Making Media Course Slides 06

Editor's Notes

• #2: 9 What makes media work special – exploring the affective and creative qualities of media work, looking at the TV, film and music industries specifically. Readings: Chapters 20-24 from the Making Media textbook. Lecture date: March 2.
• #4: entrepreneurship is considered key in making media it is such a common frame, that it encompasses everything e. as a symbolic form: a way of thinking about everything, a panacea e. as affordance networks: considering that new businesses (esp in the media) are all versions of each other, interrelated e. as a cultural practice: a way of addressing any kind of issue (ideation, prototyping, testing, iterative/agile development, move fast and break things)
• #5: entrepreneurship and startups as a symbolic form: a panacea, solution a way of thinking about everything: a cycle of conceptualization, prototyping, testing, launching, constant updating, and eventually pivoting or discontinuing. a metaphor for his proposed system of governance that contemporary nation states should adopt to be able to act flexibly and efficiently in the face of political, economic and social instability. Startups tend to be seen as ‘ready-made’ solutions for all sorts of problems
• #6: facebok motto: move fast and break things
• #8: voor verhalenvertellers (en dat zijn we allemaal) is er een inhoudelijke/ethische uitdaging en een esthetische: de mediaprofessional als DJ, de producent en consument als concullega’s, trend van verhaal naar vertelwereld. Facebook in NL: 10 miljoen gebruikers
• #9: Facebook HQ omschrijving van de omgeving, de gebouwen, sfeer, inrichting. namen van vergaderruimtes: be yourself, field of dreams, embargo, be open, be bold, …   organisatie van werk motivational posters – marketing naar binnen ipv naar buiten vier mensen, alle 4 onder de 30, allemaal in hiring/firing posities, nemen erg veel mensen aan. geen overzicht, los zand (vandaar marketing naar binnen toe): this is your company now multidisciplinary teams (product development, research) maar niet de coders (die zitten het dichtst rondom Mark & Sheryl) projectwerk: constant jezelf verbeteren/uitdagen, nieuwe dingen doen. vaardigheden: een idee hebben, dit in code kunnen vervatten, en het uittesten   bedrijfscultuur informele cultuur (Mark & Sheryl), campuscultuur (gaming, eten) cult of personality van move fast & break things en ship love naar…   perspectief/visie computational thinking/software solutions to social problems infrastructure vs culture geloof in big (dunne) data ipv dikke data politieke rol “veel mensen bij facebook zijn kritisch” en die discussies zijn soms vermoeiend; als iets niet goed lijkt/voelt wordt er wel snel ingegrepen buiten SV niet vertellen dat je voor Fb werkt
• #18: FOUR OBSERVATIONS: 1. ze denken in technologische oplossingen, 2. het bedrijf is zo gesloten als mogelijk, 3. ze hebben weinig overzicht en 4. er heerst frustratie dat ze niet worden geloofd. INFRASTRUCTURE VERSUS CULTURE OPEN VERSUS CLOSED PRODUCT VERSUS PROCESS IDEALISM VERSUS COMMERCIALISM
• #19: Macron france startup nation 15 june 2017
• #21: Mariana Mazzucato: According to conventional wisdom, innovation is best left to the dynamic entrepreneurs of the private sector, and government should get out of the way. But what if all this was wrong? What if, from Silicon Valley to medical breakthroughs, the public sector has been the boldest and most valuable risk-taker of all? 'A brilliant book' Martin Wolf, Financial Times 'One of the most incisive economic books in years' Jeff Madrick, New York Review of Books 'Mazzucato is right to argue that the state has played a central role in producing game-changing breakthroughs' Economist 
• #23: business model, customer relationships, market, audience needs.
