Industry
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“Industry” within media studies describes the broad field of conditions and practices that play a role in the creation of media. Industry includes the immediate environment of production, but also mechanisms of distribution, the organizations that enable production (studios, labels, publishers, etc., as well as their conglomerate owners), their workers, the policy makers and regulatory environment in which these entities operate, the mandate of media—typically either commercial or public service ends—and the technologies that are used in making media (Havens and Lotz 2016). Industry traces its roots to Adorno and Horkheimer’s treatise on “The Culture Industry” (1944/1972). Their decision to use the terminology of industry was clearly meant as an exclamation point to a screed on the impossibility for art and creativity to exist within activities driven by commercial goals. As Hesmondhalgh (2013) explains, culture and industry were perceived as opposites when they wrote the chapter in the middle of the twentieth century. Moreover, their use of the singular form of industry to reference a wide range of entertainment, leisure, and information industries effectively conjured an all-powerful monolith. Marxist critiques subsequently viewed any commercial media as likely to perpetuate the dominant ideology. Hesmondhalgh traces the terminology of “culture industries” to...
This essay may be found on page 102 of the printed volume.