To be or not to be the media industry – Delineation to a fuzzy concept

Abstract

Even though media industry studies are on the rise, there is a major issue: the concept itself is "fuzzy". The goal of this paper is to shed light on the concept. To do so, the paper analyses existing approaches, combining academic references as well as sources commonly used by practitioners (e.g. the OECD, the EU, DCMS). It allows to give three delineations to the media industry: (1) A novel theoretical delineation, (2) a sectoral delineation, and (3) a delineation through the NACE statistical classification system. The main research findings are: (i) the development of a so-called circling model that shows how "mediated content" is at the core of the definition of the media industry; (ii) through the convergence tendencies, many different media activities can play a supporting or facilitating role; (iii) a list of NACE codes to guide statistical analysies.

Identifying industry clusters: a critical analysis of the most commonly used methods

“…First, data were extracted. Nomenclature of Economic Activities in the European Communities (NACE) codes that describe the media industry, as developed by Komorowski and Ranaivoson (2018), have been used to extract micro-firm data from Bel-first (a database on Belgian companies published by Bureau van Dijk). The 2014 data for economic entities, addresses and number of employees were retrieved for all bodies where the principal activity falls under the media industry NACE codes.…”

The economic drivers of media clusters

“…An initial step was to identify the businesses. We followed the approach as suggested by Komorowski and Ranaivoson (2018) and used media industry-related activity codes to extract business information from Bel-first. Bel-first, developed and published by Bureau van Dijk Electronic (2018), includes the complete population of Belgian organizations.…”

A mediapark in Brussels? The media industry and its regional dynamics

“…Mauri, Vlegels, Lucy, Lazzaro, and Ysebaert, 2017]. Even though it is still relevant to study the commonalities of the CCI, including the working conditions of the creative workforce, researchers have argued that the specificities of mediated content production should spark analysis focusing on this sector [Komorowski and Ranaivoson, 2018;Picard, 2009]. Furthermore, until recently there was no consensus among scholars and politicians concerning what to include in the media industry -in terms of sectors and activities -when bringing media into their agendas.…”