The roles of media critics in the cultural industries

This paper explores the role of critics in the cultural industries through a multidisciplinary literature review. By synthesizing works in the fields of management, economics, sociology and information sciences, the author raises three issues. He begins with a short discussion of the nature of media criticism and its relationship to the cultural industries. He then tackles the question of how critical discourse is constructed: how do critics evaluate cultural products, knowing that both the economic fate of the work and the critic's professional legitimacy depend on the evaluation? Lastly, he considers the multiple roles played by critics. The author explores how this form of independent expertise plays a part in modelling the values and behaviours of different actors in the cultural field. He concludes the literature review by proposing several avenues for future research.