Understanding Media Industries from all Perspectives

This is a question I continue to struggle with, because I’m not sure that our role as scholars is always to make a “contribution” to the media industries in their present form.

What is exciting about media studies making contributions to the industry lies in the potential to introduce new, innovative, or even radical ways of thinking into the industry. Our contributions might be what helps change media industries into something other than their present form (to either micro or macro degrees). Though unfairly maligned for getting too cosy with industry, some scholars have clearly dedicated themselves to building relationships within the industry in order to change the ways in which institutions understand their audiences, media producers, and their ways in which they participate with the media, so that those industries might step back from strategies that make our media culture less accessible, democratic, or representative.

 What is exciting about media studies lies in the potential to introduce new, innovative, or even radical ways of thinking into the industry.

Beyond this kind of outreach to industry partners, I think this kind of intervention is something we all do when we write about industry and then teach those ideas to students who might one day be in the positions to effect change. I always tell the students in my media industry courses that they will likely be disappointed if they are expecting a course in “how to make it” in the media industries: I’m not producing drones. Instead, what I hope they are getting is a way to imagine other possible forms and futures for industry to take – hopefully, more equal, democratic ones – so that they can be agents of change (rather than just continuity) when they enter that industry. This is of course playing quite a long game, and one with a lot of potential for attrition. So media studies would be wise to start building more relationships with institutions and practitioners working in the here and now, even if we constantly butt heads with existing corporate imperatives, if only to help prepare the way for future innovators less set in their ways.

On the one hand, it’s hard not to imagine that kind of change as a threat to the industrial status quo; but on the other, that kind of change could be extremely profitable and productive, not only for the people effecting it, but also for whole industries that might learn to operate in ways that are less problematic and maybe even still profitable. This would count to me as a “contribution,” but it hinges on the specific issues we’re seeking to change and the hope that we could arrive at some improved or less objectionable form of industry than we have now; it’s fair, and I think important, to wonder whether the mission of critical scholarship is ultimately compatible with the market needs of media institutions. But if we see our scholarship as a form of activism, I think that implies some kind of commitment to trying to improve the industrial status quo, rather than throwing up one’s hands and declaring the industry a lost cause. At the end of the day, the goals of critical media industry studies seem to me to be to make a contribution of some sort that makes industries a more equitable site of culture production – or at least conceivable as such.

 If we see our scholarship as a form of activism, I think that implies some kind of commitment to trying to improve the industrial status quo.

I think the question to what the media industries can provide media studies is a little bit easier to answer. As John Caldwell and others have pointed out, the media industries are already sites of theorisation and critical practice where practitioners are making sense of the worlds in which they work on an everyday level. So it makes sense that talking to media professionals, listening to the stories and narratives that they offer for negotiating those worlds, and recognising that they are already contributing to the attempt to make sense of media industries would save us the trouble of having to reinvent the wheel or actually embarrassing ourselves by speaking from a position of ignorance of what’s happening on the ground. That’s not to say we take practitioner theory at face value –like anything it should be interrogated with a critical lens. But trying to understand industrial production without talking to producers is like trying to make claims about consumption without talking to audiences.

So in simply talking to us – whether “us” as scholars or more generally as the public –media industries have the power to give us insight and access to this crucial site of meaning making, community, and practice. Fortunately, the media industries love to talk about themselves. Media professionals are constantly “contributing” to media studies by issuing forth a constant stream of discourses and practices for us to think about.

 Trying to understand industrial production without talking to producers is like trying to make claims about consumption without talking to audiences.

What the industry isn’t always contributing, but could, is more of a willingness to offer constructive criticism of scholarship. We too often live in different worlds, when hearing more feedback from the industry about the ideas we generate as scholars would help us to hone our insights, critiques, and suggestions. Again, this is not to suggest we take the lead of industry uncritically, but to recognise that media practitioners have an on-the-ground perspective that we lack and might benefit from hearing.

 Hearing more feedback from the industry about the ideas we generate as scholars would help us to hone our insights, critiques, and suggestions.

Beyond this kind of outreach to industry partners, I think this kind of intervention is something we all do when we write about industry and then teach those ideas to students who might one day be in the positions to effect change. I always tell the students in my media industry courses that they will likely be disappointed if they are expecting a course in “how to make it” in the media industries: I’m not producing drones. Instead, what I hope they are getting is a way to imagine other possible forms and futures for industry to take – hopefully, more equal, democratic ones – so that they can be agents of change (rather than just continuity) when they enter that industry. This is of course playing quite a long game, and one with a lot of potential for attrition. So media studies would be wise to start building more relationships with institutions and practitioners working in the here and now, even if we constantly butt heads with existing corporate imperatives, if only to help prepare the way for future innovators less set in their ways.

