Media And Consolidation Research Organization (MACRO) Lab

The Media And Consolidation Research Organization (MACRO) Lab is a scholarly community, research lab, and online resource about media ownership for instructors, students, journalists, and citizens. Increasingly, media production is consolidated, financialized, and homogenized.

Two to four corporations dominate in each sector, severely limiting the diversity and democratic potential of our cultural production in film, television, music, news, and publishing. However, there is no easy-to-use, regularly updated, public-facing resource that visualizes and explains this state of affairs. We aim to provide a space that not only addresses the lack of accessible, critical materials about media consolidation, but also operates as a space to speculate and envision alternative media systems.

The MACRO Lab privileges the analysis of diversity, history, power, and complexity in its goal of educating citizens about the democratic dangers of media consolidation.

Project Organizer:

Dr. Andrew deWaard

Dr. deWaard’s primary research interests are the cultural industries, the political economy of media, financial capital, media authorship, and the digital humanities. He is the co-author of The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh: indie sex, corporate lies, and digital videotape (Columbia University Press/Wallflower, 2013) and his current book project examines the financialization of film, television, and popular music. Dr. deWaard is also the co-founder of cultcap.org, a SSHRC-funded research project that studies stewardship models for independent music.

Project Organizer:

Dr. Shawna Kidman

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego, specializing in media industries. I write and teach about broadcast and cable history, streaming content and digital distribution, copyright law, media audiences, and contemporary issues related to pop culture and society. Most of my research and teaching is about the media business and examines how corporate, legal, and financial systems shape our entertainment landscape. Using business and legal history, communication theory, and cultural studies, I work to contextualize and historicize media texts and practices. In looking at the structural interdependence of different media industries and different media cultures, my works takes a trans-industrial approach to the field of media studies.

Job Opportunities

Web Developer

The MACRO Lab at UCSD Communication is seeking an undergraduate, graduate, or graduated student with skills in web development and data visualization. You would be joining a team that includes two professors,a student designer, and multiple student research assistants. Your main task would be to help the development of our website and interactive graphs using Javascript and D3. You will be in contact with the designer regularly, and meet bi-monthly with the MACRO LAB team for progress updates. Start date is as soon as possible.

Hours: 5-15 a week, flexible

Pay: $30-40/hr, depending on experience

Software skills required: D3.js, Javascript, HTML/CSS. If you have experience in other relevant software such as Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Tableau, R, Python, or 3rd party API’s, let us know.

To apply, send your resume, examples of previous development work, and names of references to Andrew deWaard (adewaard@ucsd.edu) and Shawna Kidman (skidman@ucsd.edu). If you have any questions, please email either address.

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