CHAPTER 11
The production of media culture involves a range of factors that shape the work of media organizations, including:
Composition of the media workforce
External relations under economic and social pressures
The media context is dynamic, significantly influenced by convergence, especially:
Rise of online and mobile connectivity
Integration of older and newer communication channels
In production, convergence manifests as:
Interchangeability of media platforms
Blurring of boundaries:
Professional and amateur
Public and private
Fixed and mobile
Media-organizational activities primarily involve:
Selecting
Decisions from choosing raw material to delivering the final product.
Processing
Applying work routines and organizational criteria (professional and business) that influence the product through the decision-making chain.
This framework, originating from news production research, applies broadly across media products (e.g., books, movies, music, TV shows).
Media production involves routinized work, leading to predictable behaviors and opportunities for theorizing.
Much discussion focuses on news media due to journalism's history, but links to other industries are made.
Current "collapse" across media industries (functions, roles, business models) leads to blended professions (e.g., journalists as 'content managers' or 'media entrepreneurs').
Features of Media Production
Media industries combine public service and for-profit entities, engaged in industrial and creative production and circulation of culture.
Culture includes: words, audio, images, and increasingly, platforms for user-generated content.
Four intertwined elements in contemporary media production:
Content: The media products themselves.
Connectivity: Platforms enabling audience interaction and promotion.
Creativity: Semi-autonomous cultural creation.
Commerce: The business context for creation.
These elements are subjects of constant struggle and negotiation within the industry.
In economic terms, media serves a dual product market:
Selling media products (newspapers, movies, games) to audiences.
Selling audience attention (ratings, circulation) to advertisers.
This creates tension as audience, creator, and advertiser needs may differ. The digital ecosystem intertwines these roles. Media production is global with industries (e.g., game development, film, TV) offshoring, subcontracting, and outsourcing to:
Save costs
Attract capital/talent
Redistribute risks
Examples of global production include:
International financing for TV projects
Offshore movie shooting
Localizing content
Mixing music internationally
These supranational market-based productions benefit from structural trends:
Growth
Integration
Globalization
Concentration of ownership
Research insights:
Chan-Olmsted and Chang (2003) suggest product and geographic diversification for risk reduction can lead to performance declines due to increased complexity and uncertainties in global media conglomerates.
Schulze et al. (2005) and Marjoribanks (2000) indicate synergy management in conglomerates is not always streamlined or successful, depending on individual actors' values and beliefs.
Despite unique peculiarities of each media field, trends like business integration, technological convergence, and "glocalization" (localization + globalization) make working experiences increasingly similar.
Key distinctive features of media production:
Informal networks of collaboration, expertise, and influence:
Extending horizontally (peer-to-peer)
Vertically (supply chain)
Largely project-based nature of production:
Work organized in projects with limited lifespans, both within and between companies.
Highly structured, patterned, and at times formulaic processes:
Necessary for deadlines, schedules, and managing market risks.
High degree of communicative complexity and affective labor:
Required due to the dynamic, fast-paced, high-pressure nature of media production.
Affective labor: Elicits deep investment from practitioners and aims for a pre-cognitive response from audiences.
Engagement is key in the attention economy; consumer psychology is increasingly used.
Professionals are expected to deeply commit, often in playful environments.
In short: Media production is epitomized by informal networks of often freelance professionals, deeply invested in their work, within a broader structure of complex, highly structured, project-based labor.
Key Trends in the Production of Media Culture
Working in media involves several overlapping trends:
Clustering of cultural companies in specific urban areas (e.g., cultural economies of cities).
Risky and unpredictable nature of the media business: Due to the paradoxical nature of cultural commodities, which need to appeal broadly yet rely on novelty and unpredictable consumer tastes.
Complexity of controlling and collaborating with creative individuals in project-based, commercial contexts.
Pervasive nature of technology and information management in all creative processes.
Clustering helps counter the inherent risk in media. Production styles balance:
Linearity: Producing proven content (economically sound strategy).
