Screen Lives: What the experiences of documentary contributors tell us about the media

该奖学金的总体目标是通过影响工作实践、政策和公共辩论，对参与媒体制作及其代表方式的普通人的福祉产生积极影响。这将通过一系列活动来实现，这些活动旨在让有影响力的受众——包括学者、行业机构和公众——能够了解我的研究成果。从公共话语中，我们可以推测，为媒体做贡献充其量是一个矛盾的命题。贡献者一方面被嘲笑为渴望名利、贪婪和自恋，另一方面被嘲笑为天真的受害者（Winston, 1988; De Benedictis et al., 2017）。然而，尽管媒体在日常生活中的参与日益成为中心，但令人惊讶的是，很少有社会学的兴趣关注到实际参与其中的人。他们既是局内人又是局外人，既是主体又是客体的双重身份赋予了他们独特的视角；但更进一步，这意味着他们的经历可以揭示很多关于媒体政治的信息。我研究的一个重要发现是，媒体贡献者的福祉与生产环境密不可分，而生产环境已经被行业放松管制从根本上重塑了。直到20世纪80年代，英国广播公司（BBC）和英国独立电视台（ITV）的双头垄断局面还很安逸，每晚都有数千万观众收看电视节目。从那时起，独立制作部门、多频道电视、互联网、电视点播和流媒体服务的推出是众多发展的一部分，这些发展导致了一个高度竞争的媒体环境和一个分散的受众（hesmondhhalgh, 2018）。迄今为止，媒体研究倾向于关注创意产业工人的经历，但政治经济重组的后果远远超出了受薪劳动力的范围，波及到每一个参与其中的人。结构性变化对普通人的影响几乎没有出现在政策辩论和公共话语中，这些辩论和公共话语通常围绕着弱势参与者以及社交媒体对他们心理健康的影响展开。该行业在心理筛查和善后护理方面进行了相当大的投资，但我的研究结果表明，这些措施不太可能解决造成贡献者痛苦的许多根本原因（Coleman, 2023）。该奖学金的目的是促进关于注意义务及其在创意产业中如何概念化的日益激烈的辩论，鼓励政策制定者超越权宜之计的解决方案，使工作场所成为一个更公平、更安全的环境。作为一名前电视制片人，我将利用我的专业人脉在业内宣传我的研究，将我的研究结果传达给广播公司和制作公司的高管，以重塑围绕注意义务的对话，并对未来的政策方向产生影响。为了发展学术界的研究领域，我计划把我的论文变成一本专著，使我的研究结果可供未来的研究人员使用，并提高这些重要问题的知名度。作为第一本从主题角度审视媒体行业的著作，这本专著有可能对更广泛的学术产生重大影响。这些活动将通过克里斯蒂娜·沙夫博士的定期指导会议来支持，她是创意工作和文化产业领域的国际知名学者，在主体性、社会正义和定性研究方面有着共同的兴趣。在这些会议中，我将能够讨论我正在进行的工作，并收到对我的手稿的反馈。该奖学金将使我有机会最大限度地发挥我的研究价值，并培养我向学术界过渡所需的核心技能。

The overall aim of this fellowship is to have a positive impact upon the wellbeing of the ordinary people who take part in media productions and the ways they are represented, by influencing working practices, policy, and public debates. This will be achieved through a programme of activities designed to make the findings of my research accessible to influential audiences - including academics, industry bodies, and the general public.From the public discourse, we might surmise that contributing to the media is an ambivalent proposition at best. Contributors are derided as fame-hungry, greedy and narcissistic on the one hand, and naive victims of the other (Winston, 1988; De Benedictis et al., 2017). Yet despite the increasing centrality of media participation in everyday life, surprisingly little sociological interest has been paid to the actual people involved. Their dual status, as both insiders and outsiders, both subject and object, affords them a unique perspective; but furthermore, means that their experiences can reveal a great deal about the politics of the media. A key finding of my research is that the wellbeing of media contributors is inextricably tied to the production environment, which has been fundamentally reshaped by the deregulation of the industry. Until the 1980s, a comfortable duopoly of the BBC and ITV broadcast to a captive audience, reaching tens of millions of viewers every night. Since then, the launch of the independent production sector, multi-channel television, the Internet, TV on demand, and streaming services are among a multitude of developments which have led to the creation of a hyper-competitive media environment and a fragmented audience (Hesmondhalgh, 2018). Media research to date has tended to focus upon theexperiences of workers in the creative industries, but the consequences of political-economic reorganisation ripple out far beyond the paid workforce, to everyone who participates. The impact of structural changes upon ordinary people has scarcely figured within policy debates and the public discourse, which typically revolve around vulnerable participants and the effects of social media trolling upon their mental health. The industry has made considerable investments in psychological screening and aftercare, but my findings suggest these measures are unlikely to address many of the fundamental causes of contributor distress (Coleman, 2023). The purpose of this fellowship is to contribute to a growing debate about duty of care and how it is conceptualised within the creative industries, encouraging policy-makers to look beyond quick-fix solutions and make the workplace a fairer and safer environment. As a former TV producer, I will use my professional contacts to publicise my research amongst the industry, circulating my findings to executives at broadcasters and production companies, in order to reshape the conversation surrounding duty of care, and make an impact upon future policy directions. To develop the field of research within academia, I plan to turn my thesis into a monograph, making my findings accessible to future researchers, and raising the profile of these important issues. As the first book-length publication to examine the media industries from the perspective of its subjects, this monograph has the potential to make a significant impact upon the wider scholarship. These activities will be supported through regular mentoring sessions with Dr Christina Scharff, who is a leading international scholar in the field of creative work and the cultural industries, with sharedinterests in subjectivity, social justice, and qualitative research. In these sessions, I will be able to discuss my work in progress and receive feedback on my manuscript. The fellowship will give me the opportunity to maximise the value of my research, and develop the core skills I need to support my transition into academia.