain their choices and direction. The industry gives a sense of being free, buy you’re depended on a lot of people also often making it difficult to speak up.

Diverse and homogenous paradox

People are progressive in the industry, however people working in the industry are homogenous.

Pleasurable and precarious paradox

It is a fun, passionate, and important business. But with lots of anxiety and high levels of stress as well as no job security. Media industries present themselves as glamorous, innovative, and successful using impressive statistics, but behind this image lie precarious working conditions and unstable careers for most professionals.

Technological transformation as structural

In media industries, ongoing technological change (including AI) is built into how the sector works; professionals must assume that tools, workflows, and platforms will keep shifting and learn to be comfortable with constant change.

AI as embedded infrastructure (AI in media → media in AI)

The shift from seeing AI as just one tool in the toolbox to treating AI as the underlying infrastructure or “shed” in which all media work happens, making media production structurally dependent on AI systems and platforms.

Working with AI: who is it for?

The question of whether everyday AI use in media primarily serves audiences, AI/tech companies, or platform owners—highlighting that creative labour often feeds corporate data systems as much as (or more than) audience needs.

Pleasurable–precarious paradox of media work

Media work is experienced as both “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this” and “this is bad for my mental health”: a passionate, meaningful job combined with stress, anxiety, and little job security.

“Puts everyone out of business vs into business” paradox

The tension where AI is framed as a job-killer that automates creative tasks yet also lowers barriers to entry and enables new roles, services, and markets for those who can work with it.

Fight AI vs profit from AI paradox

Media organizations publicly worry about AI’s unfair use (e.g. copyright breaches, deepfakes) while simultaneously signing deals with AI and platform companies to monetise their content and data.

Algorithmic dependence

Media workers and organizations increasingly rely on opaque platform algorithms for visibility, distribution, and monetisation, making them vulnerable to changes they do not control.

Wavefinder metaphor

In an AI/transformation “wave,” professionals cannot stop the tide but can act as “wavefinders”: reading the direction of change early to make strategic choices about who they create for and which platforms or partners they align with.

AI across the production cycle

AI is now present at every stage of media production—ideation, research, scripting, editing, distribution, testing, and archiving—via recommendation systems, automation tools, generative models, and analytics.

Content paralysis (old vs new content)

The tendency for AI‑driven platforms and audience habits to favour refurbished or resurfaced older content (catalogues, archives, remixes), creating paralysis or extra risk for entirely new work.

Prompt-and-go content

AI‑generated media that can be created rapidly from text prompts, leading to a flood of low-cost, low-commitment content that competes with slower, craft-based production.

Endless versions and A/B testing

The use of AI to generate many slight variants of the same content (thumbnails, edits, headlines, cuts) and test them against audiences, shifting creativity toward optimization and experimentation at scale.

Trust vs interest paradox

Novel, AI‑shaped formats and visual designs often spike audience interest and clicks but can simultaneously erode trust and perceived credibility in news and other media.

AI and media credibility

AI can help verify facts and preserve archives, but it also enables disinformation and deepfakes; as a result, AI both strengthens and undermines media credibility, raising regulatory and labelling debates.

AI and copyright/ownership dilemmas

Generative AI trained on copyrighted works and used to adapt or translate media raises unresolved questions over originality, fair use, and who owns AI‑generated or AI‑restored content.

Structural paradox of media’s environmental impact

Media and tech are among the most polluting industries (data centres, streaming, device lifecycles), and AI amplifies this footprint, forcing workers to navigate the tension between meaningful cultural work and environmental responsibility.

Nobody-knows dilemma and diversity

Because nobody can reliably predict hits, decision-makers see any change (including diversity initiatives) as extra risk; they may support diversity symbolically while avoiding decisions that feel risky within an already uncertain market.

“Access does not equal change”

Increasing entry points for underrepresented groups into media does not automatically transform production cultures, hierarchies, or outputs; structures can absorb new people without changing core practices.

Positionality

The idea that your social and political position (e.g. gender, race, class, nationality) shapes how you see the world and how others see you, affecting access, perceived credibility, and the stories you can tell in media.

Intersectionality

An approach that recognises that inequalities in media (e.g. gender, race, class, sexuality, age) interact and overlap, producing complex, layered forms of exclusion and discrimination rather than single-issue problems.

Backstaging diversity

When minority professionals are hired to “represent” diversity but are expected to stay silent or conform to existing norms, using informal, backstage spaces to exercise limited agency without visibly changing the status quo.

Production cultures and hidden norms

The shared, often unspoken routines, jokes, values, and expectations in media workplaces that normalise sexism, racism, or exploitation even when individuals’ personal values might be more progressive.

Depoliticising passion

The idea that framing media work as fun, family-like, and passion-driven masks structural problems; when everyone “loves” the work, it becomes harder to criticise exploitation or demand better conditions.

Relational labour in the creator economy

The ongoing work of building and maintaining relationships with audiences, brands, collaborators, and platforms (beyond making content itself), which is central to creator careers and intensified by algorithmic and AI tools.

Platform lethargy

Despite concerns about AI and platforms, many successful creators and professionals simply continue “doing their thing,” adapting gradually rather than radically resisting, accepting structural dependence on platforms.

“Everyone is a studio”

The condition in which anyone with a phone and platform access can technically produce and publish media, blurring boundaries between amateurs and professionals and increasing competition.

New “normal” of always-on content

With vlogging, live streaming, and persistent social media, there are no clear deadlines or finished products; creators are expected to be continuously visible and responsive, extending work into everyday life.

Creator collectives and teams

Creators increasingly join agencies, management companies, or collectives to handle business, branding, and relationships, acknowledging that sustainable careers are hard to build alone.

Media work as ambidexterity

Media organizations must both play it safe (exploiting proven formats for advertisers and platforms) and experiment (exploring new formats and tools like AI), trying to do opposite things at the same time.

Signature journalism

A strategy in news organizations to focus resources on distinctive, high-value reporting that defines the brand, while routine or generic content may be automated or reduced, especially in an AI-saturated environment.

Deplatformisation in journalism

Efforts by journalists and editors to reduce their dependence on platform algorithms (e.g. search, social feeds) by strengthening direct relationships with audiences and emphasising distinctive, in-depth work.

Self-promotion and vulnerability

Media professionals and creators must constantly market themselves online, which can clash with their personality and leaves them exposed to hate, harassment, and reputational risk.

Self-censorship under harassment

Because of intense online abuse and threats, journalists and creators may avoid certain topics or frames, limiting the range of public debate even in nominally free media environments.

Ethical targeting vs inclusivity in advertising

The dilemma between narrowly targeting specific demographic segments for efficiency and embracing more inclusive, community- and values-based approaches that may be less “efficient” but more socially responsible.

Media jobs that don’t exist yet

The way technological and organizational transformation in media continually creates new roles (e.g. visual journalism editor, AI editor, intimacy coordinator, mental health coordinator) that only become “jobs” after someone starts doing them.

Inclusion riders and new coordinators

Contractual clauses (inclusion riders) and new roles (intimacy and mental health coordinators) are tools to structurally address inequality and abuse on sets and in production environments.

Work not always tied to degrees

Many successful media professionals (journalists, editors, creatives) did not study media formally; success often depends more on skills, initiative, and ethical judgement than on specific degrees.