SYMBOLIC PRODUCTION AND VALUE IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES

Abstract

This article discusses value creation within the fields of cultural production. It departs from Bourdieu's field model, and seeks to develop it to fit unrestricted cultural production, for example television production. Bourdieu for the most part discussed the production of value (or forms of capital) in relation to fields of restricted cultural production, that is, within the fine arts (e.g. art, literature). Although one of his best known works dealt with television, one cannot say that he used the possibilities inherent in his own theory thoroughly enough to analyse this field of mass production. This article builds on recent discussions on the role of field theory in media studies, and seeks to contribute to the development of a theory of value production in fields of large-scale or unrestricted cultural production. It is argued that the conflation of commercial value with other kinds of value is more intense in the subfield of unrestricted cultural production, as production in this part of the field needs to obey outer demand in a way that production at the pole of restricted production does not.

Keywords:

• Bourdieu
• cultural production
• digitization
• field theory
• marketization
• media production
• television
• value

Notes

1. This is also unresolved in Nick Couldry's (2003) article on the media as producers of ‘meta-capital’, an argument that Couldry makes by analogy with Bourdieu's theory on the field of power in The State Nobility (1996). For all the merits of Couldry's article, we are left with the same problem: is it more helpful to regard the power relations as played out within one field of power, or is it, as I suggest, better to regard the situation as constructed by several competing fields of power? Although the media are certainly – in the same way as the educational system – one of the most powerful agents of exercising symbolic power (i.e. to produce naturalized representations of reality), the media do not – in the same way as the state – have the coercive power to force these representations upon other fields. In this respect it is more helpful to think of the relation between the field of media production and other fields of power as a web of interrelations.

2. The format was developed by British production company Castaway, but SVT was the first broadcaster to produce and air the show (Steemers 2004, p. 175).

3. Much of these concepts and business models were discussed at the Changing Advertising Summit: New clients, new consumers, new communications, London, 13 October 2008 (see mediaguardian.co.uk/advertisingsummit, last retrieved 27 November 2008).