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DRAFT. This is part of a work in progress and is not currently finished.
The first task, in any discussion of roles and human communication media, is to define exactly what one means by the term role. Most papers that invoke the term "role" in conjunction with the term "media" (Citations to be added) are concerned with the "roles of media" within some context (e.g. society, health care, education, government, elections, etc). This use of the term role, in which the object of study is the "roles in media", looks at media as participants that play specific roles, for better or worse, in larger (usually social) processes.
Another use of the term role looks at the individual people who participate in the process of creating, performing, producing, packaging, distributing, and consuming messages within a medium. This level of role is evident, to a limited extent, in the presentation of communication models that appear in the opening chapters of nearly every general introductory text in the field of communication (Example citations to be added), with the principle roles identified being those of sender and receiver of messages. Summary texts in journalism, film, theatre, and broadcasting sometimes provide a more detailed overview of such roles as reporter, editor, director, actor, cinematographer, proofreader, producer, publisher, among others (Example citations to be added). Many of these roles are, moreover, the subject of entire books that detail the craft and/or normal practice associated with these specialties (Example citations to be added). These roles in media generally entail a normal set of practices, subject to varying rules, expections, rights, and responsibilities that are sometimes the subject of ethnographic and ethnomethodological studies (Example citations to be added).
This paper attempts to fill what appears to be a gap in the existing literature of roles in media. A fairly detailed search of the literature has yielded only one modestly comprehensive overview of the roles with the communication process or the media with which those roles are associated (Foulger, 1992b). This gap seems surprising at a time when there is increasing concern about workflows as a part of the process of message production and distribution in media (Example citations to be added), and the author may well be in error in perceiving this gap. Informal conversations with a number of collegues concerning such comprehensive overviews, even ones that are constrained to specific media and genre like newspapers, television, and television news, suggest, however, that the gap is real. This paper seeks to provide a limited remediation of this gap in the literature by describing a wide variety of fairly generic roles associated with media and asserting the kinds of media with which these roles are typically associated.
This range of roles may, as it is 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", and no one else. It may involve simple models of mediation, is would be the case when a messenger carries a message, with a message creator, a message recipient, and a third party messenger who actually transports the message from the creator to the recipient. It it often, however, much more complex, as is the case for books, where a writer normally submits a book to a publisher who, if they decide to publish it, processes the book through a series of people in specialized roles, including editors, proofreaders, art departments, legal departments, marketing departments, layout departments, printers, transportation systems, critics, wholesalers and retailers before the book can be obtained and read by a consumer. Other complex media entail a variety of other characteristic roles, including actor, producer, director, cameraman, editor, censor, and many others.
It is possible to abstract these forms of participation in media into a small number of generic roles, including those of creator, consumer, publisher/producer, distributor/carrier, selector, retailer, advertiser, and regulator, and a number of variants of production staff. These roles are meant to be considered as abstractions of the responsibilities associated with the role name. Publisher and producer, for instance, are distinct names used in different media for what is substantially the same function, that of pulling together, organizing, coordinating, and motivating the resources required to enable and support the creation, performance, and production of a message or set of messages. It is likely that other names have been, are, and will be used as we attempt to capture the concept of a "performance executive" for other media. The same can be said for each of the generic roles documented here. Each name used is intended to be applied flexibly; more as a metaphor for the kind of role the name represents than as a statement of the specific set of functions, responsibilities, or activities that role represents in any specific medium.
All media include some measure of both message creators and consumers (even when these roles are realized in a combined creator/consumer or participant role). Other generic roles include publisher/producer, distributor/carrier, selector, retailer, advertiser, critic, regulator, and a variety of production roles, including director, editor, transcriber/recorder, reproducer, and content integrator, among others. These roles are not always mutually exclusive. The role of creator is entirely distinct from the role of consumer in most mass media, but is inseperable from the role role of consumer in most interpersonal media. The role of creator is often entirely distinct from the role of performer in theatre, film, television, and other performance media, but is inseperable from the role of performer in most written and interactive media.