Liquidity: Diversifying for changing tastes (equally important for media industries).
Both linearity and liquidity involve risks, making risk and trust constitutive in media work, managed through informal contexts and social networks.
Professionals often work with different employers in the same clustered areas, fostering unforeseen collaborations and new cultural products.
The special nature of media management and production
Media professionals often care deeply about their work. Media management is challenging due to:
Unique element of media workers' professional identity.
Structural risk and unpredictability at the heart of cultural production.
Creative work is:
Volatile, dynamic, and risk-ridden.
Shaped by crucial, often tacit, skills.
Many professionals see organizations as mere conduits for their independent work.
This leads to job oversupply, with many accepting below-average salaries, contingent wages, and temporary contracts.
Shifts power to owners/employers, except for 'stars' or during innovation spikes.
Media industry management is special (Lowe and Brown, 2016). It involves:
Supervision and facilitation of creative individuals in project-based, commercial settings.
Managing contacts and contracts with outsourced and subcontracted labor, and auxiliary industries (reproduction, licensing, distribution, retailers).
Projects are often undertaken by specially assembled teams.
Team selection often prioritizes trust and compatibility over strictly rational or economic principles.
Team-based labor is portable, moving from project to project, requiring employers to constantly re-compose workforces.
The special role of technology
Technology is pervasive and ubiquitous, acting as a key accelerator for development and innovation.
Media industries are among the key drivers of new information and communication technologies.
Print journalism: Drove advancements in printing, digital reproduction, distribution, and desktop publishing.
Digital games: Supercharged upgrades to processor speeds, memory compression, 3D graphics, and screen pixilation.
Film industry: Contributed to digital surround sound and widescreen projection systems.
Music and recording industries: Facilitated portable music players and sound editing software.
In daily media work, technology plays a crucial part in the creative process, but also carries concerns:
Standardization of work practices:
Content management systems (CMS) facilitate technological convergence and synergy.
Can limit creative options for practitioners who prefer not to be 'slaves' to pre-programmed templates.
Techno-optimist notions vs. potential negative effects:
Bar and Simard (2006) suggest flexible control over technology configuration allows for shaping by individuals/teams.
Aronowitz and DiFazio (1995) warn against deleterious effects of computerization, leading to exploitative labor practices via 'cybernetization' of the workplace.
Automation of news-work: Rise of 'robotic' reporters (software-generated content) leading to job loss and reduced autonomy (Carlson, 2015).
Media professionals are expected to come to terms with numerous converging technologies in their work.
Technological convergence: The coming together of audio, video, telecommunication, and data onto a common platform, enabled by digitization.
People use the same device for multiple functions, making computers 'universal machines' for work and play.
Blurring of boundaries between home and office.
Convergence in media work relates to two intertwined processes:
Convergence of place: Workplace and home office.
Convergence of technology: Digital, networked hardware and software.
This furthers managerial control over media work through:
Workflow standardization
Workplace surveillance
Decentralization of work (telework, outsourcing).
Convergence directly affects four key aspects of mass media industries:
Content of communication
Relationships between media producers and consumers
Structure of firms
How media professionals do their work
Introduction of CMS, intranets, and desktop publishing software means for professionals:
Speeds up and standardizes the production process.
Potentially contributes to a loss of autonomy.
Requires learning new skills and unlearning old ones.
Production processes accelerate.
There is a prevailing sense that traditional business models (advertising, sales) no longer work in the digital age.
New online/offline business models combine multiple revenue streams, commodify consumer relations, and co-create with users (citizen journalists, influencers, fans).
Rapid adoption of digital devices alters audience habits, collapsing categories of consuming and producing media.
Genres, storytelling formats, and creative practices 'collapse' in favor of hybrid media products.
Ongoing convergence of domains, sectors, and disciplines presents new challenges for managing media firms and production processes.
