Julian Matthews

Are we all cultural intermediaries now? An introduction to cultural intermediaries in context

The term ‘cultural intermediaries’ is good to think with: it has been a productive device for examining the producers of symbolic value in various industries, commodity chains and urban spaces, highlighting such issues as the blurring of work and leisure, the conservatism of ‘new’ and ‘creative’ work, and the material practices involved in the promotion of consumption (e.g. Bovone, 2005; Entwistle, 2006; McFall, 2004; Moor, 2008; Negus, 2002; Nixon and Crewe, 2004; Smith Maguire, 2008; Wright, 2005). In addition, cultural intermediary research offers an important complement to the study of cultural production, within which questions of agency are typically focused on consumers, and questions of power on institutions. The concept of cultural intermediaries usefully prioritizes issues of agency, negotiation and power, moving the everyday, contested practices of market agents to the fore for the study of the production of culture (Garnham, 2005; Havens et al., 2009; Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2010). Generally, research on cultural intermediaries has followed two different (although not incompatible) directions: cultural intermediaries as exemplars of the new middle class, involved in the mediation of production and consumption (following e.g. Bourdieu, 1984, 1996); and cultural intermediaries as market actors involved in the qualification of goods, mediating between economy and culture (following developments in actornetwork theory and new economic sociology, e.g. Callon et al., 2002; Muniesa et al., 2007). Engagements within and between these streams of work have resulted in conceptual developments: for example, du Gay’s (2004) discussion of devices and dispositions, and Cronin’s (2004) elaboration of multiple regimes of mediation. Nevertheless,

Studying journalists in changing times: understanding news work as socially-situated practice

Industry insiders and media academics often voice unease about the transformations taking place in the global news industry. Despite its usefulness in drawing attention to the twists and turns of organizational change and innovation in news production, much of the research on this topic shows less interest in journalists’ situated experience than is helpful. This article suggests that academic attention might be usefully refocused to the changing nature and experiences of journalists as they encounter the changes taking place in their industry. Such a focus can be justified on theoretical grounds: the implications of change in the news industry for its traditional democratic role cannot be understood without understanding in detail what journalists do and how they do it. While acknowledging that news production takes place in the context of competitive commercial enterprise, the authors argue that fruitful avenues for empirical enquiry can be opened up by adopting a more practice-centred analysis. The article concludes by introducing recent research that joins this pursuit.

Negatively shaping the asylum agenda? The representational strategy and impact of a tabloid news campaign

This article examines coverage presented in a news campaign (on asylum and immigration) by the UK tabloid newspaper, the Sun, from January to March 2003. The analysis reveals how tabloid news conventions rather than government definitions or viewpoints frame the character and contours of campaign representations, an observation that throws into sharp relief existing explanations of elite influence or authority skew. This campaign includes portrayals of the asylum seeker as ‘the other’ or ‘folk devil’, a moral framework explaining their deviant intentions and actions, as well as expressions of irreverence at elite decision-making and government UK asylum policy. Yet it is striking how accompanying tabloid representations of public opinion, featuring consistently through the coverage, offer additional hostility to asylum policy and government officials. The article outlines how such representations and appeals garner the attention of the political elite and elite media on this occasion and develop new concerns over the newspaper’s role in negatively shaping the asylum agenda.

Out of the Mouths of Babes and Experts': Children's News and What it can Teach us About News Access and Professional Mediation

Abstract Based on a participant observation study of the British childrens news programme Newsround, this article explores how professional ideas of form and target audience condition and shape both the range of accessed news voices as well as the opportunities that these are granted on the news stage to elaborate their views, experiences and feelings. This case-study approach not only helps to map a hitherto unexplored form of television journalism but also throws into sharp relief professional news practices that inform the production of television news more generally. As such, it addresses an important silence in the conventional theorisation of news access and invites a more complex and culturally differentiated understanding of, and future approach to, news production and processes of professional mediation.

