Andrew White
I have been a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King's College London since July 2022. I was formerly a Professor of Creative Industries & Digital Media at the University of Nottingham’s China campus.
My background is in contemporary Northern Irish politics and much of my research, including my PhD in Politics from Queen’s University Belfast, reflects that. My main research interests, though, are on: the impact of digital media on contemporary society; the universal basic income; cultural policy.
https://medium.com/@andrew.white1970
My background is in contemporary Northern Irish politics and much of my research, including my PhD in Politics from Queen’s University Belfast, reflects that. My main research interests, though, are on: the impact of digital media on contemporary society; the universal basic income; cultural policy.
https://medium.com/@andrew.white1970
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Books by Andrew White
"White has provided a ground-breaking examination of the implications of digital media for the fundamental workings of society. Its international perspective makes this new classic required reading for any serious student of media in the age of global and digital communication." - John Pavlik, Rutgers, USA
"In his new book, Andrew White takes the bird's eye view of digital media. He carefully guides us through the theoretical minefields opened up by the networked world: identity politics, the distinction between private/public, the democratic state, economics, surveillance, and other key concepts. White appears a reliable guide who knows how to strike a balance between complexity and elucidation, between argument and exposition, between summary and probe. I am confident this book will be very useful for students and faculty alike. It addresses poignant issues in a clear voice." - José van Dijck, University of Amsterdam, and author of The Culture of Connectivity (2013)
Papers by Andrew White
This paper analyses the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport committee’s inquiry into the economics of music streaming. The scrutiny of the committee’s oral and written evidence, and final report is placed within the context of the music industry’s significance to UK cultural policy since the late 1990s. The perspectives of the UK’s musicians and song-writers are a focal point of the analysis of the inquiry’s published documentation, as they are when discussing the committee’s recommendations released in July 2021.
Many commentators have in the past hailed the production in China of lower cost versions of famous Chinese and international cultural and media products, better known as a shanzhai (山寨) form of production. Against that, this paper argues that there has been a significant move away from a copycat model in the Chinese creative industries, a trend which should be viewed within the context of China’s obligations as a full member of the WTO. This paper argues that the way in which online video industries have developed and innovated over the last 14 years in China has changed in that online video industries are constantly mutating their business models in response to lawsuits for IP violations instead of simply aligning with existing regulations. By doing that, they are indirectly adapting their business models to local legislation relating to the protection of IP for domestic and international content.
Book Review: Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific: industry, practice and transcultural dialogues
The attempted over-turning of the result of the 2020 US presidential election involved the proliferation of multiple online conspiracy theories and fake stories, and culminated in the assault on the US Congress while it was in the process of validating the electoral college count on 6 January 2021. This represented the apotheosis of the growth of misinformation and disinformation in the USA from around the middle of the previous decade. Social media is commonly assumed to be culpable for this growth, with ‘the news’ and current affairs deemed the epicentre of the battle for information credibility. This review begins by explaining the key definitions and discussions of the subject of fake news, and online misinformation and disinformation with the aid of each book in turn. It then moves on to focus on the following themes common to all three books as a means of attempting to provide a comprehensive analysis of the subject at hand: the use of memes and ironic content; the globalisation of misinformation, disinformation and fake news, and the impact on democratic societies; the limitations of media literacy approaches.
Discussions on media and fakery are usually premised on the general public being manipulated by mainstream media bias or fabrications emanating from the Internet. It is less common in the discipline of media and communication to speculate about users’ reasons for accepting what appear to be basic untruths: I will suggest here that discussions about users’ complicity must become more central to our attempts to understand media and fakery. Rather than a simple rebuttal of the ‘facts’ or the promotion of big data methodologies, this paper will suggest that deploying convincing counter-narratives are a better means of convincing those we suspect of being susceptible to confirmation bias and conspiratorial types of thinking that there are better ways of understanding contemporary politics.
"White has provided a ground-breaking examination of the implications of digital media for the fundamental workings of society. Its international perspective makes this new classic required reading for any serious student of media in the age of global and digital communication." - John Pavlik, Rutgers, USA
"In his new book, Andrew White takes the bird's eye view of digital media. He carefully guides us through the theoretical minefields opened up by the networked world: identity politics, the distinction between private/public, the democratic state, economics, surveillance, and other key concepts. White appears a reliable guide who knows how to strike a balance between complexity and elucidation, between argument and exposition, between summary and probe. I am confident this book will be very useful for students and faculty alike. It addresses poignant issues in a clear voice." - José van Dijck, University of Amsterdam, and author of The Culture of Connectivity (2013)
This paper analyses the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport committee’s inquiry into the economics of music streaming. The scrutiny of the committee’s oral and written evidence, and final report is placed within the context of the music industry’s significance to UK cultural policy since the late 1990s. The perspectives of the UK’s musicians and song-writers are a focal point of the analysis of the inquiry’s published documentation, as they are when discussing the committee’s recommendations released in July 2021.
Many commentators have in the past hailed the production in China of lower cost versions of famous Chinese and international cultural and media products, better known as a shanzhai (山寨) form of production. Against that, this paper argues that there has been a significant move away from a copycat model in the Chinese creative industries, a trend which should be viewed within the context of China’s obligations as a full member of the WTO. This paper argues that the way in which online video industries have developed and innovated over the last 14 years in China has changed in that online video industries are constantly mutating their business models in response to lawsuits for IP violations instead of simply aligning with existing regulations. By doing that, they are indirectly adapting their business models to local legislation relating to the protection of IP for domestic and international content.
Book Review: Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific: industry, practice and transcultural dialogues
The attempted over-turning of the result of the 2020 US presidential election involved the proliferation of multiple online conspiracy theories and fake stories, and culminated in the assault on the US Congress while it was in the process of validating the electoral college count on 6 January 2021. This represented the apotheosis of the growth of misinformation and disinformation in the USA from around the middle of the previous decade. Social media is commonly assumed to be culpable for this growth, with ‘the news’ and current affairs deemed the epicentre of the battle for information credibility. This review begins by explaining the key definitions and discussions of the subject of fake news, and online misinformation and disinformation with the aid of each book in turn. It then moves on to focus on the following themes common to all three books as a means of attempting to provide a comprehensive analysis of the subject at hand: the use of memes and ironic content; the globalisation of misinformation, disinformation and fake news, and the impact on democratic societies; the limitations of media literacy approaches.
Discussions on media and fakery are usually premised on the general public being manipulated by mainstream media bias or fabrications emanating from the Internet. It is less common in the discipline of media and communication to speculate about users’ reasons for accepting what appear to be basic untruths: I will suggest here that discussions about users’ complicity must become more central to our attempts to understand media and fakery. Rather than a simple rebuttal of the ‘facts’ or the promotion of big data methodologies, this paper will suggest that deploying convincing counter-narratives are a better means of convincing those we suspect of being susceptible to confirmation bias and conspiratorial types of thinking that there are better ways of understanding contemporary politics.