Media-organizational Activities: Gatekeeping and Selection
Media-organizational activities are where overall trends and features of media production are operationalized. Two fundamental activities:
Selecting: Sequence of decisions from raw material choice to finished product delivery.
Processing: Application of work routines and organizational criteria affecting the product as it moves through the decision-making chain.
Gatekeeping is a metaphor to describe the selection process in media work (White, 1950).
Applies broadly: news reports, literary agents, publishers, editorial work, distribution, marketing.
Refers to the power to give or withhold access to different voices in society, often a locus of conflict.
Examples of gatekeeping tension:
Governments/politicians vs. media over attention.
Representation and access for minorities.
Algorithms of Internet businesses (Facebook, Netflix, Amazon) automate content delivery, adding another gatekeeping layer.
Weaknesses of the early gatekeeping concept:
Implication of one initial gate and main set of selection criteria.
Simple view of media product 'supply'.
Reduces decision-making to a single individual or organization.
Shoemaker (1991) extended the model to account for wider social context and multiple factors:
Specific to journalism: role of advertisers, PR, pressure groups, sources, 'news managers'.
Involves multiple and successive acts of selection over news production.
Often involves group decision-making.
Considers content, expected audience, and cost.
Autonomy vs. economic/political pressures:
Gatekeeping online (often automated) can bypass mass media, potentially rendering the original concept obsolete (Bro and Wallberg, 2015).
Established journalism is no longer a privileged source or controller of supply.
Interested actors still seek rapid, extensive public attention, often via mass media, or directly engage via social media ('disintermediation').
Professional gatekeeping may return to prominence as a valued service for filtering online information.
Ideological versus organizational factors in Gatekeeping
Early studies emphasized subjective selection and editor autonomy, focusing on items that failed to gain entry (White, 1950; Gieber, 1956).
Later, attention shifted to systematic influences, categorized as:
Organizational: Bureaucratic routines, factory-like procedures.
Lippmann (1922) noted the necessity of routine to avoid editor 'excitement'.
Ideological: Values and cultural influences from the social/national setting, not purely individual.
Subsequent research demonstrated:
News media content consistently follows predictable patterns.
Different organizations behave similarly under equivalent conditions (Glasgow Media Group, 1976; McQuail, 1977; Shoemaker and Reese, 1991).
Stable perception among news decision-makers about audience interest and consensus within social-cultural settings.
This points to a paradox: media industries privilege flexibility, talent, creativity, and innovation, yet often operate on factory-like production processes, with rigid schedules, curtailing experimentation for 'exploitative innovation' (March, 1991) – sticking with what works.
News value: An attribute that transforms a news event into an interesting 'story' for an audience; always relative.
Galtung and Ruge (1965) provided the first clear statement of news values, indicating three main types of factors:
Organizational factors: Most universal; bias towards recent events near reporting facilities with credible sources.
Genre-related factors: Preference for news events fitting audience expectations (consonance) and familiar interpretative 'frames' (e.g., conflict).
Social-cultural influences: Stem from Western/ideological values focusing on elite people, negative, violent, or dramatic happenings.
News values can be seen as a consensual structure helping journalists make sense of the world (Hartley, 1982).
Joye, Heinrich, and Wöhlert (2016) noted a 'distorted' worldview in established news media, often using the nation as a primary frame.
Call for 'multiperspectival' news in a globalized, multicultural world (Gans, 2011), with 'networked' and cross-border collaborations (Alfter, 2019; Robinson, 2017).
Calls to consider news produced by non-traditional outlets (citizens, NGOs, media entrepreneurs).
News event factors predictive of coverage (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017):
Exclusivity: Stories generated by, or first available to, the news organization.
Bad news: Stories with negative overtones (death, injury, loss).
Conflict: Stories concerning controversies, arguments, strikes, warfare.
Surprise: Stories with elements of surprise, contrast, or unusualness.
Audiovisuals: Stories with arresting photos, video, audio, or infographics.
