Media Life is a course intended for undergraduate students across campus. Its goal is to make people aware of the role that media play in their everyday life. The key to understanding a "media life" is to see our lives not as lived WITH media (which would lead to a focus on media effects and media-centric theories of society), but rather IN media (where the distinction between what we do with and without media dissolves).
23. “ The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads […] Publicis executives see [China, India, Russia and Brazil] as important sources of low-cost labor […] the Publicis Groupe will benefit from the global talent pool ”
Interinstitutional news coherence Inhabited Institutions & Organized Networks (photo: the Time Warner building in New York; photo Rik Hamelink, 21 October 2004, URL: http://www.enjoyradio.net/weblog/ny/index.html). We need to look at LARGE or SMALL companies differently they are all interconnected HUGE communicative complexity High labor mobility and contingency Opportunities for CONTROL as well as creative FREEDOM
Media deconcentration: US Film & Video
So how is work organized? Key structure of the global media industries: HOURGLASS. Here an example of the computer & video game industry MAP courtesy of Chase Martin, IU graduate student
So how is work organized? Key structure of the global media industries: HOURGLASS. Here an example of the music industry MAP courtesy of Chase Martin, IU graduate student
So how is work organized? Key structure of the global media industries: HOURGLASS. Here an example of the advertising industry PUBLICIS: LA HOLISTIC DIFFERENCE
Why worry about media industries? Berlusconi & Baywatch Effects; Outsourcing
Why worry about media industries? Berlusconi & Baywatch Effects; Outsourcing BERLUSCONI: Media Ownership = Political Power BAYWATCH: Media Commercialization = Displacement of Public Discourse by Distribution of Commodifiable Entertainment Products He is the third longest serving Prime Minister of the Italian Republic (President of the Council of Ministers of Italy), a position he has held at three different times; 1994–1995, 2001–2006 and since 2008.[1] He is the leader of the Forza Italia political movement, a centre-right party he founded in 1993. Before the 2008 Italian general elections he announced his intention to establish a new political party, People of Freedom (Popolo Delle Libertà), to be constituted by the merging of Forza Italia with the National Alliance party (Alleanza Nazionale), and other right wing parties later in 2008. His victory in the 2008 general elections paved the way for the fourth term as prime minister.
Why worry about media industries? Berlusconi & Baywatch Effects; Outsourcing
All 175 newspapers opeds after start of war: good thing
Within a few years: Bertelsmann CEO’s: Thomas Middelhoff 1998-2002; Gunther Thielen 2002-2007; Hartmut Ostrowski 2008 - …
Du bist deutschland: initiative of Bertelsmann AG: Leading members include Lufthansa, telecoms company Deutsche Telekom and the publisher, Bertelsmann. According to the latter, the work will be carried by a wide range of German media and is designed to lead to "a new mood in Germany". Total media investment may reach as high as € 30 million.
Beate Uhse AG: It was founded by former German war-time pilot and sex pioneer Beate Uhse-Rotermund in 1946 and started out as a distibutor of pamphlets on family planning called Schrift X (roughly: Writing X or Paper X) which was a major success. In 1962 the company opened the world's first sex shop in Flensburg. When pornography was finally made legal in West Germany in 1976, Beate Uhse was well-prepared with a widely known and respected brand name and an established mail order business. http://www1.dubistdeutschland.de/dbd/servlet/page/Deutschland_aus_Kinderaugen/home http://dubistdeutschland.amazink.de/
Ulrike Marie Meinhof (1934-1976) was a German left-wing militant and co-founder of the RAF or Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion) after originally working as a journalist for the monthly magazine konkret. In the next two years Meinhof participated in the various bank robberies and bombings executed by the group. On 9 May 1976 she was found hanged by a rope, fashioned from a towel, in her cell in the Stammheim Prison. The official findings were not accepted by many in the RAF[5] and other militant organisations, and there are still some who doubt their accuracy and believe that she was murdered by the authorities. http://www1.dubistdeutschland.de/dbd/servlet/page/Deutschland_aus_Kinderaugen/home http://dubistdeutschland.amazink.de/
Why worry about media industries? Berlusconi & Baywatch Effects
More people in germany feel sad about globalization and loss of power: Rammstein
titanic: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/
OUTSOURCING: movies
Globalization of production: trends towards centralized production (australia: postproduction) and regional specialization
GLOBALIZATION OF MEDIA WORK: ADVERTISING Quote from an August 6 2007 story in the New York Times
GLOBALIZATION OF MEDIA WORK: FILM TV Example of GPN/New International Division of Cultural Labor in the US movie industry: Runaway Production
GLOBALIZATION OF MEDIA WORK: GAMES
http://www.gdcfocuson.com/gos/
OUTSOURCING: videogames
GLOBALIZATION OF MEDIA WORK: JOURNALISM
direct consequence of taking creative work out of the exclusive hands of professionals and companies AND outsourcing work translocally: corporations cutting transaction/overhead costs of knowledge work & outsourcing to consumers
A couple of slides of media workspaces Advertising agency.
Al Jazeera broadcast newsroom/workspace
BBC TV production “behind the scenes” (of a Doctor Who special)
Game developers on the EA Vancouver campus. What do these spaces tell us: Its all informal (dressed down, casual), fun (lots of smiles), cool, hip, young people (!) But ALSO: high pressure, hard at work, busy, dynamic AND: IT/technology driven, office work, desktop work So in Media Work two contradictory claims about the future of work come together: high-tech rationalized/bureaucratized/deskbound knowledge work versus 2. flexible, creative, dynamic, open, fluid “work as play”
examples: recruitment video of Pandemic: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/corp/index.php - video for Troika design group: http://www.troika.tv/ - band video of Eve Online employees: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvM7av1o1Q
POC: Technology; Law & Policy; Organization of Work; Careers; Markets
POC: TECHNOLOGY
POC: LAWS
POC: ORGANIZATIONS
POC: CAREERS: flexibility (biased towards the young and the restless)
POC: MARKETS: 1. Editorial logic
First step: Analysis of the society structure (the establishment survey). Second step: Selection of the group of families as a representation of country (construction of the telemetric panel). Third step: Equipping the households with data collecting electronic devices. Fourth step: Day-to-day data transmission from the households to the computerized ''library'' of AGB Nielsen Media Research. Fifth step: Data processing and creation - out of thousands of elements - one consistent database. Sixth step: Determining, second by second, what programs were broadcast by individual stations. Seventh step: Providing customers with files, which, when used with appropriate software, give a full picture of the TV audience.
Final thoughts 1: TALENT = FANDOM Media work & FANDOM: social contract producers/consumers = leave me alone to do what I want to do + please acknowledge my work/what I’m doing