The EU digital single market as a mission impossible: audio-visual policy conflicts for Estonia

The EU Commission has started to update its Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) as part of its larger push to implement its Digital Single Market (DSM) Strategy. It is expected that this will not be just a light fix for some of the ‘bugs’ in the regulation, but a major overhaul motivated by the significant changes in media systems related mostly to media convergence and globalization. In this context this article offers a small country’s view of these processes. It demonstrates in detail how Estonia, a very small country on the EU periphery, is challenged by the need to develop its positions with regard to the complex processes at the EU level. It discusses the ‘impossible conflicts’ that it encounters when trying to articulate its media policies and EU strategies. It also describes the complexities of developing media policy in a country where different government institutions are shaped by different ideological frameworks, and therefore have different policy goals; and how cultural policy goals tend to be sacrificed when they are in conflict with various techno-economic imperatives

Evolutionary dynamics of new media forms: the case of the open mobile web

This thesis is designed to improve our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of media forms, with a special historical focus on the recent processes of Web and mobile convergence and the early development of the cross-platform Web. It aims to investigate the dynamics that have underpinned the creation, evolution and conventionalisation of new media forms in the open mobile Web following the launch of 3G mobile networks. In theoretical terms the thesis explores the possibilities for the analytical integration of evolutionary approaches that traditionally have shed light on the discrete components of the evolutionary ‘ensemble’ that comprises media’s textual forms, their technologies and organisational systems. Among the theoretical pillars the study builds on is, first, the cultural semiotic approach (Lotman) that is utilised for interpreting the textual dynamics constituting the form evolution. Second, evolutionary economics (Schumpeter, Freeman and others) is included for interpreting the market dynamics that condition the formation of the media industries. Third, systems theoretical sociology (Luhmann) is deployed in order to understand the broader dynamics of social organisation in late modernism. The integration of these approaches provides the conceptual framework that focuses on the following phenomena: dialogic interchange among industry sub-systems as enabling innovations and the emergence of new sub-systems; the self-organisation of the sub-systems in the contingent environment; the role of memory and systemic ‘path-dependencies’ in guiding the processes of self-organisation; and the nature of the power relations that shape the dialogic processes. The empirical study focuses on textual as well as organisational developments. The semiotic analysis of mobile websites reveals the intertextual relations of the new forms with other media domains, especially the desktop Web. The interviews with representatives of industry stakeholders provide insights into the dialogic practices between the parties engaged in designing the mobile Web, and how, via these practices, the new platform, its media forms and institutional structures were shaped. The findings point to the historical formation of two main industry sub-systems – ‘infrastructure enablers’ and content providers – with different preferred alternatives for the design of the cross-platform Web. The thesis demonstrates how the formation of these groups was conditioned by their systemic path-dependencies, but also by the mesh of dialogic relationships among them and by the resulting changes in the discursive constellations framing the organisation of the industry and the norms for its media forms. The study points to the first signs of the historically momentous emancipation of the mobile Webmedia forms, their shaking free of path-dependency on the desktop Web

Postmodernistlikke ilminguid Eesti teleekraanidel ja televaatamises

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b1340553~S1*es

Creolisation in hypermedia : an analysis of semiotic mechanisms, which enable the development of integrated multimodal communication

The objective of this thesis is to study the creolisation, which takes place in the hypermedia. This is the question, how pictures, verbal texts, videos, sounds and many other modes of representation merge into one functional and self-sufficient whole. The thesis asks, whether such integration may be understood and defined as the development of 'hypermedia language' a certain system, with its own rules, grammars and conventions. The thesis starts by analysing, how different semiotic codes come into being, how they relate to each other and how they are syntactically organised into one coherent whole in the visual compositions of hypermedia texts. In this context the role of the visual composition as the integrating code is analysed. The conclusion reached, is that the manifold mix of differing coding what we have on our multimodal interfaces, could be seen to have quite similar built-up as for instance also verbal language has. It is also shown that if visual composition integrates the different modes according to its own principles, then this way rhetoric tropes are created, which embrace the modally differing elements. The point made, is that these multimodal tropes constitute the subcodes, which make up consistent multimodal texts by integrating them semantically. In this context the computer-interfaces are seen as the comprehensive and sophisticated set of rhetorical figures with several layers. In the last chapter the tendencies of conventionalisation of the hypothetical 'hypermedia language' are tracked and explained by semiotic theories, which discuss the development of codes and languages in culture's diachrony. The thesis shows, how hypermedia develops into a grammatically sophisticated cultural sphere and analyses what are the cultural mechanisms, how the new grammars are created and conventions are born

