David Hesmondhalgh - The Cultural Industries

Go to our Media Factsheet archive and open Factsheet 168: David Hesmondhalgh’s ‘The Cultural Industries’. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or you can access it online here using your Greenford Google login. 

Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks:

1) What does the term 'Cultural Industries' actually refer to?

The term ‘cultural industry’ refers to the creation, production, and distribution of products of a cultural or artistic nature.

2) What does Hesmondhalgh identify regarding the societies in which the cultural industries are highly profitable?

As they are often focused on intellectual property, the cultural industries are knowledge-based

and require a large number of people in their production, therefore as an industry it will create

employment and wealth.

3) Why do some media products offer ideologies that challenge capitalism or inequalities in society?

This happens because the cultural industry companies need to continuously compete with each

other to secure audience members. As such, companies outdo each other to try and satisfy

audience desires for the shocking, profane or rebellious.

4) Look at page 2 of the factsheet.

What are the problems that Hesmondhalgh identifies with regards to the cultural industries?

• Risky business

• Creativity versus commerce

• High production costs and low reproduction costs

• Semi-public goods; the need to create scarcity

5) Why are so many cultural industries a 'risky business' for the companies involved?

Because there is no definite way to see if they will be successful

6) What is your opinion on the creativity v commerce debate?

Should the media be all about profit or are media products a form of artistic expression that play an important role in

society?

I think its a split as the main reason artists publish things as its their job and they need profit

out of it however some may just want to share their passion and not care much about the profit.

7) How do cultural industry companies minimise their risks and maximise their profits?

(Clue: your work on Industries - Ownership and control will help here) 

Vertical and horizontal integration

8) Do you agree that the way the cultural industries operate reflects the inequalities and injustices of wider society?

Should the content creators, the creative minds behind media products, be better rewarded for their work?

I think that it depends on where you live and the injustices there

9) Listen and read the transcript to the opening 9 minutes of the

Freakonomics podcast - No Hollywood Ending for the Visual-Effects Industry.

Why has the visual effects industry suffered despite the huge budgets for most Hollywood movies?

Because of the unfair distribution of profits

10) What is commodification? 

Turning something into a thing that can be sold

11) Do you agree with the argument that while there are a huge number of media texts created,

they fail to reflect the diversity of people or opinion in wider society?

Yes

12) How does Hesmondhalgh suggest the cultural industries have changed?

Identify the most significant developments and explain why you think they are the most important.

Digitalisation