Locating Media Industries Spaces, Places, Platforms

Platial and Spatial Dynamics of Media Industries

Paul McDonald, Christopher Meir and Andrew Spicer

Part I: Media Industries and the Production of Space

1. Location as Soft Power in the Media Services Industry: The Case of ‘Hollywood East’
Timothy Havens and Anikó Imre

2. Virtual Spaces, Digital Assets and the (Re)Production of the Physical: Virtual Production: Digital and Legal Geographies
Nina Willment and Jon Swords

3. Environment Matters: Localising (Community) Radio to Help Save the Planet
Josephine F. Coleman

4. Accessibility and Festaphilia: Spatial Dynamics of Disability Film Festivals
Theresa Heath

5. Shifting Gears: Cars Land, Licensed Immersion, and the Renegotiation of Theme Park Spatial Capital
Myles McNutt

6. The Balearic Islands on Screen: Representations of Place in La caza. Tramuntana and The Mallorca Files
Andreu Fullana and Concepción Cascajosa Virino

Part II: Space, Place and Streaming

7. Digital Media Industries and the Question of Territoriality: The View from the Middle East
Joe F. Khalil and Mohamed Zayani

8. Streaming Cultural Authenticity: Netflix Industry Discourse and Global Original Series
Michael L. Wayne

9. Netflix’s Monumentally Local Auteur Film-Making in Europe: Production, Rhetoric and Regulation
Christopher Meir

10. Latin American Stories Stream Worldwide: Producing for Global Platforms
Luisela Alvaray

11. Streaming Scotland: The Scottish Screen Sector’s Journey into the Global Online Drama Production Market
Nelson Correia

Biography

Paul McDonald is Professor of Media Industries at King’s College London, UK. Recent publications include editing The Routledge Companion to Media Industries (2022), and co-editing Media Industries and Cities: Perspectives, Geopolitics and Transformations (2026), Global Film Policies: New Perspectives (2025), and Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines (2021).

Christopher Meir is Assistant Professor of Communication at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, where he is a member of the TECMERIN research group as well as the University Institute of Spanish Cinema (IUCE). He is the author of Scottish Cinema: Texts and Contexts (2014) and Mass Producing European Cinema: Studiocanal and Its Works (2019).

Andrew Spicer is Professor of Cultural Production at the University of the West of England Bristol, UK. His recent publications include Sean Connery: Acting, Stardom and National Identity (2022); and collaborative works, Go West! 2.5: Bristol’s Film and Television Industries (2025; co-authored with Jelena Krivosic); and The Politics of Place: Space and Location in European Screen Industries (2025; co-edited with Ruth Barton and Amy Genders).

“Questions of space and place have long fascinated cultural theorists. Locating Media Industries draws on this rich intellectual history to reboot media geography for the platform age. With case studies from across Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, this essential book explores the nuanced ways in which media institutions 'make and manage' space.”  

- Ramon Lobato, Swinburne University of Technology, author of Netflix Nations

“While the relation between place and media previously have been studied and reflected in different ways, both regarding sites of production, place representation and local colour, this volume brings new and important aspects to the field by looking at how the streaming industries challenge the idea of place and space in media production and as such increase the importance of understanding how ‘media industries produce place and space, and how place and space produce media industries’.”

- Anne Marit Risum Waade, Professor in Global Media Industries, Aarhus University