{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03906481207457828, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007694584196507843, 'mean_word_length': 5.1454545454545455, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: Value and the Media: Cultural Production and Consumption in Digital Markets

The status of television (‘after TV’, ‘beyond YouTube’ or ‘in a digital context’) has been a topic of several recent collections. The essays in this attractive volume take different approaches to the question of television’s place in a digital media ecology; perhaps necessarily, their answers remain partial. Jason Jacobs finds the aesthetic of television in its very interruptibility: the ‘signal’ is defined by its ‘noise’ (p. 259). Karen Lury describes a loss of contingency in ‘calculated’ (Stiegler’s term) media’s manipulation and production of time. The essays are grouped into four sections: Histories of the Digital Revolution; Production Strategies in the Digital Landscape; The Aesthetics of Convergence; and The Production of Digital Audiences. The overlap between the sections is managed well: the essays are occasionally cross-referenced and ‘border disputes’ generally are turned into productive discussions. Two questions in particular deserve addressing here: the ‘work’ of media experts and amateurs, and the place of software in the medium of digital television. The question of work recurs throughout this collection. Max Dawson relates the aesthetic of ‘efficiency’ in web shorts to the politics of media labour in his discussion of the 2007 Writers Guild of America strikes. The definition of online digital shorts as ‘promotional’ (and hence unpaid for Guild purposes) or ‘original content’ (and hence adding value for audiences) is crucial to those who stand to profit by their work (p. 284). John T. Caldwell focuses on the relationship between userand worker-generated content, and its implications for the competition between amateur producers and established (and organised) media technicians. Expertise is also at stake in James Bennett’s chapter on digg. Social bookmarking sites like digg replace the reviewers of mainstream media with a perhaps more democratic collective intelligence, but may then be in the awkward position of becoming expert systems in themselves (p. 344). It is on the issue of software that the essays are least satisfying. As television becomes digital, studies of television would do well to engage with research in software studies. Niki Strange explores the BBC’s approach to multi-platform programming, which can see audiences as ‘quarry’ more than ‘users’ or ‘citizens’ (p. 137). The degree to which content has been ‘unshackled’ from platform (p. 151) deserves further study. In Daniel Chamberlain’s essay, software interfaces appear as a determining structure, but the means but which ‘code’ becomes ‘law’ are under-examined (p. 241). Jean Burgess’s description of the ‘flat architecture’ of YouTube could leave more room for the participation (not to say determination) of economic and indeed algorithmic practices in shaping experiences of that online space. It is Julian Thomas’s chapter on remote controls that is perhaps most satisfying on this account. The material, technological and social elements of remotes are brought together in a way that does not elide the people who produce and use them (pp. 63–65). If a definition of ‘television as digital media’ does indeed arrive, it will do so slowly, unevenly and not nearly as neatly as once thought. – Luke van Ryn, Culture and Communications, University of Melbourne