This presentation was given at the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), presented in Montreal Canada, 14 July 2015.

1. Conceptualising Community Social Media: The Promise of
Cultural Intermediation
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman
International association of media and communication research
Community Communication Section
Theorizing Alternative, Community and Citizen Media

2. Cultural studies
Community media + DIY Citizenship = community social media
Network theory
Digital Media technologies
Cultural intermediation
3 case studies that
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

3. Cultural Studies - useful to understand online
communities
Community Media - maker culture as a form of
resistant against dominant discourse
DIY Citizenship - making as a critical protest that
reflects on power through institutions,
infrastructures, communicates and practice
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

4. Community Social Media - combination of the
collaborative and enabling practices of social media,
with the political and critical engagement of DIY making
Disjuncture with dominant discourse - there is very little
adjustment to power structures through community
social media
How can this problem be addressed?
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

5. Networking power as gatekeeping to include or exclude actors
based on their potential to add value or jeopardise the network;
Network power to coordinate the protocols of communication or
the rules for participate within the network;
Networked power which are the collective and multiple forms of
power, referred to by Castells as ‘states’, within the network; and
finally,
Network-making power, critical as it is “(a) the ability to
constitute network(s) and to program/reprogram the network(s) in
terms of the goals assigned to the network; and (b) the ability to
connect and ensure the cooperation of different networks by
sharing common goals and combining resources while fending off
competition from other networks by setting up strategic
cooperation”(Castells, 2011, p. 776).
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

6. Network-making power, critical as it is “(a) the ability to constitute network(s)
and to program/reprogram the network(s) in terms of the goals assigned to
the network; and (b) the ability to connect and ensure the cooperation of
different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources
while fending off competition from other networks by setting up strategic
cooperation”(Castells, 2011, p. 776).
1st characteristic: Common goals
2nd characteristic: Switchers “control the connecting points between various
strategic networks” for example “the connection between the political networks
and the media networks to produce and diffuse specific political-ideological
discourses” (Castells, 2011, p. 777).
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

7. Cultural intermediation
Bourdieu (1984) wrote of the ‘new cultural intermediaries’ as those roles concerned with new
occupations between consumption and production of cultural products.
Cultural intermediaries are ‘the taste makers defining what counts as good taste and cool culture
in today’s marketplace’ (Maguire & Matthews, 2014, 1).
Negus (2002) picked up the cultural intermediary framework to highlight the significance within
the market environment, which has recently been appropriated for the media (Maguire &
Matthews, 2010), fashion (Skov, 2014), journalism (O'Donnell & Hutchinson, 2015) and
advertising (Nixon, 2014), for example.
I continue this trajectory to argue cultural intermediation is useful in assembling and mobilising
community social media networks for political purposes
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

9. #ISIS
• Captured between 17 and 21
June
• 408,381 Tweets
• 176 online communities
• Most influential
@permbambungan
• Most connected user
@terror_monitor

10. #KoinUntuk
• Collected between 23 February
8 April
• 22,881 Tweets
• Most connected node
@istandforbali3
• Most influential @iyf_id

11. NSW #PlaySafe
• Collected between 13 and 23
April
• 464 tweets
• Most connected user
@casmangroup
• Most influential user
@seastsydhealth

12. Observations
• Users congregate online to form community social media
groups
• These groups have problems championing critical and
sincere political participation
• Cultural intermediation through network-making power
mobilise, connect and empower small clusters
• This is consistent with preliminary findings across three
research fields
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson
University of Sydney
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman

13. Jonathon Hutchinson
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
@dhutchman