Newsreels versus Newspapers versus Metadata: A Comparative Study of Metadata Modelling the 1930s in Estonia

This article offers a comparative take on the ways audiovisual versus verbal digital archives model our understanding of the past. We focus on content metadata schemas and their role in modeling histories and framing the uses of audiovisual databases. Our empirical corpus includes verbal and audiovisual objects from the five-year period just before the World War II (1935-1939) as presented in two digital databases – the Analytic Bibliography of Estonian Journalism and the Estonian Film Database. The article compares how the different metadata schemas for newspaper articles and newsreels model their objects. As a consequence, metadata schemas shape contemporary perceptions of historical realities in different ways

Sharing killed the AVMSD star: the impossibility of European audiovisual media regulation in the era of the sharing economy

The paper focuses on the challenges that the ‘sharing economy’ presents to the updating of the European Union’s (EU) Audiovisual Media Service Directive (AVMSD), part of the broader Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy of the EU. It suggests that the convergence of media markets and the emergence of video-sharing platforms may make the existing regulative tradition obsolete. It demonstrates an emergent need for regulatory convergence – AVMSD to create equal terms for all technical forms of content distribution. It then shows how the operational logic of video-sharing platforms undermines the AVMSD logic aimed at creating demand for professionally produced European content – leading potentially to the liberalisation of the EU audiovisual services market. Lastly, it argues that the DSM strategy combined with sharing-related network effects may facilitate the evolution of the oligopolistic structure in the EU audiovisual market, potentially harmful for cultural diversity

Transmedia critical: empirical investigations into multiplatform and collaborative storytelling

A decade has passed since the introduction of “transmedia storytelling,” a concept that refers to forms of multiplatform and collaborative storytelling. This special section opens an avenue for critical accounts of the associated narrative phenomena, social experiences, and conceptual positions. It suggests that it is time to move away from celebrating instances of transmedia productions as poetically fascinating outcomes of contemporary media changes, or as enablers of new economic possibilities for media industries, or of participatory opportunities for audiences. Instead, it calls for investigations of transmedia productions as contested phenomena—sources of contemporary cultural and social complexities—including new forms of scarcities, inequalities, and power struggles./n/nThis special section emphasizes empirical studies of situated differences of how transmedial content is produced, used and interpreted in various contexts and by different actors. The articles present case studies from several countries on aspects of transmedia content production, associated user studies, and predecessors of various modern forms of transmediation (that too often are celebrated for their unprecedented newness). The section is explicitly interdisciplinary and builds on several established research traditions (e.g., cultural studies, political economy, semiotics, and narratology). With an introduction by Ibrus and Scolari, these works attest to the importance of a cross-disciplinary dialogue on transmedia communications as social, economic, and textual phenomena.The preparation of this article was supported by the European Union through its European Regional/nDevelopment Fund (Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory), as well as by research grant ERMOS79,/nfinanced by the Estonian Science Foundation and co-funded by Marie Curie Actions

Transmedia critical: empirical investigations into multiplatform and collaborative storytelling

A decade has passed since the introduction of “transmedia storytelling,” a concept that refers to forms of multiplatform and collaborative storytelling. This special section opens an avenue for critical accounts of the associated narrative phenomena, social experiences, and conceptual positions. It suggests that it is time to move away from celebrating instances of transmedia productions as poetically fascinating outcomes of contemporary media changes, or as enablers of new economic possibilities for media industries, or of participatory opportunities for audiences. Instead, it calls for investigations of transmedia productions as contested phenomena—sources of contemporary cultural and social complexities—including new forms of scarcities, inequalities, and power struggles./n/nThis special section emphasizes empirical studies of situated differences of how transmedial content is produced, used and interpreted in various contexts and by different actors. The articles present case studies from several countries on aspects of transmedia content production, associated user studies, and predecessors of various modern forms of transmediation (that too often are celebrated for their unprecedented newness). The section is explicitly interdisciplinary and builds on several established research traditions (e.g., cultural studies, political economy, semiotics, and narratology). With an introduction by Ibrus and Scolari, these works attest to the importance of a cross-disciplinary dialogue on transmedia communications as social, economic, and textual phenomena.The preparation of this article was supported by the European Union through its European Regional/nDevelopment Fund (Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory), as well as by research grant ERMOS79,/nfinanced by the Estonian Science Foundation and co-funded by Marie Curie Actions