Shareability: Stories likely to generate sharing and comments on social media.
Entertainment: Soft stories (sex, showbusiness, sport, human interest) or humorous treatment.
Drama: Stories of unfolding drama (escapes, accidents, court cases).
Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news.
The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organizations, institutions.
Relevance: Stories about groups/nations influential with, or culturally/historically familiar to, the audience.
Magnitude: Stories significant in numbers involved, potential impact, or extreme behavior/occurrence.
Celebrity: Stories concerning famous people.
Good news: Stories with positive overtones (recoveries, breakthroughs, wins).
News organization's agenda: Stories fitting the news organization's ideological, commercial, or campaign agenda.
Studies show a 'news gap' between audience interests and editorial judgments (Boczkowski and Mitchelstein, 2013).
Extrapolation of news values to other media industries reveals two key observations:
National boundaries as a touchstone: Most content is made for a 'national audience' or adapted to local tastes, despite globalization.
Audiences are further segmented by data profiles (ethnicity, gender, class, age), reducing shared narratives.
Global production networks and international division of cultural labor:
Networked enterprise is typical for media, with ongoing outsourcing, offshoring, and subcontracting globally.
Multinational corporations are territorially anchored but stretch networks globally (Arsenault and Castells, 2008).
'Extra-local' processes can favor entrepreneurial individuals or agile firms over powerful corporations (Coe et al., 2004; Johns, 2006).
Continuously, the responsibility for employment shifts to individuals within a flexible, contingent global labor market (Miller and Leger, 2001).
Media tends to cluster in specific urban areas, fostering exchange of finance, resources, labor, talent, and skills (Scott, 2000).
Migration patterns in cultural labor are mostly regional or virtual; people stay put while their talent migrates (e.g., film shoots, game asset development).
Locational agglomeration and global networked enterprise reinforce each other, increasing contingency while connecting professionals more closely.
Miller and Leger (2001) critique that internationalization doesn't weaken corporate control, especially American control (e.g., Netflix).
The Struggle over Access between Media and Society
The question of access by institutional elements of society to the media (and thus to the audience) is significant.
Traditionally, mass media effectively controlled information flow.
New media, offering 'connectivity', create new uncontrolled channels, blurring sender/receiver roles (Jenkins, 2006).
Internet platforms disrupt global media flow and access relations.
In democratic societies, mass media are expected to provide channels for society-wide communication, especially 'downwards' from elites.
Achieved by legal provision, market purchase, or voluntary public service.
Media freedom generally includes the right not to publish.
Governments worldwide are seeking to regulate Internet platforms for citizen protection and transparency.
A continuum of media autonomy
The situation can be understood as a continuum:
Extreme 1: Media totally 'penetrated' by outside (state or other) interests.
Extreme 2: Media totally free to exclude or admit as they see fit.
Neither extreme is typical under normal conditions.
Pluralistic theory: Diversity of organizations and access ensures a mix of official, critical, and alternative views.
'Access for society' involves how media portray social reality; they can alter, distort, or challenge it.
The question involves complex conventions reconciling media freedoms and societal claims, depending on formats, genres, and audience interpretation.
Elliott (1972) typology shows the inverse relationship between degree of freedom of access available to society and the degree of extensiveness of control and action by media (communicator/editorial autonomy).
Larger scope of media control = more limited direct access by society.
Highlights the basic conflict between media autonomy and social control; access is a site of struggle.
In the contemporary context, access is more complex:
Actors can bypass professional media filters to reach mass audiences directly.
Micro-targeting: Companies and individuals customize information (using personal data) to influence opinions and behaviors.
Kruikemeier et al. (2016) found users generally understand persuasive political ads on social media and are resistant.
Metz et al. (2019) found politicians sharing personal lives online receive positive responses, suggesting 'disintermediation' of news media can be effective.
