Terry Flew

Creative Industries after the First Decade of Debate

It has now been over a decade since the concept of creative industries was first put into the public domain by the Blair Labour governments Creative Industries Mapping Documents in Britain. The concept has gained traction globally, but it has also been understood and developed in different ways in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and North America, as well as through international bodies such as UNCTAD and UNESCO. A review of the policy literature reveals that although questions and issues remain around definitional coherence, there is some degree of consensus emerging about the size, scope, and significance of the sectors in question in both advanced and developing economies. At the same time, debate about the concept remains highly animated in media, communication, and cultural studies, with its critics dismissing the concept outright as a harbinger of neoliberal ideology in the cultural sphere. This article couches such critiques in light of recent debates surrounding the intellectual coherence of the concept of neoliberalism, arguing that this term itself possesses problems when taken outside of the Anglo-American context in which it originated. It is argued that issues surrounding the nature of participatory media culture, the relationship between cultural production and economic innovation, and the future role of public cultural institutions can be developed from within a creative industries framework and that writing off such arguments as a priori ideological and flawed does little to advance debates about twentieth-century information and media culture.

Six theories of neoliberalism

This article takes as its starting point the observation that neoliberalism is a concept that is ‘oft-invoked but ill-defined’. It provides a taxonomy of uses of the term neoliberalism to include: (1) an all-purpose denunciatory category; (2) ‘the way things are’; (3) an institutional framework characterizing particular forms of national capitalism, most notably the Anglo-American ones; (4) a dominant ideology of global capitalism; (5) a form of governmentality and hegemony; and (6) a variant within the broad framework of liberalism as both theory and policy discourse. It is argued that this sprawling set of definitions are not mutually compatible, and that uses of the term need to be dramatically narrowed from its current association with anything and everything that a particular author may find objectionable. In particular, it is argued that the uses of the term by Michel Foucault in his 1978–9 lectures, found in The Birth of Biopolitics, are not particularly compatible with its more recent status as a variant of dominant ideology or hegemony theories. It instead proposes understanding neoliberalism in terms of historical institutionalism, with Foucault’s account of historical change complementing Max Weber’s work identifying the distinctive economic sociology of national capitalisms.

THE PROMISE OF COMPUTATIONAL JOURNALISM

Computational journalism involves the application of software and technologies to the activities of journalism, and it draws from the fields of computer science, the social sciences, and media and communications. New technologies may enhance the traditional aims of journalism, or may initiate greater interaction between journalists and information and communication technology (ICT) specialists. The enhanced use of computing in news production is related in particular to three factors: larger government datasets becoming more widely available; the increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous nature of software; and the developing digital economy. Drawing upon international examples, this paper argues that computational journalism techniques may provide new foundations for original investigative journalism and increase the scope for new forms of interaction with readers. Computational journalism provides a major opportunity to enhance the production of original investigative journalism, and to attract and retain readers online.

Journalism as social networking: The Australian youdecide project and the 2007 federal election

The increasing prevalence of new media technologies and the rise of citizen journalism have coincided with a crisis in industrial journalism — as the figure of the ‘journalist as hero’ is fading, new media forms have facilitated the production of news content ‘from below’ by citizens and ‘pro-am’ journalists. Participation in an action-research project run during the 2007 Australian federal election, youdecide 2007, allowed the authors to gain first-hand insights into the progress of citizen-led news media in Australia, but also allowed us to develop an account of what the work of facilitating citizen journalism involves. These insights are important to understanding the future of professional journalism and journalism education, as more mainstream media organizations move to accommodate and harness user-created content. The article considers the relevance of citizen journalism projects as forms of R&D for understanding news production and distribution in participatory media cultures, and the importance of grounded case studies for moving beyond normative debates about new media and the future of journalism.

Toward a Cultural Economic Geography of Creative Industries and Urban Development: Introduction to the Special Issue on Creative Industries and Urban Development

The connections between the development of creative industries and the growth of cities was noted by several sources in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but explanations relating to the nature of the link have thus far proven to be insufficient. The two dominant “scripts” were those of “creative clusters” and “creative/cities/creative class” theories, but both have significant limitations arising from how they privilege amenities-led, supply-driven accounts of urban development and how they fail to adequately situate cities in wider global circuits of culture and economic production. The author proposes that the emergent field of cultural economic geography provides some insights that redress these lacunae, particularly in the possibilities for an original synthesis of cultural and economic geography, cultural studies, and new strands of economic theory.

