Public lecture delivered to the Monash Culture, Media, Economy Focus Program: https://www.monash.edu/arts/media-film-journalism/news-and-events/events/events/digital-intermediation-automating-our-media-diversity

1. DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION
AUTOMATING OUR MEDIA DIVERSITY THROUGH UNSEEN INFRASTRUCTURES
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
Senior Lecturer Online Communication and Media
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

3. VINCE NEILSTEIN
‘EARACHE’S METALIZER APP AUTOMATICALLY GENERATES CUSTOM
METAL PLAYLISTS THAT DRAW FROM ALL THE METAL AVAILABLE ON
SPOTIFY, NOT JUST EARACHE RELEASES. USERS CAN ADJUST FOUR
SLIDERS — “METAL,” “DEATH,” “THRASH” AND “GRIND,” — DEPENDING
ON HOW MUCH OF EACH SUB-GENRE THEY WANT IN THEIR
PLAYLIST, AND THEN A FIFTH SLIDER DETERMINING THE NUMBER OF
TRACKS IN THE PLAYLIST. PRESS THE “METALIZE” BUTTON AND A
PLAYLIST MATERIALIZES BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES.’

5. Content visibility and cultural production - the case for digital intermediation
An overview of digital intermediation - unseen infrastructures
Automated (?) processes for online content producers
Inherent problems of digital intermediation
Digital ability and policy levers, for media diversity through digital
intermediation
TODAY…

6. CONTENT VISIBILITY

7. FOR CULTURAL PRODUCTION
CONTENT VISIBILITY
Cultural intermediation enables the transfer of value of media texts from one group of stakeholders to
another (Bourdieu, 1984; Smith Maguire & Matthews, 2010; Hutchinson, 2017);
This value transfer now occurs across digital media devices and processes, often without the input of
the user, limiting our capacity for media diversity;
Limited media diversity impacts our broader understanding of society;
Our contemporary media ecology is multi-staged, multi-faceted content production process;
The combination of agents operating in this space is the basis for digital intermediation.

8. DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION

9. MARK ZUCKERBERG, FACEBOOK’S F8 DEVELOPER CONFERENCE, 30 APRIL 2019
THE FUTURE IS PRIVATE. THIS IS THE NEXT
CHAPTER FOR OUR SERVICES. I GET THAT A LOT
OF PEOPLE AREN’T SURE THAT WE’RE SERIOUS
ABOUT THIS. I KNOW THAT WE DON’T EXACTLY
HAVE THE STRONGEST REPUTATION ON PRIVACY
RIGHT NOW, TO PUT IT LIGHTLY.

10. STATISTICA, 2019
UNSEEN INFRASTRUCTURES
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION
(Cooper, 2019; Statistica, 2020)
YouTube - 450 hours of content/minute
Twitter - 500 million Tweets/day
WeChat - 1.09 billion monthly users
TikTok - Annoys Trump
Process: platforms > regulation > commercial imperatives > content creators >automated
calculations

11. UNSEEN INFRASTRUCTURES
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION

12. TECHNOLOGIES
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION
Platforms, personal tracking devices, drones, sensors, smart devices
Interoperability: ‘interoperability is needed to support seamless and heterogeneous
communications in the IoT [Internet of Things]. Achieving interoperability is vital for
interconnecting multiple things together across different communication networks’ (Elkhodr,
2016, 86)
Interfaces, databases

13. AGENCIES
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION
Between online content producers and platforms
Multichannel Networks (MCNs)
SME: ‘built upon the technological, networking, and commercial affordances of multiple, rapidly scaling,
near-frictionless, global social media platforms—for example, YouTube, Facebook, SnapChat, and
Twitch’ (Cunningham, and Craig, 2016)
Genuine user engagement
A visibility strategy - to move talent from small (micro) audiences towards larger fan bases
Microplatformization (Hutchinson, 2019)

