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Continuum
Journal of Media & Cultural Studies
ISSN: 1030-4312 (Print) 1469-3666 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20
Moving convergence culture towards cultural
intermediation: social media and cultural inclusion
Jonathon P. Hutchinson
To cite this article: Jonathon P. Hutchinson (2016): Moving convergence culture
towards cultural intermediation: social media and cultural inclusion, Continuum, DOI:
10.1080/10304312.2016.1143161
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2016.1143161
Published online: 12 Feb 2016.
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Moving convergence culture towards cultural intermediation: social
media and cultural inclusion
Jonathon P. Hutchinson*
Department of Media and Communication, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Raymond Williams noted culture is specific to each society, where ‘the making of a
society is the finding of common meanings and direction’. Cultural studies provide a
foundation for an array of emerging research areas that seek to explore those mean-
ings and directions, such as convergence culture. Recent humanities scholarship has
called for researchers to move beyond the marvel of convergence culture, with its
potential for increased social inclusion and cultural diversity, to a more nuanced
understanding of networked participation. This paper uses empirical research data
gathered from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to argue that embedded
cultural industries research can contribute, through the cultural intermediation frame-
work, to cultural studies and the political, economic, and practice-based strengths of
the creative industries. It also argues that in a contemporary institutional social media
environment, cultural intermediation is a useful framework to understand convergent
media practices.
Introduction
The relationship between contemporary media audiences and media institutions has
undergone a significant cultural shift. Media producers are engaging audiences through
both institutionally based platforms, as well as on commercially operated social media
platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Vine. This increases the value of media content
as it allows institutions to target users, provide unique and niche experiences, and
extend the storytelling capacity of various programmes. However, including a commer-
cially hosted platform into a production methodology raises issues around the successful
facilitation of these ventures. The regulatory frameworks that facilitate co-creative media
production must be acknowledged. Furthermore, user-created content is often made for
other users interested in the media genre, not for the hosting institution or media institu-
tions themselves. Finally, user-created content tends to be produced in non-professional
environments, which may result in low-quality content, both technically and editorially.
There is, of course, the potential of increased inclusion in debates previously associ-
ated with the public sphere. This means groups of users can create media in online envi-
ronments that challenges dominant political, social and economic discourses. This sort
of content can increase cultural understanding and diversity, and may even increase
social capital. However, at its core, this user-created content can also directly challenge
the governance of these projects. Therefore, cultural intermediaries are required to align
these projects with institutional practices, and negotiate these tensions between users,
platforms, and media institutions. The work of cultural intermediaries has often been
*Email: jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2016.1143161
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focused on ‘cool’media ecosystems, such as advertising and marketing (Smith Maguire,
and Matthews 2014) at the expense of important fringe media. In this paper, I argue that
in a contemporary institutional social media environment, cultural intermediation is a
useful framework to understand convergent media practices for inclusion, as well as
improved governance practices.
In this article I define cultural intermediation as the role of individuals who under-
stand and translate the tastes of cultural texts, using an example of embedded cultural
research. The first section highlights how cultural intermediation, through convergence
culture, strengthens inclusion in the knowledge economy. The second section uses the
creative industries as a lens to understand cultural production for political inclusion. The
third section highlights how embedded cultural research enabled the description of the
co-creative governance model for social media at the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation (ABC), one of the two Australian national public-service broadcasters.
Finally, this article explores how cultural intermediaries combine creativity and eco-
nomics with government processes to produce high quality and inclusive co-creative
content. This paper suggests that if participation within institutional creative production
can be successful, and alters regulatory frameworks, participation more broadly can
have an impact on larger scale governance. This paper, finally, highlights the need to
expand the role of cultural intermediaries within creative ecologies to include those less
popular media industries.
The significance of convergence culture for cultural intermediation
Cultural specificity, as Raymond Williams (1989) noted, highlights the understanding of
society, and provides a way of finding common meanings among its participants.
