Table Of ContentThe SAGE Handbook of
The Digital
Media Economy
THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE DIGITAL MEDIA ECONOMY
Debates about the digital media economy are at the heart of media and
communication studies. An increasingly digitalised and datafied media
environment has implications for every aspect of the field, from ownership and
production, to distribution and consumption.
The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy offers students,
researchers and policy-makers a multidisciplinary overview of contemporary
scholarship relating to the intersection of the digital economy and the media,
cultural, and creative industries. It provides a state-of-the-art overview of the
major areas of debate, and conceptual and methodological frameworks, through
chapters written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
PART 1: Key Concepts
PART 2: Methodological Approaches
PART 3: Media Industries of the Digital Economy
PART 4: Geographies of the Digital Economy
PART 5: Law, Governance and Policy
The SAGE Handbook of
The Digital
Media Economy
Edited by
Terry Flew
Jennifer Holt
and
Julian Thomas
SAGE Publications Ltd Introduction & editorial arrangement © Terry Flew,
1 Oliver’s Yard Jennifer Holt and Julian Thomas, 2023
55 City Road Chapter 1 © Terry Flew, 2023
London EC1Y 1SP Chapter 2 © David B. Nieborg, Thomas Poell &
José van Dijck, 2023
SAGE Publications Inc. Chapter 3 © Sandra Braman, 2023
2455 Teller Road Chapter 4 © Philip M. Napoli, 2023
Thousand Oaks, California 91320 Chapter 5 © Julian Thomas & Samuel Kininmonth, 2023
Chapter 6 © Leung Wing-Fai, 2023
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd Chapter 7 © Gregory Steirer, 2023
B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Chapter 8 © Jolynna Sinanan, Heather A. Horst &
Mathura Road Romitesh Kant, 2023
New Delhi 110 044 Chapter 9 © Bill Kirkpatrick, 2023
Chapter 10 © Oliver Eklund, 2023
SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd Chapter 11 © Denise Mann, 2023
3 Church Street Chapter 12 © Alenda Y. Chang & Jeff Watson, 2023
#10-04 Samsung Hub Chapter 13 © Jeremy Wade Morris, 2023
Singapore 049483 Chapter 14 © Caroline Fisher & Sora Park, 2023
Chapter 15 © Xiang Ren, 2023
Chapter 16 © Bruce Mutsvairo & Last Moyo, 2023
Editor: Michael Ainsley Chapter 17 © Haiqing Yu, 2023
Assistant editor: Cassandra Seibel Chapter 18 © Vibodh Parthasarathi & Preeti Raghunath, 2023
Production editor: Zoheb Khan Chapter 19 © Hilde Van den Bulck, 2023
Copyeditor: David Hemsley Chapter 20 © Joe F. Khalil, 2023
Proofreader: Derek Markham Chapter 21 © Cheryll Ruth Soriano &
Indexer: Avril Ehrlich Jason Vincent Cabañes, 2023
Marketing manager: Ruslana Khatagova Chapter 22 © Robert G. Picard, 2023
Cover design: Ginkhan Siam Chapter 23 © Dwayne Winseck & Keldon Bester, 2023
Typeset by Knowledgeworks Global Ltd. Chapter 24 © Darshana Jayemanne, Angela Daly &
Printed in the UK David McMenemy, 2023
Chapter 25 © James Meese, 2023
Chapter 26 © Terry Flew, 2023
Chapter 27 © Seamus Simpson, 2023
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may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940366
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN 978-1-5264-9799-4
At SAGE we take sustainability seriously. Most of our products are printed in the UK using FSC papers and
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Contents
About the Editors viii
About the Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xviii
Introduction: Positioning the Digital Media Economy xix
PART I KEY CONCEPTS 1
1. Global Internet Governance in a Post-Global Age 3
Terry Flew
2. Platforms and Platformization 29
David B. Nieborg, Thomas Poell & José van Dijck
3. Meta: A Short Meditation on “Media Economics” 50
Sandra Braman
4. Audiences/Users/Publics 63
Philip M. Napoli
5. The Automated Media Economy 82
Julian Thomas & Samuel Kininmonth
PART II METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES 103
6. Labour and Work in the Digital Media Economy:
Emerging Debates and Future Directions 105
Leung Wing-Fai
7. “What Is Your Business Model?”: A Critical Genealogy
of the Business Model as Concept and Methodology 124
Gregory Steirer
8. Infrastructuring in the Global South: Ethnographic Perspectives
on Tourism, Media and Development 145
Jolynna Sinanan, Heather A. Horst & Romitesh Kant
9. Digital Media Economy Through a Disability Lens 170
Bill Kirkpatrick
vi THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE DIGITAL MEDIA ECONOMY
PART III MEDIA INDUSTRIES OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY 195
10. Streaming Platforms and the Frontiers of Digital Distribution:
‘Unique Content Regions’ on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video,
and Disney+ 197
Oliver Eklund
11. Stranger Things Have Happened: Netflix Pivots to Embedded
Commodification 223
Denise Mann
12. Steam Clouds and Game Streams: Unboxing the “Future”
of Gaming 240
Alenda Y. Chang & Jeff Watson
13. Live at the App: The Economics, Platforms, and Technologies of
Livestreamed Music 260
Jeremy Wade Morris
14. Economic and Existential Challenges Facing Journalism 280
Caroline Fisher & Sora Park
15. Understanding the Digital Publishing Economy: From eBook
Disruption to Platform Ecosystem 301
Xiang Ren
PART IV GEOGRAPHIES OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY 323
16. Going Beyond the Digital Divide Debate: Critical Reflections
on the African Digital Media–Economy Matrix 325
Bruce Mutsvairo & Last Moyo
17. Chinese Platform Economy Sans Frontières: Case Studies
from Australia 342
Haiqing Yu
18. Expanding Horizons of Media Bazaars: Topography of the
