Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines
A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distribution

In the twenty-first century, the platforms that both create and host content have become nearly as important as media itself. Companies such as Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have attained a massive hold on the public imagination and have become an almost ineluctable part of people’s everyday lives. While the workings of media distribution had until very recently remained inconsequential to the average consumer, the recent popularization of various online platforms has made the question of distribution immediate to everyone.

Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines provides a timely examination of the multifaceted distribution landscape in a moment of transformation and conceptualizes media distribution as a complex site of power, privilege, and gatekeeping. These tensions have local, national, and global consequences on the autonomy of creative workers, as well as on how we gain access to, engage with, and understand cultural products. Drawing on original research into distribution practices in industries as diverse as television, film, videogames, literature, and adult entertainment, each chapter explores how digitization has changed media distribution and its broader economic, industrial, social, and cultural implications.

Bringing together experts from around the world and across the media industries, Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines presents a vast array of critical approaches and illustrative case studies for understanding the factors that have an impact on the way media travels and moves throughout our digital lives.

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Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines
A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distribution

In the twenty-first century, the platforms that both create and host content have become nearly as important as media itself. Companies such as Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have attained a massive hold on the public imagination and have become an almost ineluctable part of people’s everyday lives. While the workings of media distribution had until very recently remained inconsequential to the average consumer, the recent popularization of various online platforms has made the question of distribution immediate to everyone.

Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines provides a timely examination of the multifaceted distribution landscape in a moment of transformation and conceptualizes media distribution as a complex site of power, privilege, and gatekeeping. These tensions have local, national, and global consequences on the autonomy of creative workers, as well as on how we gain access to, engage with, and understand cultural products. Drawing on original research into distribution practices in industries as diverse as television, film, videogames, literature, and adult entertainment, each chapter explores how digitization has changed media distribution and its broader economic, industrial, social, and cultural implications.

Bringing together experts from around the world and across the media industries, Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines presents a vast array of critical approaches and illustrative case studies for understanding the factors that have an impact on the way media travels and moves throughout our digital lives.

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Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines

Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines

Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines

Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines

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Overview

A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distribution

In the twenty-first century, the platforms that both create and host content have become nearly as important as media itself. Companies such as Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have attained a massive hold on the public imagination and have become an almost ineluctable part of people’s everyday lives. While the workings of media distribution had until very recently remained inconsequential to the average consumer, the recent popularization of various online platforms has made the question of distribution immediate to everyone.

Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines provides a timely examination of the multifaceted distribution landscape in a moment of transformation and conceptualizes media distribution as a complex site of power, privilege, and gatekeeping. These tensions have local, national, and global consequences on the autonomy of creative workers, as well as on how we gain access to, engage with, and understand cultural products. Drawing on original research into distribution practices in industries as diverse as television, film, videogames, literature, and adult entertainment, each chapter explores how digitization has changed media distribution and its broader economic, industrial, social, and cultural implications.

Bringing together experts from around the world and across the media industries, Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines presents a vast array of critical approaches and illustrative case studies for understanding the factors that have an impact on the way media travels and moves throughout our digital lives.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781479806782
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 09/07/2021
Series: Critical Cultural Communication
Pages: 392
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Paul McDonald is Professor of Media Industries at King’s College London. His publications include Video and DVD Industries (2007) and Hollywood Stardom (2013), and the co-editing of The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry (2008) and Hollywood and the Law (2015). He co-edits the International Screen Industries book series from the British Film Institute.

Courtney Brannon Donoghue is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Arts at the University of North Texas. Her publications include Localising Hollywood (British Film Institute Press, 2017) and have appeared in Cinema Journal, Feminist Media Studies, Media, Culture & Society, and various edited collections.

Timothy Havens is Associate Professor of Television and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies, the Program in African American Studies, and the Program in International Studies at the University of Iowa.

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

Introduction: Media Distribution Today Courtney Brannon Donoghue Timothy Havens Paul McDonald 1

Section 1 Conceptualizing Distribution and Circulation

1 Points of Origin: Asking Questions in Distribution Research Joshua A. Braun 27

2 Media Circulation: Reconceptualizing Television Distribution and Exhibition Amanda D. Lotz 47

3 Reassessing the "Space in Between": Distribution Studies in Transition Alisa Perren 67

4 Disingenuous Intermediaries: The Gatekeeping Power of Distributors and Publishers Virginia Crisp 87

5 The Circulation Game: Shifting Production Logics and Circulation Moments in the Digital Games Industry Aphra Kerr 107

6 Questioning the Content Supply Model: A Provocation Patrick Vonderau 126

Section 2 Distribution Ecosystems and Cultures

7 "Tech-Tonic" Shifts: The US. and China Models of Online Screen Distribution Stuart Cunningham David Craig 145

8 Language, Culture, and Streaming Video in India: The Pragmatics and Politics of Media Distribution Aswin Punathambekar Sriram Mohan 164

9 "Sorry about That": Hopes and Promises of Geoblocking's End Evan Elkins 183

10 Global TV Markets and Digital Distribution Joonseok Choi 202

11 Children's Television in an Era of Digital Distribution: Arab and European Responses Naomi Sakr Jeanette Steemers 222

12 Distribution, Infrastructure, and Markets: SVOD Services in Latin America Juan Piñón Ezequtel Rivera 242

13 VOD: Formal Challengers for Nollywood's Informal Domestic Market Jade L. Miller 259

14 The King Is Dead, Long Live the Algorithm: MindGeek and the Digital Distribution of Adult Film Peter Alilunas 277

15 Amazon and Automated Recommendations: Distribution and Discovery in the Book Trade Julian Thomas 295

16 Free, Bundled, or Personalized? Rethinking Price and Value in Digital Distribution Ramon Lobato 314

17 "Every Day Should Be a Holiday": Black Friday and the Importance of Retail in the Circulation of Media Daniel Herbert Derek Johnson 335

Acknowledgments 353

Contributors 355

Index 363

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