Find Your Niches: A Guide for Managing Intermedia Effects Among Content Distribution Channels

Abstract

This empirical study examines potential size effects in the US media and communications industry. Motivated by investors’ demand for continuous profit growth, media and communications executives attempt to leverage size effects, be it by growing the core business or by diversifying into other media segments, thereby exploiting cross‐media synergies. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors could not find a general correlation between size and diversification on the one hand and performance on the other hand. The authors’ reason that exploiting size effects in the media and communications industry is far from simplistic and cross‐media synergies may take more time and effort to leverage than assumed. Therefore, research is recommended to focus on the operational level of size effects and their development over time. For media managers, the findings imply that more emphasis should be placed on strategy implementation and operational effectiveness, rather than on sophisticated M&A and growth initiatives.     

Building Buzz and Episodes with Bite-Sized Content: Portlandia's Formula for Turning a Video Project into a Television Series

Media consumers have grown accustomed to content that is broken down into digestible chunks. Portlandia, an Independent Film Channel (IFC) comedy series that affectionately satirizes Portland, Oregon's hipster culture, offers a model of how to attract online viewers and create television programming using short videos intended for a niche audience. IFC promotes these decoupled, song-length clips online and encourages sampling and sharing. Using interviews and an analysis of the program's structure and content, this case study explores how Portlandia takes advantage of the synergy between television and new media, and the way audiences consume video programming in the digital age.     

Assessment Planning for Distance Education Library Services: Strategic Roadmaps for Determining and Reporting Organizational Performance and Value

ABSTRACT

Through a review of the literature, the author sought to identify what assessment planning practices exist in libraries, how the assessment planning process works in libraries, and what components constitute a library assessment plan. The findings suggest that, while libraries determine and report a great many aspects of organizational performance, general assessment planning (which encompasses total organizational impact and value) is not frequently used or integrated into the library's comprehensive strategic planning process, and it does not always effectively cover the scope of the assessment activities and information needed by organizational leaders and administrators to develop effective strategic plans and decisions. This lack of integration creates disconnects between the library's ability to determine and report organizational value and the library's need to provide accountability evidence to stakeholders and use the performance measurement results effectively in executing strategic planning and decision making. Using the findings of the review, the author proposes an alternative set of assessment planning components and focus areas.     

Red Net over China: China's New Online Media Order and its Implications

A nation's media order is the fundamental structure, management strategy, and operational pattern of all the media organizations within one country. In this paper, through stylizing China's online media development in the past decade, and interviewing with insiders in several major online media in China, the author analyzed the evolution of China's new online media order and its major characteristics. The implications of this newly established online media order were also discussed.     

Globalization and change in Taiwan's media the interplay of political and economic forces

For decades prior to the late 1980s, Taiwan's authoritarian government tightly controlled the media and used it as a political tool and ideological apparatus. However, the globalization and liberalization trends of recent years have had their influence, and since the 1990's Taiwan's media has been liberalized at a much faster pace than much of the rest of Asia.

Employing an historical analysis approach and a globalization theoretical framework, this study examines how the media in Taiwan has evolved in the era of globalization, and the significance and implications of this evolution. Specifically, this paper explores how Taiwan's media was liberalized, how the major functions of the media shifted, how the media environments were changed, and how the ‘closed’ media system was integrated with the global media system. It also discusses the new challenges and problems facing Taiwan following its liberalization.     

学习型新型主流媒体的组织管理:目标、结构、路径与文化

学习型组织建设为新型主流媒体的组织管理提供新的思路。学习型主流媒体组织的实践是一个全方位的过程,需要从组织目标、组织结构、建设路径、组织文化等各个方面共同施策。认同与超越是构建学习型新型主流媒体的组织目标;扁平化的组织结构、践行知识管理的建设路径是构建学习型新型主流媒体组织的运行策略;合作与创新是构建学习型新型主流媒体组织的文化追求。     

The good,the bad,and the ugly: Financial markets and the demise of Canada's Southam newspapers

Abstract

The impact of financial markets on media management practices is apparent in Canada, where public trading in newspaper company shares has contributed significantly to concentrated press ownership. Fluctuations in newspaper share values have often shaped firm strategies as a result. This paper presents the Southam newspaper chain as a case study of the impact of financial markets on newspaper management practices. Historical analysis is used to show how Canada's oldest and largest newspaper chain, which was known for its commitment to quality journalism and for allowing its local publishers editorial independence, made a fateful decision when it went “public”; with a share issue in 1945. The increasingly widespread ownership of its stock led to Southam's gradual takeover in 1996 by Hollinger Inc., which cut costs and reduced staff chain‐wide. Sale of the Southam newspapers in 2000 to CanWest Global Communications has seen editorial control centralized at company headquarters and partisan support shown for the ruling federal Liberal party, contrary to Southam's founding principles. As a result, the Canadian Senate began hearings into the media in 2003, bringing the possibility of government regulation to reverse the impact of financial markets on the management of media firms there.     

