[ecrea] Symposium - New Media Gatekeepers: Ecosystems of Access and Denial

*New Media Gatekeepers: Ecosystems of Access and Denial*

Coventry University

School of Media and Performing Arts

Ellen Terry Building - ETG101

April 22^nd  -  12:30-16:00

17:00: Book Launch and Wine Reception

Organised by the Centre for Disruptive Media:

<http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/>http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/

Free Symposium. Please Register at:

<http://www.newmediagatekeepers.disruptivemedia.org.uk/>www.newmediagatekeepers.disruptivemedia.org.uk/ 

<http://www.newmediagatekeepers.disruptivemedia.org.uk/>

_Speakers:_

Margie Borschke (Macquarie University) – Music (via Skype)

James Newman (Bath Spa University) – Computer Games

Federica Frabetti (Oxford Brookes University) - Software

Janneke Adema (Coventry University) – Academic Publishing

Jennifer Holt (UC, Santa Barbara) – Television (via Skype)

Anthony Luvera (Coventry University) – Photography

Alejandro Ball (University of Dundee) – New Media Art

Virginia Crisp (Coventry University) – Film and Moving Image

*New Media Gatekeepers: Ecosystems of Access and Denial*

The shift from ‘expert’ to ‘amateur’ gatekeepers of cultural content in
a web 2.0 context has been lamented by many an Internet skeptic as an
‘undermining of our culture’ (Keen 2007). However, gatekeeper studies
have demonstrated that the process of ‘expert’ selection (or not) of
media for publication or dissemination is subject to vagaries of
personal subjectivity (David Manning White, 1950) or to bureaucratic
routine (Walter Gieber, 1964). Negus points out that despite its
‘liberal’ image, the distribution of power within the cultural
industries is quite regressive and that decision-making power is often
situated within small enclaves of privilege—where the music industry
actually represents ‘in condensed form, the preferences and judgements
of a small, relatively elite educated, middle-class, white male faction’
(Negus, 2002: 512).

Such examinations of gatekeeping practices have made an important
contribution to understandings of power and influence within the
cultural industries. However, they have yet to fully examine the manner
in which certain technological and social developments have increased
the role of non-professional gatekeepers (e.g. fan fiction communities,
YouTube vloggers, bloggers or piracy forum moderators (Crisp, 2015;
Bodó, B. and Lakatos, 2012)) as well as the intermediation provided by
non-human filtering devices such as recommendation algorithms and
search. Even we as media users play an important role here, actively
feeding the filtering devices and computational processes set up by
major technology platforms to facilitate media dissemination and
consumption (Striphas 2015, Gillespie 2014).

Indeed, in opposition to the claims that web 2.0 has been accompanied by
a process of disintermediation (whereby intermediaries no longer play a
role in mediating between audiences and producers), this symposium will
examine the role of the complex and diverse ecosystem of formal and
informal, visible and invisible, human and computational media
gatekeepers, that is currently rising to the fore.

Keeping in mind the diversity and specificity of various media forms,
this symposium seeks to examine how the varying networks of media
dissemination come together on various platforms and as part of networks
of interactions and relations. It is our contention that the practices
of media gatekeeping must be examined in a way that acknowledges the
current level of interrelation between media forms and their associated
process of production, distribution and consumption. How does the
distribution and dissemination ecology of one medium, e.g. film,
intersect with the associated ecologies of production, distribution and
consumption surrounding games, TV programmes, software, books,
newspapers, new media art, music, and other media content?

This symposium will consider interlocking ecosystem(s) of media
distribution and publishing both holistically and culturally to develop
a more nuanced understanding of the factors that influence the
transnational flows of media texts, objects and events, and our own
becoming as users and producers of technology in intra-action with these
processes of mediation (Kember and Zylinska 2012). In doing so, this
symposium aims to provide a detailed examination of the macro/micro,
social, cultural and formal/informal contexts within which media
acquisition, as well as publishing and dissemination decisions, are
made, and how such decisions ultimately dictate the content made
available to audiences worldwide, as well as our relationship to it.
This symposium therefore considers how gatekeeping practices overlap
across industries, platforms, texts and actors, and how we might
potentially intervene. It will consider the following questions:

• What is the potential of various media forms and ecologies to
intervene into these transnational socio-computational flows of media texts?

• According to which criteria are decisions about what will be published
made, and can we foreground alternative criteria?

*Bibliography*

Bodó, B. and Lakatos, Z. (2012) Theatrical Distribution and P2P Movie
Piracy: A Survey of P2P Networks in Hungary Using Transactional Data,
International Journal of Communication 6, 413–445
Crisp, Virginia (2015) Film Distribution in the Digital Age London: Palgrave
Curran, James. “Literary Editors, Social Networks and Cultural
Tradition.” in Media Organisations in Society, edited by James Curran,
215 – 239. London: Hodder Arnold, 1999.
Gieber, Walter. “News is what Newspapermen Make it.” in People, Society
and Mass Communication, edited by David Manning White and L. A. Dexter,
173 – 192. New York: Free Press, 1964.
Gillespie, T. (2014) ‘The Relevance of Algorithms’. in Media
Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society. ed. by
Boczkowski, P.J., Foot, K.A., and Gillespie, T. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing
Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Kember, S. and Zylinska, J. (2012) Life After New Media: Mediation as a
Vital Process. MIT Press.
Manning White, David. “The ‘Gatekeeper’: A Case Study in the Selection
of News.” In News: A Reader, edited by Howard Tumber, 66 – 73. Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Negus, Keith. “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries and the Enduring
Distance Between Production and Consumption.” Cultural Studies 16, no. 4
(2002): 501 – 515.
Striphas, T. (2015) ‘Algorithmic Culture’. European Journal of Cultural
Studies 18 (4- 5), 395–412


Dr. Janneke Adema | Research Fellow Digital Media | Centre for
Disruptive Media | School of Media and Performing Arts | Faculty of Arts
and Humanities | Coventry University | ++447808738388 |

(ademaj /at/ uni.coventry.ac.uk) <mailto:(ademaj /at/ uni.coventry.ac.uk)> |
www.openreflections.wordpress.com
<http://openreflections.wordpress.com/> | http://twitter.com/Openreflections

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