On Monday, June 6th 2005, I was delighted to host a Research Seminar with
Ned Rossiter (University of Ulster) on behalf of the
Centre for Public Communication Research (CPCR).
Ned is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media) at the Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. He has co-edited various books on net culture and the aesthetic industries and is co-facilitator of
fibreculture, a network of critical Internet research and culture in Australasia.
The title of Ned’s presentation was
“Creative Industries, Organised Networks and Open Economies”;
Dr Mark Passera (Senior Lecturer in Advertising and Marketing Communications, BMS) acted as a discussant to Ned’s talk.
The event is available on audio (please contact me for further details). What follows is a summary of my notes taken during the event.
(Please note this is not a word-by-word transcript; merely my interpretation or recollection of the discussion).
SEMINAR STARTS.Rossiter introduces the topic of his presentation, which is a critique of the creative industries using the conceptual framework of the organised networks. Ned’s presentation is divided into three sections:
Section 1. Creative IndustriesNed starts with a definition of the creative industries citing a recent DCMS document, which refers to the “generation and exploitation of intellectual property”; he argues that this definition ignores those who actually produce intellectual property and issues such as the exploitation of labour power.
Rossiter develops the argument that there is ethnic and gender bias in the make-up of the creative industries; he cites an LSE comparative study (in the journal
Information, Communication and Society) on gender and labour within the media industries. He also mentions the example of the Netherlands, where there isn’t much participation by minorities in the media/creative sector (e.g. Muslim people). He then explains that the
Faculty of Creative Industries in Queensland (QUT) was (one of?) the first such departments focusing on that sector and created a sort of “Queensland ideology” (following from the
Californian ideology).
According to Rossiter, the rise of the “creative industries” is associated with
dotcom revivalism; it is also associated with the so-called decline of the welfare state (which NR argues that is
evolving rather than disappearing). Finally, he also refers to recent developments in the structure of the global economy (outsourcing, exchange fluctuation) and how these affect the sector.
Section 2. Organised Networks Following on from the previous section, Rossiter introduces the concept of the
‘organised networks’ (ON - about which he has
written quite a lot) and talks about the rise of
fibreculture.
ON are networked organisations with a structure different to political parties and different ‘temporality’/speed (i.e. info economies, global capital), i.e. a different ‘business’ model. Examples include blogs, wikis, and even ‘sarai’ (based in New Delhi – which however is a different model e.g. secure funding etc).
The main feature of ON is the convergence of (a) the informality of “virtual” networks with (b) the formality of institutions: i.e. new institutional forms [
at this point Ned raises a very important point about post-representational / processual democracy, which i personally find a fascinating area of research].
He then presents a very interesting
“Scalar dimension of Organised Networks” adapted by Surman and Reilly (2003),
Appropriating the Internet for Social Change.
The graph includes two axes (formal/informal – distributed/centralized); the accountability and transparency of those organisations varies according to these factors.
Section 3. Open Economies (case studies)The final part of Ned’s talk explore the notion of the ‘open economies’ focusing on four case studies:
1.
Creative Commons and techno-libertarians
Rossiter argues that creativity is locked within a juridical framework of ‘rights’ [
note to self: this is a very original and interesting argument, but isn’t this shift to a culture and structure of litigation an inevitable sea-change affecting all liberal democracies?]
He also argues that the “libertarian geek elite” has so far effectively stopped networks from mobilising their own financial resources (e.g. micro-payments – memberships, software etc). Therefore, he argues that the libertarian geek ethic gives you one option (i.e. “give everything away and we own the money”) and he cites the example of the video-game industries, which uses the (unpaid) expertise of enthusiasts so as to “polish” or debug games only to sell them afterwards and make profit.
2. NESTA (UK)
and the example of the Futurelab projects.
Rossiter cites the development of prototypes for educational software that lead to commercial application – collaboration between students, teachers, IT/programmers, designers. He asks whether IP is redistributed to creators/producers. Do educational institutions then have to pay a license fee for what they produced? Ned argues that this development poses serious issues of intellectual property and compensation. Also he touches upon the changing structure and culture of higher education. Is there a rise in casualisation of labour as education becomes increasingly automated (‘self-learning’, ‘life-long learning) etc, i.e. highly insecure modes of work, not very well paid?
[
and, may I add, he’s just hit the nail on the head as far as Bournemouth University is concerned].
3. Eindhoven Creative Cluster (Netherlands)
The third case study comes from the Netherlands and looks at the technical school as a “design incubator”. Companies pay a membership fee for association; students gain industry expertise & work on design projects. BUT: companies in effect gain cheap labour and free IP. Also, Eindhoven is a regional cluster, not a ‘creative capital’ like Amsterdam.
4. Publicly Funded Content model (http://www.omroep.nl)
Finally, Rossiter asks “how are public broadcasters to justify their funding base (government and tax payers) within a neoliberal ideology and digital economy?
He argues that the new models presented by Creative Commons are about “public value creation”. It is an attempt to “remodel public institutions and align with various stakeholders within CC license”:
- society (taxpayers / electorate)
- creative producers / talent
- distribution (telcos, cable, ISPs)
- users
- collecting agencies
The problem is that it (i) inflates intermediaries / bureaucracies and regulating mechanisms and (ii) reverts back to broadcast media model of mass audience.