Artefacts associated with cultural specificity are described as high or low culture, and
are inherently inclusive or ostracizing. For example, cultural critics have described opera
as a form of high culture, a cultural form that is inaccessible by others not versed in its
textual meaning. Subsequently, particular aspects of culture fail to resonate with some
parts of society. Cultural studies is a useful discipline when attempting to understand
how cultural texts operate within societies and shape these broad modes of participation.
The work of Dick Hebdige, for example, noted that ‘the subversive implications of
style’(1979, 4) empowered cultural participants in broader political and cultural
discussions through a deeper ontological understanding of their social environment.
However, one critical problem remains in identifying the common attributes of authentic
participation (Carpentier 2011a) between multiple societal stakeholders, and enabling
participatory processes across suitable platforms: a problem that can be addressed
through embedded cultural research.
This problem of participation partly emerges because information and communica-
tion technologies have led to a major cultural, political and economic shift with regard
to how individuals can participate with institutions. Indeed, many scholars have argued
that a substantial change in participation has occurred, which in turn impacts on our
understanding of economics (Benkler 2006), journalism (Bruns 2005), culture (Lessig
2004) and decentralized governance (Shirky 2008). Other scholars in turn warned
against the hyperbolic claims of user-generated content (Kreiss, Finn, and Turner 2010;
Terranova 2000), noting the ‘conflation of consumer choice with the principles of
democracy’(Turner 2010, 131). This has led commercial and non-commercial organiza-
tions to assure users that their participation will be rewarded with greater democratic
returns. These exhausted debates around convergence culture highlight how increased
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participation disrupts the traditional production and consumption model, but ignores
how it might be operationalized within ingrained institutional models.
Cultural intermediation enables us to understand what authentic participation
entails. Cultural intermediaries are concerned with the intersections between produc-
tion and consumption (Bourdieu 1984), maintaining a crucial role as tastemakers
intrinsically connected to the market (O’Donnell and Hutchinson 2015), and increas-
ing political participation (Hutchinson 2013b). Bourdieu (1984) argues that cultural
intermediaries are positioned between high and low cultural production and consump-
tion. He notes that ‘art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and
deliberately or not, that fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences’
(1984, 7). While these tastes and consumptions may not be malicious (Doane 2009),
they are nonetheless representative of class-based tastes (Gabler and Kaufman 2006).
Bourdieu (1984) highlights that class representation is more than merely taste speci-
fic: it is, rather, a position of cultural knowledge and expertise. He observed that
high-class taste is familiar, where one is born into the privilege of high cultural
appreciation, whereas middle class culture is the constant pursuit of cultural knowl-
edge. In this context, cultural intermediaries are responsible for promoting under-
standing between previously inaccessible cultural texts for some, while also
highlighting the significance of fringe cultural texts for others. Through a process of
knowledge and expertise calibration, cultural consumers are able to understand the
context, message and purpose of cultural texts.
However, the expertise and translation role of cultural intermediation is only one
aspect that is relevant to the field. Recently, scholars have also explored the market
affordances that cultural intermediaries have enabled. Negus (2002)first observed the
significance of cultural intermediaries through specific roles such as artist and repertoire
(A&R) agents, and record label executives as key players that source fringe creativity
for a mass cultural consumption. More recently, contemporary research has defined cul-
tural intermediaries as ‘the taste makers defining what counts as good taste and cool cul-
ture in today’s marketplace’(Maguire and Matthews 2014, 1). The taste-making aspect
of cultural intermediation has also been explored through fashion (Skov 2014), advertis-
ing (Kelly 2014) and lifestyle media (Lewis 2014), as connecting agents between differ-
ent stakeholder groups. In this context, cultural intermediaries are specific in how they
source emerging creativity, and make this type of cultural production accessible for lar-
ger audiences. They enable consumers and producers of cultural texts to engage in a
two-way dialogue: producers are exposed to fringe, and highly creative, practices by
non-professional creative practitioners (Hutchinson 2015a), while contributors are pub-
lished to larger audiences.
Framing cultural intermediaries in this regard can reduce the significance of their
work to the market, a phenomenon Maguire and Mathews (2012) have addressed.
