In theory, the proliferation of web 2.0 user- generated content and the appropriation of creative technologies by media audiences challenges the role of the media professional. In a very real sense it would seem that YouTube, Blogs and Myspace etc, not to mention the affordability of digital editing software and other home studio facilities, embody the collapse of the distinction between the real and the simulated that Jean Baudrillard suggests is characteristic of post-modernity (The Consumer Society, 1970). More so than ever, audiences are now the producers of the text, as opposed to passively consuming the professional output of the media industry.
In the logic of Pierre Bourdieu (Distinction, 1979), it would seem that these changes reflect the wider deregulation of ‘cultural capital’: the proclamation of taste, which had previously been very contingent upon the acquisition of the capital of consecration (education), now rests upon access to creative technology. Put more simply: you no longer have to be a media professional to be media producer; and potentially this poses a very real threat to the integrity of industry.
With video diary style footage on YouTube ‘channels’ regularly clocking you in excess of a million views what hope is there for the careers of those employed by its...