On the one hand, it’s hard not to imagine that kind of change as a threat to the industrial status quo; but on the other, that kind of change could be extremely profitable and productive, not only for the people effecting it, but also for whole industries that might learn to operate in ways that are less problematic and maybe even still profitable. This would count to me as a “contribution,” but it hinges on the specific issues we’re seeking to change and the hope that we could arrive at some improved or less objectionable form of industry than we have now; it’s fair, and I think important, to wonder whether the mission of critical scholarship is ultimately compatible with the market needs of media institutions. But if we see our scholarship as a form of activism, I think that implies some kind of commitment to trying to improve the industrial status quo, rather than throwing up one’s hands and declaring the industry a lost cause. At the end of the day, the goals of critical media industry studies seem to me to be to make a contribution of some sort that makes industries a more equitable site of culture production – or at least conceivable as such.

If we see our scholarship as a form of activism, I think that implies some kind of commitment to trying to improve the industrial status quo.

I think the question to what the media industries can provide media studies is a little bit easier to answer. As John Caldwell and others have pointed out, the media industries are already sites of theorisation and critical practice where practitioners are making sense of the worlds in which they work on an everyday level. So it makes sense that talking to media professionals, listening to the stories and narratives that they offer for negotiating those worlds, and recognising that they are already contributing to the attempt to make sense of media industries would save us the trouble of having to reinvent the wheel or actually embarrassing ourselves by speaking from a position of ignorance of what’s happening on the ground. That’s not to say we take practitioner theory at face value –like anything it should be interrogated with a critical lens. But trying to understand industrial production without talking to producers is like trying to make claims about consumption without talking to audiences.

So in simply talking to us – whether “us” as scholars or more generally as the public –media industries have the power to give us insight and access to this crucial site of meaning making, community, and practice. Fortunately, the media industries love to talk about themselves. Media professionals are constantly “contributing” to media studies by issuing forth a constant stream of discourses and practices for us to think about.

Trying to understand industrial production without talking to producers is like trying to make claims about consumption without talking to audiences.

What the industry isn’t always contributing, but could, is more of a willingness to offer constructive criticism of scholarship. We too often live in different worlds, when hearing more feedback from the industry about the ideas we generate as scholars would help us to hone our insights, critiques, and suggestions. Again, this is not to suggest we take the lead of industry uncritically, but to recognise that media practitioners have an on-the-ground perspective that we lack and might benefit from hearing.

“Hearing more feedback from the industry about the ideas we generate as scholars would help us to hone our insights, critiques, and suggestions.”

As I suggested above, I think that the most everyday manifestation of this, for me, at least, comes in teaching: hoping that someday there will be some kind of transfer of knowledge when my students exert their own agency within the media industries.

Through groups like Futures of Entertainment, I used to more frequently engage in direct dialogue with industry practitioners to share the ideas I was developing about licensing and world-sharing in the course of writing Media Franchising. I think the line I was always pushing was that in the rush within the media industries to embrace the logics of “transmedia storytelling,” there was more of a concern with writing/producing better stories than creating better conditions for a wide range of creativity. Traditional notions of authorship and centralised creative authority were being reinforced in order to ensure that transmedia narratives worked together in a nice neat way, and the idea of being a “licensed” creator was more disdained than ever. I think I felt there was an opportunity being missed to embrace a wider range of creative voices and let go of the idea that the best idea was the one authorised at the center of all these new industry strategies. Ultimately, I wanted to confront the industry with the idea that maybe licensing could be a good thing for creativity, rather than a persistent site of scorn and de-legitimation. I’m not sure I ever got much traction there. So in terms of that specific issue, I wish I had a little more success.

The most everyday manifestation of knowledge transfer comes in teaching.

While I still think there’s value in organisations like this that put scholars and industry into dialogue, I think I’m more energised lately by the idea of developing more one-on-one relationships with practitioners. Most recently, I was thrilled when, after attending his industry seminar as a form of ethnographic participant observation, a producer took the initiative to call me up and discuss how we might exchange ideas in the future. I’m hopeful that those kinds of relationships – driven less institutionally, and more by personal interest and investment – might encourage that kind of exchange and transfer of ideas in the future. That too, may be more of a long road. But it seems worth traveling.

Of course – whatever your site of research and research questions are will shape the approach that you take.

For Media Franchising, I used a combination of qualitative methodologies designed to help me understand industry practices and strategies while also the discourses used to make sense of them and give them value and meaning. This involved interviews with a number of professionals working in media franchising from a variety of different positions, and those were a thrill to do. Though I’d emphasise that I never got access to the space of production itself beyond anyone’s office – the interviews I conducted were stories told by professionals about the work, and not access to the work itself. But in a way, that really worked for me, because the project ended up being less about how media franchising works, and more the industrial meanings, identities, and discourses that produce it as a tangible phenomenon. I’m sure if I did have greater access, the findings would have been a bit different – maybe more interesting in some ways, but also less interesting in others.

