Cultural Intermediaries

Within media organizations, cultural intermediaries are the conduits between the organizational, management and production stakeholders, and the audiences wishing to participate in the co-production of cultural artefacts. They are translators of tastes, languages, norms, rules and regulatory frameworks between the organizational and audience stakeholder groups. Cultural intermediaries have historically been perceived as one of three substructures. First, cultural intermediaries have been observed as the construction of new facilitating roles between production and consumption of cultural goods (Bourdieu in A social critique of the judgement of taste. Routledge, London, 1984). Second, they are conceived as the taste agents that promote a relationship between creativity and economy (Smith Macguire and Miller 2014). Third, cultural intermediaries can be conceived as both new cultural production facilitators and economic taste agents within the cultural industries. In the context of this book, cultural intermediation takes on the role of the third substructure by both representing emerging new roles within media organizations that engage the increasingly blurred lines between cultural productions, while also incorporating the significance of the marketplace within cultural production. Further, and within public service media, cultural goods production facilitates a particular role within society insofar as content performs specific normative functions, for example, to educate, innovate and entertain. In this context, this chapter makes a case for the importance of cultural intermediation and how it is applied within the public service media sector engaging in co-creative cultural production, primarily through the efforts of online communities. This chapter then explores how online communities tend to employ heterarchy models of governance, where lead users influence the community norms and collaborative efforts. Heterarchy governance models indicate the rejection of top-down hierarchies, presenting a tension in how these spaces are governed: Is it by the hosting organization or the participants? Contradictorily, institutions operate through hierarchies as indicated through levels of management, which are in place to provide a clear focus for the organization’s goals while also facilitating the management of multiple individuals to mitigate concerns surrounding group complexity. The praxis of heterarchies and hierarchies indicates the necessity for cultural intermediation to not only manage the difference between polities, but to also ensure the interests of the stakeholders are calibrated and that information and knowledge are suitably exchanged to collaboratively produce cultural artefacts. Cultural intermediation provides the backdrop for exploring co-creation within the media organization setting, particularly when exploring participation across non-organizational platforms as the basis for the following four case studies. In doing so, this chapter also looks at the role new media technologies, specifically social media, play in the production methodology and ecology of institutional arrangements.

If we want to understand cultural intermediation within media organizations, we should look at the case of PSM as a leading innovative organization that has a history of engaging large groups of individuals to co-create cultural goods. PSM requires a particular kind of media organization in that it is unique to the country in which it resides. They are neither state media operations nor are they a commercial media organization: They are often a combination of commercial, subscription and government-funded operations that are arranged around facilitating national culture and providing an array of public services. PSM is guided by a particular set of values, often referred to as its PSM remit, which is built upon the traditional values of the BBC, often referenced as the founding model of public service broadcasting. Termed ‘Reithian values’ after the first Director General of the BBC, Sir John Reith, these PSM values include concepts such as the application of core principles of universality of availability and appeal, provision for minorities, education of the public, distance from vested interests, quality programming standards, programme maker independence and fostering of national culture and the public sphere (Cunningham in Hidden innovation: Policy, industry and the creative sector, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2013). Through these values, PSM organizations located in all regions of the globe are positioned to produce, procure and distribute a particular kind of media for its citizens. This chapter explores the formation of public service broadcasting, the semantic shift towards public service media’s use of technologies to engage in new production and distribution of public services, and locates public service media within co-creation. In doing so, this chapter looks at several co-creative projects facilitated through PSM organizations around the globe including the BBC’s Connected Studio, the CBC’s Your News project and NPR’s StoryCorp. In doing so, this chapter explores audience participation in media organizations from a global and comparative perspective, highlighting how audiences, producers and organizations are approaching co-creation in different geographic locations through cultural intermediation.

