Governing Informal Media

• In Event: Informality and Global Mediascapes

Abstract

We generally define informal media by their distance from the regulations and policies that shape more familiar media and communications industries. Nevertheless, informal media are frequently subject to the actions of formal actors seeking to manage, monitor or otherwise contain them. These actions, or governance mechanisms as we call them, are important for our understanding of the interactions of informal and formal media sectors. In this presentation, we discuss and exemplify a group of governance mechanisms that seek to transform informal media in certain ways: the extension of legal frameworks to encompass informal activity; the enforcement of regulations to reduce it; the generation of new kinds of knowledge in order to measure it; rule making to formalise it; and strategies of promotion to encourage it. These mechanisms demonstrate the paradoxically profound role of government in today’s informal media, while also underlining the importance of the informal sector for mainstream media industries, policy and regulation.

Author

• Julian Thomas, Swinburne University of Technology