The primary aim of the course is to introduce students to the study of cultural industries, focusing concretely on the audiovisual media: video, television, videogames, and cinema. Where we tend to conceptualise the products emerging from these areas as autonomous objects or the work of a handful of artists, they are really integrated within a much more dynamic cultural and economic system that shapes their production and our access to them.

Increasingly aware of the complexities of system, the field of audiovisual media industry studies has burgeoned in recent years, with research adopting a variety of different approaches and methodologies. This ranges from the more specific (framing individual creators within broader production cultures) to the more general (understanding entire industries in their global dimension). A secondary objective of the course is therefore to teach students the various methods and tools for this variety of levels. In class, these will be applied to numerous figures, organizations and (inter)national industries, ranging from showrunners and casting directors to Silicon Valley enterprises and the cases of Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood. Therefore, the third objective is to illustrate the methods and provide students with a useful variety of case studies that they can expand independently in the course assessment.

The course is taught in English. 

Following an introduction to the field of audiovisual media industry studies, focusing in particular on the history of this area and on the concepts of “media” and “cultural” industries, the course programme adopts the structure of the main textbook used, therefore shifting from micro to macro fields of study. The core of the lessons will therefore be devoted to:

• Workers, their roles in industries and labour conditions;
• The structures of companies and organizations and conglomeration;
• “Cultures” of production/distribution, between people, companies and industries;
• The economic conditions and legal regulation of cultural industries;
• The role of technology and the impact of digitalization;
• Evolutions in the era of globalization.

Each of these areas will be discussed and studied in class in relation to specific audiovisual media products from variety of global industries. Students will be encouraged to contribute their own examples. We will consider them using different theoretical and practical approaches, from cultural to economic and organizational analyses.

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1. Knowledge and understanding: students will obtain a foundation of theoretical and practical comprehension of the cultural industries and the field of media industry studies.

1.1. Students will gain this understanding through lesson participation and through discussion of the course's themes, guided by the lecturer.

2. Applying knowledge and understanding: the knowledge obtained during this course will be applied to a variety of examples of audiovisual media industries, enabling students to contextualize media products in their source industries at specific and general levels, from individuals to international scenarios.

2.1. Students will gain this ability in class, in the guided analysis of industries at these levels, through collective discussions and preparing small group presentations for assessment.

3. Making judgements: students will learn to express informed, autonomous judgments on single media products in relation to their industry, on the contexts of audiovisual media industries, and on the evolution of this field of study.

3.1. Students will gain the ability to make critical judgments through participation in discussions in class and debates with the lecturer and with their colleagues, through the theoretical trajectory of the course as well as through personal study.

4. Communication: students will learn to express themselves in English on the course's themes, including applying the appropriate specialist vocabulary of media industry studies.

4.1. They can develop this ability through class discussions and exchanges with colleagues, as well as the lecturer, as well as in the realization of group presentations on single examples of industries or figures/organizations within them.

5. Lifelong learning skills: students will learn to engage and interact with cultural, economic and organization studies of media industries and to analyse single products, connecting these elements in an independent reflection on the negotiation between art/culture and industrial/economic backgrounds. 

5.1. These abilities will be enabled through the use of various learning tools, allowing students, at the end of the course, to navigate autonomously around more than one media industry. In addition, discussion and debate with classmates and the lecturer will play a key role, as well as class exercises and personal study.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

As well as lectures and discussions, the classes will work with a variety of different cross-media texts, including academic analyses, histories, specific media products and industry reports.

Teaching

Blended learning, lectures and seminars, analysis of case studies, group discussions and presentations.

Innovative teaching methods

Classes will use the flipped classroom modality in order to discuss the themes and questions of the course texts. All of the teaching forms outlined below will be carried out in English, hence employing content and language integrated learning. 

Attendance

Attendance at the course is mandatory (at least 50% of the lesson hours) except for part-time students, for whom attendance is optional although recommended. 

Course books

The main course text book, which will be the subject of the oral exam, is:

Timothy Havens and Amanda D. Lotz, Understanding Media Industries (New York: Oxford UP, 2016) - 2nd edition

In class, all students will be divided into groups and asked to present summaries and guide discussions on one of the following essays. Please note, though, that these do not need to be prepared for the oral exam.