DME in India 361
Vibodh Parthasarathi & Preeti Raghunath
19. Public Service Media in the Digital Economy: A View from
the EU 385
Hilde Van den Bulck
Contents vii
20. Beyond Revolutions, Digital Media Economy in the Middle East:
Continuing Legacies and Emerging Disjunctures 405
Joe F. Khalil
21. Solidaristic Formations among Cloud Workers in the Platform
Economy: Entrepreneurial Logics with Resistant Identities 426
Cheryll Ruth Soriano & Jason Vincent A. Cabañes
PART V LAW, GOVERNANCE AND POLICY 447
22. Competition, Monopoly, and Antitrust Issues 449
Robert G. Picard
23. Regulation for a More Democratic Internet: Lessons from
Antitrust and Communications Regulation in the 19th and
20th Centuries 470
Dwayne Winseck & Keldon Bester
24. Global Playgrounds: Young People, Digital Citizenship and
Loot Boxes 503
Darshana Jayemanne, Angela Daly & David McMenemy
25. From Protocols to Platforms: The Changing Face of Online Piracy 524
James Meese
26. Policy Futures for Digital Platforms 543
Terry Flew
27. Global Internet Governance and the Digital Media Economy 569
Seamus Simpson
Index 589
About the Editors
Terry Flew is Professor of Digital Communication and Culture at the University of
Sydney. His books include The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (SAGE,
2012), Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013), Media Economics (Palgrave,
2015), Understanding Global Media (Palgrave, 2018) and Regulating Platforms
(Polity, 2021). He was President of the International Communications Association
(ICA) from 2019 to 2020 and is currently an Executive Board member of the ICA.
He was elected an ICA Fellow in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of
the Humanities (FAHA), elected in 2019. He has held visiting professor roles at City
University, London and George Washington University, and is currently a
Distinguished Professor with the Communications University of China, and an
Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.
Jennifer Holt is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara and a Fellow with the Center for Democracy & Technology
in Washington, DC. She is the author of Empires of Entertainment (Rutgers, 2011)
and Cloud Policy (MIT Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of Distribution Revolution
(University of California Press, 2014), Connected Viewing: Selling, Streaming &
Sharing Media in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2013) and Media Industries: History,
Theory, Method (Blackwell, 2009). She is a co-founder of the Media Industries
Journal and a member of the journal’s editorial collective.
Julian Thomas is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated
Decision-Making and Society, and a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media
and Communication at RMIT University. His latest book is Wi-Fi (Polity, 2021; with
Ellie Rennie and Rowan Wilken). Other publications include Measuring the Digital
Divide: The Australian Digital Inclusion Index (Telstra, 2016–2021), Internet on the
Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities (INC, 2016)
and The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015). Thomas was elected to the
Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2017.
About the Contributors
Keldon Bester is a co-founder of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP),
a Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and an
independent consultant and researcher working on issues of competition and
monopoly power in Canada. Keldon has worked as a Special Advisor at the
Competition Bureau, and as a Fellow at the Open Markets Institute.
Sandra Braman does research on informational power, the information
economy, and what developments in both mean for transformations in the nature
of governance. Her publications include the books Change of State: Information,
Policy, and Power and the edited volumes Communication Researchers and
Policy-Making, The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime, Biotechnologies
and Communication: The Meta-Technologies of Information, and Globalization,
Communication, and Transnational Civil Society in addition to over 100 journal
articles and book chapters. Her research has been supported by the US National
Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation. She
edits the Information Policy Book Series for The MIT Press, is a Life Fellow
of the International Communication Association, and is currently the John Paul
Abbott Professor of Liberal Arts and Professor of Communication at Texas A&M
University.
Jason Vincent Cabañes, PhD is Professor of Communication and Research
Fellow at De La Salle University in the Philippines. He holds a PhD from the
University of Leeds in the UK. He researches primarily on the mediation of
cross-cultural intimacies and solidarities, but also on digital labour in the global
South. He is co-editor of the book Mobile Media and Social Intimacies in Asia:
Reconfiguring Local Ties and Enacting Global Relationships, published by
Springer in 2020. His other works appear in journals such as Social Media +
Society and the International Journal of Communication as well as in other edited
collections. In 2021, he was recognised by the National Academy of Science
and Technology of the Philippines as one of the country’s Outstanding Young
Scientists.
Alenda Y. Chang is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. Chang’s work has appeared in numer-
ous journals, including Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment,
Qui Parle, electronic book review, Feminist Media Histories and Resilience.
