Annotated Bibliography

A sampling of works to inform our explorations of media, technology, and culture

• Argenti, P. A. (2006). How Technology Has Influenced the Field of Corporate Communication. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 20(3). 357-370. DOI: 10.1177/1050651906287260

Annotation: Argenti specifically examines corporate communications, and how new developments in communication technology have influenced corporate culture and systems, focusing mainly on the example of academia, but with applications in other industries. “Through the Internet, more information is readily available from companies, and access to all constituencies is often possible. In addition, more sophisticated research tools are available through computers that can quickly process information” (Argenti, 369). Content outlines possibilities for how technology can improve communications in the areas of crisis management; employee, media, and public relations; and finances, among others. This article may function as a foundational text when analyzing the broad changes that technology and digital media have brought about in our society.

Abstract from Author: This commentary serves as a sequel to and an update of the author's earlier article "Corporate Communication as a Discipline: Toward a Definition." In addition to presenting new information about the field of corporate communication, the author discusses the particular effect that technology has had on the field as both a function in business and a discipline within the academy. He focuses specifically on the challenges and opportunities that new technologies have brought to the field and explores possibilities for teaching and research.

• Currah, A. (2006). Hollywood versus the Internet: the media and  entertainment industries in a digital and networked economy. Journal of Economic Geography, 6(4). 439-468. DOI: 0.1093/jeg/lbl006

Annotation: Currah examines the American film industry’s response to developments in technology, particularly the advent of the use of the internet for sharing, viewing, and even producing films. The author notes that as of the time of writing, the major Hollywood studios were for the most part still attempting to enforce outdated business models for a digital age. Currah’s research “discovered that studio executives openly recognize the projected benefits of legal file sharing, but… have limited incentives to pursue emerging markets at an early stage in their development, especially when those markets are unproven and disruptive to the status quo” (Currah, 442). Currah’s research included interviews with professionals in the film and technology industries, and was part of a larger research project at Cambridge University regarding the evolution of copyright industries in an online economy. This article could serve to provide a perspective or background on the relationship between entertainment media, an area of personal interest to this author, and emerging communications technology.

Abstract from Author: The behaviour of oligopolistic firms is a source of considerable debate and concern, given their market power and ability to shape the development of new markets. A key area of debate concerns the scope for strategic adaptation in oligopolies; and in particular, the extent to which such large and otherwise successful firms ignore or marginalize important shifts in the marketplace. In this article, I critically evaluate these general theoretical issues through the lens of a specific, geographically bounded case study: the collision between Hollywood, a mature oligopoly comprising six studios, and the Internet, a decentralized architecture that has made possible peer-to peer (P2P) file sharing between networked computers. I argue that in a secure form (enforced by 'digital rights management' software), file sharing has considerable promise for all copyright owners, including the studios. I examine the oligopolistic behaviour of the studios in response to the Internet, and in particular, their response to an alternative mode of peer based film distribution, oriented around legal, paid-forfi le sharing. I argue that the studios are trying to preserve the oligopolistic structure of the industry in a digital age by promoting an inefficient and restrictive 'design' for Internet distribution, oriented around centralized server-client architectures, which provides tight control over digital commodities and minimizes the disruptive impact of the Internet. This behaviour must be understood in light of the social and economic incentives that influence executives, as well as the context in which decision-making takes place. Nonetheless, their response also raises some worrying questions about the future shape of creativity, distribution and consumption in the film industry (and in the broader realm of media and entertainment) in a digital and networked economy. The article is based on over 150 interviews with elites in the studios and other related firms in the Los Angeles region.

• Hennig-Thurau, T., Ravid, S. A., and Sorenson, O. (2021, 21 April). The Economics of Filmed Entertainment in the Digital Era. Journal of Cultural Economics, 45. 157–170 DOI: 10.1007/s10824-021-09407-6

Annotation: Similarly to Currah’s article, Hennig-Thurau et. al. examine the changes in the film industry resulting from new developments in technology, but from the much more recent perspective of 2021. Hennig-Thurau et. al. also focus more especially on how the creation of motion pictures has changed, rather than on the broader economics of the industry. They posit that “digitalization, more than any [other industry change], has unleashed a radical transformation of the industry. It has changed not just the nature of production, but also the businesses of distribution and of exhibition. It has challenged decades-long industry rules and routines” (Hennig-Thurau et. al., 157). There is enough of a common subject matter between this article and Currah’s that together they could provide a broader perspective on technology’s effects on media production within the context of a digital culture.