14. AUTOMATION
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION
Intelligent technologies (Thomas, 2018), bias/surveillance
(Andrejevic, 2019), media literacy (Valtonen et al., 2019)
Machine learning, algorithms, recommendation systems
Sense-making mechanism (Wilson, 2017; Gillespie, 2016)
Political power (Bucher, 2018), bias (Noble, 2018), black-boxes
(Pasquale, 2015), homogeneity (Whittaker et al., 2018)

15. ONLINE CONTENT PRODUCERS
Microcelebrities (Senft, 2013; Marwick, 2013)
Digital Influencers (Abidin, 2016)
Digital First Personalities (Hutchinson, 2019)

16. IMAGE SOURCE: HTTPS://I.IMGUR.COM/K2Z3MLI.JPG
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION IN PROCESS
ONLINE CONTENT PRODUCERS
‘…cultural intermediation describes the
process of moving “cultural” information
around’ (Piper, 2014, p.248)
Digital intermediation can place more value
on some content over other: K-pop

17. PLATFORM POWER (AGAIN)
MEDIA DIVERSITY?

18. DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION PROCESS
ONLINE CONTENT PRODUCERS
Process-relational philosophy
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)
A state of perpetual exchange,
communication, opposition,
conversion, translation, inter-
dependency (Robinson, 2016)

19. DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION PROBLEMS

20. NETFLIX CONUNDRUMS?
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION PROBLEMS
OR?

21. A CALL FOR INCREASED USER AGENCY
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATION PROBLEMS

22. MEDIA DIVERSITY: PLATFORM POWER
& DIGITAL ABILITY

23. ARC DISCOVERY: MEDIA PLURALISM AND ONLINE NEWS - MEDIAPLURALISM.ORG.AU
IMPACTS ON MEDIA DIVERSITY
PUBLIC AFFAIRS/NON-PUBLIC AFFAIRS
If an automated news
aggregator favours ‘Group B’
over ‘Group A’, the readership
will be less informed - or worse,
misinformed.

24. IMAGE SOURCE: LA TIMES
PLATFORM POWER (AGAIN)
MEDIA DIVERSITY?

25. DIGITAL ABILITY
MEDIA DIVERSITY?
We simply do not understand the vastly varying digital ability of users
Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII): Digital Ability
‘understood through the attitudes, skills and activities of individuals, and serve as important
measures that either include or exclude users within a digital society’ (Thomas et al., 2018)
Public service media is well positioned to build digital ability and guide citizens through the digital
intermediation ecology

26. Bodó, B., Helberger, N., Eskens, S., & Möller, J. (2019, p.218).
PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA HAVE CHARTERS THAT OBLIGE THEM TO EDUCATE,
INFORM, AND SUSTAIN SOCIAL COHESION, AND AN ONGOING CHALLENGE
FOR PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA IS INTERPRETING THEIR MISSION IN THE LIGHT
OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL CONTEXT. THE
PERFORMANCE METRICS BY WHICH THESE ORGANISATIONS MEASURE
THE SUCCESS OF THEIR ALGORITHMIC RECOMMENDATIONS WILL REFLECT
THESE PARTICULAR GOALS, NAME PROFITABILITY, LOYALTY, TRUST, OR
SOCIAL COHESION

27. PSM FOR AUTOMATED MEDIA DIVERSITY
Helberger (2018), suggests recommender systems can come in the following four manifestations:
1.Liberal Recommender: Informs about politics, shows political alternatives, makes expert citizens smarter, and more broadly provides people
with what they want;
2.Participatory Recommender: Maps diversity of ideas and opinions in society, responds to differences in information needs, styles, and
preferences;
3.Deliberative Recommender: Nudges to encounter different perspectives, serendipity, activates people to comment, share, engage, like, dislike;
4.Constructionalist Recommender: Nudges people to encounter and acknowledge minority opinions, but also supports finding and engaging
with like-minded folk

28. CONCLUSIONS

29. Profitability Loyalty Trust
Social
Cohesion
IT!!!!!!

30. DR JONATHON HUTCHINSON
JONATHON.HUTCHINSON@SYDNEY.EDU.AU
@DHUTCHMAN