Media enterprises are operating in times of digital convergence of media platforms and the blurring of market and industry boundaries. More and more media enterprises are responding to changing market conditions by moving from single-platform activities to multi-platform activities in which they supply content across distribution outlets.
While multi-platform activities are becoming a widespread practice among media enterprises, the demands and levels of sophistication and issues that come with this, including organisational adjustment, content innovation and adaptation, and co-operation activities across formerly separated media-sectors, vary widely across enterprises and industry sectors.
The 2014 Emma conference highlighted relevant current and future issues, and facets of market and industry changes and practices, regarding multi-platform strategies, concepts, tactics, operations and practices. The Association invited proposals for papers to be presented in the conference. Potential topics included but were not limited to:
- Management issues: Management of innovation; management of change; organisational renewal
- Organisational issues: How media enterprises reorganize themselves for creating and producing output for multiple platforms
- Public policy and media regulation issues: Ownership rights and copyrights for multi-platform producers; changing bargaining powers of owners of content rights
- Human resource issues: Changing nature of media professions and skills; need for multiplatform training
- Business model issues: Revenue models for multi-platform content distribution; production models for multi-platform content; changes in value chains
- Industry issues: Co-operation between enterprises of formerly separated (sub)-sectors; issues relating to evolving industrial networks and cluster-building; creation of an innovation-friendly industry environment; formation of crossmedia conglomerates
- Market issues: Changes in market structure, power and trends in concentration; convergence and divergence of markets, issues of market entry and mobility barriers
- Audience issues: The role of audience participation and user-generated content for multi-platform strategies; multi-platform strategies and delivering public service to audiences
- Media branding: The role of media brands for multi-platform strategies; crossmedia promotion; marketing trends and dynamics for media in various sectors (public, commercial, community, etc)
- Content innovation and content adaptation issues: Transmedia storytelling; creation of new media forms and genres; the relationship between technical innovation and creative content innovation; how content is translated between different media platforms and adapted for various audiences (national and international)
- Size issues: Small media enterprises vs. large media enterprises as well as small media markets vs. large media markets in terms of their competitive (dis)advantages with respect to innovative multi-platform strategies and performance
- Global/local issues: Global standardisation issues; the role of global providers of communication infrastructure and media platforms (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.); the opportunities of smaller local industry players to access and participate in the marketplace
- Social media issues: Social media platforms as content outlets; challenges to and complementarities with traditional (mass) media; types and functions of content in social media