Abstract from Author: The film industry rarely involves film anymore. The cameras and microphones use sensors. They translate the images and sounds into bits and bytes. Directors and editors manipulate the raw footage on computers, rather than with light boxes and scissors. Finished “films” get distributed as large files rather than as giant spools. Analog has given way to digital. Although the film industry has witnessed many technological changes—the introduction of sound, of color, the invention of television—digitalization, more than any of these others, has unleashed a radical transformation of the industry. It has changed not just the nature of production, but also the businesses of distribution and of exhibition. It has challenged decades-long industry rules and routines.

• Orihuela, J. L. (2017, 6 November). The 10 new paradigms of communication in the digital age. Medium. https://jlori.medium.com/the-10-new-paradigms-of-communication-in-the-digital-age-7b7cc9cb4bfb

Annotation: Orihuela identifies ten ways in which communication has changed in the digital age, naming paradigm shifts in the role of the audience to user, media to content, monomedia to multimedia, periodicity to real-time, scarcity to abundance, editor-mediated to non-mediated, distribution to access, one way to interactivity, linear to hypertext, and data to knowledge. The author notes of these paradigms that “the global process could be understood as a big shift from the classical mass media models to the new media paradigms: the user becomes the axis of communication process, the content is the identity of media, multimedia is the new language, real-time is the only time, hypertext is the grammar, and knowledge is the new name of information” (Orihuela, 2017). This article serves as a broad overview of the concepts involved in analyzing how media and culture have been affected by technology and digital media.

Abstract from Author: The digital age arrives with a set of big communication challenges for traditional mainstream media: new relations with audiences (interactivity), new languages (multimedia) and a new grammar (hypertext). But this media revolution not only changes the communication landscape for the usual players, most importantly, it opens the mass communication system to a wide range of new players.

• Rauf, A. A. (2020, 8 October). New Moralities for New Media? Assessing the Role of Social Media in Acts of Terror and Providing Points of Deliberation for Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 170. 229–251. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04635

Abstract from Author: New media and technologies such as social media and online platforms are disrupting the way businesses are run and how society functions. This article advises that scholars consider the morality of new media as an area of investigation. While prior literature has given much attention to how social media provides benefits, how it affects society generally, and how it can be used efficiently, research on the ethical aspects of new media has received relatively less attention. In an age where matters such as violence, hate crimes, fake news, etc. are increasingly pervasive, we need to address the role of online technology in aiding or limiting such negative acts. In this regard, this article uses the canvas of a terror attack that was facilitated by online technology to bring to light pressing social and ethical issues in the use of new media. I draw upon 264 news articles focusing on the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attacks to piece together how the attack was orchestrated and focus on technology-enabled facets of the event. I stir discussion on the ethical aspects of technology with regard to online discrimination (known as online othering) and highlight business and other stakeholder responsibilities and challenges as technology continues to evolve and pervade our social lives.

• Regan, T. (2000). Technology is Changing Journalism, Just as it always has. Nieman Reports, Winter 2000. 6-9. 

Annotation: As the oldest piece in this bibliography, Regan’s article will serve as an insight into how twenty-year-old attitudes and expectations regarding the role of technology have proven to withstand the test of time, and the ways in which these predictions may have been off the mark. Regan, a Nieman Fellow in 1992 and associate editor at the Christian Science Monitor at the time of this article’s publication, covers a scope of predictive notations ranging from news publishing platforms, to electronic devices used to produce news, and the global impact of evolving media technology on news reporting. This article provides a glimpse into Y2K-era approaches to technology and offers at times startlingly prescient insights into how technology currently affects not just the news, but everyday life.

