Theorising Digital Intermediation
The following abstract is my current thinking around how to frame the concept of the ‘Digital Intermediation’:
Digital intermediation as a framework is a useful way to understand emerging social and cultural forms as a result of new media technologies. Moving beyond its precursor of cultural intermediation (Bourdieu, 1984) that also incorporates market economics (Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2014) and expertise exchange (Hutchinson, 2017), digital intermediation incorporates the agency of platforms, social media influencers and increasingly algorithms. Where cultural intermediation is a process for capital (social, economic and cultural) value to be transferred between interested stakeholders, digital intermediation also incorporates and acknowledges the impact that two additional and contemporary stakeholders have: social influencers and algorithms.
Social influencers, which have previously been referred to as microcelebrities (Marwick, 2013; Senft 2013) and digital influencers (Abidin, 2016), are a particular subset of cultural intermediaries. Through their developed expertise to identify ‘cool’ boundary objects, they are able to engage in multiple media production practices to demonstrate the value of those objects to their large audiences. An example of this practice is someone such as Zoella who often engages her audience with the products from her latest shopping haul[1], Evan’s Tube who can engage his younger audience with an ‘unboxing’ of the latest Lego kit, or Fun For Louis who is often travelling to exotic locations to reveal its most appealing side. In each instance of these social influencers, they engage in high levels of media literacy to transfer the value of the chosen product or service they are focusing on for their large fan base. They will typically do this across a number of social media platforms, including their Snapchat channel for the behind-the-scenes content, the Instagram platform for the ‘hype’ photo or Insta-Story, and the YouTube video to engage the largest audience.
The second aspect of digital intermediation is the algorithmic arena, which to a large extent describes how automation is undertaken across digital media platforms. As Gillespie (2014: 167) notes, algorithms “are encoded procedures for transforming input data into a desired output, based on specified calculations”. Within a media ecology that sees significantly more content produced than can possibly be consumed, algorithms, in one sense, are seen as mechanisms to assist users in finding and consuming content that is relevant to their interests. In most cases, this manifests as a recommender system, which is represented as ‘Recommended for you’, ‘Up Next’ or ‘You will Like’ types of automated mechanisms. However, there is increasing body of literature, which is described in detail below, that challenges the power and relationships with content, society and culture that are demonstrated by automated media systems.
Digital intermediation that combines both social influencers and algorithms, then, acts as a visibility process for media content across emerging networked platforms. What has become the process of blending private with public media (Meikle, 2016) has, as Turner (2010) notes as the demotic turn, enables ordinary folk to become key influential media producers. However, these key actors within digital intermediation are typically engaging with the content production and distribution process for the social media entertainment (Cunningham and Craig, 2017) benefits such as increased wealth and fame. In many cases, the focus of the media production is commercial products and services, which are favoured by the commercial imperative of both the social influencer and the algorithmic platform. In this environment, it becomes clear that important messages, public issues, public affairs, news and current affairs, are often lost in lieu of highly profitable alternatives.
[1] Shopping Hauls are a genre of YouTube video where the presenter will review a number of products which they have purchased from a visit to the shopping mall.
