Beyond the surface of media disruption: digital technology boosting new business logics, professional practices and entrepreneurial identities

Digital disruption has recently been one of the main focal points of media management scholars. Digitalisation is regarded as the main driver of change that results in enormous managerial and organisational challenges. As the evolutionary view of organisational change (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Winter, 2003) tells us, the best and perhaps only way to overcome path dependencies and rigidities that hamper change is to learn new competencies and capabilities and to explore new business models (e.g. Achtenhagen & Raviola, 2009; Doyle, 2015; Järventie-Thessleff, Moisander & Villi, 2014; Maijanen & Virta, 2017; Teece, 2018). Nevertheless, due to organisational inertia, high uncertainty and rapid changes in business environments these challenges still exist and prevail with the risk of causing competence traps and failures.

This special issue of the Journal of Media Business Studies looks at the other side of the coin, asking how digital technologies boost change by creating new revenue models and initiating and enhancing new practices and logics in journalism and media entrepreneurship. New technology has created many stories of success, such as Netflix being one of the case examples of this special issue (see also Küng, 2015). This special issue features four papers that, in their early versions, were presented at the 2018 annual European Media Management and Association (emma) conference in Warsaw. The papers aim to look beyond the digital disruption on a more micro foundational level using different approaches and theoretical concepts. However, they all tackle the role of digital technology in enhancing and boosting changes in media.

Anders Fagerjord from the University of Bergen and Lucy Küng from the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford provide an important contribution by analyzing the value-creating process of streaming video services on the micro-level, drawing on Netflix as a case study. As the authors point out, “streaming services are a new and fast-growing element in media industry”. These services fundamentally change the habits of media users, which in turn changes the whole competitive environment. Based on company and industry reports as well as press accounts, the study provides a detailed analysis of the core actors and flows between the actors. The study shows the nature of these new complex organisations that the authors call “tech-media hybrids” combining characteristics of a network and platform and having a strong grounding on digital technology. The authors also call streaming video services the “new beasts” that are very reliant on external partners. In such hybrid organisations, data flows and analytics constitute a central source of competitive advantage.

Juliane Lischka from the University of Zürich provides a fresh approach by applying the concept of institutional logics to her analysis of digital transformation. Following, e.g. Friedland and Alford (1991) and Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury (2012), Lischka defines institutional logics as “supraorganisational cognitive and behavioural patterns” characteristic to different institutional domains. As the author emphasises, institutional environment of journalism has become more complex and in result, news companies have become “hybrid organisations that manage multiple institutional domains”. Lischka differentiates four competing institutional logics shaping digital journalism: professional (e.g. gatekeeper or interpreter of relevant events), market (news as a commodity), managerial (e.g. development of business competence) and technology (tech) logics that relate to the new digital technology and its use in production and distribution. Based on the analysis of NiemanLab Predictions for journalism 2014–2019, the study shows that the different logics are actively negotiated and synergies are built between them. For example, tech logic is seen as advancing professional logics, but in times of conflict – when the tech logic is seen to oppose traditional professional logic – the traditional professional logic tends to dominate and function as a protective shield for journalism’s legitimacy and sustainability. The study emphasises the ability to actively negotiate between the different institutional logics and importantly suggests that sustainable business models in media should be based on active negotiations between competing logics.

Sven-Ove Horst from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rita Järventie-Thesleff from Aalto University and Francisco Javier Pérez-Latre from the University of Navarra analyses the role of digital technology in entrepreneurial identity development. Based on the analysis of interviews with startup entrepreneurs and observations in the startup incubator “neudeli” at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, the study shows that participation in digital media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) plays a central role in the identity development. The analysis finds three different entrepreneurial identities: solution-driven, purpose-driven and lifestyle-driven identity. Solution-driven identity is related to pragmatic pursues for solutions and achievement of strategic goals, purpose-driven identity refers to the awareness of societal problems and willingness to influence society, lifestyle-driven identity relates to the entrepreneur’s own life, organising one’s work and time and enjoying of being an entrepreneur. The study contributes to a fairly unexplored field. In addition, the study broadens media management research into the direction of media platforms, thereby providing insights to the entrepreneurial identity development in a mediatised society.

Sylvain Malcorps from Université Libre de Bruxelles explores how online journalists and marketers participate and collaborate in the online service provision. Based on ethnographic data from an action research project at the Belgian media company Mediafin, the study shows how digital media enhances collaboration between journalists and marketers that traditionally worked in their own silos. The author focuses on personalisation features at a news website and defines media products in terms of both content and audiences. Online journalists create, adapt and publish the content, whereas marketers create audience segments. The competitive media environment has made the personalised customer relationship more important and relevant for the business. According to this study, the emphasis on personalisation challenges and increases the interactions between marketers and online journalists, especially in gatekeeping and audience segmentation. As for the role of digital technology, e.g. audience data and analytics are shared and found relevant by both online journalists and marketers.

In sum, the articles of this special issue provide new insights, concepts and methods that until now have been less explored in the media management studies. Fagerjord and Küng’s analysis of the value creation process of Netflix reveals in detail what the power of the streaming media providers is based on. Lischka’s study provides a fresh approach based on the framework of institutional logics. The study insightfully tackles the contradictions and interplay of competing logics and how technology logic challenges the traditional ones. The study by Horst, Järventie-Thesleff and Perez-Latre contributes to media management by analyzing digital platforms as a source and tool to develop one’s entrepreneurial identity. Malcorps’ paper shows a good example of an action research and hopefully inspires more studies based on this method.

The papers of this special issue deal with interesting and relevant phenomena for the media industry. They highlight the potential of new technologies boosting change in various ways. But there is still a lot to be discovered. We certainly look forward to seeing these topics further explored at future emma conferences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.