The Department of Media and Journalism Studies at Aarhus University is one of nine departments within the School of Communication and Culture at the Faculty of Arts. Eight research centers focus the department’s research expertise to investigate the accelerating developments in media and journalism and to address the ensuing questions and key issues facing society and the human condition. A core field of interest is the development and digital evolution of mass media and new digital media.

Research Themes

To develop a foundational conceptual framework for understanding and comparing the specific characteristics and challenges of small film markets, which enables the identification of their features, strengths and weaknesses on a media systemic level.
To provide an empirical multi-level comparative analysis of key industry data in dialogue with WP2. The goal of the analysis is to assemble findings and draw conclusions about the competitiveness of individual small nations’ industries in relation to the rest of the EU; in relation to the UK as the dominant European exporter of content and the USA as the main competitor of domestic content in cinema, broadcast and VoD.
To provide an integrative view on the competitiveness of European small film markets along the film industry’s value chain, whose different sectors are analyzed in WPs5-7. This is to provide a holistic view of the European value chains’ different manifestations in small film markets as regards levels of development and competitiveness, which allows for conclusions about the state of the wider EU film industry’s internal integration and international competitiveness.
To develop a policy toolkit for comparative analysis of the extent to which policy measures in small markets are aligned to support competitiveness. The policy toolkit will be piloted with screen agencies in three small markets (to be selected together with EFAD). This is to expand public funders’ knowledge of competition and how film and audiovisual ecosystems are transforming, which is perceived to be lacking (Eskilsson, 2022) and thereby help them to redesign and align support measures to better position film industries in the global competitive landscape.
WP6 will create new knowledge on the needs of the sub-sectors of distribution, exhibition, and marketing. It aims to identify future-proof scenarios and strategies for building scale and provide learning guides for improving competitiveness in distribution and exhibition. The focus is both on growing the strength of these sub-sectors in the small EU markets and on improving the global distribution, exhibition, and marketing of content from these markets.
To develop an innovative methodology that allows for uncovering the preferences of European film audiences and factors promoting and impeding their access to and engagement with films from small European countries in order to widen and diversify the audiences for these films;
To identify the structural factors impeding domestic and international audiences from accessing films coming from small countries. This implies looking at factors beyond audiences’ taste, i.e. socio-economic conditions; access not only as a technological question but also an economic, cultural, and literacy one; the key role of industry and cultural gatekeepers as well as sociability factors such as the communitarian dimension which defines the cinematic experience; To describe the “discovery paths” of domestic and international audiences in relation to small countries’ films and the key moments/technologies/activities in that journey;
To define and test strategies and tools to attract new and international audiences to films coming from small countries. This includes the design of a dashboard of personas that represent the ideal target audiences for films from small countries across various groups and the development of methodologies and tools for audience engagement in contexts of co-creation and piloting of such solutions in small countries;
To support the development of business models and policy-related innovations in WP4 with evidence on audiences’ discovery paths, profiles, and individual motivations;
To promote the key role of small countries and their cinema as places of diversity and testing grounds of innovative ways of fostering audience engagement with European films;
To provide recommendations and policy scenarios aimed at increasing and diversifying domestic and international audiences’ engagement with small European countries’ films that can be included in the “State of European Film” in WP8.