Abstracts of theses in the field of speech,XIV∗

In this paper we report on a longitudinal case study of an administrative unit of a large nonfederal government following the election of a new Chief Elective Official. In this case, the changing climate becomes a dominant characteristic of the emerging situation. Poole and McPhee's (1983) extension of Giddens' Structuration Theory is employed as an analytic framework, tracing through the evolution and transformation of climate themes in the case. We find new categories of, and conditions affecting, climate—theme emergence, spread, and sedimentation. More particularly, the case demonstrates the complexity of organizational climate, with several processes interacting simultaneously to generate a constantly changing climate in the course of reproducing the organization's culture and beliefs. Importantly, the case shows how these complex climate processes are related to demoralization and counterintentional results in organizational change.     

“New” Holistic Mass Media Business Model

This qualitative case study, based on the principles of grounded theory, develops a holistic business model for media outlets by investigating the organizational structure and corporate culture of a unique agricultural radio station that operated successfully for over 60 years. It examines the station in the context of its founding era and determines the process used to create this survivor. An inductively generated “theory of commitment” is proposed, and guidelines are provided that could help today's independent media start-ups become survivors.     

Arab media,corporate communications,and public relations: the case of Al Jazeera

Over the past few decades, public relations has developed significantly in the West into a sophisticated management function which is recognized as an integral part of any organization's attempt to communicate with various persons, both within and outside the organization, in order to achieve its goals and objectives. However, this is not the case in the Arab world where public relations remains underdeveloped and, even when practised, is relatively unsophisticated. This paper deals with the public relations function in a prominent though controversial Arab media organization: Al Jazeera Satellite Channel. It explores how Al Jazeera has been dealing with internal and external communication issues impelled initially by its role as a satellite broadcaster spearheading changes in a vibrant Arab mediascape and subsequently by its expansion into a global broadcaster. Drawing on James Grunig's four models of communication to analyze Al Jazeera's public relations practices, the case study at hand outlines some of the communication challenges and opportunities the organization has been facing during its 10 years of existence. The case of an indigenous organization like Al Jazeera operating in a culturally distinct environment puts into perspective communications issues and complicates our understanding of how public relations is understood and practised outside the normative Western public relations paradigm.     

From Facebook to Instagram: Exploring user engagement in an academic library

It is trendy for university libraries to offer services on social media (SM) platforms. As many millennials prefer to use apps of photo-snapping, libraries unavoidably start to use Instagram to connect with users. This study examines the effectiveness of the use of Facebook and Instagram in The University of Hong Kong Libraries (HKUL), by a mixed-method approach to analyze the posts on the two SM sites of HKUL and user feedback collected from interviews on campus. The content analysis surprisingly revealed that both Facebook and Instagram received very low user engagement, and the most frequently posted contents were library operational news and library events. The interviewees opined that they welcomed HKUL's use of Facebook and Instagram, but they urged HKUL to change its uninteresting style on the SM sites and make better use of the SM features to attract users' attention. This study provides insights for librarians for their effective management and adoption of SM, especially for content design and management.     

Sport and the Transnationalizing Media Corporation

This article contributes to the understanding of how transnational media corporations enter, operate, and are structured in different national contexts. Specifically, it provides a detailed examination of News Corporation's use of sport as an instrument for successfully penetrating national television markets within the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The discussion is divided into 3 sections, focused on (a) the cultural and economic rationales underpinning News Corporation's use of sport as a core aspect of transnational television market entry strategies, (b) examples of News Corporation's use of sport programming to enter and manage local media markets, and (c) the changes wrought in News Corporation's organizational structure and focus resulting from its transnational sporting orientation.     

All hands on deck to tweet #sandy: Networked governance of citizen coproduction in turbulent times

While citizens previously took a back seat to government, citizen coproduction of disaster risk communications through social media networks is emerging. We draw on information-processing, citizen coproduction, and networked governance theories to examine the governance and impact of networked interactions in the following question: When government's capacity in information-processing and communication is overwhelmed by unfolding disasters, how do government and citizens coproduce disaster risk communications? During the Hurricane Sandy, we collected 132,922 #sandy tweets to analyze the structure and networked interactions using social network analysis. We then conducted case study of the government's social media policy governance networks. Networked citizen interactions – their agility in voluntarily retweeting the government's #sandy tweets and tweeting their own messages – magnified the agility and reach of the government's #sandy disaster communications. Our case study indicates the criticality of social media policy governance networks in empowering the lead agencies and citizens to coproduce disaster communication public services.     

