History of Media Management
This module aims to analyse long-term perspectives how media companies manage their businesses and to show how change and continuity, tradition and innovation in media management are often combined. Each lecture takes into account a specific media sector (printed press, telecommunications, photography, music, broadcasting, digital media, etc.) and specific aspects of media management (production, distribution, consumption, innovation, failure, etc.) from the 19th century to nowadays. The course focuses on three particular topics. Firstly, how media markets and professions have diversified during the past two centuries and how management strategies changed over time. Secondly, we examine how media companies and politics respond to new media and, at the same time, how their attitudes towards old media change in contact with the new ones. The final part examines how digitization impacted on the ways media companies are managed and how companies adapted to this macro-phenomenon. This module combines lectures on specific topics with discussions based on historical papers and sources (political papers, boards of directors meetings, strategic planning, but also fictional literature, etc.) and on scientific papers.