• #24: the entrepreneur as savior? Financial: save money; risk vs reward, overdraft Family: supportive family/significant other; competing commitments (+ Friends/social life) Career: loss of employment security, uncertainty, dealing with failure Psychological: failure and rejection, emotional rollercoaster, mental health Health: eating/exercising, diet (15-18 hour workdays) and: no more critique of ‘the system’: everything is on YOU (the individual)
• #25: the entrepreneur as savior? Financial: save money; risk vs reward, overdraft Family: supportive family/significant other; competing commitments (+ Friends/social life) Career: loss of employment security, uncertainty, dealing with failure Psychological: failure and rejection, emotional rollercoaster, mental health Health: eating/exercising, diet (15-18 hour workdays) and: no more critique of ‘the system’: everything is on YOU (the individual)
• #26: Startups have deeply interconnected value propositions Affordance network: remember EVERYTHING IS A REMIX? Therefore, they can be more appropriately defined as ‘affordance networks’ (Rasi, Hautakangas, & Väyrynen, 2015). To outline these affordance networks, it is necessary to map patterns of affordance change within start-up ecosystems over time Reality television covers a wide range of television programming formats, from game or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning programmes produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (a modern example is Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance – or voyeurism – focused  productions such as Big Brother. consider US Writers Strike of 2006-2008: Exactly if and how the WGA's Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA) should apply to other TV and film categories such as reality television and animation had been inconsistent over the years and were an area of much dispute. Programs such as Real People and That's Incredible!, which were arguably "reality" shows of the 1980s, were covered by the MBA, whereas more recently produced reality shows such as Survivor and America's Next Top Model are not.[39] Many producers of reality programming argue that since these shows are mostly, if not entirely, unscripted, there is no writer. The WGA counters that the process of creating interesting scenarios, culling raw material, and shaping it into a narrative with conflict, character arc, and storyline constitutes writing and should fall under its contract. In the summer of 2006, the WGAW attempted to organize employees of America's Next Top Model.[40][41] The employees voted to join the WGA, but then they were fired and production continued without them.
• #27: Startups can be a way to engage with a specific real-world issue (rather than simply a way to make money quickly) The example of UrbanSitter substantiates the notion of start-ups as a symbolic form but, even more, suggests to alternatively conceive start-ups, with Couldry (2004), as practice or, with Krämer and Bredekamp (2013), as cultural technique, where the founding of a start-up can be a way of thinking about and engaging with a real-world situation or problem rather than being primarily driven by a techno-economic or business rationale.
• #28: rise of entrepreneurship framed as individual solutions to systemic problems alternative conceptualization of e.: not as business savior, but as social support system. demystifying the discourse around entrepreneurship (as oriented toward BUSINESS, RATIONALITY, MONEY, the INDIVIDUAL, SUCCESS) toward something that is SOCIAL, COLLABORATIVE, AFFECTIVE/EMOTIONAL/PASSIONATE, IMPACT
• #29: We did convenience sampling (in collaboration with MultipleJournalism.org) to determine news organisations that are doing things differently, whether in terms of business models, newsgathering, storytelling forms and formats, audience relationships, and/or distribution methods. In 2013 I embarked on a five-year project titled “Beyond Journalism” (also the title of a forthcoming book on the project, contracted with Polity Press) charting the development of news startups around the world, seeking to understand the ways digital journalism takes shape in the context of new organisational forms and new operational practices. Tamara Witschge (University of Groningen) joined the project in 2015. In our project we critically investigate the work of those who are called ‘entrepreneurial journalists’ in a variety of settings and countries. The project, while still on-going, currently covers 21 cases in 11 countries (see Table 1). Our identification of startups in the field follows that of Bruno and Nielsen (2012) and Powers and Zambrano (2016): organizations built primarily around a web presence, that have no formal affiliation with legacy news media, and that seek to be recognized by their peers as journalistic. That said, over the years some companies have ended up participating in our project because of opportunity sampling, not fitting neatly our original operationalization.
• #30: pilot: nieuwsatelier
• #34: affective labor is overall term, meaning work that you put care into and that takes different skills – including emotional (bodily) ones – to do also: relational/caring labor/work: Increasingly, part of the job of artists is to foster and sustain ongoing interaction with a community of individual fans. Artists must balance their audiences’ need to connect with them and with one another with their own economic and social needs. as audiences have taken to social media to interact directly with them, expectations for more personal relationships have increased, as have the importance of such connections in shaping economic fortunes. the dialectic tension between connection and privacy, to the funhouse mirror nature of emerging technologies. ALSO: anticipatory labor (preparation + recovery), prospective labor (networking + skills upgrades), speculative/hopeful labor
• #35: immaterial labor is a category of work where people turn the whole self into work (material labor is learned skills in industrial settings, like operating machinery; immaterial would be social & communication skills)
• #36: immaterial labor is a category of work where people turn the whole self into work (material labor is learned skills in industrial settings, like operating machinery; immaterial would be social & communication skills)
• #37: emotional labor is the process by which workers are expected to manage their feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rules and guidelines (for example, compliance, cooperation, customer satisfaction etc)
• #38: All of this highlights the importance of media work/making media as a form of affective labor: work intended to produce emotions in people - but (importantly) also takes an extraordinary amount of emotion to produce (!)