The ongoing significance of national media systems in the context of media globalization

This article argues that the concept of national media systems, and the comparative study of media systems, institutions, and practices, retains relevance in an era of media globalization and technological convergence. It considers various critiques of ‘media systems’ theories, such as those which view the concept of ‘system’ as a legacy of an outdated positivism and those which argue that the media globalization is weakening the relevance of nation-states in structuring the field of media cultures and practices. It argues for the continuing centrality of nation-states to media processes, and the ongoing significance of the national space in an age of media globalization, with reference to case studies of Internet policies in China, Brazil, and Australia. These studies indicate that nation-states remain critical actors in media governance and that domestic actors largely shape the central dynamics of media policies, even where media technologies and platforms enable global flows of media content.

Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates

Neo-liberalism has become one of the boom concepts of our time. From its original reference point as a descriptor of the economics of the ‘Chicago School’ or authors such as Friedrich von Hayek, neo-liberalism has become an all-purpose concept, explanatory device and basis for social critique. This presentation evaluates Michel Foucault’s 1978–79 lectures, published as The Birth of Biopolitics, to consider how he used the term neo-liberalism, and how this equates with its current uses in critical social and cultural theory. It will be argued that Foucault did not understand neo-liberalism as a dominant ideology in these lectures, but rather as marking a point of inflection in the historical evolution of liberal political philosophies of government. It will also be argued that his interpretation of neo-liberalism was more nuanced and more comparative than more recent contributions. The article points towards an attempt to theorize comparative historical models of liberal capitalism.

Creativity, the ‘new humanism’ and cultural studies

Creativity used to be seen as something peculiar to artists, designers and dissidents, suggesting space to be yourself, with a whiff of subversion. Now it is considered essential for survival in the current labour, attentiveness and relations markets ... Creativity is therefore seen as a key asset by a whole range of social institutions and interest groups ... Myself Limited and Lifelong Learning, Patchwork Identity and Do-it-yourself programmes: ‘Design your life. Be creative!’ (Promotional material for Be Creative! The Creative Imperative exhibition, Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich, 30 Nov. 2002–16 Feb. 2003)

Creative suburbia: Rethinking urban cultural policy – the Australian case

This article considers the question of whether creative workers demonstrate a preference for inner cities or suburbs, drawing upon research findings from the ‘Creative Suburbia’ project undertaken by a team of Australian researchers over 2008–2010 in selected suburban areas of Brisbane and Melbourne. Locating this question in wider debates about the relationship of the suburbs to the city, as well as the development of new suburban forms such as master-planned communities, the article finds that the number of creative industries workers located in the suburbs is significant, and those creative workforce members living and working in suburban areas are generally happy with this experience, locating in the suburbs out of personal choice rather than economic necessity. This runs counter to the received wisdom on creative cities, which emphasize cultural amenity in inner city areas as a primary driver of location decisions for the ‘creative class’. The article draws out some implications of the findings for urban cultural policy, arguing that the focus on developing inner urban cultural amenity has been overplayed, and that more attention should be given to how to better enable distributed knowledge systems through high-speed broadband infrastructure.

Creative Industries: From the Chicken Cheer to the Culture of Services

The creative and industrial dimensions of culture are very much the focus of discussion at present. The concept of creative industries, first promulgated by the Blair Labour government in Britain in 1998, and now having an impact upon public policy and arts and humanities education in Australia (the Queensland University of Technology having established a Creative Industries Faculty, replacing its Faculty of Arts, in 2001), is one of the more visible dimensions of this trend in Media and Cultural Studies. But the linking of culture and creativity with economy and industry goes much wider than this. Its manifestations range from the discovery of urban nightlife as a factor in the location decisions of information technology businesses, to the use of Shakespeare as a training tool for corporate managers. Entering the word ‘creativity’ onto the Harvard Business Online site yields 224 documents that: draw attention to how organizations can kill creativity; indicate how to use deadlines to promote creativity; provide strategies on building an inventive organization; advise on how to promote intrinsic motivation in the workplace; and discuss how to get ‘beyond the chicken cheer’, where Loren Gray advises readers on why not to ‘waste your time at seminars that urge you to cluck like a chicken in an attempt to lose inhibition and inspire creativity’ (Gray, 1999).