Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Ilya Kiriya 80 According to the theory of cultural industries (in plu- ral) which appears in late 1970s in France the central element of the cultural industries is the function of the editor. This func- tion is generally played by such companies which brings togeth- er the artistic side of the process and the technical side of the process based on technical reproduction and distribution (Huet et al., 1978). Generally, the creative (or artistic) process is not measurable and is realized by creative teams mainly under the craft principles while the function of technical reproduction and distribution is just transforming such craft produced “concept” into the market good. The function of editor is performed by a publisher in case of book industry, movie company (or major) in field of movie production, musical label in phonographic industry. So-called French school appears due to some industrial transformations of the media and communication sector in Eu- rope in the second half of the XX century such as increasing the weight of such industries within the structure of contemporary economies, deregulation in field of audiovisual sector across the Europe, and intensification of transnational cultural exchange. Thus, the problematic was mainly oriented toward analysis of the feature of cultural industries as particular goods (HUET et al., 1978) and politico-economical nature of media as public good (MURDOCK; GOLDING , 1973). The key element in politico-economic features of cul- tural industries is the individual taste-driven non-predictability of the demand and consumer value of any cultural good. Such non-predictable character poses the problem of the price for cultural products which is essentially accidental and doesn’t rely on the cost of the creative production. Such creative part of the production is considered as non-measurable and as a result its cost is purely artificial. That entails the high risk for cultural pro - duction industries which is generally curbed through non-salary based remuneration of creative workers (according to models of royalties in great extend related with commercial result of the final product) ( HERSCOVICI , 1994; HUET et al., 1978). Despite some general principles cultural industries could be differentiated between them because they could rely on different generic models of functioning and different types