• #40: passionate work: extreme emotions as part of making the work meaningful (suffering from exploitation, glass ceiling etc but “cannt believe I’m getting paid to do this”) Journalists genuinely care about journalism. Despite misgivings about established media companies, about the management of the industry as a whole, or regarding the way people have come to distrust or avoid the news – practitioners still embrace the profession for its promise of enabling an open democratic society characterized by free speech and the free flow of information. Journalists self-identify strongly with the profession, referring to journalism as their “calling”, “duty” or “moral obligation.” Their comments suggest an intrinsic motivation (Witschge 2013) and emotional investment regarding the profession, much like a craftsman has an inherent desire to do their job well (Sennett 2008). This passion for journalism begets three distinct meanings in the discourse of those we interviewed: aesthetics, engagement, and emotional environment. Passion project & aesthetic passion
• #41: passionate work: extreme emotions as part of making the work meaningful (suffering from exploitation, glass ceiling etc but “cannt believe I’m getting paid to do this”)
• #42: on the temporal fragility of emotional work
• #45: business models: money attention autonomy/freedom reputation (2-4 are the ingredients of fandom)
• #46: zetland live: https://www.zetland.dk/live
• #47: https://debalie.nl/artikelen/waarom-live-journalism-wie-zijn-wij/ De Balie Live Journalism
• #48: motivations: technology, economy, culture, and social. tech: belief in online
• #49: We are more than just producers of stories. Outride.rs, our web publication, is our flagship project. But “Outriders” is an organisation dedicated to reinventing journalism. We want to innovate while preserving journalist values and find the new ways for them to strive. However, solutions journalism can contribute to the journalistic movement beyond simply fixing its image. It can augment and complement the press’ traditional watchdog role, presenting citizens with a more complete view of issues. In addition, as David Bornstein puts it, it can enhance the impact of investigative reporting, by presenting evidence that entrenched problems can, in fact, be solved. That is particularly interesting in countries where the media scene is extremely polarised. Another side of this problem is the lack of trust that lead to apathy and resulted in people not being engaged with politics on a local level. Both issues are very much relevant for Poland at this very moment. One of the goals of solutions journalism is to swift the conversation, from accusations and problems to a more complete and balanced view of these issues, helping to drive more effective citizenship. https://medium.com/outriders/bringing-solutions-journalism-to-poland-12fe9da6f83b https://medium.com/outriders/outriders-network-building-infrastructure-for-the-future-be2350b9c478
• #52: making it work: TOGETHER: social support, family like in Howard Becker’s art worlds: journalists don’t do it alone (even if they strike out on their own) In her work on how artists construct an identity, Alison Bain signals how “to be a professional artist, then, essentially involves successful claim and defence of professional status through the construction and maintenance of an artistic identity” (2005: 34). In doing so, Bain highlights three issues shaping the occupational identity of the artist: The significance of being part of a community (that confers recognition, a sense of belonging, as well as mutually establishing the legitimacy of what you are doing); The significance of working freely, as a matter of personal choice, and being creative (that both enables practitioners to accept the precariousness of their careers as it constrains efforts to do something about this precarity – as freedom, choice and creativity are attributes that most people generally associate with leisure activities rather than salaried work); The significance of ‘the art of compromise’, as practitioners tend to have to supplement their income from art with secondary employment.
• #53: making it work: TOGETHER:co-ops, organized networks like in Howard Becker’s art worlds: journalists don’t do it alone (even if they strike out on their own)
• #54: making it work: TOGETHER: communities of practice, peers like in Howard Becker’s art worlds: journalists don’t do it alone (even if they strike out on their own)
• #57: The Correspondent existential instability and precariousness are the flipside of creativity “wanting to make a difference, being a pioneer, doing something different, something new, working with cool people.”
• #58: The Correspondent existential instability and precariousness are the flipside of creativity “wanting to make a difference, being a pioneer, doing something different, something new, working with cool people.”
• #61: culture: the freedom the independent environment offered to pursue whatever our participants considered to be quality work, rather than being evaluated on the basis of criteria related to productivity.
• #62: Alexander Beets – Femke Lakerveld