Let us, then, consider the range and nature of these roles:
| creators | All communication media include some variant of creator of messages, a role that immediately bifurcates into the potentially seperate roles of creator and performer. The creator may be a writer, composer, director, designer, or journalist, among many potential namings. The performer may be an actor, musician, newscaster, reporter, dancer, messenger, or fulfill any of dozens or other named performance role. In many media the creator and performer will be the same person. In some cases this creator/performer will be more a participant than a performer. There are many possible variations in the combination of creator, performer, and consumer of messages, and different media will normally support some one of these combinations in preference to the others. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate the creator of messages of messages from performers. It is sometimes easy. This should be expected. All performances entail some level of creation. All creations entail some level of performance. Hence while it may be desireable to seperate creator characteristics from performer characteristics, it is also entirely reasonable to view them as a single cluster of related characteristics. | |
| consumers | All communication media include some variant of consumer of messages. The consumer may be a reader, viewer, a listener, an audience, a participant or any one of a dozen other namings of people that describe modes of message consumption. | |
| publishers/producers |
Many media entail a role of producer or publisher. Where associated with a medium, producers and publishers take organizational responsibility for organizing, managing, and funding the process of producing and/or publishing content. The nature of this production/publishing role can and does vary by medium, as does the name applied. Indeed, some media may use entirely different names to describe people whose role is to find and/or provide the financing and organization required in order to enable the creation, manufacturing, promotion, and/or distribution of content. In some cases the role of publisher/producer is a very limited one in which a person or group decides to publish or produce a specific piece of content (a play or movie, for which this variation is fairly common, or a book). In other cases the role will be an expansive one in which an organization builds a business on its publication or production of many content instances (e.g. a publishing house, a movie studio, a television network, etc). In this latter case it is not unusual to see a layering of the role of publisher/producer, with the larger organization desigating a set of executive producers or series editors who organize a series of related content instances and a more local set of producers or editors that take responsibility for one or a few content instances at a time. Namings can be confusing here, especially in publishing, where an editors role may be akin to executive producer, selector, or production staff depending on the exact nature of their responsibilities. The roles associated with namings in theatre, film, and broadcasting are, in general, cleaner in their divisions of responsibilities |
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| investors | Some media involve an explicit and seperable role of investor. Investors are people or organizations whose sole or primary relationship to a medium is to provide the capital necessarily to produce content and/or distribute or enable the distribution of content. Investors may influence productions and performances through their interaction and agreements with producers, but they have no direct relationship to production, performance, or its management beyond their potential return on investment if the production is successful. | |
| distributors/carriers |
All media involve message transmission. For many media, however, this transmission is formalized through a formally maintained message distribution system. Specifically, there are people and/or organizations associated with many media who take responsibility for transmitting, transporting, sorting, storing, distributing, and/or delivering messages without, in general, regard for the specific content carried. These distributors/carriers exist in a variety of forms, ranging from individual messengers and independent truck drivers through long distance telephone companies, internet network service providers, overnight shipping companies, wholesale distributors, and postal systems, among others. |
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| selectors |
Many media entail a generic role of content selector. Specifically, there are buyers, content acquisition specialists, editors, phone screens, reviewers, or other selectors of message content who select content for publication, performance, or other variant of storage and/or delivery through the medium. Such selection will, in general, reflect the editorial goals, preferences, and guidelines of specific instances of the media instance. The issues associated with these goals, guidelines and preferences will include, in varying degree according to the medium and instance, such things as subject matter, entertainment value, fulfillment of submission requirements, and quality of content. This rooting of selection in instance-specific editorial policy is important to defining this generic role, as selection is specifically not about censorship, which seeks to prevent specific kinds of content from being selected for any instance within a medium or set of media. So long as every instance of a medium has a unique editorial policy based on the needs of the specific market niche it addresses, it can be reasonably presumed that all content has a potential home somewhere. |