Media-organizational Activities: Processing and Presentation
Media industries, organizations, and professionals are part of a specific media production value chain:
Conception $\rightarrow$ Execution (pre-production) $\rightarrow$ Production (editing, transcription, duplication) $\rightarrow$ Marketing (packaging, promotion) $\rightarrow$ Distribution $\rightarrow$ Consumption (Hesmondhalgh, 2018).
All productions follow a particular logic (Deuze, 2007).
Media logic (Dahlgren, 1996):
Refers to 'the particular institutionally structured features of a medium, the ensemble of technical and organizational attributes which impact on what gets represented in the medium and how it gets done.'
Points to specific forms and processes organizing work within a medium.
Indicates cultural competence and frames of perception of audiences/users, which reinforces production within the medium.
Can be medium-specific, relating to production patterns within technological and organizational contexts.
Other models of media organizational activity:
Peterson and Anand's six-facet model of culture production (2004): Examines technology, law/regulation, industry structure, organizational structure, occupational careers, and the market.
Miège's concept of production logic (1989): Based on economic value chain, dominant power brokers, creative workers, revenue stream, and overall market structure.
Each media profession's media logic can be analyzed by its institutional, technological, organizational, and market features.
Typified by increasing complexity and ongoing liquefaction/collapse of boundaries between fields and disciplines.
The organization of media production: advertising
Advertising agencies tend to cluster in global urban centers (e.g., Tokyo, New York, London).
Work is almost exclusively project-by-project.
Two types of project organization:
Within full-service firms (employees from different departments).
Temporary cooperative efforts across firm boundaries (numerous external services/professionals).
Agency work is understood as 'project ecologies' (Grabher, 2002) or 'production ecology' (Cottle, 2003):
Competitive institutional relationships and cooperative dependencies.
Heterarchical character: project teams are networks of professionals temporarily sharing common goals with shared horizontal power.
Project ecology involves: marketing managers (client side), account managers/planners/creatives (agency), and creative/technical professionals hired on project basis via personal networks.
Spec-work (speculative work) is common:
Conceptual designs or entire campaigns produced for free to prospective clients.
Includes unpaid/underpaid internships.
The Internet and social/mobile media changed the industry:
Commission system replaced by performance-based system.
Agencies now work across multiple media.
Success determined by audience participation in co-creating, distributing, and promoting brand messages (Nixon, 2011).
Growing trend: companies use advertising for social change, beyond sales (Rosengren, 2019).
The organization of media production: journalism
News outlets generally cluster near their core audience, with competitors often located together.
Organizational processes for news selection are typically hierarchical, though collegial in production units.
Most work is based on routine, standardized activities.
Bennett (2003) suggests three sources of incentives for journalists to standardize work habits:
Routine co-operation with news sources: PR officials, spokespeople, celebrities, politicians.
Work routines of specific news organizations: Unwritten 'house style' rules and conventions.
Daily information sharing and working relations with fellow reporters: Journalists moving as a 'pack', covering same issues.
This stable approach exists alongside dynamic newswork, as many journalists are part-time, contingent, or freelance.
This reality prompts critical reflection on newsroom-centricity in journalism studies (Anderson, 2011; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2009).
Such focus privileges fixed patterns and 'organizational functionalism' over differentiation (Cottle, 2007).
Less formalized ways of making news involve audience-oriented outlets (startups, popular magazines, infotainment).
The news industry's processing line:
Story assignments by editors $\rightarrow$ news conference $\rightarrow$ play decisions (prominence/timing) $\rightarrow$ layout/lineup $\rightarrow$ final editing $\rightarrow$ content page makeup/anchor script $\rightarrow$ final lineup.
Flexible up to deadline; rolling deadlines in digital environment.
Sequence: substantive ideas considered $\rightarrow$ narrowing down by news judgments $\rightarrow$ format, design, presentation decisions based on technological affordances.
This model is compatible with processing in other media over longer timescales (e.g., Elliott's (1972) three 'chains' for TV documentary: subject, contact, presentation).
