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.
REVIEWS
"White has provided a ground-breaking examination of the implications of digital medi... more REVIEWS
"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)
FREE access.
This paper analyses the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport committee’s i... more FREE access. 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.
FREE access to this article.
Many commentators have in the past hailed the production in China... more FREE access to this article.
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.
FREE copy of the article available here.
Book Review: Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific: indust... more FREE copy of the article available here.
Book Review: Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific: industry, practice and transcultural dialogues
FREE copy of the article available here.
The attempted over-turning of the result of the 2020 ... more FREE copy of the article available here.
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.
FREE copy of the article available above.
Discussions on media and fakery are usually premised... more FREE copy of the article available above.
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.
An analysis of the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport's select committee report ... more An analysis of the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport's select committee report on music streaming released on 15 July 2021. The main music streaming platforms benefit the already popular mainstream songwriters and musicians at the expense of those not so well established. The long term implications of this for the UK music industry should concern those who want to continue listening to a wide diversity of music. The analysis of the select committee’s recommendations is written with those general concerns in mind. Where appropriate, important technical terms, like “Equitable Remuneration”, “Making Available” and “Communication to the Public”, are explained to the readership as a means of illustrating their significance to debates about equity in the music streaming industry.
The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it ... more The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it comes to the distribution of international TV series and other media content, as media platforms incorporate user-generated content to encourage or foster audience engagement. Through a series of case studies, this article investigates how international TV series are acquired, distributed, marketed and curated on Chinese online video platforms. This helps to identify specific strategies and themes used by these platforms to promote international content and engage users. These marketing techniques, however, are not always as successful as expected, suggesting the need for a closer examination of the types of engagement sought by media platforms, and the ways in which Chinese audiences have responded within their cultural context.
This chapter is based on primary research in the form of semi-structured interviews with Chinese ... more This chapter is based on primary research in the form of semi-structured interviews with Chinese photographers whose object of study is urban scenes in the city of Shanghai. These creatives tend to view themselves within China’s long-established literati tradition, which contains both marginal positions and positions affiliated with centralized power (historically associated with the Southern and Northern Song periods respectively).The concept of Chinese creatives as literati will be linked to philosophical discussions on the nature of Chinese creativity and related discussions on China’s place in the global knowledge economy. By self-identifying as literati, our interviewees embody the intertwining of state-sanctioned attempts at exploiting China’s history and traditional culture, critical resistance towards rampant modernization, and attempts at finding Chinese ways of "becoming contemporary", as one interviewee puts it. These creatives are comfortable with ambiguity, and thus offer an alternative philosophy to Western understandings of creative practice.
The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it ... more The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it comes to the distribution of international TV series and other media content, as media platforms incorporate user-generated content to encourage or foster audience engagement. Through a series of case studies, this article investigates how international TV series are acquired, distributed, marketed and curated on Chinese online video platforms. This helps to identify specific strategies and themes used by these platforms to promote international content and engage users. These marketing techniques, however, are not always as successful as expected, suggesting the need for a closer examination of the types of engagement sought by media platforms, and the ways in which Chinese audiences have responded within their cultural context.
This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of ... more This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of two years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects.
Andrew White argues we aren’t making the most of our creative industries and their potential to b... more Andrew White argues we aren’t making the most of our creative industries and their potential to boost Britain’s soft power
REVIEWS
"White has provided a ground-breaking examination of the implications of digital medi... more REVIEWS
"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)
FREE access.
This paper analyses the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport committee’s i... more FREE access. 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.
FREE access to this article.
Many commentators have in the past hailed the production in China... more FREE access to this article.
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.
FREE copy of the article available here.
Book Review: Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific: indust... more FREE copy of the article available here.
Book Review: Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific: industry, practice and transcultural dialogues
FREE copy of the article available here.
The attempted over-turning of the result of the 2020 ... more FREE copy of the article available here.
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.
FREE copy of the article available above.
Discussions on media and fakery are usually premised... more FREE copy of the article available above.
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.
An analysis of the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport's select committee report ... more An analysis of the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport's select committee report on music streaming released on 15 July 2021. The main music streaming platforms benefit the already popular mainstream songwriters and musicians at the expense of those not so well established. The long term implications of this for the UK music industry should concern those who want to continue listening to a wide diversity of music. The analysis of the select committee’s recommendations is written with those general concerns in mind. Where appropriate, important technical terms, like “Equitable Remuneration”, “Making Available” and “Communication to the Public”, are explained to the readership as a means of illustrating their significance to debates about equity in the music streaming industry.
The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it ... more The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it comes to the distribution of international TV series and other media content, as media platforms incorporate user-generated content to encourage or foster audience engagement. Through a series of case studies, this article investigates how international TV series are acquired, distributed, marketed and curated on Chinese online video platforms. This helps to identify specific strategies and themes used by these platforms to promote international content and engage users. These marketing techniques, however, are not always as successful as expected, suggesting the need for a closer examination of the types of engagement sought by media platforms, and the ways in which Chinese audiences have responded within their cultural context.
This chapter is based on primary research in the form of semi-structured interviews with Chinese ... more This chapter is based on primary research in the form of semi-structured interviews with Chinese photographers whose object of study is urban scenes in the city of Shanghai. These creatives tend to view themselves within China’s long-established literati tradition, which contains both marginal positions and positions affiliated with centralized power (historically associated with the Southern and Northern Song periods respectively).The concept of Chinese creatives as literati will be linked to philosophical discussions on the nature of Chinese creativity and related discussions on China’s place in the global knowledge economy. By self-identifying as literati, our interviewees embody the intertwining of state-sanctioned attempts at exploiting China’s history and traditional culture, critical resistance towards rampant modernization, and attempts at finding Chinese ways of "becoming contemporary", as one interviewee puts it. These creatives are comfortable with ambiguity, and thus offer an alternative philosophy to Western understandings of creative practice.
The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it ... more The relationship between online media platforms in China and fan groups is a dynamic one when it comes to the distribution of international TV series and other media content, as media platforms incorporate user-generated content to encourage or foster audience engagement. Through a series of case studies, this article investigates how international TV series are acquired, distributed, marketed and curated on Chinese online video platforms. This helps to identify specific strategies and themes used by these platforms to promote international content and engage users. These marketing techniques, however, are not always as successful as expected, suggesting the need for a closer examination of the types of engagement sought by media platforms, and the ways in which Chinese audiences have responded within their cultural context.
This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of ... more This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of two years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects.
Andrew White argues we aren’t making the most of our creative industries and their potential to b... more Andrew White argues we aren’t making the most of our creative industries and their potential to boost Britain’s soft power
This book brings together leading scholars to analyze political marketing in the context of the U... more This book brings together leading scholars to analyze political marketing in the context of the UK 2015 General Election. Election campaigns represent a time of intense marketing, including: the communication of party, party leader and candidate brands; the design and dissemination of key messages and policy proposals; identification of target voters; setting out strategies for the campaign; and translating strategies into specific communication tactics. Each chapter of this book has been specifically commissioned to focus on one of these aspects of the campaign (targeted campaigning, branding, core messages, advertising, media management, online campaigning and the campaign in the marginal seats). The collection offers insights into the most interesting and innovative aspects of the 2015 election campaign, determining how levels parties with differing resource approach elections and with what impacts, as well as what we can learn more broadly about marketing at general elections. The chapters are developed to make the topic accessible to non-scholars and to have real-world relevance.
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"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.
"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.