Convergence culture has moved through three distinct stages that demonstrate varying degrees of audience participation. If we are to understand participation within global media organizations, we need to look at cultural intermediation as the most contemporary approach towards a genuine convergence culture. Building on the conceptual work of Chap. 1, this chapter is organized around three distinct sections to strengthen the argument for cultural intermediation within global media organizations. Sect. 1 explores ‘Convergence Culture: The first wave’ and is an opportunity to revisit convergence culture theory from its earliest inception through fandom and textual reappropriation through to its cross sector integration into the policy and regulation governance fields. Beyond the foundational work of convergence culture by Henry Jenkins, this section brings to the fore convergent journalism (Bruns in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and beyond: From production to produsage. Peter Lang, New York, 2008), copyright (Lessig 2006), economics (Benkler in The wealth of networks. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2006) and management (Shirky 2010). The second section, ‘Convergence Debunked?’, examines the theories that have been used to quash the futuristic rhetoric of convergence culture. By revisiting the work of Weber and Foucault who describe bureaucracy and governmentality, this section of the chapter argues for governance that incorporates convergence yet maintains the structure of institutionalization. The final section in this chapter ‘Cultural Intermediation and the Creative Economy’ builds on the affordances of convergent new governance models to demonstrate the contemporary organizational approach of convergence culture that incorporates cultural intermediation. This section demonstrates it is possible to conduct convergent media production with cultural intermediation by engaging in the principles of the creative industries’ approach towards economics and politics. This is done in part by exploring other participation and co-creation models within media organizations through other global examples of the BBC’s Connected Studio, Capture Wales, 4iP, Channel 4’s Central Station and The Guardian’s Open Journalism project. The combination of these three sections provides the basis for the following four case studies.

The introduction to this chapter outlines the incorporation of social media platforms and PSM globally. It then moves towards the background of the ABC and how they have incorporated social media platforms, co-creation and user participation historically since developing their online presence. The scholarship acknowledges that public service broadcasting has developed beyond the production and procurement of programming, to also include innovative public services distributed across a range of digital platforms and technologies. Further, globalization has an enormous impact on the policy and regulation aspect of public service media (PSM), especially with digital technologies and social media use as interactive tools for content production, where scholars are exploring concepts around a PSM 2.0 model. After introducing the ABC and PSM as a particular type of non-commercial media organization, this chapter outlines ABC Pool (abc.net.au/pool), a now defunct platform that was developed and facilitated by the ABC to enable users to contribute user-created content (UCC). This UCC was hosted on ABC supported servers, and in some instances, ABC long-form radio documentaries, web productions, gallery exhibitions and television productions used some of the more suitable contributions. Users could contribute content as audio, photography, video or text to themed projects that were mostly facilitated by Radio National producers, who would remix the contributions into 53-minute feature documentaries around that theme. Users also had the opportunity to create their own themed projects and co-create with the other ABC Pool users. The platform operated under a Creative Commons licensing system which enabled content to move seamlessly between mediums, for example, online to television, while maintaining the original contributor’s authorship. ABC Pool was one of the first user-created content sites of the ABC and challenged many of the Editorial Policies, the legislated regulatory framework under which the ABC operates. This case study demonstrates how the ABC experimented with user contributions included in co-creative production models and highlights emerging governance models that incorporate participatory production between institutions and audiences.

This chapter begins by providing an overview of the key issues associated with new media and audience participation. It then moves to a specific case study of mobile technologies and public service media (PSM) through the MyBurb case study. During 2011, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Pool project developed an experiment that sought to combine emerging augmented reality (AR) technology with the archival collection of the ABC. Communication scholars have argued for the significance of one’s representation of space and place through the increasing use of mobile media by providing a unique context to the location. Additionally, the field acknowledges the role of cultural institutions as critical to add context to the ‘mobile media space’ by providing access to their archival content collection. The MyBurb project attempted to alter Australian suburbs by augmenting ABC archives in contemporary suburban environments to explore the blur between physical and digital spaces with its citizens. Mobile media, specifically geo-locative AR applications such as Layar are ‘one of the most widely used mobile AR applications’ (Liao and Humphreys in New Media & Society, Online: 2, 2014) and challenge the sociological implications of hybrid spaces as ‘[m]obile interfaces … allow users to be constantly connected to the Internet whilst walking through urban spaces’ (de Souza e Silva in New Media & Society 13: 261, 2006). The project was successfully implemented, but was rarely utilized by the audience it sought to engage, revealing a division between aspects of the ABC’s remit and engaging its audience through mobile technology and environmental hybridity. This observation supports the cultural production gap Hesmondhalgh (The cultural industries, Sage, London, 2007) identified between the production and consumption of cultural goods, where this chapter argues the cultural production gap could be facilitated through technological intermediation as part of the broader concept of cultural intermediation. This chapter then focuses on how cultural intermediation can facilitate the collaborative production of cultural goods to include the affordances of geo-locative media whilst avoiding the disconnection between the MyBurb project and its stakeholders. Further, this chapter seeks to explore the concept of governmentality as it highlights the tensions that exist between users and facilitators of institutional co-creative spaces, and the governance under which they operate.

