Next week, the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS) of the Department of Communication Sciences will host the meeting of the Horizon 2020 project EUMEPLAT from 14 to 16 December 2022. During this three-day event, there will be a round table discussion on platformization and the European audiovisual industry, and a keynote given by Prof. Dr. Eugenia Siapera. Both events will be streamed online. 

On the 14^th of December from 2:00 – 4:00 pm CET, we will have an interesting roundtable discussion on platformization and the European audiovisual industry with Guillaume Branders (Senior Industry Relations Manager UNIC/International Union of Cinemas), Christine Eloy (Managing Director, Europa Distribution), Juliette Prissard (Delegate General, Eurocinema) and Prof. Tim Raats (Head of Media Economics and Policy, imec-SMIT-VUB). Prof. Daniel Biltereyst is the moderator.

On the 15^th of December from 10:15 – 11:15 am CET, Prof. Dr. Eugenia Siapera will give a keynote on Europeanisation and Platformisation. This talk will focus on three provocations for standard understandings of Europeanisation and platformisation from the point of view of marginalized/vulnerabilized groups: the first is the emergence of a form of Europeanisation coming from the actions and organizing of migrants; this does not take the ethnocultural form that is typical but a political form of rights claims (example: migrant women’s groups). Secondly, while platformisation is typically understood as the extraction of data by corporations, its value as an infrastructure for organizing from below and for mutual benefit should not be underestimated (example: data and platform cooperatives); Finally, digitalization is often seen negatively as a replacement of social life but experience from marginalized communities, for example the trans community, shows that digitalization enables them to create safe spaces. Taken together, these views from below provide an alternative imaginary to top-down efforts to diffuse an ethnocultural version of European identity and to technophobic critiques of platforms and digital media. At the same time, however, these views show the difficulties and struggles involved in reclaiming or (re)socializing technologies developed by corporations for profit.  Prof. Sofie Van Bauwel is the moderator.

If you want to participate, please send an e-mail to Femke.DeSutter@UGent.be