The Sony Hack: Data and Decision in the Contemporary Studio

Abstract

The 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment has left in its wake a comprehensive archive of contemporary studio decision making. Relying on unfiltered email correspondence, this essay examines the production culture of high-level decision makers in both its ordinary operation and in a crisis situation. In its ordinary guise, upper-echelon executive culture relies on gatekeeping rituals to foster belief in the corporation’s purposes. Email operates as corporate private sphere, encouraging the performance of insider-ness while also serving as a pseudo-public channel for strategic decision making. In a crisis, top executives attempt to preserve the centrality and independence of decisions despite their reliance on dataflows. In the case of The Interview (2014), intracorporate networks attempted to insulate the studio from the consequences of its own movie while simultaneously shoring up extracorporate relations with the creative community. The focus on top-down decision making helps connect research into management cultures with both strategy and textual production. The ethics of relying on stolen documents are also considered.