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used in the production process (deep texts) allow us to study in depth the evolution of the producers’ practices and discourses during these first months.
The production process is analysed according to five levels distinguished in the gatekeeping theory. These are: the individual producers, the production
routines, the organisation of the editorial board within the broadcasting company, the extra-media influences, and the social systems in which producers
work. The results show that producers of this new programme hardly value possibilities for including audience perspectives in the production process. A
growing amount of content for online platforms is being made, but only a few producers seek out for audience perspectives through these platforms. In‑
stead, online content mostly aims for more engagement of the audience to watch the programme. This analysis is further developed into a thick description
and highlights specific situations to understand the practices and the motivations of producers.
PP 238
The New Star System: The Political Economy of Multi-Channel Networks
A.M. Jonsson
1
, H. Örnebring
2
1
Södertörn university, School of Culture and Education, Huddinge, Sweden
2
Karlstad university, Department of Geography- Media and Communication, Karlstad, Sweden
Multi-channel networks (MCNs) are a relatively new organizational form within the media industry, linked to video sharing sites (predominantly YouTube
but also similar sites like Vimeo; some MCNs are also active on visual social media like Instagram). MCNs function as an intermediary between individual
content creators and advertisers/marketers, and also provide other forms of support services to creators, notably marketing and business strategy consult‑
ing. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the political economy of MCNs as part of the wider new networked media industry (Snick‑
ars & Vonderau, 2012). MCNs have begun to attract some scholarly interest (e.g. Cunningham, 2015; Mann, 2014; Mueller, 2014), but has yet to become
as a major area of scholarly interest. Themes addressed in the existing research are for example the participatory culture of MCNs; agency and motivations
of actors; value creation, cultural hegemony of MCNs and their role as transitional workspaces. This paper uses Swedish MCN companies Splay.tv and United
Screens as case studies to analyse the market and cultural logics that underpin this type of media organization. Our main contention is that MCNs are driven
by a “celebrity logic” rather than the “content logic” that is dominant in many media industries. MCNs are best viewed as a hybrid industry. Like the social
media networks on which they are active, they are based in the “sharing economy”(or “like economy”, as in Gerlitz & Helmond 2013, or “ethical economy”
as in Arvidsson 2009) driven by networked connectivity, but they also use methods and logics from established media industries (in particular the film
industry) where the celebrity logic has its roots (unsurprisingly, the world’s largest MCN company, Maker Studios, is owned by Disney). MCNs mainly create
value through leveraging a type of celebrity economy-of-scale where the aggregation of individuals into themed channels that cut across many different
social media networks: these“packages”become more attractive to advertisers than working directly with the individual creators (thus the existence of MCN
clearly proves Jarvis’ prediction about the “death of the middleman” in the new networked economy (Jarvis 2009) wrong). Creating such an economy
of scale is also necessary because of the comparatively shorter life cycle of online celebrity and stardom; as the creators’fame wanes, they must be replaced
with new ones in order to maintain the value that the aggregation creates.