• Miranda J. Banks, “Gender Below-the-Line: Defining Feminist Production Studies”, in Production Studies. Cultural Studies of Media Industries, ed. by Vikki Mayer, Miranda Banks and John T. Caldwell (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 87-98.
• Kate Eichhorn, "Content Automation", in Content (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2022), pp. 129-143.
• Tejaswini Ganti, “Ch. 5: The Structure, Organization, and Social Relations of the Hindi Film Industry”, in Producing Bollywood. Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 175-213.
• Jonathan Gray e Derek Johnson, “Ch. 4: Television Producers Go to the Movies: Transforming Professional Identities”, in Television Goes to the Movies (Londra: Routledge, 2021), pp. 101-130.
• Daniel Herbert, Amanda D. Lotz e Lee Marshall, “Approaching Media Industries Comparatively: A Case Study of Streaming”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(3), 2018, pp. 349-366.
• Brendan Keogh, "Between Triple-A, Indie, Casual, and DIY. Sites of Tension in the Videogames Cultural Industries", in The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries, ed. by Kate Oakley and Justin O'Connor (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 152-162.
• Jade Miller, “VOD: Formal Challengers for Nollywood's Informal Domestic Market”, in Digital Media Distribution, ed. by Paul McDonald, Courtney Brannon Donoghue and Timothy Havens (New York: NYU Press, 2021), pp. 259-276.
• Alisa Perren, "Chapter 7. Who Says Life is Beautiful?", in Indie, Inc. Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021), pp. 176-207.

Assessment

Assessment for this course will consist in:

i. group presentations, in English, both during and at the end of the course. During the course, students will be split into groups. These groups will be assigned one of the essays listed in the previous section; they will summarise this for the class and propose questions regarding its content.

At the end of the course, students will also prepare group presentations focusing on a specific theme relating during the course (a figure, an organization, a production culture or a national/international industry).

ii. an oral exam (in English). The oral exam will evaluate how well the student has learned the course contents as well as their ability to express themselves, to argue, and to apply acquired knowledge. It will refer to the course materials and the content of the lessons.

To pass the course, students must demonstrate their critical capacity and their ability to expand on the course’s themes; they must offer in-depth analyses of the audiovisual media industries; and they must use an appropriate language/vocabulary that relates to the discipline.

The absence of these skills will lead to students not passing the course.

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.

Teaching

Individual study: analysis of the teaching materials and of cast studies.

Attendance

Attendance at the course is mandatory (at least 50% of the lesson hours). The only exception is for part-time students, for whom attendance is optional although recommended. 

Course books

The set text for part-time students – who are able to take the exam as non-attending students – is:

Timothy Havens and Amanda D. Lotz, Understanding Media Industries (New York: Oxford UP, 2016) - 2nd edition

To provide the opportunity for non-attending students to balance out their individual study with the content of the lessons and gain a full understanding of the course, the programme includes following supplementary materials. Non-attending students must select and prepare three of the following essays (not all of them) for the oral exam.

• Miranda J. Banks, “Gender Below-the-Line: Defining Feminist Production Studies”, in Production Studies. Cultural Studies of Media Industries, ed. by Vikki Mayer, Miranda Banks and John T. Caldwell (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 87-98.
• Kate Eichhorn, "Content Automation", in Content (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2022), pp. 129-143. Tejaswini Ganti, “Ch. 5: The Structure, Organization, and Social Relations of the Hindi Film Industry”, in Producing Bollywood. Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 175-213.
• Jonathan Gray e Derek Johnson, “Ch. 4: Television Producers Go to the Movies: Transforming Professional Identities”, in Television Goes to the Movies (Londra: Routledge, 2021), pp. 101-130.
• Daniel Herbert, Amanda D. Lotz e Lee Marshall, “Approaching Media Industries Comparatively: A Case Study of Streaming”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(3), 2018, pp. 349-366.
• Brendan Keogh, "Between Triple-A, Indie, Casual, and DIY. Sites of Tension in the Videogames Cultural Industries", in The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries, ed. by Kate Oakley and Justin O'Connor (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 152-162.
• Jade Miller, “VOD: Formal Challengers for Nollywood's Informal Domestic Market”, in Digital Media Distribution, ed. by Paul McDonald, Courtney Brannon Donoghue and Timothy Havens (New York: NYU Press, 2021), pp. 259-276.
• Alisa Perren, "Chapter 7. Who Says Life is Beautiful?", in Indie, Inc. Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood in the 1990s (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021), pp. 176-207.

Assessment

Assessment for this course will consist in an oral exam (in English). The oral exam will evaluate how well the student has learned the course contents as well as their ability to express themselves, to argue, and to apply acquired knowledge. It will refer to the course materials and the content of the lessons.

To pass the course, students must demonstrate their critical capacity and their ability to expand on the course’s themes; they must offer in-depth analyses of the audiovisual media industries; and they must use an appropriate language/vocabulary that relates to the discipline.

The absence of these skills will lead to students not passing the course.

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.

Attendance is obligatory for a minimum of 50% of the lessons. It is not possible to take the exam as a non-attending student, with the only exception of those students who are studying part-time.