{"title":"Rage against the streaming studio system: worker resistance to Hollywood’s networked era","authors":"A. J. Christian, Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2023.2166363","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Every global media conglomerate in the United States has a streaming video platform. Unlike their streaming competitors from Silicon Valley, the early years of Hollywood streaming push emerges from a Studio System. The emergent Streaming Studio System is not as integrated as the Classic Hollywood Studio System, but it shares some important similarities. Most important is the seamless integration of production, distribution, and exhibition. The streamers increasingly make and release projects exclusively to consumers via exhibition portals they control. But workers are fighting back against the power of the streamers as they exacerbate inequality and working conditions in the media industry, mirroring the widening inequality at the dawn of the twenty-first century. They are using the more open digital platforms to organize and share their stories. This article explores worker strategies for resisting Hollywood’s digital empire in three ways: (1) a survey of film/TV workers in Chicago, a regional hub for ‘runaway production’ where state tax credits lowers production costs to allow for increases in production; (2) an analysis of stories posted to the @ia_stories page of crew members represented by the IATSE union; and (3) an analysis of ‘above-the-line’ activism, including solidarity campaigns launched after the 2020 #BlackLivesMatter protests (e.g., #EndLatinXClusion, #Hollywood4BlackLives, #ChangeHollywood), contractual innovations from advocacy groups like Color of Change’s Inclusion Rider, and the threat of another Writers Guild strike.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"923 - 940"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information Communication & Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2166363","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
ABSTRACT Every global media conglomerate in the United States has a streaming video platform. Unlike their streaming competitors from Silicon Valley, the early years of Hollywood streaming push emerges from a Studio System. The emergent Streaming Studio System is not as integrated as the Classic Hollywood Studio System, but it shares some important similarities. Most important is the seamless integration of production, distribution, and exhibition. The streamers increasingly make and release projects exclusively to consumers via exhibition portals they control. But workers are fighting back against the power of the streamers as they exacerbate inequality and working conditions in the media industry, mirroring the widening inequality at the dawn of the twenty-first century. They are using the more open digital platforms to organize and share their stories. This article explores worker strategies for resisting Hollywood’s digital empire in three ways: (1) a survey of film/TV workers in Chicago, a regional hub for ‘runaway production’ where state tax credits lowers production costs to allow for increases in production; (2) an analysis of stories posted to the @ia_stories page of crew members represented by the IATSE union; and (3) an analysis of ‘above-the-line’ activism, including solidarity campaigns launched after the 2020 #BlackLivesMatter protests (e.g., #EndLatinXClusion, #Hollywood4BlackLives, #ChangeHollywood), contractual innovations from advocacy groups like Color of Change’s Inclusion Rider, and the threat of another Writers Guild strike.
期刊介绍:
Drawing together the most current work upon the social, economic, and cultural impact of the emerging properties of the new information and communications technologies, this journal positions itself at the centre of contemporary debates about the information age. Information, Communication & Society (iCS) transcends cultural and geographical boundaries as it explores a diverse range of issues relating to the development and application of information and communications technologies (ICTs), asking such questions as: -What are the new and evolving forms of social software? What direction will these forms take? -ICTs facilitating globalization and how might this affect conceptions of local identity, ethnic differences, and regional sub-cultures? -Are ICTs leading to an age of electronic surveillance and social control? What are the implications for policing criminal activity, citizen privacy and public expression? -How are ICTs affecting daily life and social structures such as the family, work and organization, commerce and business, education, health care, and leisure activities? -To what extent do the virtual worlds constructed using ICTs impact on the construction of objects, spaces, and entities in the material world? iCS analyses such questions from a global, interdisciplinary perspective in contributions of the very highest quality from scholars and practitioners in the social sciences, gender and cultural studies, communication and media studies, as well as in the information and computer sciences.