EUROPEAN MEDIA PLATFORMS: ASSESSING POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES FOR EUROPEAN CULTURE

Project Information

EUMEPLAT

Grant agreement ID: 101004488

DOI

10.3030/101004488

Project closed

EC signature date 5 November 2020

Start date 1 March 2021

End date 31 May 2024

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 3 023 025,00

EU contribution

€ 3 023 025,00

Coordinated by

LIBERA UNIVERSITA DI LINGUE E COMUNICAZIONE IULM
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EUMEPLAT (EUROPEAN MEDIA PLATFORMS: ASSESSING POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES FOR EUROPEAN CULTURE)

Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2024-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Since the inception, the project aimed at investigating the relation between Europeanization –as the rise of a common culture in the EU, or the lack thereof - and the so-called platformization process, or the transformation of the online media into walled and proprietary spaces, generally controlled by US capitals (i.e. Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Disney+).
The work is premised on historical evidence, figured out by our scientific advisor Donald Sassoon: that circulation of cultural contents across European countries is rare, also resulting in the lack of pan-European media – when compared with the US entertainment industry, the wide Hispanophone audience scattered in Latin America, the regional ambition of the Gulf-based Arabic media, or such giant markets as the Indian or the Chinese.
Through the prism of media studies we observed a problem which is also relevant for society at large: the weakness of the EU cultural unification, in respect to the results achieved in terms of regulation, or development of infrastructures. This is significant, when one considers that the apparently trivial contents delivered by the media play a non-secondary part in the shaping of common identities (i.e. Billig’s banal nationalism, or Anderson’s imagined community).
The most ambitious goal was to take together the big picture of the above-cited sobering issues, and the theoretical scope henceforth necessary, with empirical backup. Therefore, we split the categories into a series of variables, all meant to serve – to a different extent – as indicators of Europeanization. WP1 was about the continuity of the technological landscape, the similarities between different media systems, and the impact of EU regulation on the rise of a single market. In WP2 and WP4, the existence of a common European public sphere was questioned, again, through the lenses of the social media debate in ten countries. WP3 dealt with TV series and movies offered by the VOD platforms and with the most followed social media influencers, to assess the state of cultural consumption across the continent. WP5 aimed at elaborating on those findings, and on original data as well, to cope with the perception of the future in the eyes of the Europeans, for what concerns platformization and technological innovation.
In a nutshell, the main question revolves around understanding the relative relevance of various patterns: the European; the national, inherited from modern history; the regional, due to the technological and linguistic fragmentation; and the global, hegemonized by US-based companies. Finding the place of Europe in this assemblage is a paramount interrogative for all those who care about the future of our societies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In WP1 - completed during Year 1 - we worked for organizing the European territory in terms of geo-cultural patterns. We collected data about newspapers, Tv, radio, theatrical movies, OTT services, Internet and social media. As a framework, we adopted the comparative media model as laid out by Hallin and Mancini; whilst the impact of media regulation on the rise of a single market was investigated in a specific task.
WP2 and WP4 operationalized the major question by searching the traces of a common public sphere, in the social media discourse in Europe.
In WP3, we observed two dimensions: what people watch on VODs; and what people follow on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Data have been collected in ten countries - including the socio-demographic breakdown, when possible – in respect to the most used commercial platforms. Based on literature review, we can state that the scope of the study is unprecedented and offers relevant insights into the state of European media culture.
In force of our grounded approach, WP5 put the findings to the test of experimental elaborations, to come to terms with the shaping of the future. The methodologies include collective blogging, drawing of scenarios, and a series of Delphi+ workshops on the major externalities of the process.

Among the publications, that outnumbered the KPIs, we recall those involving a significant number of authors or revealing our approach:
- Media Systems in Europe, edited by Papathanassopoulos & Miconi (Springer, 2023), collects the WP1 findings;
- The special issue of “Cinema & Cie” - Cinematic Continuities, Changes and Challenges in Europe – edited by Biltereyst, Gipponi & Miconi - moves from the movie market WP1 task (23, 41, 2023);
- The special issue of the OBS journal on Platformisation of News and Interactions, edited by Álvares & Üzelgün (2023) includes the results of WP2;
- Baqir, Galeazzi & Zollo’s article on News and misinformation consumption (PLoS ONE, 2024), is dedicated to our approach for fighting misinformation;
- The book Hegemony: Platformization of Video. The European Perspective (NBU, 2024), edited by Boshnakova, Miconi & Toms collects the WP3 results;
- The semantic map model is laid out in Carpentier et al, Bridging the Discursive and Material Dimensions of Europeanity and Europeanisation (OBS, 2023);
- Miconi’s book Europeans and the Media (Routledge, 2024) discusses the overall theoretical framework and a number of findings from WP1, WP2, and WP3;
- The special issue of the Central European Journal of Communication titled The Construction of the Future of the Platforms (17, 1, 2024), edited by Carpentier & Hroch, showcases the results of the WP5 tasks.

The results of the projects have been presented in a number of international peer-reviewed conferences, in particular ECREA and IAMCR.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We will mention two areas of improvement: a technical one; and the one of general interest.
In the first case, we used advanced methodologies: the interactive dashboard in WP1; the automated detection of latent ideologies embedded in social media discourse, in WP2; the data clustering in WP3; the two-step work in WP4, including manual annotation and machine learning analysis; and the Delphi+ workshops in WP5. It is our belief that these methods, in their respective field of application, will provide a basis for further investigations.
As to the big picture, the main knowledge advancement is the understanding of how the Europeanization processes unfold, within media systems and in general. Three aspects deserve to be mentioned.
Firstly, no linear trend emerged, either in terms of cultural unification, technological convergence, or even amalgamation between the Eastern and the Western regimes (WP1 and WP3). Rather, the national and the local dimension go together, as proved by the long-lasting influence of national contents, either in traditional form (TV) or in new forms (i.e. local influencers on YouTube).
Secondly, for what concerns people’s agency, there is scarce evidence of Europeanization from below (WP2, WP4, WP5), with the EU being perceived as an administrative unit, more than as a living world.
Finally, and in synthesis, platformization may in some cases favor Europeanization – but this is hardly the main force beneath the whole process. Platforms are controlled by US companies (or Chinese, in the case of TikTok) while allowing the users for uploading their own contents: in such a way replicating the traditional problem of European culture, being lost in the middle, between the national and the global. This tendency, is of not clash of sovereignties between the EU and the platforms, will likely be a major theoretical issue to tackle, in the years to come.

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