[iDC] The People Formerly Known as the Employers

[Mark Deuze]

Dear Brian, Michel:

Thanks for taking the time to read my blogpost, and making the effort  
to write a response. Although I’m sure I come late to the table, as  
Brian suggests, perhaps I could add some value to the ongoing debate  
by redirecting some of our focus away from celebrating what you refer  
to as “free radicals”, “radical minorities” and “networked protesters”  
as somehow and necessarily located outside of public or commercial  
media firms, to the talent of the often hardworking folks working on  
in the inside (and whose ranks our students try to join).

Brian suggests the main culprit here is capitalism, exemplified by the  
practices and ideals of neoliberal management: “stripping businesses  
down to the managerial core and outsourcing as much labor as  
possible.” Workforce flexibility is indeed an outcome of managerial  
praxis, fueled by (some) workers demanding more control over their  
work-life in order to start a family or take care of elderly parents/ 
grandparents, and (some) managers wanting to make organizations more  
flexible and instantly adaptive to changing trends in consumer tastes  
(as well as redirectling investments away from Talent towards  
Technology). I emphasize this point – that I think both of you  
indirectly make as well – to recognize the dual nature of this  
development.

I concur that several social systems in society have dropped the ball  
on signaling the trend towards the depopulation of (media)  
professions. Policymakers (and union officials) rely on labor laws  
that protect those who are already “in”, instead of those who either  
want to get in or get in and out on their own terms; journalists and  
other media workers glamorize their own work (mainly because they are  
so personally invested in it) and thus underreport their own  
exploitation, media academics have only in recent years started to  
seriously address media production (now that all media using indeed  
has become media making), and that work has not trickled down (or up)  
to media management textbooks yet (something I am trying to correct  
with a forthcoming volume bundling authors in this field, with  
apologies for this early plug). Politicians are only beginning to  
realize these issues in the context of a policy-driven shift towards  
creative industries and a global cultural economy.

And Michel, about naming names of Web 2.0/social media/convergence  
culture advocates that fail to acknowledge or take seriously the labor  
context within which all this P2P production and media co-creation is  
taking place – to be honest, when I was listening to Leopoldina  
Fortunati the other day I felt for the first time that somebody  
brilliantly articulated the twin process of power redistribution  
taking place in this context. In my arguably limited experience, most  
media scholars tend to be on one or the other side: either  
articulating a celebratory/critical perspective on industry (which  
perspective generally aims at big media corporations that in fact are  
increasingly not involved in producing media), or a celebratory/ 
critical perspective on blogging and the such (again often ignoring  
how much of the social media landscape in fact gets financed and  
produced by media organizations and professionals).

Beyond this, why should we not warn against the deleterious side- 
effects of a self-producing digital media culture? The productive  
behavior of audiences is used by some managers and companies to  
outsource salaried work to unpaid volunteers, for sure. Yet at the  
same time, this praxis deeply disrupts the professional identity,  
workflow, and business models across the media industries, making such  
processes anything but uniquely exploitative. Additionally, through  
case study research I do find plenty of examples of companies and  
firms embracing different models of management, different approaches  
to quality of life issues. Furthermore, the managerial school of  
thought advocating “managing without management” is an inspiring way  
of thinking about the organization of cultural production. All of  
which to say there’s more to this than an either/or perspective.

Cheers, Mark.

_____________________________

Mark Deuze
Department of Telecommunications
Indiana University, USA
Professor of Journalism and New Media
Leiden University, Netherlands
mail: mdeuze at indiana.edu
web: deuze.blogspot.com
phone: 18126069742
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