The Functions of Data in the Competition between Audiovisual Media and Video Sharing Platforms for Advertising

The rapid expansion of video-on-demand platforms, such as Netflix or Disney Plus, associated with the advance of digital capitalism makes the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) adopted by the European Union a particularly relevant case for understanding the politics of the digital media policy. Based on an actor-centred constructivism, the article seeks to propose a conceptual approach to explore platform governance and highlight the key dynamics through which platform governance related to the media sector is formulated in light of the actors involved. As such, it provides an ‘in situ and in action’ view on normative building, introducing politics into the analysis of platform governance. The study focuses on the political framing of two key issues related to the crystallization of AVMSD: (1) the financial contribution of online platforms to European and national audio-visual content creation and (2) the presence and prominence of European and national audio-visual works in the online catalogues.

Section: Platform Governance: Towards An Actor-centred Constructivist...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Platform governance and the politics of media regulation: The review of the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive

Vlassis

2023

Advertising funded video-sharing platforms under the revised AVMSD: Commercial communication functionalities

Micova

Kostovska

2021

The 2018 revision of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) defined video-sharing platforms (VSPs) and brought them into the scope of the Directive, holding them responsible, though not liable, for preventing certain types of harm from both the user-generated content and the commercial communication they carry. The AVMSD introduces the concept of functionality to distinguish a platform as a VSP and bring it into scope. In this article, we present findings from an investigation that applied the concept of functionality more widely and sought to identify and understand those VSP functionalities relevant to commercial communications. We elaborate the creator-facing, advertiser-facing and user-facing functionalities found in a sample of thirteen VSPs by examining company documentation, and systematic testing through use, triangulated through semi-structured key informant interviews. Based on analysis of these commercial communications functionalities and the contractual relationships governing their use, we identify four purchasing pathways, each of which reveals roles played by stakeholders and distinct points of control. We therefore argue that the concept of functionality, which captures the platform design elements and the acceptance of a value proposition by various kinds of users, can be useful in distributing co-operative responsibility within dynamic, polycentric co-regulation and informing systems for enforcing procedural accountability.

The AVMSD as a harmonized approach to moderating hate speech?

Barker

2021

While the EU Commission has set its sights on much broader online content regulation through the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the ongoing reforms to the eCommerce Directive (eCD), the AudioVisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is set to play a role in online hate regulation for content on video-sharing platforms (VSPs). The challenges though are greater than fitting within the DSA agenda and include particular barriers from national content moderation laws across various member-states, together with a fragmented umbrella of pan-European content regulation mechanisms. The convergence in timing of the AVMSD transposition, the draft DSA and the reform of the eCD (and its liability shield) offers a unique opportunity to assess the implications of harmonized content moderation responsibilities for hate speech from 2020 and beyond. This article explores the AVMSD, DSA and eCD as a ‘trend’, before discussing the impact of the reformulated AVMSD on VSPs and their efforts to tackle online hate. It argues that the AVMSD is an underappreciated tool in the increasingly harmonized approach to moderating online hate speech, but also a trigger-point for the new EU trend towards tackling platform power.