Roles in Media Design Pattern

An Extended Abstract for a Presentation at the NCA Summer Conference, 2002

Roles in Media

Davis Foulger
davis@foulger.info
Oswego State University (SUNY)

Problem:

What are the generic roles (generic patterns of participation) in network and computer-based human communication media (systems of communication)? Note that the pattern at issue here is not the roles OF media, but participant roles IN media.

Context:

This problem applies to all communication media (systems of communication) that enable people to interact with each other, whether in the networked-computer context or in traditional (face-to-face, human mediated, paper-analog-based, electrical, and broadcast) media contexts. It is of particular interest for establishing generic design patterns in media, including workflows and opportunities for computer and networked human mediation. Not all roles occur in all media. Indeed, there are patterns of specific association of roles with specific generic media types. Because virtually all communication, networked or otherwise, occurs within the context of media (systems of communication), this pattern is rated as high in invariance.

Discussion:

An understanding of the communication process must take account of both the language that communicators use to construct and understand messages and the media they use to deliver and receive them. Existing contextual theories of communication contribute to our understanding of these elements, but ignore the substantial commonality that exists in interpersonal, live presentational, small group, organizational, static presentaitional, correspondence, publication, broadcast, and other communication contexts. The roles that are associated with our use of media provide one of these commonalities.

This appears to be relatively unexplored ground.

It can be argued that the question of generic roles was one of the first areas for which assumptions were made in forming the modern field of communication. Shannon's model of the communication process includes two such generic roles (sender and receiver). Almost all introductory textbooks in the field of communication make reference to this and other related models, including the interactive, transactive, and gated models of communication. All of these models make reference to variants of the sender and receiver role. One makes reference to a third role, the gatekeeper. These roles are presented as being common to all (or in the case of the third role, many) media, but are assumed to be self-evident. They are rarely discussed in any detail.

Texts associated with "mass" communication frequently make reference to specific roles in specific media, often within the context of career possibilities or a "typical" organization chart (e.g. directors, writers, and camera operators in motion pictures; producers, talent, and recording engineers in music recording; editors, correspondents, and rewrite desks in newspapers; program directors, news reporters, and engineers in radio). Little or no attention is paid to the similarities between these roles across these different media. A similar pattern can be observed in discussions of interpersonal media. Although there are discussions of roles within specific interpersonal contexts (including Westley and McLean's (1957) categorization of roles in groups, Brody's (1991) taxonomy of stakeholders in organizational environments, various organizational communication network roles), no attention is paid to the similarities between these roles in different media (managers, account executives, and secretaries in business correspondence; chairpersons, meeting participants, and recording secretaries in committee meetings; judges, witnesses, and court stenographers in judicial proceedings).

The increasingly complex communication media environment set up by networked computers increases the value of understanding the generic roles associated with media. Education of communication professionals, for instance, is generally isolated to a few key media (e.g. journalism, radio broadcasting, television broadcasting). The range of media is exploding, however. It is not reasonable to expect that we can have professional education that targets each network medium. Role commonalities and media design patterns provide a way of creating generalized programs that train people to work in a variety of related media. The design of media and implementation of media instances are another place where the generic role patterns may be important. Can we really afford to rediscover the lessons of older media in newer media because we haven't learned the generic problems and solutions associated with related roles and workflows in other media?

Solution:

At least nineteen generic roles can be identified that are associated, in various combinations, with different media. These include:

