The media are home to an eclectic bunch of people. This book is about who they are, what they do, and what their work means to them. Based on interviews with media professionals in the United States, New Zealand, South Africa, and The Netherlands, and drawing from both scholarly and professional literatures in a wide variety of disciplines, it offers an account of what it is like to work in the media today. Media professionals face tough choices. Boundaries are drawn and erased: between commerce and creativity, between individualism and teamwork, between security and independence. Digital media supercharge these dilemmas, as industries merge and media converge, as audiences become co-creators of content online. The media industries are the pioneers of the digital age. This book is a critical primer on how media workers manage to survive, and is essential reading for anyone considering a career in the media, or who wishes to understand how the media are made.
"Mark Deuze, one of our best young media theorists, has written a magisterial book. Without ideology or jargon, he moves fluidly between different media sectors, mixing perspectives on media production with those on media audiences and their activities. This book will frame key debates in the field for some time to come."
Henry Jenkins, MIT
Work and meaning - economy and culture - are more integrated than ever. As audiences and consumers we revel in media; as workforce and citizens we are at risk from them. In this well-researched and original book Mark Deuze shows how the creative industries work and what it is like to work in them.
John Hartley, Queensland University of Technology
"Mark Deuze offers a guidebook to navigate us through the 'mashup' of everyday life and media content, production and consumption, globalization and the local, work and leisure, authenticity and artifact. His book is a timely corrective to the popular dream of cultural employment, and offers insight into a society characterized by instability and destabilization, speed, precariousness and a continual overspilling of the domains of work and life."
Andy C. Pratt, LSE
ISBN: 9780745639253 / £14.99 GBP / $22.95 USD - Buy from Polity Books
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