Locating and localizing Media Industry Studies

Abstract

This chapter examines the globally peripheral case study of Greek media industry studies for the twofold aim of locating the relevant research trajectory in and about the country and arguing for the significance of localizing media industries research within the context of Media Industry Studies. Media Industry Studies (MIS) emerged in Anglo-American scholarship in the late 2000s as an umbrella term that aims to bring together the study of diverse and historically distinct media industries through a variety of disciplinary and methodological traditions, embracing aspects of both the humanities and social sciences. In celebrating plurality, however, MIS has faced difficulty in establishing common ground with certain media-related disciplines whose research agenda was incompatible with others. Central to this has been the prioritization or not of issues related to culture, and the concomitant methodological implications of such a choice. In retrospectively locating MIS in and about Greece, this chapter traces a similar trajectory, with political economy-driven social sciences research dominating media industries research and with hardly any dialogue between such an approach and less dominant approaches emerging from arts, humanities, and cultural studies. Recently, however, there has been a significant shift toward a more methodologically mixed and qualitatively orientated humanities-inspired agenda that also reflects the expansion of the objects of research from an almost exclusive focus on such issues as the print press, television news, or online journalism, to film, television fiction, or video games. The chapter demonstrates that such a shift has been taking place because of changes in the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural environment in which Greek media industries operate, and therefore argues for the significance of localizing MIS rather than unconditionally adopting its agendas as these emerged in Western media contexts.