Global online platforms, COVID-19, and culture: The global pandemic, an accelerator towards which direction?

Abstract

The article proposes to consider the COVID-19 global pandemic as new major development for cultural industries and policies and to highlight timely and crucial trends due to the lockdown measures. Thus, it attempts to stimulate the scholarship debate regarding the consequences of the pandemic to the action of global online platforms, as well as to policy and economic aspects of cultural sectors. Taking as case study the audio-visual sector, the article explores whether the US global streaming platforms are the winning players of the lockdown measures and emphasizes the multifaceted strategies developed by US-based platforms in order to strengthen their soft power. Focusing on China and the European Union, the article also argues that the overwhelming action of US-based online platforms triggers the potential emergence of media platform regionalization in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, it highlights the regulatory challenges and how the new empirical trends are expected to shape the current audio-visual policy framework. The analysis focuses on the period between the beginning of global pandemic in Asia-Pacific in January 2020 and the progressive easing of lockdown measures in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific in July 2020.

Video Component of Media Education in Direct and Reverse Acculturation at North Carolina State University and Texas Christian University

“…The researchers came to the conclusion that "online interaction with host nationals represents an avenue for international students to better understand their communication behavior and subsequently communicate more effectively during intercultural interactions" (Hendrickson, Rosen, 2017: 100). Thus, for example, amateur video content distributed on the Internet on platforms such as YouTube (Vlassis, 2021) may also be designated as online interaction of foreign and local students if there are no other options for building direct interpersonal connections due to the quarantine restrictions.…”

The show must go on? The entertainment industry during (and after) COVID-19

“…We aim to add knowledge to the literature on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on different socioeconomic domains by systematically analyzing the effects on the entertainment industry across the world (Changsong et al, 2021; Kim, 2021; Vlassis, 2021). We propose that physicality, synchronicity, and digitizablity of entertainment sectors may drive the directions and magnitudes of the effects, in conjunction with the consideration on the ongoing transformation progressed in each sector, from a long-term perspective (Boyle, 2019; Hutchins et al, 2019; Johnson and Woodcock, 2019; Ryu and Park, 2018; Sanson and Steirer, 2019; Spilker and Colbjørnsen, 2020).…”

“…Indeed, the fluctuation is omnidirectional, provoked by dramatic changes in consumer attitudes and behaviors. The changes have shocked the value chain in the industry, from production to distribution channels, but with different directions and magnitudes (Vlassis, 2021).…”

Habitar la contingencia

“…Por ejemplo, entre los fenómenos que ya comienzan a vislumbrarse en diversas partes del mundo se destacan la necesaria revalorización de la interacción social presencial (Katila, Gan & Goodwin, 2020;Banerjee & Mayank, 2020); la emergencia de una nueva vida cívica y la intensificación de formas de comunidad en línea entre ciertos sectores de la población que antes se encontraban alejados de esta esfera (Vlassis, 2021); el aumento de la violencia intrafamiliar, particularmente aquella que se ejerce en contra de las mujeres (Kumar, 2020;Dlamini, 2020); y el surgimiento de nuevos liderazgos políticos y de mecanismos de legitimación (Walby, 2020), entre otros. Más aún, de acuerdo con las estimaciones más recientes, se prevé que las estrategias de aislamiento y de distanciamiento social podrían continuar de manera intermitente hasta bien entrado 2022 (Kissler y otros, 2020).…”