Elihu Katz Colloquium: David Hesmondhalgh, University of Leeds

Digital Platforms, Cultural Industries and Everyday Users: Dilemmas of Power and Agency

About the Talk

Recent research in the burgeoning sub-fields of critical platform studies and critical data studies has rightly emphasised the importance of engaging with how ordinary users experience digital technologies. Recalling earlier debates in media studies between researchers of political economy and “active audiences”, this raises a difficult challenge: how to synthesise recognition of agency and variability with a coherent analysis of power and inequality. This talk draws on research conducted as part of a five-year European Research Council funded project to consider these issues via a case study of transformations in music culture in an era when streaming services such as Spotify and social media platforms such as TikTok shape musical experience. 

About the Speaker

David Hesmondhalgh is Professor of Media, Music and Culture in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Cultural Industries (4^th edition, 2019); Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (2015, co-written with Kate Oakley, David Lee and Melissa Nisbett); Why Music Matters (2013); Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2011, co-written with Sarah Baker) and a book-length report for the UK government’s Intellectual Property Office on Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Era (2021, co-written with Richard Osborne, Hyojung Sun and Kenny Barr).

From 2021-26, he is Principal Investigator on a major five-year research project, funded by a European Research Council Advanced Research Grant, on Music Culture in the Age of Streaming. 

He is also editor or co-editor of eight other books or special journal issues on media, music and culture, including a special issue of Popular Communication (co-edited with Anamik Saha) on Race and Cultural Production; The Media and Social Theory (Routledge, co-edited with Jason Toynbee, 2008) and Media and Society, 6^th edition (Bloomsbury, co-edited with James Curran, 2019).