Towards a Reparative Media System

It’s that time of the year, and I’m in Philadelphia for the 2023 conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (continuing my 21-year streak of attending AoIR), which starts in earnest with the keynote by Aymar Jèan ‘AJ’ Escoffery. His focus is on reparative media, and he begins by noting that it feels like our collective harms are intensifying. This is exacerbated to some extent by corporate media, who often distribute the equivalent of fast, globally consumable food rather than slow and locally relevant content. This perpetuates injustices which require a particular approach to repair, including grassroots (re)distribution.

Power in the media and cultural industries is located in their cultural distribution systems (from development through production, distribution, and exhibition, to audiences, and thence repeating the cycle. This is true for all major platforms, including for example Netflix and other streaming services, which are often integrated with the major production studios to create a Hollywood-style streaming studio system (if not yet as well established).

The creators involved in these processes usually have no right of ownership over their creations; this is especially problematic for women and minority groups, and does not tend to produce diverse content. Minorities also remain underrepresented at the executive producer level. This also produces various other harms to them, for instance at personal, physical, and psychological levels; it also results in reductive storytelling that privileges a handful of major and often simplistic narratives.

The alternative to such production systems may be open access platforms, yet these are also part of a corporate complex and not without their own challenges; they aggressively curate and censor user-generated content and mine it for data extraction, for example, and algorithmic distribution can generate networked segregation or polarisation between audience groups. Takedowns sometimes disproportionately minority and vulnerable communities – with trans and black content more likely to be taken down on some platforms that far-right content, for example. And the moderation is itself done by underpaid and overworked staff in precarious positions, who are gradually being replaced by artificial intelligence. This is not a sustainable cultural ecosystem.

A response to this may be an effort at reparative research and development. The model here is that of a cookout in black communities, where hosts invite community to collaboratively cook up new ideas. This should also have a strong intersectional aspect, but this is difficult to manage in the longer term because of the added cultural complexities that it adds; but it can help us repair how we see and value ourselves.

AJ has pursued this through the Chicago-based OpenTV channel, which has been practicing repairing systems for several years for a local audience of several thousands. This is fundamentally anti-corporate in itself, but it is unlikely that we will be able to replace corporate media altogether; however, such initiatives can at least plant the seeds for new systems. This must also involve reparative research with content creators and audiences, including qualitative interviews and quantitative audience data analysis, which then feed back into the operational setup and processes of such reparative media initiatives themselves.

This may then also lead to the production of more complex, connective, and collective stories, whose ownership is shared with creators. This way, creators come to view their primary audience not as the network producers who will greenlight their shows, but the actual community they are addressing. Further, this also enables more inclusive production processes, with a much more diverse cast of participants both in front and behind the camera, and in doing so is more likely to avoid stereotypical or offensive depictions of people and produce complex and humanising representations of communities instead. This also expands narrative possibilities. In doing this work we must also better understand harm in cultural production, which exists in both corporate and independent productions. There is a need to slow down and scale down production in order to take more time to address these harms.

Reparative work also extends to the platforms through which such content is distributed and exhibited; these platforms are often designed to encourage binge-watching, which is itself a problematic practice. It is valuable, therefore, to include local events and other pathways to experiencing such content, which also provides new opportunities of receiving direct feedback from audiences; these could be coordinated across multiple locations, too, and may lead to further opportunities for collaboration and story creation, as well as for research with creators and audiences – which can reveal just what aspects audiences appreciate about the intersectional storytelling they experience in such content.

There is a distinction to be made here between media reparations (materially righting the wrongs of past media practices) and reparative media: building media frameworks that have a repairing effect. This will also be explained in a The Cookout comic that describes reparative media through the comic medium for a broader audience; and pursued through a number of further, follow-up projects – including work towards reparative social media platforms.