How should we pay attention to the international role of platforms in contemporary media and cultural industries?
While many platforms have global aspirations, different media ecosystems are embedded in different national and regional contexts – with their own internal cultural, political, financial, regulatory and aesthetic dynamics – producing a range of barriers and opportunities for interaction. There are particular differences between the digital ecosystems of the Global North and South – dominated, in particular, by major Chinese and US tech companies – while the British and European media environments have their own distinct dynamics, as they do across the African continent and elsewhere in the world.
This study day brings together internationally-renowned scholars, post-graduate students and early-career researchers to explore these issues together. Presentations of research will focus on the impact of AI on the disciplinary field of media and communications and the global platformisation of music. This is complemented by a “how-to” session on journal publishing in this field for Early Career Researchers.
Outline of the day (Central London location / Rooms TBC)
10.00-11.00 – Presentation: Generative AI and the Paradigm Crisis in Communication Studies: Human-Machine Dynamics and Disciplinary Reconstruction in the AIGC Era
Anthony Fung (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
From Professional-Generated Content (PGC) and User-Generated Content (UGC) to Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC), the evolution of the communication ecosystem is reshaping the foundations of communication research. In the PGC era, media institutions monopolized discourse power; in the UGC era, individuals competed for narrative space through social platforms; and the current rise of AIGC signifies the deep integration of algorithms into content production, challenging traditional theoretical frameworks that explain human communication behaviors. This transformation has triggered three structural challenges: a crisis of authenticity, where AI-generated deepfake content blurs the line between humans and machines, undermining the credibility of information sources; the failure of effect models, as traditional persuasion theories struggle to explain how AI-tailored messages based on psychological data precisely manipulate cognition and behavior; and a shift in power dynamics, where AI platforms control content distribution through algorithmic black boxes, reconstructing public discourse systems via traffic-driven logic. To address these challenges, communication studies must re-examine its research paradigms: explore the subjectivity of communication in human-machine collaboration, establish ethical frameworks adapted to synthetic media, and critically analyze the power relations behind algorithms. The discipline’s mission is not to resist technological evolution but to find equilibrium between innovation and humanistic values.
11.00-12.00 – Panel: Ask the Editors: Journal publishing – what, how and why?
This session, aimed at Early Career Researchers, will open up the black box of scholarly publication in this field. Those curious about any aspect of academic publishing will be encouraged to bring questions they may have to the panel.
Zhou Jianxin & Dianlin Huang, Global Media & China
Global Media and China is an open-access journal in media studies that explores the dynamic relationship between global media ecosystems and China’s media landscape, while also addressing broader global media trends and transformations. The journal emphasizes a diverse global authorship and readership, fostering a deeper understanding of media systems and their evolving roles worldwide. Editorial Directors will provide an overview of the journal’s development trajectory, current editorial scope, and practical guidance for prospective contributors seeking to engage with its mission of fostering cross-cultural scholarly dialogue.
Toby Bennett, Journal of Cultural Economy
Journal of Cultural Economy is concerned with the role played by various forms of material cultural practice in the organisation of the economy and the social, and the relations between them. It offers a unique interdisciplinary forum for work on these questions from across the social sciences and humanities. Papers explore topics such as local barter systems, creative entrepreneurship, debt politics, consultancy, financial markets, crypto-currencies and, of course, digital platformisation – its thematic scope is diverse and international, as is its editorial board. The journal’s Production Editor will give an overview of “do”s, “don’t”s and common misunderstandings.
14.00-16.00 – Workshop: Platformisation of Music
This session explores emerging research focused on platforms and music industries, foregrounding dominant and alternative perspectives in different parts of the world. The emphasis here will be on debate, dialogue, mutual learning and potential future collaboration.
Allan Watson (University of Loughborough), The Rise of the Platform Music Industries
The music industry is being reshaped by a fresh round of platform intermediation – one based on MusicTech, social media platforms and user-generated content, live streaming, crowdfunding and gamification. In his forthcoming book, co-authored with Andrew Leyshon, Allan Watson critically examines this latest wave of new platform music industries and considers how they are influencing music creation, distribution and consumption as well as their wider economic and cultural impact. While debates about the moral economy of streaming dominate both media and academic accounts of the music industries, a focus on streaming alone obscures much of the complexity resulting from related and concurrent platform innovations.
Qian Zhang (Communication University of China), Adaptation and optimisation across audio-visual platforms: Hot song production in the Chinese music industry
Short-form video platforms have reshaped the practices of record companies and music streaming services, giving rise to new cross-audiovisual platform ecosystems. This article draws from interviews with musicians and staff in China’s music industry, and adopts the concept of the ‘platform adapter’ to analyse how music industry practitioners and content producers in China have adjusted their production, distribution, and promotion strategies in response to the affordances of this emerging industrial ecosystem. It discusses the practices of staff who work with musicians to construct ‘hot songs’ (热歌) that can gain popularity across audio-visual platforms and music streaming services. Connecting theoretical ideas about affordance, platform ecologies, and adaptation, the article contributes to research on how cultural forms are ‘optimised’ to be more amenable to the requirements of platforms. As song production practices are adapted to the requirements of short-form videos that can spread across different platforms, it argues that the emotional coding of songs has become ever more important for the commodification of popular music in the platform economy.