To develop the concept of cultural intermediaries beyond cultural translators and
taste agents, I return to the central argument of this article that in a contemporary
institutional social media environment, cultural intermediation is a useful framework
to understand convergent media practices. As such, I argue the cultural intermediary
role is useful for new governance models that engage a broad range of collaborative,
co-creative participants. However, before turning towards my own experience of
embedded cultural research, it is necessary to briefly describe the significance of the
creative industries for political participation, building on the cultural intermediation
framework outlined above.
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Creative industries as a cultural production backdrop
Cultural studies has a history in analyzing the empirical world by following the
common meaning and direction to make sense of society, insofar as culture is the ‘con-
figuration or generalization of the “spirit”which informed the “whole way of life”of a
distinct people’(Williams 1989, 10). Cultural studies, then, is an engaged study of cul-
ture that attempts to understand how ‘culture is (in part) a field of power-relations
involving centres and peripheries, status hierarchies, connections to norms that impose
repressions or marginalisations’(During 2005, 9). As sociologists, anthropologists,
ethnographers, and so on, we glean data to tell a convincing story of an unknown
society, and interpret that material for a broader audience. Cultural studies has had three
main debates that surround its manifestation:
The claim that culture (and hence cultural studies) has strong political force; the debate
over the determining power of economic structures on cultural formations; and the debate
over the role [of] individual experience. (During 2005, 38)
Simon During’s observation can be seen in three points of contention. Firstly, the
political empowerment of cultural studies has, arguably, seen the discipline become
counter-hegemonic, clustered around particular identities. Secondly, cultural studies may
be considered hypocritical in that it seeks to understand those areas of economic
inequality, yet is itself determined by economic factors that fund it. Finally, cultural
studies has been criticized for including the personalized account of research, a charac-
teristic it strives to avoid by not acknowledging cultural identities. As a result, cultural
studies scholars continually militate against such claims on their work.
Creative industries, in turn, sought to take those societal understandings and relay
the significance to the political and economic regulatory structures that surround soci-
eties. Creative industries, as Flew (2012) suggest:
Coexists with a variety of other broadly cognate terms, including cultural industries, copy-
right industries, content industries, cultural-products industries, cultural creative industries,
cultural economy, creative economy, and even the experience economy.
How we might approach the creative industries is, as Desmond Hesmondhalgh (2007)
notes, the difference between publishing and broadcasting. Similarly, Caves (2000) sug-
gests creative industries might emerge through the production of simple cultural goods,
which, he notes, are produced by individuals or small groups, or complex cultural
goods, which emerge from complex labour divisions seen through cinema, televisions
and games. In the policy realm, the creative industries definition has been more consis-
tent, with one of the more convincing definitions emerging from the United Nations
Conference on Trade And Development (UNCTAD) Creative Economy report in 2010.
The report suggests that the creative industries:
•Are cycles of creation, production and distribution of goods and services that use
creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs;
•Constitute use of knowledge-based activities, focused on, but not limited to, the
arts, potentially generating revenues from trade and intellectual property rights;
•Comprise tangible products, and intangible intellectual or artistic services, with
creative content, economic value and market objectives;
•Are at the crossroads among artistic services and industrial sectors.
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The creative industries have received criticism for only promoting the creative sector
(Pratt 2005), while complex cultural goods are produced by creative and non-creative
individuals and sectors (Bilton 2007), and for condensing the creative industries’contri-
bution to the economy as being caused by the inhibitions of copyright (Towse 2010).
These critics suggest that the creative industries might promote the rhetoric that new
industries have ‘just emerged’from nowhere, and are peripheral to the real economy. A
common argument, however, and one that I will return to in the latter section of this
paper, is that of exclusion: which industries are excluded from the creative industries,
and why are those industries worse for not being part of the new digital economy? For
example, accounting software used in the production of a cinematic complex cultural
good should be subject to creative industries analysis, but the accounting industry is not
a focus of current research in this area. As a means to start rethinking the impact on
cultural policy, Flew (2013) suggests the global creative industries can be thought of in
four ways: production, consumption, markets and places.