Abstract from Author: As we enter the 21st century, publishing digitally no longer just means putting up “shovel-ware” (or legacy content, as some would call it) on a Web site. We face a future in which technology will change journalism, as it always has. Just as telephones gave reporters the ability to remain in the scene of a story longer or TV allowed us to tell news stories using moving pictures, these new media are already changing the way we do our jobs as journalists–whether we welcome these changes or not. While the basic tenets of journalism will remain the same (honesty, fairness, accuracy), almost everything else will change: how our work reaches our audience/readers; the tools we use to do our jobs; the nature of the relationship we have with the people who access our work, and who our competitors are.

• Waizenegger, L., McKenna, B., Cai, W., and Bendz, T. (2020, 12 August). An affordance perspective of team collaboration and enforced working from home during COVID-19. European Journal of Information Systems, 29(4). DOI: 10.1080/0960085X.2020.1800417

Annotation: Waizenegger et. al. examine how the economic and work-life changes necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic have affected communications, particularly in professional work settings. By default, much of professional communication moved to online spaces and was conducted by digital means rather than in-person. The authors of the article pose the research question, “how does the enforced working from home requirement due to COVID-19 affect team collaboration? To answer this question, we use affordance theory (Gibson, 1977) to explore the behaviours associated with IT objects and goal-orientated actors (Volkoff & Strong, 2013) usually associated within workplace conditions but are now enforced within home offices around the globe” (Waizenegger et. al., 430). The research and insights presented by Waizenegger et. al. may serve to illuminate a timely example of how technology has become not just a convenience, but a necessity in everyday life.

Abstract from Author: COVID-19 has caused unprecedented challenges to our lives. Many governments have forced people to stay at home, leading to a radical shift from on-site to virtual collaboration for many knowledge workers. Existing remote working literature does not provide a thorough explanation of government-enforced working from home situations. Using an affordance lens, this study explores the sudden and enforced issues that COVID-19 has presented, and the technological means knowledge workers use to achieve their team collaboration goals. We interviewed 29 knowledge workers about their experiences of being required to work from home and introduced the term “enforced work from home”. This paper contributes to the affordance theory by providing an understanding of the substitution of affordances for team collaboration during COVID-19. The shifting of affordances results in positive and negative effects on team collaboration as various affordances of technology were perceived and actualised to sustain “business as usual”.

• Wilczek, B. (2020, 11 November). Misinformation and herd behavior in media markets: A cross-national investigation of how tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation in political and business journalism. PLoS ONE, 15(11) DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0241389

Annotation: Wilczek examines how misinformation perpetuated by news media, focusing specifically on the U.K. and Switzerland, has affected political and societal shifts and events. While not focusing primarily on technology and digital media, the content does highlight the role of new media in amplifying and increasing the quantity of and access to false news reports via the internet. As Wilczek concludes, “this article contributes to the understanding of how and under what conditions misinformation diffuses in media markets. The findings show that during amplifying events (i.e. election campaigns and economic downturns) tabloids allocate more attention to political and business misinformation… Moreover, the findings suggest that this attention allocation process depends in particular on the strength of the amplifying event in a media market” (Wilczek, 2020). This article may serve to provide a framework for analyzing how disinformation spreads in an online space, one of the disadvantages of the digitization of news.

Abstract from Author: This study develops and tests a theoretical framework, which draws on herd behavior literature and explains how and under what conditions tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation. More specifically, the study analyzes all cases of political and business misinformation in Switzerland and the U.K. between 2002 and 2018, which are selected based on corresponding Swiss and U.K. press councils’ rulings (N =114). The findings show that during amplifying events (i.e., election campaigns and economic downturns) tabloids allocate more attention to political and business misinformation, which, in turn, drives broadsheets to allocate more attention to the misinformation as well–and especially if the misinformation serves broadsheets’ ideological goals. Moreover, the findings show differences between Swiss and U.K. media markets only in the case of business misinformation and suggest that the attention allocation process depends in particular on the strength of the amplifying event in a media market. Thereby, this study contributes to the understanding of how and under what conditions misinformation spreads in media markets.