Heritiana Ranaivoson

1. With the overwhelming volume of content on streaming services and the prevalence of algorithm-driven technologies, audiovisual media consumption is increasingly shaped by recommender systems (RS...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly reshaped the news media landscape in the fast evolving‎ digital ecosystem. While recent legislative measures and industry self-regulation initiatives have‎ emerged to address AI’s implications, the ethical challenges associated with its adoption in European‎ Union (EU) newsrooms and the ways news media organisations navigate regulatory frameworks and ‎internal initiatives remain underexplored. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining the conditions‎ under which AI tools are integrated into media organisations from both organisational and regulatory‎ perspectives. Drawing on an analysis of 30 key documents and 41 in-depth interviews with media‎ professionals and regulatory experts across three EU markets, the study uncovers key findings: a limited ‎discourse on AI use in media organisations, significant disparities in AI implementation practices, and an ‎absence of clear, actionable regulatory guidelines for addressing considerations in AI-driven news content.‎

Due to the media goods’ dual economic and cultural role, merger and acquisition (M&A) assessments are complex and differ from M&As in other sectors. An additional layer of complexity is added to the assessment when various authorities are involved. An even more complicated matter is when the authorities have different remits. These authorities mostly comprise National Competition Authorities that enforce competition law, focused on economic considerations, and National Regulatory Authorities that enforce and oversee the application of media law, focused not only on setting rules and limitations on the media market but also on considering non-economic elements such as plurality. In certain countries, ministries and government authorities can intervene in these assessments. There have been discussions on the need for cooperation between authorities, however, mostly at the international level. Thus, little is known about the current cooperation procedures at the national level. The article proposes a typology of cooperation at the EU member states level and the United Kingdom and introduces the concept of the ‘power pyramid’ to represent the hierarchical relationships between authorities. Cooperation proves that competition policy and mediaspecific regulation are intertwined and are complementary. Furthermore, the article shows that having more than one authority assessing media M&As leads to media pluralism being more often explicitly one of the criteria used in the assessments, and thus providing a more holistic approach.

In this article we present a manifesto for research into the complex interplay between social media, music streaming services, and their algorithms, which are reshaping the European music industry – a sector that has transitioned from ownership to access-based models. Our focus is to assess whether the current digital economy supports a fair and sustainable development for cultural and creative industries. The manifesto is designed to pave the way for a comprehensive analysis. We begin with the context of our research by briefly examining the de-materialisation of the music industry and the critical role of proprietary algorithms in organising and ranking creative works. We then scrutinise the notion of “fairness” within digital markets, a concept that is attracting increasing policy interest in the EU. We believe that, for “fairness” to be effective, the main inquiry around this concept – especially as regards remuneration of music creators – must be necessarily interdisciplinary. This presupposes collaboration across complementary fields to address gaps and inconsistencies in the understanding of how these platforms influence music creation and consumption and whether these environments and technologies should be regulated. We outline how interdisciplinary expertise (political science, law, economics, and computer science) can enhance the current understanding of “fairness” within Europe’s cultural policies and help address policy challenges. The article details how our research plan will unfold across various disciplinary hubs of a Horizon Europe project (Fair MusE) that aims to explore the challenges and opportunities of today’s digital music landscape. The plan culminates in the integration of these hubs’ findings to deliver “key exploitable results”.

This articles serves as editorial introduction to the Journal of Digital Media and Policy’s Special Issue on ‘US-Based SVoD Providers in Europe: Impacts and Challenges’. It starts by a reminder of the importance taken by US-based SVOD in Europe, and their ambiguous impact. On the one hand, they play a key role in terms of audio-visual creativity and innovation. On the other hand, they have been at the centre of many policy debates regarding notably their impact on the production and consumption of European content. The objective of the Special Issue is to analyse such impact using various empirical approaches and comparative analyses. This is done via five articles, two short commentaries and three book reviews, which are briefly presented in the end of this editorial introduction.

Platforms and Exposure Diversity: Towards a Framework to Assess Policies to Promote Exposure Diversity | Article | Media and Communication

The 2018 revision of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) aimed at addressing the issues and challenges raised by globalisation and digitalisation