ECREA conference, Braga

***This event is currently postponed****

The 8th European Communication Conference (ECREA) will take place in October in at the University of Minha (Braga) with both Maria and Caitriona contributing to panels.

The theme of the conference is ‘Communication and Trust: building safe, sustainable and promising futures’ and it is one of the largest European conferences for media and communications scholars.

Caitriona will present work from the project in a paper entitled ‘Screen Agencies as Digital Innovators: Balancing market failure and public interest’. Maria will present her paper ‘Whose freedom, and from what?: The child as a cipher for a politics of ‘traditional values’.’

More information about the conference is available here.

Screen Agencies as Digital Innovators: Balancing market failure and public interest

This paper reports the findings from an international comparative study of screen agencies and film funds across a number of small European nations.  Using interviews with senior staff in these funding agencies along with analysis of policy materials, this research offers insight into the evolving framework of publicly funded interventions in the screen sector.

Despite considerable disruption within the screen sector, publicly funded subsidies and financial supports continue to be essential elements in the provision of film and television.  There is an elaborate global system of fiscal incentives and direct funding espoused under rationales of economic growth and cultural protection. National and regional screen agencies are some of the main stakeholders in this system, and include bodies such as Screen Ireland, the Danish Film Institute, Screen Scotland, Flanders Audiovisual Fund and the Croatian Audiovisual Centre. The interventions of these screen agencies are particularly significant in the context of the small indigenous markets they serve.

This research examines the critical role that screen agencies and film funds play in the provision of screen content and in the political drive to build a sustainable production sector which is culturally rich and economically competitive. For some agencies this role necessitates an extension of their remit and supporting activities to fully realise the potential of the digital screen.

The paper focuses on the expansion of their expertise and funding structures to support new forms of screen technology including Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and gaming. In this role screen agencies attempt to be disruptive innovators in a converged media landscape but must do this within the limits of public support.  Their activities include offering a gateway to capital, especially in relation to development funding, and professionalising these sectors through talent development and political lobbying.

In this transition screen agencies have had to develop new funding models, structures and assessment criteria which are distinct from those used to support their traditional remit, film.  Merging different areas of screen has led to some tensions linked to different business models and perceived cultural hierarchies.  As one interviewee posited on the internal approach to game support within his agency: ‘We don’t want to have movies and also a bit of games; we want to have movies and games’.

This research points to the practical challenges and rewards for cultural policymaking that attempts to stimulate innovation and transition emerging technologies into commercially and culturally important resources.  While the expansion of screen agency activities is an outcome of a converged digital landscape, this research concludes that they are a key node in the delivery of innovation within media industries, though this is not without its own challenges. The paper concludes by outlining two potentially greater public interest roles for these agencies: to diversify the outputs and cultures of the technology and gaming sectors and to increase the sustainability of non-Anglophone content, technologies and platforms.