Typological Analysis of Contemporary Photo Agencies

Section: Modern Journalism: Subjects and Issues

The author investigates photo agencies, a special type of media organizations whose activities are related to the creation, production and distribution of photographic content. The author conducts a typological analysis of 108 photo agencies, the sample of results (22 of them) being presented in detail in the form of a table in the article. Typical features (organizational and economic status, types of activity, type of information product, audience, area of collection and dissemination of information) are identified on the basis of typological studies of news agencies and of the media system in general. Some of these features are divided into sub-features. The initial hypothesis that the variety of contemporary photo agencies might be divided in clusters, and units within each of them gravitate towards internal homogeneity was confirmed. The leading feature turned out to be the type of information product, the sub-feature – “type of photo content”, which revealed a close interrelation primarily with organizational and economic status, and in most cases with other features. The author proposes to distinguish four main clusters of photo agencies, and those that cannot be attributed to any of them to consider hybrid. The study also found that the majority of photo agencies expand the range of information products mainly through the increment of other types of content (audio, video, multimedia, etc.); also, but less often, through the increment of photo content, which indicates the multimediatization and hybridization of contemporary photo agencies.

DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.6.2020.108135

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