The media are home to an eclectic bunch of people. This book is about who they are, what they do, and what their work means to them. Based on interviews with media professionals in the United States, New Zealand, South Africa, and The Netherlands, and drawing from both scholarly and professional literatures in a wide variety of disciplines, it offers an account of what it is like to work in the media today.
Media professionals face tough choices. Boundaries are drawn and erased: between commerce and creativity, between individualism and teamwork, between security and independence. Digital media supercharge these dilemmas, as industries merge and media converge, as audiences become co-creators of content online.
The media industries are the pioneers of the digital age. This book is a critical primer on how media workers manage to survive, and is essential reading for anyone considering a career in the media, or who wishes to understand how the media are made.
Table of Contents:
Preface vii
1 Liquid Life, Work, and Media 1
2 Creative Industries, Convergence Culture, and Media Work 45
3 Media Professions in a Digital Age 84
4 Advertising, Public Relations, and Marketing Communications 113
5 Journalism 141
6 Film and Television Production 171
7 Game Design and Development 201
8 Conclusion: Liquid Media Work 233
Notes 243
References 250
Index 266
About the Author :
Mark Deuze is Assistant Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University.
Review :
“Deuze ably synthesizes a wide range of sources, writes lucidly even as he marshals a considerable amount of detail, moves unjarringly between different media sectors and offers a valuable synoptic account of the major characteristic features of media work in the so-called digital age.”
European Journal of Communication "A comprehensive account of what working in the media today entails ... Media Work is well researched and insightful. On the heels of the recent screenwriters' strike in the USA, it is relevant and specific to the creative industry but offers pertinent observations that are useful far beyond the field of media."
Work, Employment and Society
“Mark Deuze is one of the best young media theorists working today and his compelling new book does a magisterial job of laying out the field of current discourse on digital media issues and suggesting their far-reaching implications for every aspect of modern life. Deuze moves fluidly between different media sectors, mixes and matches perspectives on media production (including work on labor) with perspectives on media audiences and their activities, engages with work on new media but then applies it to more traditional media, and does so without recourse to predetermined ideological perspectives and specialized language. This book will frame key debates in the field for some time to come.”
Henry Jenkins, MIT
“Mark Deuze offers a guidebook to navigate us through the ‘mashup’ of everyday life and media content, production and consumption, globalization and the local, work and leisure, authenticity and artefact. His book is a timely corrective to the popular dream of cultural employment, and offers insight into a society characterized by instability and destabilization, speed, precariousness and a continual over spilling of the domains of work and life.”
Andy C. Pratt, London School of Economics
“Work and meaning - economy and culture - are more integrated than ever. As audiences and consumers we revel in media; as workforce and citizens we’re at risk from them. In this well-researched and original book Mark Deuze shows how the creative industries work and what it is like to work in them. What he calls ‘media life’ is mobile, convergent, semi-permanent and precarious. It can be tough too, when you - and your income - are only as good as your last idea.”
John Hartley, Queensland University of Technology