Because I’m personally so often interested in doing this kind of discourse analysis of the cultures of production, I’m also a big fan of using trade journals for media industries research. I feel like in the age of production studies wherein some researchers have secured access to sites of production in Los Angeles and other media capitals, we’ve come to devalue the trade journal as “just” the promotional ramblings of public relations offices and their sycophantic friends writing the articles. Yet even if they are puff pieces, these trade stories circulate with Hollywood and other media industries as claims about how those cultures of production work. Compared to my interviews – which were stories that professionals had circulated to an audience of one (me) and equally needed to be taken with a grain of salt – at least trade journal reports circulate throughout a number of different communities working in these media sectors, above and below the line. In the future, therefore, I’m particularly interested in reasserting the value of trade discourse as a site of analysis.

 I’m a big fan of using trade journals for media industries research – for these circulate throughout different communities working in the media sectors, above and below the line.

But I also think that studies of the culture of production would also benefit from thinking more about popular claims that work to make sense of industries from a position on the outside. How are ideas about production, and professional’s ideas about those work worlds, shaped in any way by discourses and practices of non-professionals? Just as we’re sometimes interested in how the industry constructs and imagines its audiences (through practices like ratings and focus groups as well as stories about what Midwestern homemakers will and will not watch), I wonder if we might get some good mileage out of considering how consumers create knowledge about the world of production. I’m working on this right now – trying to consider an “audience function” within production cultures.

How are ideas about production shaped in any way by discourses and practices of non-professionals?

I think that many would argue that access (or lack thereof) presents a significant challenge – the ability of the industry to close off knowledge of its inner-workings and shut us out as researchers.

But actually I would suggest the most significant, and more insidious, challenge lies in privileging “insider” status and failing to figure out that we don’t need full access to start making significant interventions into how we understand industry and how that industry might be imagined to work. Lest that sound contradictory with my call that we listen carefully to the insights of practitioners on the ground, what I mean is to be wary of the scholarly positions we privilege. I think it is important that we try to address the voices of industry professionals in our work – but I don’t know that we need to celebrate the scholar’s ability to get inside. The industry is already talking to us – via Twitter, in trade articles, and more – so acting like we have to get inside ourselves to understand how practitioners are trying to negotiate and make sense of their work seems a little unnecessary and potentially self-centred. I think it’s great that production studies have encouraged us to get inside and look for this access – it is not in itself a problematic thing, and it yields great insights. We should try to understand media industries from all possible perspectives. But privileging media industry studies that gain this access as the single best way forward seems as limiting as it is enabling. The methodologies we choose should really be based on our research questions.

The methodologies we choose should really be based on our research questions.

This may sound strangely targeted, and even potentially irrelevant in an international context depending on different institutional rules, but one thing I would definitely like to see happen is for our field to develop a set of best practice guidelines for media industry research and the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) that monitor human subjects research for any institution receiving federal research funds (in the US, at least). I know that universities in some other nations have similar systems, while others have none, with varying degrees of oversight and concern for what we do in media studies in terms of researching the work worlds of industry. These aren’t even consistent with the US, as some institutions’ interpretation of federal guidelines – which are geared much more toward medical research and the physicians’ duty to “do no harm” than media industry researchers’ activist goals and critical, interventionist methods – are more and less rigorous and impactful on the work we do.

 Our field should develop a set of best practice guidelines for media industry research.

The IRB is extremely important, in that it protects human subjects that might help us contribute to our research – say, the below the line labourer who risks his or her position in a precarious economy by talking to us. There is an important function being performed here in making sure that industry researchers are taking appropriate steps to protect the confidentiality of partners in the industry who make be taking risks in making the kinds of contributions we’ve envisioned. But there comes a point where in the practical application of these important principles, IRBs have become more interested in protecting the university from the ire of corporations who don’t like the research. What I worry about is when the desire to protect human subjects requires researchers to get permission not just from individuals, but corporations. As with many things in the US, corporations seem to increasingly have the rights of the people. I’m not sure I want media institutions to be able to stop us from doing human subjects research if the humans themselves consent.

So toward the future, I hope that concerned organisations like ICA or SCMS might be able to draft some kind of guidelines – both for researchers and IRBs – to both affirm the importance of protecting, listening to, and respecting the perspectives of the people working in the media industries, and free us to be truly critical of institutions and structures of power that we might (hopefully, someday) be in a position to change.

Derek Johnson is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison