This article considers the future of audience research in an era of big data. It does so by interrogating the dynamics and potentials of the big data paradigm in an era of usergenerated content and commercial exploitation. In this context, it is proposed that the major dynamics of big data are a conjoint application of numerology and alchemy in the information age. On this basis, the potentials of new data techniques are addressed in light of the critical gap between audience data and the audiences themselves. Audience research has entered the era of 'big data', a paradigm emerging from two decades of innovative and aggressive information management. In the context of this data arcadia, the need to reconsider our epistemological premise may be less apparent than the sudden expansion of the methodological toolkit, but it is no less pressing. With this in mind, my proposition is that we need to consider both the dynamics and the potentials of such techniques. Media dynamics are determined in this instance as the presumptions, imperatives and motives that shape the paradigm itself, along with the interaction of
This article assesses the rationale for India’s November 2016 demonetization, in terms of its origins and impact over the following year. I argue that this intervention was conceived and understood as part of a larger international monetary experiment. The article draws upon international media commentary, impact assessments by Indian scholars and the professed goals of the Government of India. Having established a direct link between demonetization and an advancing ‘cashless agenda’ around the world, I situate Narendra Modi’s Digital India programme as the putative foundation for a transactional economy. Drawing upon ethnographic studies exploring the everyday experience of India’s year of living digitally, this article raises the critical question of who must, or indeed can, bear the transaction costs of this digital utopia. In conclusion, I argue that the rapid expansion of digital money situates these concerns at the heart of social and cultural, as much as economic, analysis.
The disorganized industry and the informal economyIndia makes more films than any other country in the world, and has done so for five decades. Add to this the ubiquitous umbrella term, Bollywood, with which Indian cinema has been increasingly associated, and it is easy to conjure up an image of an industrial juggernaut where a handful of mega-studios churn out films and media moguls exact huge profits from exhibition, sellthrough and ancillary rights. Such an image would be highly misleading. In the first place India has not one, but several, major film industries serving different audiences at home and abroad. Second, the most striking difference between the Indian film world and Hollywood is the relative lack of formal organization to be found in Indian film making. The film business in India remains characterized by intense fragmentation, since: 'Unlike the U.S. film industry where supply is controlled by a handful of oligopolistic corporations with monopoly power, hundreds of Indian producers compete for markets' (Pendakur, 2003: 35). The informality of capital and the dispersal of assets in the product chain of Indian cinema belie a very sophisticated system of production and dissemination which, through its collective efforts, manages to produce the largest output of films anywhere in the world and deliver those films to one of the world's largest and most diverse audiences. The largely informal relations between the different sectors, however, can also lead to conflicts over the spreading of risks in an industry where only 10 percent of films will break even. A distributor may finance a film (usually on the basis of the featured stars) and then use this financial leverage to dictate creative
At the heart of the digital economy is the willful imposition of a powerful combination of hardware and software, time and data, surveillance, prediction and behavourial control. This article argues that a central ambition of digital society has been the pursuit of an integrated commodity form. The novelty of this integrated commodity stems not only from the convergence of production and consumption but also from the subsumption of sociability itself. As a consequence, we are required to consider all social actions within digital society as being transactions enshrined within an economy of integrated markets. Our acceptance of these new commodity relations is paving the way for a ‘great integration’ of simultaneous transactions across different social domains. Borrowing from Karl Polanyi’s account of an earlier transformation, this article will propose that the prerequisites of digital society and the integrated commodity form have been established through the constitution of a series of ‘fictitious commodities’.
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