Media Industries in Crisis: What COVID Unmasked

“In the midst of viral emergency, economic stagnation, and the world on fire, Media Industries in Crisis takes us to the maelstrom of spectacular catastrophe – where the production stakes are high, workers are exhausted, and it’s only the corporations that are really cleaning up. This expansive and inclusive book most vividly captures the ambivalent role of media in the global omni-crisis; a collapsing new world of risk, danger and - dare we hope - radical opportunity.”

Mark Banks, Professor of Cultural Economy, University of Glasgow, UK

“If you need a refresh on what an unflinchingly rigorous and thoroughly global political economy approach can reveal about contemporary media, look no further than Mayer, Lavie and Banks’ Media Industries in Crisis: What COVID Unmasked. Equally refreshing is their melding of traditional media industries disciplinary foci with critical deployment of core elements of public relations and management disciplines such as crisis communication and crisis management. This disciplinary détente is then directed at engagingly diverse studies of how, in the time-honored fashion of big business, media industries during the pandemic tried never to let a good crisis go to waste.”

Stuart Cunningham, co-author, Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley

“Vicki Mayer, Noa Lavie, and Miranda Banks have assembled an indispensable volume on contemporary media industries in our age of health, economic, and political crisis. With the global COVID pandemic as the core historical focus, the essays crackle with powerfully relevant analysis on such topics as changing distribution patterns, intimacy coordination, on-set health protocols, and production conditions in a variety of international settings. Media Industries in Crisis is an absolutely essential read for anyone interested in the dynamics of entertainment media industries and labor today.”

Alisa Perren, Professor and Director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries, Department of Radio-Television-Film at University of Texas at Austin, USA

“Media Industries in Crisis manages a seemingly impossible task: Simultaneously showing how the pandemic fits within a larger history of how media industries have managed crisis while also providing grounded, localized case studies of diverse stakeholder responses around the world, this collection is a vital resource for media industry researchers and practitioners alike. Editors Mayer, Lavie, and Banks – along with their 20 contributors – offer a vital snapshot of a transformative time for the global media industries and its breadth of media workers.”

Charles R. Acland, Concordia University, Montreal, author of American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder

“It’s beneficial to live on a damaged planet, at least for some. This lively collection is as varied as pandemic responses have been, but better organized. Articles are united by a desire to understand the issues stirred up by COVID-19 across the globe, from venture capital investors to on-set intimacy coordinators, streaming services to cinema chains. A timely multi-national contribution to one of Media Studies’ core research fields.”

Dr. Patrick Vonderau, University of Halle, Germany

VickiMayer is Professor of Communication at Tulane University. She is author or editor of several books about media and communication, especially cultures of production. Her edited/authored books include Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries (2009), Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy (2011) and Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans: The Lure of the Local Film Economy (2017).

Noa Lavie is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Communication and Media Unit at Academic College of Tel Aviv‑Jaffa. Her work on the sociology of culture, media industries and television studies has led to prestigious grants (ISF 2017, BSF 2021) and publications in Ethnicities, Media Culture and Society, Sociology, Television and New Media, and Poetics.

Miranda Banks is Associate Professor and Chair of Film, Television, and Media Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She is author of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (2015) and coeditor of Production Studies (2009) and Production Studies, The Sequel! (2016).