10.54103/2036-461X/22505
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2036-461X
22505
41
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Horizon 2020 – EUMEPLAT – European Media Platforms: Assessing Negative and Positive Externalities for European Culture
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
23
Projects & Abstracts
2024-04-05
2024-02-10
2024-04-05
2024-04-05
195-196
Cinéma & Cie
Andrea Miconi
2023
10.54103/2036-461X/22505
195
IULM University
2036-461X
41
en
196
Moretti, Franco. 2013. Distant Reading. London: Verso. Morin, Edgar. 1990. Penser l’Europe. Paris: Gallimard.
Horizon 2020 – EUMEPLAT – European Media Platforms: Assessing Negative and Positive Externalities for European Culture
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/22505/20367
23
                                                                                       Horizon 2020
                                                                                       EUMEPLAT – European Media Platforms:
                                                                                       Assessing Negative and Positive Externalities
                                                                                       for European Culture
                                                                                       Andrea Miconi, Principal Investigator
                                                                                       IULM University, Milan
                                                                                       DOI https://doi.org/10.54103/2036-461X/22505




                                                                                          In his canonical interpretation of European        The goal of the research project, funded by
                                                                                       cinema, Thomas Elsaesser notoriously framed           the European Commission within the Horizon
                                                                                       it in terms of an ontological juxtaposition with      2020 framework, is to analyze the relationship
                                                                                       Hollywood, acting as a “Big Other”—a variant of       between media platformization and the possible
                                                                                       Delanty’s “constitutive other” (1994, 134)—along      consolidation of a common European culture.
                                                                                       the five different axes of cultural, institutional,   The project, coordinated by IULM University,
                                                                                       economic, spatial, and political tendencies           brings together twelve partners: Hans-Bredow-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       (Elsaesser 2005, 493–501). In a more recent           Institut of Hamburg, New Bulgarian University,
                                                                                       reading of the theory, interestingly enough,          Open University of Catalunya, Gent University,
                                                                                       Elsaesser came to question whether such an            UNIMED-Union of Mediterranean Universities,
                                                                                       opposition can still provide European cinema          Bilkent University, National and Kapodistrian
                                                                                       with a solid legitimacy: in fact, “Europe is          University of Athens, ISCTE-IUL Lisbon, Ca’
                                                                                       becoming more like the United States a hundred        Foscari University, IKED, and Charles University
                                                                                       ago”, that is, a continent of “immigrants” and        in Prague. Its various work-packages focus on
                                                                                       demographic displacements, cultural shocks            selected aspects of the European landscape: the
                                                                                       and social fractures, to the extent that no “binary   evolution of media systems, and their regulation
                                                                                       difference” could stand up to historical facts        over the last thirty years; the Facebook and
                                                                                       (2019, 1–2). What is left of European culture after   Twitter debates around the most critical topics;
                                                                                       this “trauma”, and how to absorb it into a new        the consumption of movies and TV-series on
                                                                                       wave of philosophical moviemaking (2019, 14),         VOD platforms; the representation of gender and
                                                                                       is therefore Elsaesser’s last and unanswered          migration on social media; the most followed
                                                                                       research question; a question that reminds us         influencers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok;
                                                                                       of a classic dilemma: is Europe one, or is it the     and—with regard to this special issue—the
                                                                                       precarious assemblage of diverging forces?            production, distribution and success of European
                                                                                          This special issue, made possible by the efforts   theatrical movies.
                                                                                       of Elena Gipponi and Daniël Biltereyst, moves from      While secondary analysis has allowed us to
                                                                                       the results of the European project EUMEPLAT -        collect historical series from thirty countries
                                                                                       European Media Platforms: Assessing Positive          in the region, first-hand data related to the ten
                                                                                       and Negative Externalities for European Culture.      nations represented in the Consortium: Belgium,


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                              195
Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece,                 TikTokers and YouTubers; or the mid-range level
Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Türkiye. In            of regional exchanges and collaborations.
all cases, the major research question remains               Here, once again, and depending on the selected
the same: is the process we know as media                  variables, Europe can be seen as a united or
platformization, in any of its facets, helping             as a divided continent, as has been the case
the circulation of European ideas, images and              throughout the centuries of its modern history
cultural works across the boundaries?                      (Moretti 2013, 3-8). That European identity can
  As theory and empirical research are deeply              only be perceived in terms of a “unity in diversity”
intertwined, our findings—if any abstract                  is a well-known theory, sustained in particular
generalization is allowed—lead us back to                  by Edgar Morin (1990, 49-50) and Gerard Delanty
the very original tension between unity and                (2013, 323-325). Still, one may object that the
multiplicity, that is the premise of European              archipelago of European cultures only makes
identity. On the one hand, we measured the impact          sense, as the Italian philosopher Massimo
of a number of convergence forces: the top-down            Cacciari put it, in light of its common paradigm
path to Europeanization, fostered by the EU                —or more ambitiously, only if we accept the
regulation, the amalgamation of local markets,             challenge of investigating the very split which
and portability; the solution of commercial co-            caused those identities to be separated from an
productions; and, needless to say, centralization          original root (1994, 12-13). Through the prism
due to the growth of global platforms. On the              of media cultures—cinema, in this case—we
other, however, we also uncovered a set of                 aim to detect the conflicting tendencies shaping
divergence trends: the fragmentation of the VOD            contemporary Europe: and this can be only but
catalogues caused by geo-blocking; the ever-               the first step, in a long road of research for years
lasting influence of national media cultures,              to come.
ranging from TV content to the most popular




REFERENCE LIST
Cacciari, Massimo. 1994. Geofilosofia dell’Europa. Milano: Adelphi. Partial translation by Massimo Verdicchio
in Cacciari Massimo. 2016. Europe and Empire. On the Political Forms of Globalization. New York: Fordham
University Press.
Delanty, Gerard. 1995. Inventing Europe. Idea, Identity, Reality. London: Palgrave-MacMillan.
Delanty, Gerard. 2013. Formations of European Modernity. A Historical and Political Sociology of Europe. Cham:
Palgrave-MacMillan.
Elsaesser, Thomas. 2005. European Cinema: Face to face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press.
Elsaesser, Thomas. 2019. European Cinema and Continental Philosophy. Films as Thought Experiment. New
York and London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Moretti, Franco. 2013. Distant Reading. London: Verso.
Morin, Edgar. 1990. Penser l’Europe. Paris: Gallimard.


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