Laura Supplemental Post #3 - On "Content"

One thing that really jumped out to me about the Caldwell reading this week was the following passage about the rhetorical shift from "program" to "content." Caldwell writes:

"The term “content” frees programs from a year-long series and network-hosted logic and suggests that programs are quantities to be drawn and quartered, deliverable on cable, shippable internationally, and streamable on the Net" (49). 

The word "content" has always made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, and I think Caldwell explained why in a really effective way. Before I came to grad school, my first full-time job after undergrad was as a marketing copywriter for a small company in Boston, but my official job title was "Content Development Specialist." There was something about that title that made cringe hard: it made it clear that rather than engaging in the craft of writing, I was here to produce a consumable thing that could be taken by the company to place where it wanted and sold off to clientele. What I actually wrote had no inherent meaning; as marketing content it was only important that it effectively "capture mindshare" (ugh).

We could use a lot of words to describe what I produced for that company. "Art" carries a weight to it, implies sophistication and validity as a form of expression, and is mostly irrelevant to my composing emails to be sent "from" our clients' CEOs. "Media" is neutral, purely descriptive, and implies an emphasis on communication via words or images, which was sometimes but not always the purpose. "Content" has no craft, no artistic or use value. It is measured solely by its ability to turn profit, and it's best if it's "evergreen", ie can be easily repurposed multiple times.

Okay, so maybe I'm being a little overdramatic here. I really didn't like that job. But I want to start monitoring the way I use the word "content" and the multiple meanings it carries within it. Because the fact that we use "content" where we could use, say, "media texts" or "programs" (a term that feels like it carries its own set of meanings) is definitely something worth looking at.