Coaching the European media community for success
Developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality or 5G mobile networks are creating opportunities for Europe’s digital content and media industries to create a whole new range of products and services. But lack of communication and co-operation is holding the sector back. “We can still observe a gap in discussions between the large technology providers and the small technology adopters preventing the establishment of common strategies for technology take-up,” says Halid Hrasnica, programme manager at Eurescom and project co-ordinator of VITAL MEDIA (Vision, Insights and Trends for Awareness and Leadership in Media). This is where VITAL MEDIA comes in. The EU-funded project has spent the past two years getting the big fish and the smaller ones from the media, social media and creative industries as well as representatives of broadcasters and telecoms operators to sit around the same table and define the research roadmap for the future of their industry. If you are wondering why this is necessary, comparing the respective strengths of the North American and European social media industries may help. “Europe’s position in social media is weak – most of the big players such as Google or Facebook are in the US,” says Dr Hrasnica, “fake news is an example of how this can affect us — it is hard for us to fight this because social media data analytics are not in the hands of European players.” Strengthening European social media Strengthening the sector’s sense of community was the first project aim. Working under the umbrella of the EU’s New European Media Initiative or NEM, the VITAL MEDIA team set about bringing in new members from under-represented regions, including Eastern Europe and Ireland. It established a network of NEM ambassadors to reach out to people in relevant organisations and encourage them to join. Four regional clusters — two in France and one each in Spain and the UK — were active in the project; they organised brokerage events to put local companies in touch with each other and produced a handbook of the media landscape and ecosystems in Europe for facilitating future co-operation. Face-to-face events were backed up by developing online tools such as the NEM Collaboration Platform and a redesigned website and improved social media presence for NEM. Focus on Horizon Europe This revitalised European media community has produced an impressive list of publications in the brief two-year lifespan of the project. These included the NEM Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2025, firmly aimed at the EU’s 2021–2027 framework programme Horizon Europe, and a total of eight position papers on media-relevant areas of technology including data, next generation internet, hyper-personalisation and content distribution. For the policymakers, this was completed by publishing two White Papers on the need for policy dialogue in convergence and social media, in November 2017, and on the future of European social media, in December 2017. Although not part of the original remit, social media became an important focus of the project. In addition to the White Papers, NEM’s 2017 annual summit, organised by VITAL MEDIA, was dedicated to the topic and the project has helped create awareness in the NEM community of the need for companies to act on social media. “Here in Europe, we have to keep innovating and then try to spread the results across the world through products and services made in Europe,” says Dr Hrasnica, “we cannot compete with Facebook just by establishing another Facebook.”
Keywords
VITAL MEDIA, NEM Initiative, European media, convergence, social media, digital media, research strategies, content, creative industries