Authors:
Francesca Odella | University of Trento | Italy
Sara Zanatta | Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino | Italy
Collaborative relations and music professionals: an analysis of team work networks in the media sector
Francesca Odella (University of Trento)
Sara Zanatta (FMST, Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino)
This paper explores and analyses collaborative relations among music professionals in the media sector and specifically the role of team work projects in TV media production. Following Becker study (art worlds) we agree that popular art products (such as TV fictions products) require a mixture of artistic and technical competences. Any professional collaboration takes part in the creative process and also the professional figures perceived as ‘marginal’ play a fundamental role in the social construction of an art world. According to this interpretation music composers that typically have a secondary role in the production process of television media (usually as post-production collaborators), can develop a specific professional profile and be essential for understanding some production practices. The data analysis is based on networks structure and composition of work teams that collaborated in producing TV serials and films broadcasted on Italian private and public televisions from 1996 to -2009. The analysis aims to underline how temporary networks created by work teams changed through time, and how they evolved in relation to market organizational requirements (new formats, slowdown investments, international collaborations, etc.). Specifically, our hypothesis is that the collaboration between composers and other figures in the ‘artistic world’ of Italian TV fiction production (namely directors and producers) progressively induced changes in the quality standards of Italian TV fiction products and in the media production practices.
References
Becker H.S. 'Art Worlds' Revisited, Sociological Forum, Vol. 5, Issue 3, 1990, p. 497-502.
Cattani G. and Ferriani S. ‘A core/periphery perspective on individual creative performance: social networks and cinematic achievements in the Hollywood film industry’, Organization Science, vol.19, n.6, 2008, pp.824-844. 13.
Botero W. and Crossley N. Worlds, Fields and Networks: Becker, Bourdieu and the Structures of Social Relations, Cultural Sociology, vol. 5, n.1, 2011,pp. 99–119.
Crossley, N, McAndrew S. and P. Widdop, Social Networks and Music Worlds, Routledge, 2016.
Jones C., Hesterly W., Fladmoe-Lindquist K., and S. Borgatti, ‘Professional Service Constellations: how strategies and capabilities influence Collaborative stability and change’, Organization Science, vol. 9, n.3, 1998, pp. 396-410. 12.
Zuckerman E.W, Typecasting and Generalism in Firm and Market: Genre-Based Career Concentration in the Feature Film Industry (1933–1995), in C. Jones, P.H. Thornton (ed.) Transformation in Cultural Industries. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 23, Emerald, 2005, pp.171-214.