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| performers | Many media entail a seperable role of performer. Specifically,there are, in many media, people whose principle role is to perform message content that has been created by others. This does not mean that a performer does not play a creative role. The performer often can and will exercise some level of creativity in interpreting content for an audience and/or in enhancing the performance with improvised additions. The existance of the role does, however, imply a formal bifurcation of the roles of creator and performer, with the creative role composing all or most of the message and the performer enacting the message for consumption. The role of performer is common in dynamic art media like movies, theatre, and musical performance and broadcast media like television and radio. It is not normally associated with a wide variety of other media, including books, letters, newspapers, talk radio, and face-to face interaction, among others. The names that is probably most prototypically associated with the role of performer is actor, but depending on the medium, such names as musician, dancer, anchor, and news reader may apply. | |
| directors | Many media entail the role of a performance director who takes specific responsibility for guiding and coordinating performers and other production staff in their coordinated effort to interpret content for an audience. Other names that can be associated with the role of director can, depending on the medium, include, conductor, choreographer, managing editor, judge, moderator, and chairperson, among many others. Note that the role of director is clearly distinct from that of publisher/producer. Where a publisher/producer is concerned with organizing all of the details of a production, including preproduction issues like content selection and postproduction issues like duplication and distribution, a director is generally only responsible for coordinating the performance to its completion. That completion may take the form of an actual performance, a finished newspaper ready for layout and printing, director's cut film, a successfully completed meeting or proceeding, or other completed and integrated content. | |
| transcribers/recorders | Many media entail a transcription recording role in which people and/or organizations play an intermediate role in capturing a performance to a recording medium such that it can be stored for later use (e.g. viewing, reference, editing, reproduction, etc). Names associated with this role, in various media, include stenographer, court reporter, cameraman, and recording engineer. It should be noted here that "meeting minutes" should not be regarded as a transcript or recording unless they contain the full text of the meeting. | |
| editors | Many media entail a content editing role in which people have specific responsibility for editing content after it has been created by the author, writer, or other creator of content or transcribed/recorded by a cameraman, recording engineer or other recording professional. The purposes associated with such editing can be varied, and include such issues as meeting content length objectives, managing content to meet editorial guidelines, correcting errors, and even combining parallel or related messages obtained from multiple sources into a single message. | |
| content checkers | Some media entail a content checking role in which people take specific responsibility for checking content for correctness. Specific names for this content checking roles include proofreader and fact checker. While content checkers frequently have little role in the creation, direction, editing, transcription, selection, or performance of content, they do frequently have veto power, within the scope of a media instances editorial policy, over the final publication/distribution of content. | |
| content integrators | Many media entail a content integration role in which people and/or organizations play an intermediate role in combining diverse content into a cohesive whole. Names for people who play this role in various media include layout, paste-up, film editor, and others. Note that the role of content integrator differs from that of editor even where the editors role is creating a single message out of multiple parallel message (see the description of editor). The content integrators role is to turn a content from a variety of sources into a finished composite performance (e.g. a publishable edition of a newspaper or a duplicable cut of a film) after the performance has been completed. The role of the editor would normally precede this role. In some cases the finished product of an editors effort will be a performance that can be content integrated into a final integrated edition. In other cases, the role of the editor will occur between initial creation and performance. | |
| reproducers | Many media entail some form of formal content manufacturing in which people and/or organizations play an intermediate role in manufacturing copies of a stored performance. A name normally associated with this role, in publishing media, is printer. The name duplicator is more normally associated with film. Other names probably apply in other media. Coded as yes (1) where there normally is a formal reproduction role associated with a medium and no (0) otherwise. | |