The emergence of homogeneity and heterogeneity in knowledge structures during a planned organizational change

Scholars and practitioners increasingly strive to understand the complexities marking implementations of organizational change programs. Studies on this topic often concentrate on members' cognition about a planned change, regularly finding that members' knowledge structures and interpretations either converge or diverge over time. Using interviews, observations, and a unique discourse processing technique, a nine-month case study of one division of a municipal government organization shows that members' knowledge structures simultaneously converged and diverged as a consequence of both the change initiative and several unanticipated organizational events, including a clash between workgroups. The study's findings and theoretical perspective suggest a challenge to cognitive perspectives on knowledge and traditional research on organizational change; they also provide lessons for practitioners on how organizations may learn from complex change dynamics.     

“Keeping it real:” Identity management strategies used by teens in conversation

This paper explores the alignment of individual and organizational identity management. Two videotaped conversations between adolescents and teachers were analyzed in order to discover the extent to which individuals enact particular strategies to manage both individual and institutional identities. These episodes demonstrate little support for Pratt & Foreman's (2000) identity management strategies of deletion, integration or aggregation. Compartmentatlization, or the separation between conflicting identities, was the most prevalent strategy employed in both conversations. These findings raise questions about individual's positions within organizations and their abilities to enact various strategies and identities. The authors conclude by urging a reconsideration of the term, “identity management.”     

Pennsylvania's transition to enterprise computing as a study in strategic alignment

We theorize about the strategic alignment of computing with organizational mission, using the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's efforts to pursue digital government initiatives as evidence. To do this we draw on a decade (1995–2004) of changes in Pennsylvania to characterize how a state government shifts from an organizational to an enterprise perspective regarding computing. We document and analyze the strategic and operational aspects of a series of information and communications technology (ICT) planning efforts to highlight the nature and roles of strategic alignment used to achieve this transition. Findings from this analysis mark the importance of combining several approaches to strategic planning regarding the adoption and application of ICT.     

Collaborative digital government in Mexico: Some lessons from federal Web-based interorganizational information integration initiatives

The use of information and communication technologies in government has been characterized as one powerful strategy for administrative reform. From recent experiences around the world, it seems clear that in order to enjoy some of the greatest benefits of digital government, the integration of information across organizational boundaries is necessary. However, these digital government initiatives face additional challenges, since the required level of interorganizational collaboration and trust is often not supported by existing institutional arrangements, organizational structures, and managerial processes. In fact, many institutions and administrative structures found in government contexts offer incentives for single-agency work only, which produces stove-pipe systems. Based on an extensive case study in the Mexican federal government, this paper explores how certain institutional arrangements and organizational structures can enable or hinder cross-agency collaboration and consequently, interorganizational information integration.     

The Internet's Impact on Content Utilization Chains: An Exploratory Case Study on Leading Publishers in Germany

The market-side utilization of content is affected by the prevalence of the Internet. However, it is not clear in this context how and to what extent it has changed in detail. Aiming to reveal and evaluate the Internet's impact in the print media industries, we examine the latest enhancement of publishers' content utilization chains. For this purpose, we conduct an exploratory case study and apply time-series analysis as well as cross-case synthesis to analyze the data collected. As unit of analysis, we focus on 3 publishers whose content utilization practices represent best practice in the German newspaper, magazine, and book publishing industries, respectively. Based on the results of the case study, we conclude that the Internet has an impact on the composition of publishers' content utilization chains but to a varying extent. However, because Internet-based content utilization windows hardly generate extra revenues or cannibalize existing ones, publishers' revenue models have not changed significantly so far. Besides, we state that the arrangement of Internet-based content utilization windows, which mostly constitute direct-channel distribution, decisively depends on their relation with print-based ones. Hence, we are able to show that the Internet's impact on publishers' content utilization chains manifests itself in various ways.     

Real options theory,flexibility and the media industry

Abstract

This conceptual paper is based on two propositions: 1.) An efficient flexibility management is a critical success factor for media companies. 2.) The concept of real options theory (ROT) aims at improving a company's flexibility management. As a consequence, it is analysed how ROT can contribute to the flexibility management in media companies. In this context, two research issues are investigated. First, it is shown that real options as substantiations of flexibility are of great importance for media companies: In doing so, it is outlined that options which focus on a company's fixed costs management and options which aim at improving a company's sales situation are of high relevance for all segments in the media industry. Contrarily, options which focus on a company's variable costs are only relevant for media companies engaged in the print segment. Second, it is illustrated how ROT can contribute to the reactive and proactive management of flexibility in media companies.     

Building a New Paradigm: Analysis of a Case Study in Organizational Change in Collection Management Using Bolman's and Deal's Four-Frame Model

In 2010, the Oregon State University Libraries implemented changes to its organizational structure to align itself better with the university and respond to the ongoing fiscal crisis. The Collections & Resource Sharing Department was created at that time. This case study describes and analyzes changes in collection management using the four frames in Bolman's and Deal's model: structural, human resources, political, and symbolic. The article concludes with a discussion of ongoing challenges that are likely to require greater use of the political and symbolic frames for planning and implementing further changes.