THE MEDIA LOGIC OF MEDIA WORK
MARK DEUZE
Culture creation is quickly becoming the core industrial (and individual) activity in the
globally emerging cultural economy. This process gets amplified through the increasing
collection of media corporations, as well as the widespread diffusion of information and
communication technologies.
The concept of media logic is used as a mapping tool, articulating contemporary
institutional, technological, organizational, and cultural trends as they codetermine media
work. This hermeneutic analysis identifies principal components of work styles in the
media production industries across disciplines and genres, including journalism,
advertising, film and television, and digital game development.
Keywords: media production, media industries, media work, labor, creative industries,
cultural industries, and production of culture
In this paper I map the field of media production studies with an emphasis on labor and work,
focusing on the blend of work and lifestyle conditions and strategies of professionals in the media
industries: their “work styles,” where life has become a way of working and a way of being at
work.
WORKSTYLES IN THE MEDIAPOLIS
Change and insecurity, whether real or perceived, are part of most if not all
people’s work styles. Beck points at the fundamentally ambivalent prospects
of the “brave new world of work” as marked by uncertainty, paradox and risk.
In such a new capitalist setting letting go of control, history, and tradition are
advertized as new necessary survival skills
The media, in whatever shape or size, amplify and accelerate these trends –
even more so because nowadays people are not just using media in a digital
, age; we are living in media; we use more media all the time. The life world of
a majority of the population gets expression and meaning almost exclusively
through media. It does suggest, however, that these media have not only
become digital and networked, but more importantly so also pervasive and
ubiquitous: they cannot be switched off, are everywhere, and have become
unavoidable.
Our contemporary world is what Silverstone regards as a “mediapolis”: a
completely mediated public space where media support and overbruggen the
experiences of everyday life. In the constant remix of time spent on work,
life, and play in and through media the differences between these spheres of
activity get lost.
The field of media making is sensitized to two related phenomena that are to
some extent exemplary of the contemporary human condition in Mediapolis:
1) A notion of media work as a set of behaviors, strategies and tactics, norms
and values that codetermine with technology the outcome of the production
of culture within and across media industries (such as journalism, advertising,
television and film, digital games).
2) An appreciation of media work as a range of activities and social
arrangements that a growing number of people – and the majority of
teenagers – enact in the context of contemporary digital culture, that is: using
media as media producers rather than or next to media consumers.
MEDIA LOGIC
The average media worker operates in a complex environment, somewhere
between the splendid isolation of one’s individual creative endeavors and a
constantly changing transnational context of business. Neither the individual,
nor the company completely controls the production of culture and the norms,
values, and ways of doing things of the professionals involved mutually
influence each other.
MARK DEUZE
Culture creation is quickly becoming the core industrial (and individual) activity in the
globally emerging cultural economy. This process gets amplified through the increasing
collection of media corporations, as well as the widespread diffusion of information and
communication technologies.
The concept of media logic is used as a mapping tool, articulating contemporary
institutional, technological, organizational, and cultural trends as they codetermine media
work. This hermeneutic analysis identifies principal components of work styles in the
media production industries across disciplines and genres, including journalism,
advertising, film and television, and digital game development.
Keywords: media production, media industries, media work, labor, creative industries,
cultural industries, and production of culture
In this paper I map the field of media production studies with an emphasis on labor and work,
focusing on the blend of work and lifestyle conditions and strategies of professionals in the media
industries: their “work styles,” where life has become a way of working and a way of being at
work.
WORKSTYLES IN THE MEDIAPOLIS
Change and insecurity, whether real or perceived, are part of most if not all
people’s work styles. Beck points at the fundamentally ambivalent prospects
of the “brave new world of work” as marked by uncertainty, paradox and risk.
In such a new capitalist setting letting go of control, history, and tradition are
advertized as new necessary survival skills
The media, in whatever shape or size, amplify and accelerate these trends –
even more so because nowadays people are not just using media in a digital
, age; we are living in media; we use more media all the time. The life world of
a majority of the population gets expression and meaning almost exclusively
through media. It does suggest, however, that these media have not only
become digital and networked, but more importantly so also pervasive and
ubiquitous: they cannot be switched off, are everywhere, and have become
unavoidable.
Our contemporary world is what Silverstone regards as a “mediapolis”: a
completely mediated public space where media support and overbruggen the
experiences of everyday life. In the constant remix of time spent on work,
life, and play in and through media the differences between these spheres of
activity get lost.
The field of media making is sensitized to two related phenomena that are to
some extent exemplary of the contemporary human condition in Mediapolis:
1) A notion of media work as a set of behaviors, strategies and tactics, norms
and values that codetermine with technology the outcome of the production
of culture within and across media industries (such as journalism, advertising,
television and film, digital games).
2) An appreciation of media work as a range of activities and social
arrangements that a growing number of people – and the majority of
teenagers – enact in the context of contemporary digital culture, that is: using
media as media producers rather than or next to media consumers.
MEDIA LOGIC
The average media worker operates in a complex environment, somewhere
between the splendid isolation of one’s individual creative endeavors and a
constantly changing transnational context of business. Neither the individual,
nor the company completely controls the production of culture and the norms,
values, and ways of doing things of the professionals involved mutually
influence each other.