| help desk | Some media are sufficiently complicated in some specific detail of its operation that there is a need for some form of consumer assistance or help desk role. Names for this help desk role in various media include telephone operators and technical support personnel, among others. | |
| retailers |
Many media involve the direct sale, via retailers, of access to the medium or to specific media content. Specifically, are there people and/or organizations who sell access to the medium and/or its content directly to participants in the medium, whether those participants act as net receivers of messages or a interactants within the medium. A variety of forms of retailing fall within this generic role, including those associated with ticket sales, equipment sales, subscription sales, network access charges, advertizing sales, and direct sales of publications, copies of performances, and other manufactured content representations. |
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| advertisers | Many media distribute advertizing as part of the overall content of the medium. The advertizing space used is generally sold to advertizers, there people and/or organizations who provide and pay for advertizing content that is presented in the medium. The relationship of this advertizing to other content within specific media is likely to vary considerably. Indeed, there may be generic differences in the nature of advertizing content and presention between different instances in the same medium. Indeed, in some cases (public television, programs at school plays) the advertizers may not even be formally identified as advertisers, but as funders, sponsors, or grant sources. To the extent that a person, enterprise, or other organization stands to get business or otherwise acheive organizational goals as a result of exposure of its name and/or messages within the content of the medium, and such exposure is contingent on payments or other services, it will be regarded as advertizing. | |
| critics |
The critic or critical role acts specifically to critique and evaluate content within the medium. While there can be several variations on the critical role, including that of consultant, futurist, and (in theatre, at least) "fixer", the prototypic role of critic is to act as a independent public witness to media content who will, after viewing a performance, offer a considered evaluation of what they saw as a guide to other potential consumers of that performance or production. While critics sometimes create content for use within the medium they critque and evaluate, it will often be the case that the critiques and other evaluations they make of content within the medium will be distributed within another medium. Note that critics generally serve their critical role in one medium as a function of playing a creator role in another. |
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| regulators |
Some media entail a regulative role in which people, agencies, or organizations act in a regulatory capacity relative to the medium. The nature of such agencies can vary, but would certainly include agencies like:
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No claim is made that all of the generic roles associated with media are covered here. While most of the above seem pretty obvious once they are written down, this is a voyage of discovery for the author and, one hopes, the reader. Indeed, it is already possible to identify roles that one might want to add to this list. There is, for instance, an engineering role in media that may already be covered to some extent in the generic role of distributor/carrier. It remains to be considered how important it may be to distinguish the engineering, monitoring, and maintenence function from the distribution/carrier function it supports within the normal operation of media. The reader is invited to share their thoughts on the inclusion of this and other roles as this work continues.
Foulger (1990, 1992a) asserts, based on a analysis in which 52 media were compared on 12 characteristics, that there are at least six generic types or clusters of media, including propinquitous interpersonal media, telephonic media, correspondence media, film and art media (a dichotomous cluster), publishing media, and broadcast media. Five of these clusters are clearly visible in Hoffman and Novak (1996) based on a small number of media. A seventh cluster, encompassing computer and network-based media, was found in all of these studies. Indeed, while Foulger (1990) and Hoffman and Novak (1996) use very different data sets, their independent identification of this networked computer media cluster as one that occupies the middle ground between more traditional clusters of media underscores the importance of these networked computer media as bridges that break down the traditional dichotomy between interpersonal and mass media. It is likely that analysis of a larger set of media and characteristics would lead to even richer and more detailed clusterings of media. Still, the primary clusters of media that are visible in Foulger (1992) and Hoffman and Novak (1996) appear to cover the principle means by which most people communicate today, and should be adequate to the purpose of comparing the generic roles that are normally associated with media.
