"Online platforms and culture: the winning actors of the great lockdown?", In Global Watch on Culture and Digital Trade, n°4, May 2020.
By Dr. Antonios Vlassis (Center for International Relations Studies-CEFIR, Université de Liège), Analytical report, May 2020.
The great lockdown due to the global pandemic of the COVID-19 has a major impact on the functioning of cultural markets and the global flows of digital cultural content. Regarding the online platforms and their place in the audiovisual ecosystems, the great lockdown could have some crucial effects: consolidating the dominant place of some US video on demand platforms in the global cultural market; giving the economic and technological advantage to these global players to establish their leading position in the global trade of digital cultural content; developing oligopolistic conditions of strong competition among few US multinational firms in the digital audiovisual market; strengthening the material and symbolic resources of these platforms in order to become irreplaceable global actors for culture professionals, the cultural economy and flows of cultural expressions. This issue seeks to explore whether some US online platforms, such as Netflix or Disney Plus, are the winning actors of the great lockdown. In addition, this issue highlights the new European approach to Artificial Intelligence.