Cultural Intermediaries, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2017 Audience Participation in Media Organisations

This book interrogates the existing theories of convergence culture and audience engagement within the media and communication disciplines by providing grounded examples of social media use as a social mobilization tool within the media industries. As digital influencers garner large audiences across platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, they sway opinions and tastes towards often-commercial interests. However, this everyday social media practice also presents an opportunity for socially and morally motivated intermediaries to impact on public issues.

Cultural Intermediaries: Audience Participation in Media Organisations is intended to provide an explicit overview of how one notable media organization, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), incorporates participation into its production methodology, while maintaining its role as a public service media organisation. The book provides several cases studies of successful audience participation across socially motivated projects. Finally, the book provides an updated framework to understand how cultural intermediation can facilitate authentic audience participation in media organisations.

Jonathon Hutchinson (PhD 2013, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Australia) is a lecturer in Online and Social Media Communication at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research explores public service media, everyday social media use, and the role of social media influencers within co-creative environments. He is a trained ethnographer and has been published in many leading national and international journals.

Offers an up-to-date account of how audience participation manifests within media organisations through convergence culture, demonstrating how cultural intermediation enables the co-creative process

Discusses public service media as a burgeoning field of international scholarship through an exploration of the important implications for national media, cultural and social policy

Provides a compelling account of cultural intermediation as a process that represents the interests of multiple stakeholders engaging in content production

Develops an ontological framework to understand how cultural intermediation moves towards digital intermediation while operating in an increasingly automated media ecosystem that sees humans interacting with artificial intelligence and algorithms

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras