THE PRODUCTION OF MEDIA FICTION
Since the mid-1980s, the most intensively researched topics in media
studies have been audiences, their reception and uses of mediated texts.
Following the preponderance of prior research that made claims about the
meanings of such texts, their ideological significance and their social effectivities,
the emphasis on audiences seems both predictable and warranted. One result of
this focus, however, is that during the same period far less work has focused on
production processes. This also follows, in part, from the presumption that mass-
mediated fiction remains, in many cases, a ‘factory product,’ standardized content
emerging from routinized production processes. We suggest, however, that the
situation is more complicated than this. Variations within routines, the points of
tension engaged in contests between standardization and differentiation, are of
equal significance and equally instructive in exploring the significance of media
fictions. It is necessary, then, to provide a more thorough and detailed analysis of
production practices than the usual generalizations about ‘media factories’ allow.
One approach is outlined in David Bordwell’s concept of ‘historical poetics’
(Bordwell 1989). Under that category, he suggests that it is necessary to explore
options open to mediamakers at given points in time and in specific social
contexts, attending to industrial, economic, and regulatory factors. While
Bordwell tends to focus on those options generating the standardized elements
found in much massmediated material, we believe it is possible to discover
important manipulations of production processes that indicate the ‘relative
autonomy’ of individuals, groups, even organizations within media industries.
What this suggests most importantly is that any study of the production of media
fiction must recognize multiple types of influence. Factors ranging from policy
formation to the application of new technologies may affect the production of any
particular media fiction. While research taking account of multiple causal
elements usually provides stronger explanations, it often remains the case that
specific instances of production studies privilege particular aspects over others.
In some cases, this results in reductive assertions about causation or influence,
although in most instances it simply means that one factor is taken as dominant,
overdetermining all others. These factors and the relations among them may be
described as ‘levels of analysis.’
We emphasize that this term should not imply a universally effective
hierarchy of influence or determination, but it is the case that such a
categorization of influence works from more general to more specific sites and
applications. The most effective production research will seek to identify the
interdependence of the influences, while demonstrating their variations in
different cases, settings, and systems
