CALL FOR PAPERS: Global Internet Television – A Media Industries special section
Issue 13, September 2018 – http://www.mediaindustriesjournal.org

Editors:

In recent years major over-the-top subscription services including Netflix and Amazon
Prime Video have been expanding into new international markets, becoming quasi-global television networks. At the same time, online TV offerings from incumbent pay-TV providers, broadcasters and telcos are proliferating, using diverse programming, pricing, and marketing tailored to the demands of their national and regional audiences.

Together, this mutating landscape of internet-distributed television raises many questions for media industry research. Which models of internet television distribution are succeeding in different countries, and why? What are the major policy issues shaping the evolution of internet television around the world? What regulatory problems and responses are emerging? What are the implications for longer debates about transnational and global television? Despite all the change characteristic of these services, legacy television institutions persist as well. What frameworks help us explain and talk about television in a period of such a variety of industrial practices?

This special section of Media Industries invites critical analyses of the industrial dynamics of internet television as seen from various parts of the globe. We especially invite contributions that take a comparative or transnational approach to the topic. Internet television is an evolving and contested term that, for some, encompasses a range of services, from amateur video channels and live-streams through to curated subscription services such as Netflix. While acknowledging these blurred boundaries, this issue focuses primarily on industrially curated services for professional content.

Topics to be considered may include:

  • The evolving geography of different services and their various characteristics (programming, catalog structures, business models, branding, marketing, etc.);
  • The infrastructural and market conditions required for success in internet television services, the unevenness of these conditions across countries, and their implications;
  • National and transnational policy issues including net neutrality, internet filtering, censorship, classification, and local content quotas;
  • The challenges posed by these services to existing scholarly and industrial frameworks for understanding transnational television flows and trade;
  • Debates about local taste and viewing cultures as they relate to internet TV;
  • Internet TV and the international intellectual property system.

Articles should be 5000-7000 words in length, and may take the form of argument-driven case studies; analyses of particular industry, policy, regulatory or infrastructural issues; or other approaches as agreed with the editors. Submissions should reflect a media industry studies approach to the topic. (Please note we are not seeking articles focused exclusively on analysis of the content distributed by these services, unless accompanied by discussion of industrial practices.)

Media Industries is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that supports critical studies of media industries, institutions, and policies worldwide. Media Industries expects contributions to adopt a critical, rather than instrumental, perspective and to engage with relevant media industries literature. We are especially interested in contributions that draw attention to global and international perspectives, and use innovative methodologies, imaginative theoretical approaches, and new research directions. We encourage authors to employ the online format creatively by incorporating audiovisual materials and hyperlinks within their articles. Articles accepted for review will be double blind-reviewed by two reviewers.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Abstracts (500 words) should be emailed to the editors by 1 October 2018. Please send to: ramon.lobato@rmit.edu.au | lotz@umich.edu | julian.thomas@rmit.edu.au

For accepted articles, the following deadlines apply:

  • Full article submission: 1 February 2018
  • Revision deadline: 15 April 2018
  • Publication date: September 2018

Email enquiries to the editors are welcome at any stage.