Further, and building on the Foucauldian history of cultural policy, deriving conclu-
sions from the creative industries becomes increasingly significant, especially if we use
a governmentality framework and ask ‘Who governs what? According to what logics?
With what techniques? Toward what ends?’(Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006, 84). In
that regard, engaging in practical creative research, specifically embedded cultural
research, provides new media researchers with a rich and detailed source of data that is
useful to interrogate the broader political and economic policy impact of creative indus-
try research. That is to say, through a solid understanding of the stakeholders involved
in the cultural production environment, an informed decision process is possible. Rod
McGuinness, Social Media Coordinator at the ABC for the Radio Division, notes that
moderating the contributions of social media users is not entirely the role of the ABC,
but rather a combined effort of the ABC and the online community themselves:
You know these third party sites like Facebook and Twitter and others. People are more
personal, they’re more candid, they’re much more likely to say what they think than when
they are on an ABC site. This is a great opportunity to connect with the community at a
deeper, stronger level. And there are some people who do see themselves as community
managers and not just moderators, that’s the other thing. They see it as social media people
see it as ‘yep we post stuff and then we have to moderate it’and that’s about ‘is there any-
thing defamatory, are people being nasty to each other, who do we have to block?
(McGuinness, 2012)
In these instances, the social media users are close to the purpose of the project other
users are contributing to, and understand what is an acceptable governing process. These
users can be community managers as cultural intermediaries and, as I have previously
argued, cultural intermediaries are positioned as core enabling roles that translate knowl-
edge and expertise, while drawing on tacit knowledge to guide the regulatory process
(Hutchinson 2012). Cultural intermediaries, then, are decision agents that operate
between citizen participants and institutions that can best address these questions of
governmentality. While this type of political participation may not be explicitly obvious
through societal governance, it is a common activity within the creative industries, espe-
cially participatory culture activities associated with convergence culture.
While convergence culture has gone out of favour with contemporary researchers, it
is useful as a guiding principal for disruptive production methodologies that highlight a
shift in power relations. What is missing to support the current convergence culture
debates is empirical, institutional research data that demonstrates how an institutional
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setting can operationalize convergence culture. The following provides empirical data
that supports how cultural intermediation is useful as a framework, to understand institu-
tional cultural producers as mobilizing greater political participation within nation-state
cultural institutions.
Embedded cultural research
I was embedded as a Researcher in Residence at the ABC for 3 years, from 2010 until
early 2013, to understand how the role of the community manager operates within co-
creative production models. A community manager is located between online communi-
ties and the institutions that resource them, and perform conduit activities between the
stakeholder groups such as assisting in co-creative content production, community gov-
ernance, and user engagement and participation strategies (Hutchinson 2012). The ABC
is legislated (ABC 1983) to perform cultural infrastructure tasks by performing services
beyond the procurement and production of broadcast programmes, and to provide a host
of public services. Its modus operandi places it in position to satisfy the criteria of a
nation-state institution that contributes to the cultural and social fabric of the nation.
Due to a challenging political and economic environment, the strategic positioning of
the ABC is to reduce emphasis on terrestrial broadcasting, and focus its attention on
digital media. Mark Scott, the managing director, recently confirmed this:
The national broadcaster has been, and intends to remain, an industry leader in its approach
to digital media, with innovative programming and platforms driven by the input of a cre-
ative workforce. (Scott 2015)
The ABC has a strong history of innovative public services published across digital
media platforms, for example Fat Cow Motel,
1
triple j Unearthed,
2
ABC Open,
3
and
Heywire
4
to name a few. I have previously argued the significance of the ABC as a
cultural infrastructure facilitator (Wilson, Hutchinson, and Shea 2010), and will not dis-
cuss that here. Instead, this article is concerned with presenting empirical data on how
individuals are using social media tools to engage with nation-state institutions through
collaborative cultural production. Further, this section explores how networked
production methodologies impact on institutional governance regimes through a cultural
intermediation framework.
