The 'Winslet algorithm': a news MacGuffin

Last week I had the pleasure of delivering a guest lecture to third year Media students at the University of Ulster. As a lapsed academic of no great repute this is not my usual sort of gig, but I was grateful for the invitation from Professor Máire Messenger Davies, a friend and former colleague who heads up the university’s Centre for Media Research (Máire is also co-author of Practical Research Methods for Media and Cultural Studies, essential reading for number phobic creative types).

The lecture addressed the use of research in public policy settings. The mantra of ‘evidence-based policy’ still holds sway in government circles, although the concept has been challenged and refined since the Modernising Government White Paper (1999) first pushed it up the administrative agenda. I wanted to help students understand why so much research is undertaken or commissioned in the Government’s name (and, by extension, ours), and to what ends.

By happy chance the topic had extra sizzle in the week when the Government’s chief scientific adviser on drugs was sacked by the Home Secretary over a policy dispute. Plus the lecture gave me a good excuse to trot out a much cherished, and oft repeated, quote by the poet A.E. Housman (‘Statistics…are like a lamppost to a drunk. They’re used more for support than illumination’).

Anyway, following the lecture I’m back in England no more than two days only to find, in the pages of The Sunday Times, an intriguing example of film policy research in action (‘Kate Winslet's wow factor is worth £60m to the British economy’). Disappointingly, the story just doesn’t stack up on closer inspection, although that hasn’t stopped its propagation by other news outlets (including the Guardian and The Daily Telegraph). 

Allow me to explain.

The story in question concerns news that the UK Film Council has prepared ‘a briefing note’ quantifying Kate Winslet’s monetary value to the British economy (quotes here and that follow are taken from The Sunday Times article unless indicated otherwise).

It’s an intriguing idea, with obvious news value to a weekend broadsheet looking for star-tinged copy.

The story, as written, is simple enough: taking Kate Winslet as a test case, we’re told the UK Film Council calculated her economic worth using five variables:

• The star’s salary (estimated by the UK Film Council to total £20 million from 1995 onwards)
• ‘Production investment effect’, which is the value of production activity attracted to the UK by the star’s profile (estimated at £34.4 million).
• ‘Box-office chain effect’, defined in the news report as ‘the element of a successful film that marketing firms credit directly to the actor’. No figure is given for this item.
• Earnings from tourism associated with films featuring the actress (no figure is given).
• The ‘general promotional effect’ for Britain (once again, no figure is given).

Result: Ms Winslet’s value as a ‘national treasure’ is estimated to be around £60 million.

In the lecture I made it clear that readers of such news reports should ask themselves who conducted the research in question and for what purpose. To this end we’re told the calculation was conducted ‘by economists funded by the government’ (i.e. the UK Film Council), and that the ‘formula’ will ‘be used by diplomats and businessmen promoting the British film industry abroad.’

Now maybe I’m being dim, or perhaps I’ve not been at this game long enough- but how does that work exactly? Kate Winslet is estimated to be worth £60 million to the UK economy (using a plausible but wholly artificial measure), and that information in some way helps to promote the British film industry abroad. I’m definitely missing something here.

Curiously, in place of more detailed exposition we're served up a quote from Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary, who, we're told (in a startling flash of foresight), 'will make headlines at the end of this month when a group assembled by [him] recommends ways to rekindle the spirit of creative fever once known as cool Britannia'. 'I think [Kate Winslet] is an extraordinary actress', Hunt is quoted as saying. 'I loved her in Revolutionary Road, but also as a symbol of what Britain can offer the world.'

It would help, of course, if we could actually read the briefing note in question. At least that would establish the background and credibility of the calculation, and most likely describe the underlying assumptions that qualify data modelling of this sort. But there are no such details in the news report, and nothing on the UK Film Council web site (no press release, and certainly no briefing note). Which suggests this was most likely an internal exercise, carried out for tactical purposes or in response to a specific request, and therefore not one to bear too much weight in policy terms. Public bodies are unlikely to commission or undertake research that has demonstrable policy impact without publishing it for credibility sake.

So, to recap the main points: we have an unpublished government 'formula' used by unnamed ‘diplomats and businessmen’ for unknown ends. I can't help feeling it's a story device with all the makings of a classic Hitchcock MacGuffin. And if I was to run my lecture again I’d gently remind the students to question everything they read in the papers (and blogs, for that matter).

Comments

[James Wright]

think its a McGuffin btw..

[Jim Barratt]

Definitely MacGuffin (see Hitchcock writing in the New York Times, 4 June 1950 ['Master of Suspense: Being a Self-Analysis by Alfred Hitchcock'], for example).

'McGuffin' is one of the unsavoury after-effects experienced by Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me...