Reading log week 3

Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas, 2015, ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy,Polity Press, Cambridge UK, ch.3.

In this chapter, the author tries to explore the work situation nowadays in media industry. According to him, there are formal and informal media, and people who are doing these two work models have significantly different work experiences. Even though the informal work always refers to low payment, exploitation and bottom of the food chain, but there are also good things compared with those formal ones: more flexible and leisured. However, for those most in-demand elites, the boundary between the formal and informal is becoming blurred: they have creative positions which are crucial, and at the same time also pursue the flexible and less routinized work style to make life more enjoyable.

Referring to myself, it is worth discussing which way I will go after graduation. As I know, media graduates in Australia may start doing freelance and other kinds of informal works and this is common here. But if go back to China, there are less freelance opportunities for graduates. Most of them will go to local TV station or film studio which offer them a very busy life but not relatively high salary. It is a kind of tradition in China that the most capable person should do the most works. As the article indicates, the creative jobs are still growing overall and those creative workers are better educated, and thus have more options (pp.78). The options here in Australia seems allow them to choose which work model they prefer, but as I know in developing country like China, it is a matter of salary, which means they will be better paid for their creativity, but still the timetable is usually fixed since the companies want to see progress every day to ensure profits.

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