[
although I take Ned’s criticism of CC, I’m probably much more positively inclined towards that model – at least as an alternative to the established IPR / corporate model].
Rossiter concludes that the framework of the Publicly Funded Content [
which I have to say sounds very similar to Blumler and Coleman’s model of the Civic Commons] could possibly work within national cultures, but certainly not at the international level, given e.g. the problem of translation or accountability (a subsequent question being raised is why does the British taxpayer pay for the development of BBC Online, which is used by the entire globe?).
[
My counter-argument would be that institutions and services such as BBC Online are a global investment on behalf of the country; an investment that pays back in terms of cultural hegemony and structural influence].
Conclusions.Ned concludes that Organised Networks (ON) can be understood as new institutional forms whose logic is internal to the social-technical dynamics of communications media. Also ON invite an expansion of how creative industries operate and are understood. Finally, the primary challenge at this stage of the ON concept is to determine a source of funding. The whole thing is a task of collaborative invention.
MAIN PRESENTATION ENDS.
DISCUSSANT’S COMMENTS (Dr Mark Passera):Passera makes three main points:
The first one is ‘creativity’ – the creative industries. If we are talking about new industries, what has actually changed? He mentions the example of “the Rebel Self” and the attempt to create the opposite of “Converse”. What is new in creativity and new media? He discerns a trace of technological determinism in Ned’s paper.
The second point that Mark makes relates to Organised Networks. If there are new networks out there, how would you respond to examples of old networks working quite successfully (cf. the EU Constitution referenda in the Netherlands and France). Passera mentions Mouffe’s notion of multiple rationalities – how would the new media deal with that in terms of resolving conflict?
The final point is on sustainability (and the question of who pays for those new structures). The beauty of the new media is that a lot of people can create and publish and many people don’t expect payments! Perhaps the solution is banner-ads etc. Maybe the way out of judicial model is to abolish it and go down the route of freeware and shareware!
PRESENTER’S RESPONSE TO DISCUSSANT’S COMMENTS. Ned comes back on the issue of multiple rationalities; he argues that there is no way that labour exploitation in the new media environment is being tackled within the context of the creative industries. Unions are not very popular with younger workers because they are quite hierarchical and exclusive (top-down). So ON may be the best option for young people looking for some kind of institutional form that will help them address those challenges.
He then notes a paradox within capitalism: “There are wonderful cracks in the system of neo-liberalism” – e.g. in Australia, further deregulation of higher education leads to the development of educational entities that are contributing modules to existing MA programmes, which equals more flexibility, less bureaucracy, more decentralised / less controlled RAE-type research etc, which is a highly attractive agenda for an ON.
DISCUSSION OPENS TO THE FLOOR.Q: The mainstream industries (e.g. PR, Marketing, Academia etc) are still based upon formal/established institution; one could question the future impact / appearance of Organised Networks at the everyday level.
NR: Civil society and NGOs are prototypes of ON but very likely to change i.e. move to a post-NGO form. Traditional institutional structures are there but they’ve changed – they may not be organised networks but they are networked organisations. The shift away from the old model presents quite substantial changes at the political, cultural and legal level. An example is the impact of the RAE and the information economy on structure and culture within UK academia.
MP: Possibly a good example of that post-NGO model is New Social Movements and the Nike / sweatshops, cultural jamming issue (i.e. forcing a MNC to address those issues).
Q: Is democracy being undermined with the new institutional forms and journalism being degraded into a corporate model?
NR: Democracy has been undermined for quite a long time – irrespective of Organised Networks. Ned goes back to Mouffe and how traditional conceptualisations of democracy are exclusive. Thus, ON are not undermining democracy; he calls for a post-representative / processual democracy. Representative democracy is based on rational consensus and upon deliberative modes which exclude multiple rationalities (i.e. are exclusive). How do you accommodate plurality? The traditional model cannot do that. The post-representative model may be able to reconceptualise democracy [
this is great stuff, I’m getting blisters on my fingers but I don’t care!!]. Rossiter is essentially trying to transpose the features of traditional democracy on to the online environment [
which is also - partly - what I’m doing in my PhD thesis]. He notes that networks need to be open to intervention, change and antagonisms that underpin social relations. Ned compares blogs to mailing lists (and talks about the role of moderation on censorships etc).
MP: Is there a trade-off between creativity and sustainability? A romantic view of creativity is that creation is done for its own value, not for money. The notion of distributing information and products without profit may be a new theme/norm.
NR: A symbolic economy is attached to the real economy e.g. entering the conference circuit or the festival circuit (which is highly hierarchical), the “political economy of exotica”. The power relations of the symbolic economy need to be addressed as well. The free content model cannot escape power relations.
Q: One could use the ON model to conceptualise decentralised terrorist networks.
MP: There is a lot to be learned by the way criminal networks have been developing, esp. financing and management – invisible processes outside formalised arrangements of government etc.
SEMINAR ENDS.