The following table provides summary of these clusters and the media that are associated with them based on Foulger (1992a) and Hoffman and Novak (1996):
| Cluster | Medium |
| Propinquitous Interactive | Face-to-Face Interaction, Small Group Interaction, Public Speaking, Town Meeting |
| Art | Paintings, Dioramas, Sculpture, Automatons, Silent Film, Filmstrips, |
| Film | Film, Film with Subtitles, Talking Automatons |
| Correspondence | Letters, Notes, Memos, Tape Letters, Facsimile, Telegrams, Telex, Electronic Mail |
| Publishing | Books, Daily Newspapers, Magazines, Video Recordings (Videotapes, DVD Video, etc), Weekly Newspapers, Journals, Recordings (Records, CD's, Cassettes), Newsletters, On-line information, Online databases, Online services, Electronic Publications, MultiMedia Documents (VideoText), Billboards, Direct Mail Advertizing |
| Telephonic | Telephone, Teleconferencing, Intercom, C.B. Radio, Ham Radio, Videophone, VideoConferencing, Internet Telephone (CU See Me), Instant Messenger |
| Broadcast | Broadcast Television, Cable Television, Satellite TV, Digital TV, Radio, Talk Radio |
| Computer and Network-Mediated | Hypermedia, Video Hypermedia, Computer Conferencing (Newsgroups, ListServes), Cooperative Composition, Voice Mail, Electronic Bulletin Boards, Streaming Audio and Video, Voice-into-text concurrent interaction, Virtual Reality, Interactive Television, |
The reader should have no trouble identifying common human communications media that are not listed anywhere in this table, including theatre, vaudeville, musical performance, dance, judicial proceedings, maps, calenders, carnival rides, polling systems, telegraphs, and mechandise packaging, to name but just a few. These options are suggestive of additional clusters, including a probable "propinquitous performance" cluster, but identification of such groupings remains for the future.
The following table summarizes the distribution of the generic roles described among the eight clusters of media identified above. The table classifies the relationship of roles to media clusters as follows:
| Propinquitous Interactive | Art | Film | Correspondence | Publishing | Telephonic | Broadcast | Networked Computer | ||
| creators | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| consumers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| publishers/producers | No | Sometimes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Sometimes | |
| investors | No | Sometimes | Often | No | Sometimes | Yes | Yes | Sometimes | |
| distributors/carriers | No | Sometimes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| selectors | Sometimes | Often | Yes | No | Yes | Sometimes | Yes | Sometimes | |
| performers | Sometimes | Rarely | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Sometimes | |
| directors | Sometimes | Rarely | Yes | No | Sometimes | No | Yes | Sometimes | |
| transcribers/recorders | Rarely | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Sometimes | |
| editors | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Sometimes | |
| content checkers | No | No | No | No | Often | No | Sometimes | Sometimes | |
| content integrators | No | Sometimes | Yes | No | Often | No | Yes | Sometimes | |
| reproducers | No | Sometimes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | |
| help desk | No | No | No | Sometimes | No | Sometimes | No | Often | |
| retailers | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Sometimes | |
| advertisers | Rarely | No | Yes | No | Yes | Rarely | Yes | Often | |
| critics | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Sometimes | |
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regulators |
No | Rarely | Rarely | Limited | Sometimes | Limited | Often | Limited | |
Clearly this is a summary view. If one was to look at every medium associated with these clusters, one would find a certain amount of variation in these answers as one moved from one medium to another. The variation would be limited, however, and would certainly conform to the outline of the summary. Certainly there would generally be more variation between media in different clusters than there will be for media within clusters. It should be fairly obvious, from the above, that the clusters themselves have very different role distributions.
This summary of the relationship of a variety of generic roles to media was initially created to give students in a Communication Ethics class a view of the many different kinds of people that are associated with different media. The idea, at the time, was to provide a baseline that would allow students to understand the different kinds of ethical responsibilities different participants in media have. Creators of message content in almost any medium have a different set of rights, responsibilities, and ethical obligations than receivers do. Investors have different rights and responsibilities relative to message content than do publishers and producers. Directors have different rights and responsibilities than do performers. Those rights and responsibilities associated with any particularly role can vary across media, as well. While the differences in those rights and responsibilities may be more a matter of intensity rather than substance (a liar in an interpersonal context may be sued for defamation while a liar in a publishing context can be sued for libel), there can also be differences in substance. These differences are evident in Foulger (1992b), where the responsibilities associated with message creation in telephonic and interpersonal media differ substantially from those associated with message creation in broadcast and telephonic media. The rights and responsibilities that can be associated with varying participants in media can vary substantially, and understanding the range of different participants that can be associated with a given medium is an important first step to understanding how those responsibilities differ.
The summary presented here has other potential uses:
This research is, in many ways, the beginning of what should be an interesting journey.