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Workshop of the Media Industries Working Group of the Society for Media Studies (GfM), July 2025, FU Berlin
Compared to production and publication, the monetary exploitation of media content is a less studied research topic. Presumably, the often difficult-to-understand media industry processes and structures of exploitation appear too specialized, bureaucratic, and formalized—or simply hidden and overshadowed by other issues (cf. Lobato 2012, Lindquist 2019). An in-depth examination of Goffman's “backstage” of the media industries (cf. Dommann 2023) is sometimes preferred to the dazzling “front stage” (cf. e.g. Caldwell, 2013, who speaks of “authorship below-the-line” in the context of film production). It would be very worthwhile to analyze the interrelationships between production, publishing, distribution, and exploitation in more detail. An interdisciplinary comparison is particularly useful here, as the processes and dynamics of the various sub-sectors of the media industries are becoming increasingly similar due to increasing digitalization and platformization (cf. Havens & Lotz 2017, Caldwell 2016).
