FAVz071 SIECE conference 2018

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2018
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Šárka Jelínek Gmiterková, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Jiří Voráč, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Prerequisites
None.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
At the end of the course students should be able to:
understand current developments in online distribution of audiovisual content from the perspective of relatively small, peripheral, and fragmented (in terms of population, languages, infrastructures, capital) media markets.
Syllabus
  • The course consists of lectures, panels and discussions of the Seventh Annual Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference (SIECE). Final program of the conference will be published in late March / early April. The conference will take place on May 22nd and 23rd in Prague, in National Film Archive.
  • The Seventh Annual Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference (SIECE) shifts attention to the current developments in online distribution of audiovisual content. Distribution is the least visible, but, in many ways, the most influential sphere of the ecology of today’s screen industries. Powerful distributors virtually act as gatekeepers in both economic and cultural terms. They control financial flows, rights management and exploitation, marketing, and the access of audiences to audiovisual cultures, by determining what we can see, when, where, in what language, and on which platforms. In terms of business models and practices, no other sector of today’s media industries is undergoing such fast and unpredictable transformations. Distributors are adapting to various aspects of digitalization and convergence, to changing consumer behavior, and to growing global competition. On one hand, distribution remains locked in a close relationship with and influenced by established practices in home video, broadcasting, and cinema exhibition, as well as established viewing habits related to them. On the other hand, a new distribution paradigm has emerged after IT companies like Google, Apple and Amazon started directly competing and collaborating with Hollywood.
  • With the recent boom and diversification of audiovisual online services, accompanied by the growing importance of original content production for internet, the question of what is television becomes more pressing to media scholars than ever before. Catch-up services of FTA broadcasters or nonlinear OTT additions to cable networks have become less and less distinguishable from video-on-demand platforms such as Netflix. On the other hand, Netflix, YouTube and their many local counterparts have started experimenting with curatorial strategies that resemble television scheduling, while commissioning or developing original premium content that would give them advantage over their linear competitors.
  • New models of online distribution create new challenges to and are limited by the existing copyright system in the EU. European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy, aiming among others at removing barriers of cross- border circulation of audiovisual content, will significantly change the existing ecosystem of European screen industries. It urges both policymakers and media scholars to ask new questions about industry practices and regulatory frameworks, such as: Who benefits from the territoriality of the copyright, who would win and who would lose if distributors are prevented from territory-by-territory licensing? What are the real obstacles for increasing cross-border circulation of European audiovisual content, and how could such barriers be removed? How would EC’s regulatory initiatives affect diversity of AV content’s supply on one hand and informal media economies on the other?
  • While most current discussions focus on the US, Asia, and the biggest multinational moguls, the SIECE 7 Conference opens a space for approaching these industry trends and policy questions from the perspective of relatively small, peripheral, and fragmented (in terms of population, languages, infrastructures, capital) media markets. This small- market perspective brings issues to the fore such as digital barriers to access, localization of content, language barriers, or national cultural policy. Potential topics for papers and panels include, but are not limited to:
  • - Socio-economic characteristics of small on-demand markets.
  • - Short-format internet television and its place between online advertisement and broadcasting.
  • - Public-service media and its online strategies.
  • - National cultural policies vis-à-vis global platforms.
  • - European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy and its potential impact on different stakeholders of small media systems.
  • - Digital curation and localization of content.
  • - Dis-intermediation or re-intermediation? The role of intermediaries in on-demand markets.
  • - Informal economy agents as distributors and cultural intermediaries.
  • - Marketing of online distribution platforms and their offerings; segmentation, targeting, and positioning.
  • - The impact of online platforms on theatrical distribution and festivals.
  • The Screen Industries in East-Central Europe pre-conference will investigate the region’s audiovisual media industries from all angles – local, transnational, economic, cultural, social, and political – and through a broad range of original scholarship delivered in the form of conceptual papers and empirical case-studies. A selection of the pre-conference proceedings will be published in a special English-language issue of the Czech Film Studies journal Iluminace (www.iluminace.cz).
  • The 2018 Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference (SIECE) will take place as a pre-conference to the 68th Annual Conference of ICA ‒ International Communication Association.
Literature
  • Iluminace 4/2012, 3/2013, 3/2014
Teaching methods
series of conference papers
Assessment methods
written report
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught: in blocks.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/spring2018/FAVz071