I have closely followed the ABC’s approach to collaborative production for several
years, and have published on projects including #7DaysLater (Hutchinson 2015c),
MyBurb:Redfern, and New Beginnings (Hutchinson 2013c).In this article, I concentrate
specifically on my role as the embedded community manager of ABC Pool, where I
had to identify the actors, what their interests were, and how those interests were negoti-
ated. ABC Pool was a user-generated content platform hosted by the ABC national
radio network, Radio National. ABC Pool encouraged its online community to con-
tribute photography, audio, video and written content to user and ABC producer driven
projects that were often co-created into 53-min radio documentaries. During that time I
identified three specific actors: the ABC Pool members, the Pool team and the broader
ABC as an institution. I identified their interests, and how those interests would collide
at times, during the collaborative, co-creative production process. In any instance of
interaction, either through a comment on the website, a conversation between the rights
management people and the Pool team, or with producers who provide insights to a
cultural text contributor, I would engage in a negotiation process. This enabled a
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presentation of stakeholder interests, demonstrating why their interests were significant,
resulting in a best practice to accommodate all interests in a practical way. For example,
if a user’s contribution was not to the standards of broadcast on the ABC, the commu-
nity manager would provide guidance on why it was important to have particular attri-
butes in their contribution from the ABC’s perspective. As the earlier comments of Rod
McGuiness’underlined, this method formed part of a wider ABC strategy around social
media moderation (see Figure 1).
I engaged in digital ethnography, along with action research, in order to observe and
understand both the online users of ABC Pool and the institutional staff that facilitated
the project from within the organization. Digital ethnography was especially useful, as I
was able to explore social technologies that disregard substantive approaches ‘in the
Figure 1. An example of community managers guiding a user contribution to align it with the
standards of the ABC. (Source: Image published under Creative Commons, BY NC)
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sense of its focus on the idea that technologies affect us, rather than us influencing tech-
nology’(Hjorth 2011, 12).
This approach allows us to further situate the experience of ABC Pool users, and
also helps to uncover the relationship between the virtual (online) and actual (real life).
Given my role as the community manager, the shape of the research was guided by
action research, which sought to improve the governance of the platform. Greenwood
and Levin (2007) note:
Action research is social research carried out by […] a professional action researcher and
the members of an organization, community, or network (‘stakeholders’) who are seeking
to improve the participants’situation.
The direct relationship between the cultural research benefits of digital ethnography is
obvious: the digital ethnography observations and findings, or the learning process,
could be integrated into the community management of the website.
With regard to user-created content on the ABC, we now have an understanding of
who governs to what logics, through what techniques, towards which ends. In the con-
text of ABC Pool, there was a unique combination of users operating to their own rules,
or under the guidance of lead-users, to undertake what they perceived to be best practice
for the site. Similarly, the ABC as the hosting institution also governed, in an approach
that its management perceived to be best for the site, while operating under the auspices
of the ABC: its legislated Charter. These two approaches were often at odds with each
other, which is precisely the moment an enabling role is required to negotiate the differ-
ent perspectives of the stakeholders. In this environment, this was the role of the com-
munity manager: a person, or people, that understand each stakeholder and their
language, and could translate between each. The exchange of expertise and knowledge
best demonstrates the comprehension and enable the stakeholders:
The governance of ABC Pool is performed from two perspectives: the users have one way
of undertaking it, while the ABC has another. It appears to me this is precisely the role of
the community manager, to translate the differences between these two groups to enable
collaborative, co-creation for the successful production of cultural artefacts. (Fieldnotes
2012)
The need for new governance models was obvious within this collaborative, co-creative
environment where cultural production took place. In ABC Pool, the disruption of co-
creation was part of the process, yet it required alignment with the existing regulatory
framework of the ABC. The following section highlights how this was done through a
process of cultural intermediation.
From creative industries to cultural intermediation
Each ABC Pool user interaction was referenced against the ABC’s editorial policies,
which are the standards that interface between the legislation, the ABC Act (1983), and
the day-to-day production processes of the ABC staff. The ABC Act provides the remit
for the ABC to conduct business as a public service broadcaster in Australia. Specifi-
cally, it ensures the ABC remains focused on its core remit, which is to continue the
universality of appeal and access, provision for minorities, education for its publics, pro-
gramme maker independence, distance from vested interest, and quality programming.
