Employment and Innovation in U.S. Media Industries. 2004-2018

We carry out trend analysis to test two hypotheses. First, digitization has altered traditional routines and skills, resulting in declining employment rates. Second, productivity has grown because firms have recruited more skilled workers with higher wages. We analyze employment and wage tendencies in four communications and media sectors to test them

Employment and Innovation in U.S. Media Industries. 2004-2018

We carry out trend analysis to test two hypotheses. First, digitization has altered traditional routines and skills, resulting in declining employment rates. Second, productivity has grown because firms have recruited more skilled workers with higher wages. We analyze employment and wage tendencies in four communications and media sectors to test them

Celebrating Indigenous National Cinemas and Narrative Sovereignty through the Creation of Kin Theory, an Indigenous Media Makers Database

Indigenous peoples have been misrepresented and underrepresented in media since the dawn of cinema, but they have never stopped telling their own stories and enacting agency. It is past time to recognize them on their own terms. To facilitate that, academics, activists, and industry partners can fund, hire, teach, and share more Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) led projects. The uniqueness of 2020 with COVID-19, Black Lives Matter and human rights movements, and the move online by many academics and organizations have deepened conversations about systemic inequities, such as those in media industries. To address the often-heard film industry excuse, “I don’t know anyone of color to hire,” the Nia Tero Foundation has created Kin Theory, an Indigenous media makers database, that is having a dynamic, year-long launch in 2021.

Understanding the industry/state interface in creative industries studies

It is time to transcend the cultural studies vs. media industries debate in media industries studies. To take advantage of the exemplary focus on real-world behavior of media industries that Stuart Cunningham brought to the field, scholars need to articulate the normative values informing their media industries research. This is necessary in order to preserve academics’ intellectual autonomy, and to maintain scholarly rigor.

The curious absence of cybernationalism in Latin America: Lessons for the study of digital sovereignty and governance

In this article, we are interested in examining the factors that drive cybernationalism and digital governance in media policies. As scholars with a long-standing interest in media industries and policies in Latin America, we start with a simple empirical observation: the curious absence of debates and strong efforts to regulate digital media in the region grounded on nationalistic arguments. It is not exaggerated to affirm that for the past two decades, the region has largely adopted a laissez-faire, deregulatory approach on fundamental issues about the structure and functioning of the Internet, including the performance of global digital platforms, content traffic, data ownership and access, and speech. We believe that understanding the decades-long transition from nationalistic media regulations to pragmatism in digital policies in Latin America yields valuable insights for theorizing the conditions that foster (and discourage) nationalism and sovereignty in digital policies.

Structured Industry Workshops as Methodology: Researching National Screen Agencies and Policies

This article explores the advantages of ‘structured industry workshops’ as a methodology for obtaining nuanced empirical data about the practices and ‘behind the scenes’ workings of national screen agencies, organizations, institutions and stakeholders. The article argues that structured industry workshops with industry informants in the media industries have five major methodological benefits. The workshops facilitate access to and interest from elite or expert informants who can otherwise be hard to attract; they counter the risk of spin and ‘corporate scripts; they provide a valuable forum for not only finding out what practitioners think, but also how they discuss and engage with other practitioners; they can be a pathway to industry and policy change as well as future academic inquiry; and finally, structured industry workshops can help establish a platform for sustained dialogue and industry-academy collaborations, with genuine knowledge exchange and co-production as well as potential for impact.

‘I owe it to those women to own it’: Women, Media Production and Intergenerational Dialogue through Oral History

While the academy is faced with increasing calls for its research to be socially relevant, a long-established principle of feminism has been the discovery and use of knowledge produced by, for and about women. Informed by feminist debates, the Histories of Women in the British Film and Television Industries project undertook a number of engagement activities drawing on the oral histories of women who had worked in the British media industries. These included workshops with trade union members and media practitioners which explored continuity and change in women's experiences of the media workplace. This article reflects on this suite of engagement activities, their successes and failures, and the possibilities and limitations of feminist-informed impact in and through the academy.