Cultural Intermediation.pdf

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has explored new production techniques to engage audiences in innovative ways, delivering content over multiple digital platforms. Participatory cultures have led to the development of multiplatform media environments, where users can contribute content and co-create with media professionals. However, this raises complications in normative and editorial decisions, and governance models must balance top-down hierarchical approaches with heterarchical governance that employs meritocracy. The ABC's project, ABC Pool, allowed online audiences to contribute media and engage with ABC staff, operating under a Creative Commons licensing regime. The project's co-creative approach combined user-created content with producer's work, but managing the participants and aligning activity with the public service remit was a challenge. Research suggests that cultural intermediation, involving the coordinated efforts of multiple intermediaries, is necessary to negotiate the crisis of production in co-creative cultural artifact production.