Cultural Industries

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

Cultural industry means creation, production, and distribution of goods of a cultural or artistic nature. Television and film making, publishing, music, as well as crafts and design are among the cultural industries.

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

Hesmondhalgh acknowledges that those who favor the situations where multinational corporations and their political allies make profits are the cultures in which the creative sectors tend to be extremely productive.

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

Hesmondhalgh points out that in modern culture, texts appear to propose values that challenge capitalism or gender inequality and prejudice in society. This is because businesses in the cultural field continue to negotiate with each other on an ongoing basis in order to secure audience members. As such, businesses outdo each other to try to fulfill the audience's demands for outrage.

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

. Semi-public goods

. Risky business

. High/Low production costs

. Creativity VS commerce

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

It is risky for the companies involved because audiences use cultural commodities in extremely dynamic and uncertain ways to convey the view that they are distinct from other people. Companies cannot monitor the publicity of the goods they obtain and cannot be correctly forecast in such a manner that, considering high levels of risk, the cultural industries can be immensely profitable. 

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?

Media products should be produced for the value of artistic expression rather than the money it will make.

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

Cultural industry companies reduce their costs and increase their profits by using vertical integration. Vertical integration happens where a publishing corporation controls a variety of firms in the same manufacturing and distribution chain.

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

The creative minds behind media goods surely deserve more credit than they get. The people behind the job who are in the middle of producing it must be very committed and optimistic in the sense of having to have the best result for the client in order to have a good product.

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

With the production budgets getting higher, it has suffered due to margins getting tighter.

10) What is commodification? 

Commodification is the process where things, services, ideas, and people are transformed into objects for sale in a capitalist economic system.

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?

I think that the representation of diversity in people has improved a lot compared to before. LGBT members and people of ethnic minorities are represented more
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12) How does Hesmondhalgh suggest the cultural industries have changed? Identify the three most significant developments and explain why you think they are the most important.

. Digitalisation ~  the internet and mobile phones have multiplied the ways audiences can gain access to cultural content. 

. Ownership and organisation ~ the largest cultural companies now operate across a range of cultural industries.

 

. Cultural products can now be shared across national borders. This increased the adaptation, reinvention and hybridity of genres and products.