Ellen Seiter, Ph.D.

Professor
Stephen K. Nenno Endowed Chair in Television Studies

213.740.3334
eseiter@cinema.usc.edu
SCA 320

Ellen Seiter is the author of The Internet Playground: Childen's Access, Entertainment and Mis-education (Peter Lang 2005), Television and New Media Audiences (Oxford,1999), Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture (Rutgers, 1993). Seiter's research on Anti-American and Anti-Muslim sentiments among college students is available in the form of an educational documentary:  Projecting Culture: Perceptions of Arab and American Films.  In the film, twelve University students discuss American and Arab films in light of September 11 and war in the Middle East.

Seiter’s current research with co-investigator Miranda Banks studies current creative/craft guild negotiations in Hollywood and labor struggles around digital media, residuals and online content. Digital Content Creation has shaken the media industries by providing new distribution outlets for creative work and a demand for new skill sets among creative workers, something that has exacerbated Hollywood’s favoritism of the young. This research is based on survey data and interviews with film school students, on the one hand, and working writers, camera operators and directors, on the other, comparing individuals at different stages of their careers in terms of their understanding of the labor economies of film/tv vs. new media production, and the desirability of professional unions. The digital divide as it separates creative workers along generational lines is a matter not merely of ability and innovation with new technologies, but also a matter of experiences in the labor market and whether the model of “entrepreneurial labor” common to the web, online video, and video gaming, threatens decades of union struggles in the creative industries in the US The Hollywood strikes of 2007 form a background for research into what young aspirants to these industries understand about labor market forces, compared to their elders.