Authors
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Jana Radošinská
University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava
Author
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Zuzana Kvetanová
University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava
Author
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Ján Višňovský
University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava
Author
Keywords:
critical political economy of media, late modern media audiences, media and cultural studies, media economics, media industries, media ownership, oligopolies
Abstract
Understanding the ‘industrial’ nature of media production and its individual segments is an essential part of any systematic scholarly reflection on the cultural, economic or political aspects of media communication. The media industries produce information, entertainment, narratives and cultural phenomena, i.e. materialised items able to disseminate (and promote) a plethora of ideas, experience, emotions, lifestyles, value-based opinions or even spiritual stimuli. However, despite all of their unique traits and production principles, media industries may be seen as ‘common’ industrial segments that are subject to specific technological, economic and commercial imperatives. The production ‘phase’ of media communication certainly involves a wide spectrum of rather complex production mechanisms. The study thus aims to explore and discuss the current scholarly opinions on the media industries and their social, cultural, economic and technological frameworks. Firstly, the authors offer an overview of existing definitions of the media industries and their typologies. The basic terminological outlines are followed by a closer look at transformations of the media industries in the digital era, especially in relation to late modern media audiences and their volatile preferences. The authors also introduce, discuss and compare various paradigmatic outlines related to studying the economic aspects of media production, placing emphasis on the political economy of media and its problematic relationship to media studies and cultural studies.
Author Biographies
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Jana Radošinská, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava
Jana Radošinská is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication, University of Ss. Cyril
and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia. Her scholarly and research interests include issues of media culture, media industries, mainstream film production and media entertainment. She also focuses on problems related to contemporary media audiences, cultural aspects of journalism, television studies and digital games. She is the author or co-author of four scientific monographs, as well as several studies published in scientific journals indexed in Web of Science or Scopus. She is the Deputy Managing Editor of Communication Today.
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Zuzana Kvetanová, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava
Zuzana Kvetanová works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia. As a scholar, she is interested in media reality with emphasis on television; her field of expertise also includes gender stereotyping, violence and sexism. The author minds the need to better understand the dimension of digital games within wider sociocultural and media trends. She is also interested in the terminological framework of game studies, applying an interdisciplinary approach which includes the knowledge of cultural anthropology, sociology, philosophy and psychology. She is the Deputy Managing Editor of the academic journal Acta Ludologica.
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Ján Višňovský, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava
Ján Višňovský is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication UCM in Trnava and Head of the Department of Mass Media Communication. He is particularly interested in problems and questions of journalism in context of the development of information and communication technologies. His key works are the monographs Life and Work of Dominik Tatarka (2009) and Current Questions of Theory and Practice of Journalism in the Internet Era (2015). He has published over sixty scholarly articles and conference papers. Out of them, fifteen are indexed in Web of Science or Scopus.
Section
Theoretical studies
How to Cite
Radošinská, J., Kvetanová, Z., & Višňovský, J. (2020). To Thrive Means to Entertain: The Nature of Today’s Media Industries.
Communication Today,
11(1), 4-21.
https://doi.org/10.0000/xxptar59
