Abstract
The media systems in Europe have followed the developments in technology and globalization processes, resulting in the fading of concrete borderlines between and across them, paving the way for the establishment of the ‘platform society’. The latter grants dominant status to business and technological change, and it pulls together divergent systems of the communications sector. It operates alongside, and gains from, the advent of globalization, which takes place on both international and local levels. Finally, it changes the social role of media, as in the foreseeable future citizens-viewers will be classified according to their purchasing power.
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Media systems, as described by Hallin and Mancini (2004), have now been modified significantly due to the advent of digital media technologies. Nevertheless, the dimensions that have been employed for comparing media ecosystems over the last three decades—political parallelism, state’s role, journalistic professionalism and reach of the media market—are still of value. However, in the age of platformization of the communication universe, when investigating media ecosystems and forming typologies, the emphasis should be given to the evolution of communication technologies, since the latter have changed how media content is produced, disseminated and consumed. Additionally, in all media systems, competition has been intensified due to the rise of diverse digital players against an ever-changing platformized background on which traditional media organizations and digital intermediaries coexist.
The patterns of media use and trust between the clusters of countries, emerged by the available data analysis, can disclose important issues regarding the resilience of media over time and help us mapping the shifts in media markets, as the media field transitions from the analogue to the digital age.
Throughout the pages of this volume, it has become evident that national and subsequently regional media systems have followed the developments in technology and globalization processes, resulting in the fading of concrete borderlines between and across different media systems. This seems to be the reason that explains why recent research on media systems traces either the vanishing of media models (i.e. the liberal model as originally described by Hallin and Mancini) or the emergence of new hybrid types (Humprecht et al., 2022).
As we have seen throughout this book’s chapters, the developments in communications technology, such as digitalization, platformization and convergence, have commenced altering the media landscape, and many analysts have attempted to predict what these changes are going to be. In effect, as Esser and Vilegenthart’s remark, ‘countries are exposed to similar trends and developments’ and even though, ‘those developments play out differently in different contexts’ (2017, p. 23), we are still able to identify some common patterns at least in principle.
First, the new developments in the European media field, such as digital television, OTT, SVOD, and streaming, have become a reality for the simple reason that they are heavily influenced by the needs of the European industry and financial concerns, intense marketing and promotion.
Second, while European media has moved towards the digital and platform age, the conventional sources of revenue (advertising and license fee) still play an important role, even though new ways of funding in the age of platformization, mainly by the subscribers, will increase their importance too.
Third, in an environment in which the deregulation of European media sector has been associated with the dominance of neo-liberal ideologies advocating the restructuring and modernization of the economy and, in effect, the marketization of the public communication sector, consumer demand has been taken for granted.
Fourth, the new developments in the media field have led to the creation of larger and fewer dominant groups in the last decades. The economic dynamics of the information industries have encouraged private enterprises in the sector to become vertically integrated and to expand horizontally, thereby increasing the levels of concentration. The information industries are becoming more concentrated and populated by large multimedia groups. European countries have unleashed powers for mega firms, but in the era of platformization, these have been replaced in practice by the so-called Tech Giants.
Fifth, the consumer-choice argument still plays a dominant role in new media developments. In the 1980s cable TV was considered as the ideal technology to end centralized television systems and as something that would encourage interpersonal communication and democracy. In the last decade the same arguments have come back replacing the terms of ‘cable TV’ and ‘wired society’ to ‘digital TV’ and currently platformization of the media. Again, this digital/platform rhetoric has paid little attention to the citizen-viewer, although they argue for him/her. In effect, new media developments clearly indicate that in the foreseeable future, citizens-viewers will be classified according to their purchasing power. These trends, however, mirror the developments of the last decades in Europe, where poverty and inequality have been more severe. In effect, one can observe how the evolution of media platforms is intertwined with broader dynamics and, namely, with the increasing polarization of our societies. In this respect, last years have brought to completion the twofold process, by which globalization is reducing the differences between countries, while at the same time fostering new economic inequalities within those countries (see Harvey, 2014, p. 171; Piketty, 2013, p. 80).
The digitalization and convergence of European media systems communications seem to be part and parcel of a developing process leading to the ‘platform society’. It grants dominant status to business and technological change, and it pulls together divergent systems of the communications sector. It operates alongside, and gains from, the advent of globalization, which takes place on both international and local levels. Finally, it changes the social role of media. For example, television used to be considered as a public good, and it seems to be transformed in a highly class divided medium.
In this new era, the European Union could be a decisive factor in ending this new societal cleavage, but it is uncertain whether will be successful since public policies in most countries favour this new ‘brave society’. Furthermore, as long as critical interplays among media organizations, technologies and practices of media’s content production and consumption are unfolding in state-bounded media systems, the role of the state in shaping and controlling key aspects of media policies is far from being considered as a remnant of the past (Flew & Waisbord, 2015). It remains to be seen whether either the European Union or the individual member states can really control concentration and consolidation in the field, especially the Tech Giants. In fact, the race to a new transformation of European media systems has started in late 1980s, and it seems it keeps going on.
References
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Flew, T., & Waisbord, S. (2015). The ongoing significance of national media systems in the context of media globalization. Media, Culture & Society, 37(4), 620–636. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714566903
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Papathanassopoulos, S., Miconi, A. (2023). Conclusions. In: Papathanassopoulos, S., Miconi, A. (eds) The Media Systems in Europe. Springer Studies in Media and Political Communication. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32216-7_8
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