Paul Rekret (University of Westminster), Small-Scale Online Radio in the UK: an Alternative to Music Platforms?
This presentation examines Small-Scale Online Radio stations (SSORs) as a media actor. There has been substantive growth among SSORs across the UK and internationally in recent years. SSORs are a distinct, emerging type of cultural institution and represent a new form of radio broadcasting that appeared in the mid-2010s. These stations share four distinct characteristics: (1) they are local: identified with a particular city, town, or region. (2) They broadcast exclusively online without licensing. (3) They operate on a voluntary basis and rely upon donations and fundraising to cover running costs. (4) Personnel are drawn from local music and arts communities with stations serving as hubs for local creative industries. Taking a number of UK SSORs as its focus, this presentation will situate them in the history and theorisation of radio in order to understand what is distinct about them. It will also ask if SSORs represent an alternative mode of music distribution to streaming platforms for a digital age.
Please join the Westminster Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) for a research seminar with Professor Vicki Mayer, exploring the experience of new working selves.
Details
When Martin Heidegger wrote, “Only as phenomenology, ontology is possible,” he wanted to turn our attention to objects as things we make through human perception and experience. Turns out, many of those experiences happen at work. In fact many theories about experience are located in workplaces. Phenomenology’s method assumes that we are workers in the modern world. What this means is we have a self that is produced through work as an experience. We can call this our working selves.
This talk attempts to renarrate the experience of work as a storytelling process. To tell the contemporary story of precarity, alienation, and marginality uses experience to critique new working selves — the entrepreneur, the innovator, the influencer, and the creative. But stories remember and forget other stories. They base the disillusion with these working selves in a new politics with old caveats for class, race, and gender. Can we find inspiration in those forgotten stories? Can we reframe the assumptions belying our perceptions and experiences?
Biography
Vicki Mayer is Professor of Communication at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana (the United States). Author of three books and editor of three more and an encyclopedia, she has written broadly about work, jobs, and employment through the lens of cultural studies.
The Communication and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster welcomes you to this talk on Media Geographies with Prof. David Morley and Dr. Mike Duggan.
In order to understand how the media exercise their power, we also need to contextualise media and communication studies themselves, by considering how they have been shaped by the specific circumstances of their development in the period of the post WWII economic boom in the affluent democracies of the world’s Northwestern ‘temperate zone’. In an era in which mobility is now becoming a key dimension of inequality, the study of communications must also involve questions of both geography and demography – in particular, the degrees of mobility (or immobilisation) of different categories of persons, technologies and commodities. We should perhaps be sceptical about the myths of digital media’s weightlessness, immateriality and lack of friction and especially its claims to enable us to transcend geography. In a world of heavily policed borders, with the rise of economic protectionism leading to tariff wars and increasing conflict over control of international trade routes, media and communications cannot be understood outside the context of these geo-political issues. In this context, as Foucault argued, we need theories and models which will enable us to understand both the ‘grand strategies of geopolitics’ and the ‘little tactics of the habitat’.
This event will open with a provocation from Prof. David Morley on the intersection between media and geography, followed by a response from Dr Mike Duggan, and what is sure to be a lively and highly informative discussion. The evening will be rounded off with a wine reception and the chance to continue conversations with friends old and new.
Prof. David Morley
David Morley is Emeritus Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. Following his early work on media audiences and the household uses of information and communication technology, he has worked in the field of cultural geography for many years now. His publications include ‘Spaces of identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries’ (with Kevin Robins, Routledge 1997); ‘Home Territories ‘ (Routledge 2001); ‘Media, Modernity and Technology: the Geography of the New’ (2005) and ‘Communications and Mobility: the Migrant, the Mobile Phone and the Container Box (Wiley Blackwell, 2016). He also edited ‘Stuart Hall : Selected Essays Vols 1 and 2’ (Duke University Press 2019). His work has been translated into 22 languages.
Dr Mike Duggan (Kings College)
Mike Duggan holds a PhD in Cultural Geography from Royal Holloway University of London, working in partnership with the Ordnance Survey on studying everyday digital mapping practices. Mike is primarily interested in the intersections between technology, culture and everyday life. He has studied everyday mapping practices, the lived experiences of the sharing economy and video conferencing platforms. He a director of the Livingmaps Network and the editor-in-chief of the Livingmaps Review, a bi-annual journal for radical and critical cartography, which welcomes a range of submission styles from academics, artists, activists and others interested in maps and mapping practices. His latest book is All Mapped Out, is published by Reaktion Books (2024).
This event is hosted by Prof. Tarik Sabry and Dr Doug Specht.