1st Edition
Media Industries in Crisis What COVID Unmasked
This edited volume offers a global overview of the immediate impacts the COVID pandemic had on local and national film, television, streaming, and social media industries—examining in compelling detail how these industries managed the crisis.
With accounts from the frontlines, Media Industries in Crisis provides readers with a stakeholder framework, management lessons, and urgent commentaries to unpack the nature of crisis management and communications. The authors show how these industries have not only survived, but often thrive amidst a backdrop of critical national and regional emergencies, wars, financial meltdowns, and climate disasters. This international collection—featuring case studies from 16 countries—examines how media industries managed all of these crises, successfully rebranding themselves as “essential” while making power plays in politics, economics, and culture. The chapters reveal key lessons for the meltdowns, tectonic shifts, and struggles ahead.
This collection will be of interest to media and communication students, particularly those focused on media industries, crisis communications, and management, as well as to practitioners working in media industries.
Introduction: COVID Strikes: The Makings of Crisis within a Crisis Industry Vicki Mayer PART I: Defining Stakes and Stakeholders in Media Crises 1. Insider Stakeholders: Hollywood in Crisis Miranda Banks 2. Essential Stakeholders: Is Kirsten’s Dunst’s Nanny an “Essential” Worker? Dispatches from Studio New Zealand Bridget Conor 3. Policy Stakeholders: Political Pivots and Precarity in Colombia’s Orange Economy Enrique Uribe Jongbloed and César Mora-Moreo 4. Cultural Stakeholders: Solidarity in Finland for Creative Justice Anne Soronen 5. External Stakeholders: How Hollywood’s U.S. Boosters Normalized Risk Kate Fortmueller 6. Stakeholders in Troubled Times: Understanding the Scene of Egyptian Media Production in Two Timeframes Mariz Kelada and Chihab El Khachab PART II: From the Headlines: Crisis Management and Communications 7. Polish Perspectives on Netflix COVID-19 Relief Funds Michał Pabiś-Orzeszyna 8. Studio Construction in Ireland—Boom, Bubble—or Both? Bill Grantham 9. Indian Pandemic Entertainment Aesthetics and Infrastructure Darshana Sreedhar Mini 10. “Not Essential”: The Controversial Status of Turkish Dizis Zeynep Sertbulut 11. COVID Variants and Colonial Remnants in South African Media Industries Jessica Dickson 12. Shooting with a Long Lens: Three Interviews with a Feminist Filmmaker in the Age of US Racial Reckonings Angela Tucker and Vicki Mayer 13. Work Contracts and Creative Justice for Turkey Ergin Bulut 14. Working From Home for Abroad: (Re)configurations of the Brazilian Animation Industry Elena Altheman 15. Fraught Gathering: Studio-Exhibitor Reckoning at CinemaCon 2021 Charlotte Orzel 16. Collaborative Networks for Streaming Film Festivals as Crisis Responses in Germany Skadi Loist 17. Multi-Cinemas and the Moment of Meme Capitalism Toby Miller PART III: Lessons Learned about Crises 18. Combat Lessons on the Decline of Democracy in/on Israeli Television News Noa Lavie 19. Taking a Cue from the COVID Lobby: Lessons for Greening Dutch Film Production Judith Keilbach 20. COVID Choreography in the U.K.: Redefining Intimacy on Set Tanya Horeck and Susan Berridge 21. Lessons from Mumbai: Managing the Lockdowns in Two Media Industries Tejaswini Ganti 22. Riding the Roller Coaster: Scenes from the Chinese Film Industry Ying Zhu 23. Epilogue: Learning from One Particular Crisis Miranda Banks, Vicki Mayer, and Noa Lavie
Biography
Vicki Mayer is Professor of Communication at Tulane University. She is author or editor of several books about media and communication, especially cultures of production. Her edited/authored books include Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries (2009), Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy (2011) and Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans: The Lure of the Local Film Economy (2017).
Noa Lavie is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Communication and Media Unit at Academic College of Tel Aviv‑Jaffa. Her work on the sociology of culture, media industries and television studies has led to prestigious grants (ISF 2017, BSF 2021) and publications in Ethnicities, Media Culture and Society, Sociology, Television and New Media, and Poetics.
Miranda Banks is Associate Professor and Chair of Film, Television, and Media Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She is author of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (2015) and coeditor of Production Studies (2009) and Production Studies, The Sequel! (2016).
“In the midst of viral emergency, economic stagnation, and the world on fire, Media Industries in Crisis takes us to the maelstrom of spectacular catastrophe – where the production stakes are high, workers are exhausted, and it’s only the corporations that are really cleaning up. This expansive and inclusive book most vividly captures the ambivalent role of media in the global omni-crisis; a collapsing new world of risk, danger and - dare we hope - radical opportunity.”
Mark Banks, Professor of Cultural Economy, University of Glasgow, UK
“If you need a refresh on what an unflinchingly rigorous and thoroughly global political economy approach can reveal about contemporary media, look no further than Mayer, Lavie and Banks’ Media Industries in Crisis: What COVID Unmasked. Equally refreshing is their melding of traditional media industries disciplinary foci with critical deployment of core elements of public relations and management disciplines such as crisis communication and crisis management. This disciplinary détente is then directed at engagingly diverse studies of how, in the time-honored fashion of big business, media industries during the pandemic tried never to let a good crisis go to waste.”
Stuart Cunningham, co-author, Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley
“Vicki Mayer, Noa Lavie, and Miranda Banks have assembled an indispensable volume on contemporary media industries in our age of health, economic, and political crisis. With the global COVID pandemic as the core historical focus, the essays crackle with powerfully relevant analysis on such topics as changing distribution patterns, intimacy coordination, on-set health protocols, and production conditions in a variety of international settings. Media Industries in Crisis is an absolutely essential read for anyone interested in the dynamics of entertainment media industries and labor today.”
Alisa Perren, Professor and Director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries, Department of Radio-Television-Film at University of Texas at Austin, USA
“Media Industries in Crisis manages a seemingly impossible task: Simultaneously showing how the pandemic fits within a larger history of how media industries have managed crisis while also providing grounded, localized case studies of diverse stakeholder responses around the world, this collection is a vital resource for media industry researchers and practitioners alike. Editors Mayer, Lavie, and Banks – along with their 20 contributors – offer a vital snapshot of a transformative time for the global media industries and its breadth of media workers.”
Charles R. Acland, Concordia University, Montreal, author of American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder
“It’s beneficial to live on a damaged planet, at least for some. This lively collection is as varied as pandemic responses have been, but better organized. Articles are united by a desire to understand the issues stirred up by COVID-19 across the globe, from venture capital investors to on-set intimacy coordinators, streaming services to cinema chains. A timely multi-national contribution to one of Media Studies’ core research fields.”
Dr. Patrick Vonderau, University of Halle, Germany