When collaborative production with the audience occurred, the editorial policies often
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ignored practices that were currently occurring, but were regularly reviewed to keep up
with technologies and user practice.
What emerged during my research was the role of the multiple cultural intermedi-
aries, who facilitated a seamless process that enabled non-ABC staff to contribute to the
creative process, engage in collaborative production with the producers of the ABC, and
maintain content that satisfies the remit of public service broadcasting:
There is a consistent group of what I originally thought were community managers but
have since started to think of them collectively as cultural intermediaries. While for the
most part they are engaging in the knowledge and expertise transfer between the stakehold-
ers, they are also embodying the market agent role by ensuring the cultural goods produced
not only satisfy the producers, but also a broader audience of consumers. However, what I
am also beginning to notice is the impact these people play on developing regulatory
frameworks for the platform (terms and conditions) and how these relate to the overarching
Editorial Policies. (Fieldnotes 2012)
During this period, I observed shifts in the ABC Pool Terms and Conditions that deter-
mined how the online community members could operate within the ABC facilitated
environment. Both the ABC Pool online community members and the ABC Pool cul-
tural intermediaries directed these governance shifts through consultation processes. In
these instances, a ‘best practice’was constructed by exploring the benefits for both the
ABC and the ABC Pool cultural intermediaries.
Primarily concerned with the spheres of production and consumption, discussion of
cultural intermediaries generally follows one of two paths. Cultural intermediation is
either associated with the Bourdieu (1984) framework of post 1960s France, concerned
with new occupations between production and consumption, or with the ‘dialectal rela-
tionship between culture and economy’(Maguire and Matthews 2014, 1). This article
thus far has developed the connection between culture and the political and economic
frameworks it supports. However, under the cultural intermediation umbrella, co-creative
production across social media technologies is a combination of politics and economics
with cultural production and consumption. That is, having understood the socially con-
structed technological spheres the users operate within, the broader economic and gov-
ernmental issues are framed to adjust and enable the production of cultural artefacts.
Thinking about cultural intermediaries as creative workers ‘can assist in a critical assess-
ment of the claims made about creative work in contemporary economies’(Maguire and
Matthews 2014, 4). Finally, cultural intermediation assists in understanding the impact
of taste on production, economics and markets.
The cultural intermediaries at the ABC, defined here as the taste agents that facilitate
the collaborative, co-creative production of complex cultural goods (Hutchinson 2013a),
can be classified into three types of agent models: the single point of entry, the multiple
cultural intermediaries and the community editors. The single point of contact model is
the slowest form of cultural production, but aligns any user interaction strictly with the
focus of the ABC; for example, a social media producer operating an ABC Facebook
page. The multiple cultural intermediaries model represents fast cultural production, as
there are more than one conversation at any given moment, for example multiple Radio
National
5
producers talking with their audience. The multiple cultural intermediaries
model, for the most part, is useful to align the focus of the users with the focus of the
institution to create specific texts that meet the requirements of the ABC. The third
model is a community editor model, which sees members of the online user group pro-
moted to the role of cultural intermediary. This model is the most problematic as these
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users are not trained ABC staff, but have the priorities of both the ABC and the online
user group as their primary focus within all interactions. These three categories provide
the basis for a decentralized institutional online community governance model:
The ABC Pool team have now invited the lead users to participate in the weekly production
meetings, which used to be a closed-door affair. John Jacobs (ABC Pool Community Man-
ager) explained to me that by inviting them into such management discussions enables an
efficient exchange of perspectives: the Pool team are able to hear the concerns directly from
the members, and the members have a direct link to management decisions. If anything,
they are engaging in governance conversations for mutual benefits. (Fieldnotes 2011)
This model provides an approach for an egalitarian system that governs the whole,
while using those participants that the governance model directly effects. By engaging
cultural intermediation as a basis for enabling collaborative, co-creative cultural produc-
tion, a nuanced understanding of all the stakeholders becomes possible and forms the
basis of a governance model, which in turn will impact upon those stakeholders.
