A short talk on the basics of cultural intermediation.

1. Cultural Intermediation
Jonathon Hutchinson
@dhutchman
http://jonathonhutchinson.com

2. Rationale of cultural intermediation
• Online environment
• Engaging in the production of cultural
artefacts
• Required when there are multiple groups of
stakeholders
• Usually the community manager, social media
producer, moderator, etc.
• Can also be the technology

3. Definition
Cultural intermediation is the negotiation process
that occurs between specific professional
production roles to create cultural artefacts. It is
also “mediation that occurs across other actors
such as technological devices, programming, code
generation and design. The combination of all of
these human and non-human actors as they
negotiate cultural artefact production is described
as cultural intermediation.”
Hutchinson 2013

4. Builds upon
• Bourdeau (1984)
• Negus (2010)
• Is not related to class structures
• Does not become another blockage in the
production chain
• Instead, promotes the flow and exchange of
knowledge and ideas

7. Alternative institutional online
community governance
“Collaborative production is not determined nor
is it managed by one singular mediation device:
it is the result of multiple mediations occurring
simultaneously to manage the interests of all
cultural production stakeholders. Cultural
intermediation provides the basis for
institutional online community governance.”
Hutchinson 2013

8. So what does this mean?
• Identifying the stakeholders involved
• Understanding their interests
• Identifying and to an extent mimicking their
communication standards
• Developing a production process that
incorporates all these needs
• Engaging in interactional expertise as a
negotiation tool

9. Interactional Expertise
“Interactional expertise is a translation role that
facilitates and supports communication,
dialogue and exchange across expertise
domains” (Banks 2009: 85).

10. Institutional online community
governance models
• This is a precursor for understanding how
governance operates within these spaces
• Three forms of cultural intermediaries: single
point of contact, multiple cultural
intermediaries and community editors

12. Conclusion
• Cultural intermediation required for the
collaborative production of cultural artefacts
• Understand the stakeholders
• Incorporate interests
• Negotiate interests
• New forms of institutional online community
governance