The organization of media production: music and recording
The music industry offers a different model, with a decision chain from ideas to transmission (Ryan and Peterson, 1982):
Songwriting to publishing.
Demo tape to recording (producer/artist selection).
Recording to manufacturing.
Manufacturing to marketing.
Marketing to consumption (radio, jukebox, live, direct sales).
Original ideas are filtered through publishers' ideas on presentation (artist, style), promoting the product in markets.
The Internet, filesharing (Napster, Limewire), and streaming (Spotify) profoundly changed the industry.
Company side: Labels use '360' contracts to receive a percentage of artist earnings from all activities (music sales, touring, appearances, endorsements, merchandising) to offset business risk.
Artist side: Theoretically possible to bypass industry, publish directly, build fan contacts, set prices independently. Baym (2018) calls this 'relational labor'; potentially liberating but extremely labor-intensive.
The organization of media production: film and television
Film and television companies have an 'overwhelming tendency to locational agglomeration' (Scott, 2000), with Hollywood as a prime example.
Clustering attracts talent, services, and auxiliary companies, reducing access costs.
Employment relations have shifted:
From structured internal labor markets (e.g., European public broadcasters) to 'boundaryless' external labor markets.
Growing group of skilled professionals supplies an industry of few big companies and many small producers.
Professionals counter precarity by organizing into 'semi-permanent work groups' (Blair, 2003), moving together from project to project.
Benefits employers (outsourcing hiring/firing to team leads) and employees (securing future employment via networks).
Networks have power, as creative talent of informal leaders is essential.
Production organization is quite hierarchical, governed by strict divisions of labor separating conception and execution.
Conception by creative, high-skill workers; execution by routine, low-skill workers (Warhurst, Thompson and Lockyer, 2005).
Many pitch shows and submit speculative work, but few get 'greenlighted' (formal financing approval).
Decisions, especially for big-budget productions, are increasingly made by committees due to convergence/diversification (considering marketing, merchandising, licensing, theme parks alongside the film/TV program).
The organization of media production: digital games
Development studios and publishing companies form the basic organizational structure.
Main jobs in game development: Design, production, art, programming, audio, quality assurance, coordinated by a team lead.
Designers: Establish concept, characters, mechanics; write detailed design document (dynamic).
Game writers: Often freelance, for story, dialogue, plot, character.
Art directors/artists: Develop characters, virtual worlds, animation, effects.
Sound engineers/designers: Important for surround-sound; sound design often outsourced.
Programmers: Develop/modify game engines, design AI.
Testers: Evaluate for problems and playability.
Crunch time is common: six-to-seven-day workweeks, ten-to-sixteen-hour workdays (Prescott and Bogg, 2011).
Game development projects vary; large corporations show more similarities, smaller developers more diversity.
Kerr (2006) notes differences (e.g., British companies concentrate skills; Japanese firms assign specialist groups).
Two major trends since the 1960s/70s (Johns, 2006):
High dependence on technological innovation (internal and external).
Increasing global scale: teams of hundreds dispersed across studios worldwide (US, Canada, Europe, Asia).
This consolidation in 'supra-regions' is problematic as global media conglomerates limit smaller firms' access to finance and distribution (Johns, 2006).
Industry moving from physical production to mobile and online games.
New emerging industries: eSports, mediated game streaming (Taylor, 2015).
Common challenges across media professions regarding production organization:
Production on a global scale, despite dominant companies in key urban centers.
Flexible and contingent employment, even for permanent contracts, due to volatile industry.
Precarious ideation/pre-production phases: financing/payment after conception (copyright, project reimbursement, freelance comp).
Revenue increasingly from services, distribution, merchandising, not material goods.
Production processes are strictly organized (hierarchical, sometimes heterarchical) to accommodate complexity, diverse media/skillsets, and tight deadlines.