< Creators	< Senders/creators of messages
< Consumers	< Receivers/audiences of messages
< Selector/Gatekeepers	< Content selectors who make decisions about what content will flow through the medium
< Publishers/Producers	< Organizers of media instances who enable the creation, production, and distribution of messages.
< Directors	< Organisers of content and content producers who guide a variety of people in other roles through the process of producing messages and performances
< Performers	< Senders of messages who perform or recreate messages that have been created by others.
< Transcriber/Recorders	< Recorders of messages who, through the action of transcription/recording, enable messages to be preserved over time, distributed multiple times, and/or transmitted across space.
< Content Editors	< Content intermediaries who seek to "improve" messages within, in general, the scope of an editorial guideline.
< Advertisers	< Supporters of message production whose "return" on investment is the addition of promotional content that accompanies the message or performance.
< Content Integrators	< Content intermediaries who organize a variety of messages into an integrated "performance".
< Reproducers	< Content intermediaties who reproduce messages that have been created by others
< Distributor/Carriers	< Content intermediaties who transport, transmit, and/or deliver messages that have been created by others.
< Retailers	< Content or service intermedaries who provide access to either message content or the medium in exchange for a fee.
< Representative/Advocates	< Intermediaries who act on behalf of other participants (agents, lawyers, etc).
< Regulators	< Content or service intermediaries who attempt to regulate the content within a medium.
< Critics	< Creators of messages (often within a different medium) who critique content within a medium.
< Investors	< Individuals or organization that finance the creation, performance, packaging, distribution of messages or the operation of a medium, generally with an expectation of a direct financial return on the investment.
< Financial Management	< Individuals who track and/or manage financial and other resources associated within a media instance or production.
< Production Support	< Others who act in support of a media instance or production. Other generic roles may be hidden within this general category.

The only universal roles are the creators and consumers who compose messages and read, view, hear, or otherwise attend them. All media entail both creators and consumers, even where, as would be the case in interpersonal media, both roles are simultaneously enacted by the interactants. The same cannot be said for other roles. Distributor/carriers only matter when the message has to travel long distances. Selector/gatekeepers only matter to the extent that a message passes through one or more intermediaries on its path from creator to consumer. The publisher/producer, investor, and financial management roles only matter where message production entails considerable expense and/or organization. Similar constraints can be observed for other roles.

This range of roles within a medium may, as is the case for dyadic face-to-face communication, only entail that of participant, with every participant acting as both creator and consumer of messages. This role mix may, as it does in public speaking, entail an audience of message consumers, a small selection of presenters, possibly including a "director" in the guise of a "master of ceremonies", a transcriber/recorder who creates a transcript of the speeches, and some production support that set up chairs, lecterns, microphones, and other scenic elements. It may involve simple models of mediation, as would be the case where a third party messenger carries a message between a message creator and message recipient. It is often, however, more complex. In book publishing, for example, a writer normally submits a book to a publisher, where it is evaluated by an acquisitions editor and, if the decision is made to publish, it is processed through a series of specialized roles, including editors, proofreaders, art departments, legal departments, marketing departments, layout departments, printers, transportation systems, wholesalers, retailers, and even critics, all of whom play a role in allowing a consumer to obtain the published book. Motion pictures, magazines, newspapers, radio, music recording, and television all entail similarly complex participation.

The temptation to treat any role as either interpersonal or mass media should be resisted. Similar roles in different media may differ in name, skills, tools, and even in the details of what they accomplish and how they accomplish it, but they serve the same purpose. A transcriber/recorder, for instance, entails the creation of a record of a communication event that can be played back, reviewed, and even edited at a later time. A recording engineer (audio recording) and camera operator (motion pictures and television) obviously use different tools and different skills to accomplish the same task. The only real difference are in the modalities recorded. A courtroom stenographer uses very different tools to accomplish essentially the same task by translating verbal language into a written transcription that can be reviewed and edited. A recording secretary who takes and types up meeting minutes accomplishes the same task at a lower level of detail. Other transcriber/recorders include the police artist who turns a verbal description into a picture of a suspect, the roommate who writes down a telephone message and tacks it up next to the phone, the secretary who types up and mails out a letter based on dictation from an executive, the rewrite desk that takes an account of an event from a correspondent over the phone and turns it into a newspaper article, the tribal griot who turns a bit of tribal history into a rhythmic template that will be easier to both remember exactly and teach to others, and the answering machine that records a message when a phone can't be answered. While some of these roles only occur in a few interpersonal media, a similar mix of interpersonal and mass media variations can be observed for all of these roles.

References:

Brody, E. W. (1991). Managing Communication Processes. New York; Praeger.

Foulger, Davis. (2001). Roles In Media. Draft paper. http://evolutionarymedia.com/papers/rolesInMedia.htm