ECREA16-Abstract

447

Saturday, November 12

1 1 : 0 0 – 1 2 : 3 0

MIP10

Policy and Production

PP 641

When Everything Is ‘Content Marketing’: Examining Media and Marketing Convergence in Practices, Policy and Critique

J. Hardy

University of East London, School of Arts and Digital Industries, London, United Kingdom

A distinctive contribution made by critical political economy (CPE) of media scholars has been to examine the implications of advertising as a system

of financing media and the influence of marketers on media content, provision and access to communications. Classic contributions examined advertisers’

influence on non-advertising content and on media firms’ behaviour. The problems they identified are of central concern today, but critical political econ‑

omy approaches need to be updated to deal with transformations in the ways marketing communications are produced and circulated and the changing

dynamics of media-advertising relationships.This paper discusses key trends in the integration of media and marketing communications described by terms

such as content marketing, branded content, native advertising and sponsored stories. It presents original research on the growth of these practices, and

discusses how media and marketing integration is advancing across corporate ownership and networking, work practices and values, forms and formats,

user engagements and (co)creation. It identifies critical issues and implications ranging from the (further) erosion of the‘firewall’between editorial content

and advertising, to concerns about deception, disclosure, economic surveillance and privacy, to wider concerns about advertiser and ad finance influences

on media content, creative control and corporate decision-making. This paper draws on findings from a comparative study of the regulation of native adver‑

tising and media-marketing integration in the US, UK and EU.This show that critical concerns about the integrity of communication channels remain salient

but have tended to be displaced in favour of market liberalisation, constrained in part by consumer protection measures. In media governance, traditional

principles of separation of media and advertising are being displaced by the diffusion and normalization of advertiser integration across digital communi‑

cations. The paper advances an agenda for critical academic scholarship to investigate practices and problems and inform policy debates. In doing so, it sets

CPE responses in the wider context of media and cultural scholarship and considers how the growth of media –marketing integration has elicited supportive

responses from within ‘convergence culture’ and related scholarship in respect of both news journalism and entertainment production. Finally, the paper

outlines a new, broad-based academic network project to investigate emergent branded content practices that seeks to promote resources for collaborative

research and academic engagements with industry, civil society and policy networks. The paper contributes to the main conference theme in various ways.

It explores continuities and discontinuities in media production practices and professional identities, in regulation, and in media and cultural scholarship.

PP 642

The Rapid and Continuing Expansion of the "Creative Industries" Sector in Taiwan: How Is the Cultural Policymaking on Putting the Cart

Before the Horse?

H.J. Tsai

Loughborough University, Social Sciences, Loughborough the UK, Taiwan

This article examines the expansion of the Creative Industries Project, including the development of a new public–private partnership based on neolib‑

eral ideology for revitalising investment activity and economic recovery. The ambitious nature and rhetoric of the Cultural and Creative Industries Project

(CCIP) have both illustrated how governments promote ‘deregulated’ markets and have particularly illustrated how globalisation has accentuated these

tendencies. The purpose of CCIP is to support sustainable development of the economy, while increasing the employment rate and cultural development.

The CCIP clearly shows that investments in the public sector and private capital without long-term planning to foster talent is deficient. Additionally, sales

of creative commodities, such as film and television products, were encouraged in the Chinese market by deregulation, trade agreements, and cross-border

cooperation. Overly focusing on the huge market opportunities in China lead to the deconstruction and absorption of individual talents in relatedTaiwanese

industries, such as film and TV since most media workers were forever working at reducing production costs, and tolerated the low-paid and long-hours job

in Taiwan. The high wage in Chinese market seems more attractive to Taiwanese media and film workers. Finally, the CCIP also influenced higher education

in Taiwan. Official data from Ministry of Education on higher education shows a significant increase in new departments with names such as Cultural and

Creative Industries founded in universities during this period. Given this trend, the relationship of the creative industries policy, the actual employment

of these graduates, their working conditions and the development of higher education will be clarified. To a large extent, neoliberalisation did, particularly

as embodied in creative industries policies, affect higher education. These new departments founded not only to ‘train the talents for global creative in‑

dustries’but also to deliberately cultivate this ‘reserve army of labor’. After the resources of the mass media, communication, art, design and management

departments are merged, these ‘Department of Creative Industries’ signify in the neoliberalised context of Taiwan. This work is divided into three parts

to present the development of and the differences in the creative industries during the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP,

民主進步黨

) period and

the Kuomintang (KMT,

中國國民黨

) period. The first section describes the increase in funding and the changes to public subsidy systems related to

these industries. The second section describes the development process of the Chinese market. Finally, the interesting phenomenon of creative industries

departments appearing at universities, to nurture talent, is explored.