Models of Decision-making
Ryan and Peterson (1982) describe five main frameworks for explaining how decisions are made in mass media culture production:
Assembly line:
Compares media production to a factory: skills/decisions built into machinery, clear procedural rules.
Results in overproduction at each stage because cultural products need marginal differences.
Craft and entrepreneurship:
Powerful figures (with reputations for judging talent, raising finance) manage creative inputs of artists, musicians, engineers.
Applies especially to film; also to publications where editors act as charismatic figures.
Increasingly, these individuals work in teams/committees.
Convention and formula:
Members of an 'art world' agree on a 'recipe' or widely held principles for combining elements into a genre.
Audience image and conflict:
Creative production fits an image of what the audience will like.
Decisions about audience taste are central, leading to conflict among competing entrepreneurs.
Product image:
Shaping a piece of work to be accepted by decision-makers at the next link in the chain.
Most common way: producing works similar to recently successful products (Ryan and Peterson, 1982).
Does not assume consensus; aligns with 'professionalism' or 'editorial' logic (knowing good media production) vs. 'market' logic (predicting commercial success).
Most studies confirm professionals strongly believe they know best how to combine production factors within constraints.
Achieved sometimes at the cost of not communicating with/listening to the audience.
Secures product integrity on the professionals' terms.
Ryan and Peterson's typology stresses the diversity of frameworks for achieving regularity/predictability in cultural goods production. There are different ways to handle uncertainty, respond to pressures, and reconcile continuous production with originality/autonomy/freedom.
Concepts like 'factory-like manufacturing' or 'routine bureaucracy' should be used with caution.
Media Participation and Convergence Culture
Audience participation plays a crucial role in media production.
Historically, audiences did 'work' of consumption, enabling media companies to sell attention to advertisers.
Some genres invited engagement (e.g., 'Letters to the Editor', call-in radio), but consumers weren't expected to participate in the creative process.
The interactive nature of the Internet greatly changed this.
Early assessments of online interaction:
Bucy and Gregson (2001) considered online participation (active/direct) vs. 'old' media (passive/indirect); viewed participation as largely symbolic empowerment.
Domingo et al. (2008) placed interactive media in the context of a shift from local communities to complex societies requiring expert systems (journalism).
As a 'network society' emerged, sender-receiver relationships became more reciprocal.
Testing audience participation in five phases of news production (access/observation, selection/filtering, processing/editing, distribution, consumption/interpretation) at online news sites, found options generally limited to ranking/commenting.
Lewis (2012) reiterates tension between professional control and audience participation.
Much work takes the professional mass communicator's perspective of 'sharing' the stage with the public.
Loosen and Schmidt (2012) offer a corrective: audience inclusion as 'reciprocal co-orientation and interaction' with two dimensions:
Inclusion performance: Features/practices involving participatory relationships.
Inclusion expectations: Cognitive patterns guiding practices of professionals and audience.
Two important caveats about audience participation from industry perspective:
'Obduracy' among media professionals: Resistance to change due to routines, practices, and values (Borger et al., 2013).
Amplified by references to professional autonomy and quality control regarding audience role.
'Dark participation' (Quandt, 2019):
Negative, selfish, or sinister contributions: cyberbullying, 'trolling', 'doxxing', strategic 'piggy-backing' to spread disinformation/hate.
Quandt views these as a necessary caution to overly optimistic readings of collaboration/co-creation.
'Convergence culture' (Jenkins, 2004):
Refers to phenomena caused by technological, industry, and role convergence.
Comprises:
Audience participation in production.
Blurring of professional/amateur lines.
Breakdown of producer/consumer lines.
Led to terms like 'prosumer' and 'produser' (Bruns, 2008).
Jenkins (2006; Jenkins and Deuze, 2008; Jenkins et al., 2013, 2016) expands to 'spreadable' media for active users, acknowledging co-creation role for young people in storytelling.
Embraced in media literacy: making media helps children/youths learn skills and develop critical attitudes (Livingstone and Sefton-Green, 2016).