Through the model of decentralized governance, we can see a direct relationship
between production and consumption, how social media tools and platforms disrupt the
production model, how user participation becomes a valuable tool not only for creativ-
ity, but for governmentality, and finally how cultural intermediaries are crucial for facili-
tating the governance process. A digitally networked communication environment then,
suggests that a decentralized governance approach can be operationalized within
national cultural infrastructure like the ABC.
Conclusion
Cultural studies, and its derivatives, have provided a broad discipline that enables us to
understand societal meanings, and, coupled with a Foucauldian approach, how that
understanding influences the governmentality of the people within that society. Cultural
studies, cultural policy and creative industries all tend to place creative workers in con-
texts that are not entirely useful, or undermine the significance of their role as institu-
tional cultural producers to some degree. This article is a cautionary tale of creative
content, serving as a reminder that creative workers, and the institutions that employ
them, play a significant role in the production of cultural artefacts. I argue that in a con-
temporary institutional social media environment, cultural intermediation is a useful
framework to understand convergent media practices. Specifically, cultural intermedia-
tion allows us to observe the social construction of technologies and their cultural uses,
the users of those technologies, and the techno-cultural relationships that are pivotal to
co-creative production environments. As such, cultural intermediation is a framework
for exploring the empirical world to provide useful insights that contribute to developing
governance models, globalized media markets and academic enquiry.
There is convincing support that new media technologies enable participation, how-
ever the concept of participation remains problematic. Although a somewhat tested
modus operandi, the institutional online community governance model is still subject of
the questions: who participates, and why? These are common questions first expressed
in early critiques on cultural studies, as an attempt to understand why cultural studies
researchers examine some and not others. Understanding convergence culture through
empirical data, for example, through institutional online community governance, pro-
duces a rigorous product of embedded cultural research. To further explore participation,
10 J.P. Hutchinson
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it is useful to borrow Carpentier’s observations (2011b), which suggest participation
does not necessarily equate to a better experience or democratic process. Further, Car-
pentier and Dahlgren (2011) question the usefulness of the broad term participation:
One has to feel invited, committed and/or empowered to enter into a participatory process.
But the presence of a participatory culture cannot be conflated with participation itself and
its logics of equal(ised) power relations.
The problem identified by these academics suggests if the user is not politically
motivated to participate, it debunks any concern for a democratized power relationship
for the participants. This argument aligns with Graeme Turner’s(
2012): when people
contribute user-created content, does this mean organizations actually listen, let alone
break down barriers towards a more participatory and democratic environment? Cultural
intermediation, through the methodological process of embedded cultural research, may
provide important answers to the ‘who’and ‘why’questions.
Acknowledgements
Chris Wilson, Ellie Rennie, Jenny Kennedy, Gerard Goggin
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. ‘Fat Cow Motel was a unique cross-media experience which combined analogue TV, interac-
tive TV, the web, email, voicemail and SMS on a scale which had never before been
attempted in Australia’(ABC 2014c).
2. ‘Established in 1995, triple j Unearthed has kicked off the careers of thousands of musicians.
With over 99,000 tracks, it’s also a great place to discover your new favourite band’(ABC
2014b).
3. ‘All across Australia, people are creating great videos, photos and written stories to share on
the ABC. ABC Open brings these stories together for you to explore’(ABC 2012).
4. ‘Heywire puts young Australians at the centre of the conversations that shape their communi-
ties. The ABC has run the annual regional youth project in partnership with the Australian
Government since 1998’(ABC 2013).
5. Radio National (RN) is one of the five national radio networks of the ABC. ‘RN’s vision and
purpose is to nurture the intellectual and cultural life of this country, and to be a vital element
of the contemporary Australian conversation’(ABC 2014a).
Notes on contributor
Jonathon Hutchinson (PhD 2013, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and
Innovation, Queensland University of Technology) is a lecturer in Online Media and Social Media
Communication at the University of Sydney.
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