Towards a Bourdieusian analysis of the social composition of the UK film and television workforce

This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).The social composition of the workforce of the UK film and television industries does not reflect the diversity of the population and the industries have been described as white, male and middle class. While the lack of specific demographic representation in employment (for example gender or ethnicity) has been highlighted by both industry and academic commentators, its broader social composition has rarely been addressed by research. This article draws on the work of Bourdieu, particularly the concepts of field, habitus and capitals, to explore perceptions of the barriers to entry into these industries and the way in which individuals negotiate these by drawing on the various capitals to which they have access.Peer reviewe

Transferable Media Pluralism Policies from Europe

This paper was presented at a conference organised in the context of an HARC funded project on media power and plurality, conducted by Professor Steven Barnett and Judith Townend, at the University of Westminster, an outcome of which will be a forthcoming Palgrave volume on Media, Power and Plurality in 2015 in which an extended version of this paper will feature. The paper considered several key areas of potential policy transfer from Europe and proposed several models of subsidy policy and regulation with a view to ensuring the provision of a healthy amount of public service content and journalism in the digital online era