This chapter predominately looks at user participation beyond access, and towards inclusive facilitation: a role suitable for cultural intermediation. The global screen industries have been experimenting with user participation for several years, based on broad cultural goals, which has also ignited broader media debates. The public service media (PSM) remit requires the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to provide for minorities whilst fostering national culture and the public sphere. The remit of PSM and its impact on national and cultural policy, as scholars argue, is the reason for the significance of this burgeoning field, where PSM are positioned as cultural facilitating institutions: they provide the cultural voice of geographical region for both its citizens and as an exported cultural product. PSM’s role as a cultural institution is crucial within the field of comedy television. Social media platforms and projects, specifically ‘social TV’, have enabled greater participation in ABC content consumption and creation; they provide opportunities for social participation in collaborative cultural production. However, this chapter argues that instead of deconstructing boundaries, social media platforms may, in fact, reconstruct participation barriers within the co-creative production processes. This chapter documents the ABC co-creation between Twitter users and the #7DaysLater television programme, which is a narrative-based comedy programme that engaged its audience through social media to produce its weekly programme. The chapter argues why the ABC should engage in social media platforms to collaboratively produce content, with #7DaysLater providing an innovative example, but suggests skilled cultural intermediaries with experience in community facilitation should carry out the process. This chapter describes how cultural intermediation is the process of public service media organizations engaging digital influencers across social media to support authentic participation amongst a broader group of citizens.

In this chapter, the book will redirect its focus on the participation and co-creation that has been enabled through new media practices and social media platforms. However, participation exists and has done so in organizations in many forms historically. From early forms of talkback radio and letters to the editor, scholars have explored the passive and active role of media and audiences as they participate in the production of content in various forms through hands-on participation and towards more soft forms of enacting media content through the lived-in experience. Regardless of the format of participation, audiences have been engaged in vernacular creativity for some time as a form of cultural intermediation. This final case study draws on empirical data from the ABC’s Double J, a recently launched digital radio service that is targeted at 25–45 year olds, and has been launched as an alternative to the very successful Triple J radio network that is aimed at 16–24-year-old listeners. During 2015, Double J, as part of its J Files programme that showcases artists, undertook a participatory project that chose fans of an international rock act, The Black Keys, to curate and produce an episode of the J Files. This case study provides a clear example of how expertise in different areas is brought together and exchanged between stakeholders to produce a programme that is extremely niche and tailored in regards to content, whilst marketable to the broad Double J audience. This demonstrates much of the cultural intermediation framework that will have been described in this book so far, whilst featuring another variation of co-creation within media organizations. This case study highlights that the knowledge and expertise exchange between the co-creative stakeholders is key to any form of participation within media organizations that seek to bolster interest from their audience. Further engaging with the market agent aspect of cultural intermediation, the Double J example demonstrates co-creative management is crucial to ensure cultural production aligns with market factors and audience trends.

This chapter looks at automated media systems and explores the roles of cultural intermediation on algorithms as a form of digital intermediation. To begin, this chapter provides insight into automated media and cultural systems, and the sorts of implications associated with that arena of artificial intelligence and algorithms. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of networks and social network analysis as a method to understand how human and non-human agents operate across large-scale social media spaces. It then moves towards a more practical explanation of how to capture data and analyse them to reveal patterns and areas of interest within social media communication. Finally, this chapter moves towards understanding digital intermediation as a combination of both cultural intermediation, along with large-scale data science as an approach to efficiently and effectively operate across contemporary social media platforms for ethical communication across future media ecologies.

As social media platforms have increased the potential for audiences to engage with media organizations, content production staff, talent and other audience members, media organizations have a sophisticated approach towards involving the audience in various ways. The research presented in this monograph so far has described a broad range of audience participation at varying levels of content production intensification. The book has made the case in each instance of audience participation for the increasing role of cultural intermediation as the enabling framework to facilitate co-creative activities between audience members and professional production individuals. This final chapter outlines how cultural intermediaries are part of the broader cultural intermediation framework to facilitate co-creation within media organizations. To provide tools that ‘enable’ users to participate is only a portion of the picture, where a broader understanding of how human and non-human intermediaries promote or inhibit user participation. Whilst suggesting that users have the capacity to participate is useful, there are many barriers such as regulatory frameworks, editorial oversight, code and development, design, functionality and access that potentially inhibit participation and co-creation. Media organizations must ensure that these factors are considered and addressed to ensure successful co-creation with its audience. This chapter provides an in-depth overview of the issues associated with media organizations and cultural intermediation and contributes to the implications of contemporary cultural intermediation.