Creating a new(s) view of the environment How children's news offers new insights into news form, imagined audiences and the production of environmental news stories

Based on a production study of childrens news, this article examines the unique new(s) views of the environment created by news programming. Childrens news programmes, such as the BBCs programme Newsround, construct a new(s) view of environmental degradation. Studying the childrens news programme thus provides insights into the unexplored relationship between news differentiation and environmental news representations. This particular investigation explores and demonstrates how Newsround and its informing conception of its child audience produces a simplified and personalized view of the environment, which powerfully undermines a reasoned understanding of the relationship between human beings and the natural world. By this means it examines the important connections between news conventions, news programmes and new(s) views of the environment.

“Making It Our Own” BBC Newsround Professionals and Their Efforts to Build a News Agenda for the Young

This article, based on an observational study of the BBC children’s news program Newsround (UK), discusses how news professionals’ particularized news culture shapes the production of the specialized news agenda. Studying the agenda-building process with this concern reveals how an understanding of their target audience plays an important role within the news-making process. This informs professionals’ collective understanding of an “ideal” Newsround story that is used within production to select and shape a simplified and personalized news agenda for children. The impact of this process on children’s “cultural rights” as would-be citizens as well as the importance of the news form and its inscribed audience for an understanding of agenda building is then addressed within the article’s conclusion.

Media performance in the aftermath of terror: Reporting templates, political ritual and the UK press coverage of the London Bombings, 2005

This article examines newspaper reaction in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings 2005 to identify the repertoires they use to respond to this large-scale terrorist incident perpetrated on UK soil. It introduces to our established view of media reporting of terrorism, a moment when traditionally differentiated newspapers respond collectively to this incident with coverage marked by its representations of condemnation, solidarity and law and enforcement brought together within human-interest story treatments. These findings point to newspaper journalists employing a generic reporting template at this time to reproduce copy so ordered as to respond consensually to this incident. Newspapers’ performances across this period privilege official responses and collective national reaction to the bombings as they cauterise an identified social wound produced by the incident. Their investigation calls attention to the ritual character of reporting produced against this context, pointing in particular to the enacted images of ‘Britishness’ central to its performance.

Maintaining a politicised climate of opinion? Examining how political framing and journalistic logic combine to shape speaking opportunities in UK elite newspaper reporting of climate change

This article explores the importance of issue politicisation and mediation for the reporting of climate change in UK elite newspapers. Specifically, this investigates how journalistic logic mediates political framing to produce commentaries on and discussion about climate change in the news. In analysing elite newspaper coverage over time in this case, the article shows that (1) various frames introduce the issue as a legitimate problem within coverage and that (2) the news stories these inform are opened to specific commentaries according to ‘elite journalistic logic’. This configuration of coverage orders the speaking opportunities of established voices of science, politics and industry as well as those less established voices that enter to explain and qualify these elite accounts. The article concludes that the ingrained combination of issue politicisation and journalistic logic observed here will likely shape future elite reporting and those voices that it will include.

Formula manufacturers’ web sites: are they really non‐compliant advertisements?

Purpose – In the UK, advertising of infant formula products direct to consumers is not permitted. These products must be used on the recommendation of suitably qualified health or medical professionals. The aim of this study is to examine formula manufacturers’ web sites to ascertain whether these are used as alternative forms of advertising that fall outside current regulations.Design/methodology/approach – The web sites of five leading formula product manufacturers were surveyed in 2009 and again in 2012 as part of a wider assessment of infant and follow‐on formula advertising and presentation. These sites were assessed for the presence of text and images they contained relating to infant formula products that may not be directly advertised to consumers under current regulations.Findings – Although not technically classified as “advertisements” all these web sites were found to contain formula product information that could be construed as promotional in nature in 2009. By 2012, this was true of just tw...

U.S. TV News and Communicative Architecture: Between Manufacturing Consent and Mediating Democracy

The research reported in this article examines for the first time contemporary U.S. TV journalism approached through the prism of its communicative architecture. We argue that the established communicative structures of TV news, generally overlooked and under-theorized in the research field, are deeply implicated in both processes of manufacturing consent and mediating democracy. The article illustrates and systematically compares how the established communicative structures of TV news feature within and across U.S terrestrial and satellite news networks and considers how they variously shape, constrain, and facilitate the public elaboration of major issues and engagement of identities.