Love is all around. This may be somewhat of a cliché, and like all platitudes contains a kernel of truth. Our relations with media are profoundly personal, and this intimacy plays a powerful role in explaining the significance of media and communication in society and in everyday life. However, love as a concept or driving force in the mutual shaping of media, society and the day-to-day tends to be rarely acknowledged in media and (mass) communication scholarship – and when it does, it is often seen as a problem rather than as a natural, let alone helpful phenomenon. In this chapter, a theory of “media love” is proposed in recognition of its profundity, particularly in terms of both the mediation and mediatisation of love as distinct processes changing the role and meaning of media in society and everyday life. In conclusion, the implications of love for the development of media and information literacy are discussed.

In this paper, I respond to a critical analysis of my recent work on definitions of and approaches to journalism as a profession by Tabe Bergman. At the heart of our debate is the division between structure and agency, and what our focus should be in teaching and studying journalism. An argument is made to address structures (of political economy) through agency (of working journalists).

Making Media uncovers what it means and what it takes to make media, focusing on the lived experience of media professionals within the global media, including rich case studies of the main media industries and professions: television, journalism, social media entertainment, advertising and public relations, digital games, and music. This carefully edited volume features 35 authoritative essays by 53 researchers from 14 countries across 6 continents, all of whom are at the cutting edge of media production studies. The book is particularly designed for use in coursework on media production, media work, media management, and media industries. Specific topics highlighted: the history of media industries and production studies; production studies as a field and a research method; changing business models, economics, and management; global concentration and convergence of media industries and professions; the rise and role of startups and entrepreneurship; freelancing in the digital age; the role of creativity and innovation; the emotional quality of media work; diversity and inequality in the media industries. Open Uva Course: the University of Amsterdam has a open course around the book. The course offers a review of the key readings and debates in media production studies. Course slides 2020 Take a look at the Making Media Facebook page here. Take a look at the Table of Contents and Introduction here.

The contribution by The Janissary Collective argues that while protest movements and civic groups may indeed benef it from ‘mediatization,’ their playful character is less the result of a conscious strategy than the outcome of the performativity of means-over-ends focused engagement. This manifests itself in the ‘slacktivism’ inherent in participating online only. The Janissary Collective takes a skeptical stance towards generalizing the transformative role of new media tools, and proposes to regard today’s political and social movements as thriving on the unruly and affective ecologies of media that mostly emphasize the feeling of belonging to a community instead of actually being part of one. Participation in these movements is an expression of a playful way of being and therefore a mode of being human.

In the last decade, digital media technologies and developments have given rise to exciting new forms of ludic, or playful, engagements of citizens in cultural and societal issues. From the Occupy movement to playful city-making to the gameful designs of the Obama 2008 and Trump 2016 presidential campaigns, and the rise of citizen science and ecological games, this book shows how play is a key theoretical, methodological, and practical principle for comprehending such new forms of civic engagement in a mediatized culture. The Playful Citizen explores how and through what media we are becoming more playful as citizens and how this manifests itself in our ways of doing, living, and thinking. We offer a pluralistic answer to such questions by bringing together scholars from different fields such as game and play studies, social sciences, and media and culture studies.

La conferencia del profesor Deuze fue una adaptacion del articulo del mismo autor: Deuze, M., & Witschge, T. (2017). Beyond journalism: Theorizing the transformation of journalism. Journalism, 146488491668855. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884916688550.

O futuro da comunicação social enquanto indústria e em termos dos profissionais a que dá emprego é analisado utilizando a teoria da comunicação social e a perspetiva da produção relativamente à comunicação social enquanto trabalho. Dada a dependência da sociedade nos meios de comunicação para contar as suas histórias, e o facto de as vidas quotidianas das pessoas serem representadas nesses mesmos meios de comunicação, o momento em que estes mundos colidem constitui um ponto de partida excelente para uma exploração futurística. Utilizando uma taxonomia dos meios de comunicação social como artefactos, atividades e organizações sociais, o trabalho mediático é analisado do ponto de vista de uma oportunidade estética, de uma chamada ética à ação e de uma responsabilidade social.

The future of media as an industry and in terms of the professionals it employs is considered using media theory and the production perspective on media as work. Given society’s reliance on media to tell its stories, and people’s everyday lives playing out within those same media, the moment these worlds collide provides an excellent starting point for futuristic exploration. Using a taxonomy of media as artefacts, activities and social arrangements, media work is considered in terms of an aesthetic opportunity, an ethical call to action, and a social responsibility.

The emergence of a startup culture in the field of journalism is global: since the early years of the twenty-first century, new independent journalism companies have formed around the world. Although setting up one's own journalistic practice is not particularly novel in the news industry, the last couple of years have witnessed exponential growth in the startup space. In this context we chose to look more closely at one of the more successful recent online news startups: the French site Mediapart. We were interested in the factors involved in creating and running a journalism startup, and how the professionals involved give meaning to what they do in the fast-changing journalism field. We found that, although one of the main unique selling points of the journalism professed at Mediapart is that it challenges and provides an alternative to mainstream French press, at the heart of it is a strong traditional journalism ideology. While Mediapart has in many ways challenged and inspired the ways in which other French news organizations operate, it does not challenge our understanding of journalism, but rather reinforces a traditional and homogenous definition.

As societies are ageing and mediatizing at the same time, it becomes both timely and relevant to develop particular perspectives on the role and meaning of media for older people. The diversity and inequality in the lived experience of the ageing population in the new media environment constitute a blind spot in current research. In this essay, we bring literatures of (cultural) ageing studies and (new) media studies into conversation with each other by asking what future directions for research on older people and their media lives from the particular perspective of social diversity could be. We propose three key interventions: developing a focus on social stratification and inequality broadly conceived; designing research with a life course perspective rather than reducing people to age groups; and focusing empirical work looking at the various ways people ‘do’ media in an ensemblematic way.

Nessa contribuição, argumenta-se que viver na, ao invés de com, mídia não apenas nos transforma em zumbis, mas que tal zumbificação nos oferece vantagens adaptativas para sobrevivência no século XXI. Como zumbis midiáticos, estamos mais bem equipados para abraçar o coletivismo ao invés do individualismo; ser anti-hierárquico ao invés de organizado verticalmente; e se engajar em nossos mundos mútuos (de mídia) com paixão e fervor sem necessariamente ter um plano ou objetivo específico em mente. No fim, o futuro da humanidade como zumbis midiáticos se resume à pergunta: se isso realmente é uma sociedade zumbi, o que seria o equivalente mediado de arrancar a cabeças das pessoas? A resposta pode ser encontrada em práticas como hacking, o conjunto de habilidades do fandom e a moralidade do coletivo.

Understanding creative industries in general and media work in particular poses a fascinating paradox: as people worldwide engage with media in an increasingly immersive, always-on, almost instantaneous and interconnected way, the very people whose livelihoods and sense of professional identity depend on delivering content and experiences across such media seem to be at a loss on how to come up with survival strategies – in terms of business models, effective regulatory practices (e.g. copyrights and universal access provisions), and perhaps most significantly the organization of entrepreneurial working conditions that support and sustain the creative process needed to meet the demands of a global market saturated with media. This article proposes a model for professional identity in media work that engages with these questions, based on past, present and ongoing personal experiences of one of the authors as a self-employed media worker in multiple creative industries.