Hello, and welcome to their second week of our course. And, during this week, we will speak about the main principles of classic cultural industries. So, it means that we will bring together, main principles which has been pointed out after 1970s, by classic cultural industries theorists. And the first part of this week is about risk, value and particular demand for culture products, because the most important difference between cultural industries and cultural products and other kinds of products is their particular value, particular question of how understand the value of cultural products. First, peculiarity, is that, this difference of value, and this difference of value is based on the non applicability of utility theory. What does it mean? And what is the utility? Utility is the ability to utilize a good for particular predictable purpose. So, to drink water when you are thirsty, to use the car when you need to move for frequently from one point to another point or to use the public transportation for first such kind of needs, et cetera. So, the utility of such kind of things, such as drink water when you're thirsty is quite simple. But once we start to speak about the utility of the symbolic goods, it's become much more harder to understand. Just because it's hardly predictable, because all of us are very different, and each of us has individual aesthetic tastes, which means that the content suitable for one consumer, can be absolutely ill suited for another consumer. And from this point of view, it's very difficult to understand what is the utility of watching film. Because for one people, the utility of watching it could be very different than for another people. And, until now, nobody managed to define particular needs in symbolic content, and communication, just because the concept of needs is deficient here. Of course, there are some works and especially the classic work, by Elihu Katz and Michael Gurevich, about needs in field of communication, or so-called theory of use and gratification of media, where they are trying to identify five main groups of needs, such as cognitive needs, meets their needs in obtain some kind of knowledge, affective needs, need to obtain some kind of emotion, integrative needs to improve social status, and integrative needs to communicate with other people and the world, and of course, they particular needs to be disconnected from their society, so the escapist needs. But what is the problem? The problem is that such kind of concept is quite artificial, it's quite difficult to understand, in which extent, a particular content is oriented toward connective needs, or toward escapistic needs, or affective needs, or integrative needs, just because it's quite difficult to assess such kind of things, such kind of very difficult psychological thinking psychological, understanding how the people use the media and for what purpose. So, it's difficult to assess this content, and to understand whose needs it's oriented to, from such uncertainty in utility understanding, comes the most important, or one of the most important peculiarities of cultural industries, is the uncertain value of usage. And certain value of usage that comes from unpredictability of collective, and individual cultural tastes. So, uncertain value of user chip means that for one people, the value of particular cultural products will be completely different, than for another people. One people will think that their particular film is the really genius, will say very genius artistic creation, and for the people, this film will be understood as a real negative creation, creation which shouldn't be. So, from this point of view, it provokes some particular problems inside the logics of cultural industries. What kind of problems? First problem, is the high risks, high risks because you can't predict, before launching the product, the success of such product. Second problem is, there is of course, the problem of pricing, since the risk is higher, the price should be higher. So, you should constantly include into their price, the possible prime for the failure, in order to obtain the higher profit in case of profit. So, the third problem is the problem of accounting, of creative workers labor, just because they creative labor, or creative workers labor is individual labor, is a labor coming from the spirit of particular author, and sometimes it's absolutely impossible to calculate it, to account it, et cetera. And final question is, how to control, to maintain the higher level of creativity, and at the same time to provide the independence of creative groups, from one hand, you would like constantly to see the new products appearing, because, from these new product depends, that your commercial success, from another hand, you have to improve, to provide independence or quasi independence of creative groups. Finally, such kind of unpredictability provoke particular diversity, significant diversity of different practices and consumption. First of all, we should stress that a lot of products in cultural industries are not market based, so, that consumption is non market based consumption. It could be free of charge, or it could be a consumption for a less price than the real cost of the product once you are coming to the museum, and you are consuming the museum heritage. If we can use this term consumption here, because it's not for sure that we can use it here. But in a majority of cases, you are paying the price which is absolutely non sufficient to maintain the cost of this maintenance, et cetera. But you are just buying a particular amount, not very significant, in order to be connected to the heritage, or what we call the heritage. At the same time, we should also do a distinction between consumption, practices, and usages. This is a very important thing, because if you'll take the marketing approach, or approach coming from a managerial science, it's very simple, it's very understandable, and I prefer not to use it here, and during this course, just because it's coming from another science, and in my opinion it's quite simplistic, it's the idea that, any technology or any product, could have a particular demand for the functionality of such product. It means that inside your mobile phone you have a particular functions, and consumers by assessing such functions, make their choice by buying such mobile phone, and have a particular demand for particular functionality of these device. If we will bring together the communicational approach, media studies approach, to this will say practices, or this issue of consumption, it will be much more difficult. Because, yes, any device, any content, any other kind of symbolic good, have a particular prescripted functions, prescripted means functions which has been, we'll say, pre-programmed by the inventor over this device or by producer of this content, author, et cetera. And apart of such functions, always are rejected by users. So, it means that the user is the active user, it's not the passive consumer. He's active user, because only part of functions are used by him, and sometimes he invented new usages for particular functions, in order to make things better, inorder to consume it differently, et cetera, et cetera. But any usage are based on practices, and practices are some social demand on particular kind of social interactions, relationship et cetera, et cetera. If we will take the so-called practice of selfie doing, on mobile phone, and then we will trace the history of mobile phone as the device, we will see how during a few dozen years, this practice to make self photos has been evolved to inside mobile phone, and inside functionality of mobile phone, in order initially to make a little photos, then, to be able to make a photo, and watch the photo you have, so, to add the so-called camera, which is the real camera over the phone, so the front camera of the phone. So, the camera which is filming the face, that you the face of the user, et cetera, et cetera. So, it means that the practice of doing selfies are coming from even probably the middle of the 20th century, when the first photo machine, has been used to, for example, with a particular mechanic tool, which allow you to use the few seconds delay, in order to be able to do a selfie photo. And then, we can observe historically during a few dozen years, the evolution of such practice.
