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Cultural Intermediation, Algorithmic Culture and Public Service Media: Social media, co-creation and influence

Presented byDr Jonathon HutchinsonDepartment of Media and Communicationjonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au

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Today…– Think through how we (audiences/users) consume

media – and the impact of algorithms– How are algorithms impacting on culture?– What is public service media (PSM)?– How should PSM be engaging in algorithmic

culture?– Explore one program that demonstrates PSM

algorithmic culture, #7DaysLater

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YouTube

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Interactive time…

https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/1a401610-0050-4e85-96c7-9e87bf1c077c

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How are algorithms shaping our culture?– Think of this through a media studies lens– Raymond Williams notes culture is specific to

each society, where “the making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions” (1989)

– How does technology impact on that definition?– Newspapers during the late 90s limiting the

‘publicness’ due to technological advances in printing and distribution

– Algorithms in contemporary space – also limiting the publicness?

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Public Service Media (PSM)

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Public Service Media (PSM)– “has been tasked to serve the societal and

cultural needs of each member nation and to promote democracy and participation within the national geographical boundaries” (Głowacki, 2015, p. 26)

– Built on PSB, which “was to inform, educate and entertain with total independence from political power and commercial pressure” (Tremblay, 2016, p. 194)

– The thematic shift from PSB and towards PSM is taken as “common parlance as services are extended across ‘new’ media platforms and experiments undertaken into new interactive content forms” (Debrett, 2015, p. 557).

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PSM under pressure– Barnett (2015) remind us that PSM is increasingly

under attack because of conservative governments, introspective and disorganised left political parties, hostile media environments, and substantially reduced funding arrangements

– Tremblay (2016) also observes the mounting pressure by governments on PSM in its “systematic reduction” in the field of media and communication, which he notes as a “gradual and calculated suffocation of public service media” (p. 192).

– PSM value tests

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The Checkout…

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/thecheckout/clips/

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PSM from the research perspective– Supported through arguments that note it should

provide new multiplatform services beyond television and radio (Steemers, 2016)

– It is a tool for online citizenship and civic engagement (Debrett, 2015)

– A locale for ‘distinctive’ media system innovation (Cunningham, 2015)

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PSM: tokenistic participation?– Głowacki and Jackson (2014) highlight that

websites are often ‘bolt-on’ extras for marketing purposes

– Jakubowicz (2014): “seems to remain in most cases [as] marginal forms, either designed to obtain input … that professional journalists use in producing their programmes, under their exclusive control, or web pages … serving as a display case for UGC” (p. 229)

– No one is looking at algorithmic cultures, particularly through social media

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Participation is dead?– While it has gone out of style, participation is

crucial for cultural production– Monitoring user behaviour is certainly how media

is distributed, if not produced – e.g. Buzzfeed and Vice Magazine

– But what about public issues and the impact of social media?

– “Social media play a prominent role in mediating issues of public concern, not only providing the stage on which public debates play out, but also shaping their topics and dynamics” (Burgess & Matamoros-Fernández, 2016)

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What’s an algorithm?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hfOvs8pY1k

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Who cares about algorithms?– Netflix: bad programming– YouTube: bad videos– PSM: Incorrect public issues– “offloading of cultural work onto computers,

databases and other types of digital technologies has prompted a reshuffling of some of the words most closely associated with culture, giving rise to new senses of the term that may be experientially available but have yet to be well named, documented or recorded” (Striphas, 2015: 395)

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Cultural Intermediaries– Taste agents (Bourdieu,1984) – Market agents (Negus, 2002)– Institutional taste and cultural agents

(Hutchinson, 2016)– Multi Channel Networks who facilitate social

media cultural intermediaries– Essena O’Neill, Fun For Louis, MoreZoella

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Social Media and Influence

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Cultural intermediaries and PSM– Can be termed microinfluencers (Abidin, 2015)– Essential for distributing content – Generate crucial public issues through social

media– Feed issues back into PSM– Think of Triple J Hack, for example

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#7DaysLater

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Social Network Analysis

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So what?– Algorithms are here to stay for content production– They need to be closely monitored to ensure

information is correct– This is crucial for PSM, and other media orgs too– Cultural intermediaries are the key agents here– These are the future media work roles

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Dr Jonathon Hutchinson@dhutchmanjonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au