European Media Platforms: Assessing Positive and Negative Externalities for European Culture

The project aims at analyzing the role of media platforms in fostering or dismantling European identity. We will focus on the “platformization” process, as the rise of new closed web architectures, so as to inquire its positive and negative externalities, functional and dysfunctional consequences. Negative externalities include misinformation, toxic debate, exclusion of independent voices; positive externalities encompass European co-productions, or practices able to bring people out of the information bubble.

For this purpose, we will run a multidisciplinary analysis of platformization in three fields: news, video sharing, media representations, with the final goal to offer a theoretical synthesis. The research question is whether or not new platforms – YouTube, Netflix, NewsFeed – are making European culture more European, based on indicators related to production, consumption and representation.

• Project website https://www.eumeplat.eu.
   

In this video, the researchers provide a first insight into the project:


 

Publications

Based on the findings of this project, the handbook "The Media Systems in Europe. Continuities and Discontinuities" was published under open access conditions. It was edited by Stylianos Papathanassopoulos and Andrea Miconi. Based on the famous model for analysing media systems by Hallin and Mancini ("Comparing Media Systems", 2004), the book examines the media systems of Europe in different regions: Northern, Northwestern, Eastern and Southern Europe.







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