Panel Abstract
In this panel, we discuss Finnish cultural workers’ hopes for digitalized work in the post-pandemic world. As a global health crisis, the COVID-19 foregrounded and intensified the professional uncertainty in numerous cultural productions. While actors of performing arts were prevented from working for long periods in 2020 and 2021, other fields of cultural productions were able to continue their work, although in altered circumstances. Efforts for keeping confidence, adjusting to changes and offering hope in one’s professional communities were and are still vital in the precarious conditions of the cultural sector.
Our starting point is that hope involves three key elements: the desire for the result, the belief in its possibility and imagination of what the future will be like (Gross, 2022). Hope is motivated by felt needs or anxiety, and it is something people are willing to invest effort into (van Hooft, 2011). In this panel, we ask: How do cultural workers’ goals, desires, and prospects for the future, as well as norms and practices are justified through reflections of hope? Particularly, we discuss cultural workers’ occupational and professional investments and hopes in relation to digitalized and platformed characteristics of work in the fields of literature, journalism, visual arts and film and television industry. These fields have many sector-specific features, but their practices of content production, publishing and distribution have datafied strongly in recent years. Through our ethnographically-oriented studies, we also consider what cultural workers’ anxieties and hopes disclose about the current ideals of art and media work.
Henri Laukkanen- Making contemporary art with digital representations of contemporary art
The COVID-19 pandemic hit Finland’s art world hard. Lockdowns closed galleries and museums, or if they were open, the audience stayed home. Artists’ opportunities to travel to see what their foreign colloquies were doing were limited. All this was, of course, not unique for Finland. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major crisis for the international contemporary art community. Consequently, some of the emerging solutions were also created on an international scale. The art world went online and relied on digital representation practices. During the lockdowns digital documentation of exhibitions became the primary way to watch contemporary art. Many of these representation practices had existed even before the pandemic but now they gained new momentum. The established platforms, such as Instagram gained more traffic. New platforms, such as Solo Show were born.
In my paper, I ask how the exhibition institution has changed during and after the COVID pandemic. To answer this question, I examine one important web-based exhibition institution, namely websites that curate and publish art exhibition documentations made by artists and art spaces. I will describe possibilities and challenges that they provide for professional artists. The paper is based on my ongoing research project on digitalized representation practices of the art world. Methodologically the study combines interviews of Finland-based artists and digital ethnography which focus on three curatorial platforms that operate on international scale.
Anne Mölsä- Audio book production and the developing professional ethos of the publishing workers of Finnish literary fiction
The literary field is amid of a series of remarkable eruptions caused by digitalization, globalization, and commercialization. The changes in the consumers’ reading habits affect how publishers think of their work and make their publishing choices. In the last decades the independent publishing houses have increasingly become part of large media companies through mergers. Nowadays these enterprises often include audio book companies, and audiobook businesses have also started their own publishing departments. The audiobook consumption has increased more than tenfold in Finland during 2017-2021, partly due to the Covid19-pandemic that increased the consumption of audio books. It is justified to assume that these developments shape the publishing houses’ work culture and create both new kinds of hopeful prospects for the future and new kinds of conflicts in professional ethics.
In this paper I will dig into what kind of hopes and anxieties raised by the outlined developments can be read in the publishing personnel’s preliminary interview data. The interviews are part of my PhD research that will in the later stages also include participant observation.
Traditionally the ethos of the trade publishing houses has been seen as both enabling the artistic development of literature and making profit by publishing selling titles. In this paper I will review what kind of ways of speaking the publishing personnel use to frame and produce this dichotomy in the era of digital revolution.
Anne Soronen, Saara-Maija Kallio & Eliisa Vainikka- Aspirations and anxieties of knowledge production in the film and television industry
Digital platforms have changed the work of media professionals and created new professions, but there is little information about how film and television workers experience datafication and the increasing use of data analytics in the field. Although productions were delayed, screenings of films postponed and cinemas closed for prolonged periods during the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the film and television professionals were able to keep their jobs due to the increased demand of streaming services of media content (Akser 2021). Our paper is based on the ongoing research project in which we focus on the effects of datafication on decision-making processes and practices of Finnish film and television production companies. First, we examine how professional knowledge is connected to understandings of and challenges to datafication and second, how reflections of hope are
included in knowledge production.
While many processes of decision-making in film and television productions happen in digitalized environments, negotiations and practices are also tied to physical places in which people collaborate. Our aim is to examine how hopes and aspirations as well as anxieties and fears of film and television workers are related both to the global questions of datafication and post-pandemic conditions of the industry as well as to the local and production-specific dimensions of teamwork and decision-making. We discuss how different occupational groups, such as screenwriters, highlight and assess the possibilities and restraints of AI and data analytics in their work in the near future. Methodologically, the study combines ethnographically informed media production research and critical data studies, emphasizing cultural, technological, and emotional-affective dimensions of media productions.
Pauliina Penttilä- The curve looks good! Audience metrics, occupational enthusiasm, and professional goals in a tabloid newsroom
When audience metrics entered newsrooms, analytics faced resistance. Journalists regarded following audience behavior would lead to popularization, sensationalism, and disruption of quality journalism. Since then, attitudes have changed, and using metrics has become an essential part of journalistic practices. In recent years, crises like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine have increased news consumption, and due to analytics, journalists have
been able to see how audience’s growing interest towards news materializes in rising numbers and curves. In this sense, datafication has given them hope and confidence considering the social meaning of their work and professional journalism in large.
On the other hand, there is often a thin line between being popular or populist. How do journalists recognize this line and seek a balance between large audience and professional goals? How does this balancing affect journalistic practices and ideals?
This paper presents early results of an ethnographic study conducted in the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti during Spring 2023. It investigates how audience metrics are featured in a Nordic tabloid, and how the information about audience behavior is combined with the principles of professional journalism. When the audience curve is above the target line and new subscriptions flow in, enthusiasm and motivation in the newsroom raise. But if the numbers are achieved due to an article about celebrity’s nudes, how does professional journalism cope with it? Growing audience brings hope but at what cost?