Media Industries in Global Frames: Craft, Collaboration, and Competition is an international colloquium organised by Centre for Cinema Studies (CCS) in launching a new research cluster hosted by the CCS. Media industries research has over the years blossomed, and become a vibrant undertaking, in scope, productivity and complexity. In this event we want to find common pathways, examples that help to focus scholarly effort that is becoming unwieldy, and not easily wrapped up in handy packages for transmission. Hence the 3Cs, craft, collaboration and competition. All of these words have reach into the range of media industry production, and circulation, research.
 
Craft, collaboration and competition are loaded terms, dependent on contexts for meaning, and connotations. All three have radically labile senses (i.e., prone to change) indicating positive and negative, exemplary and reprehensible activities. All three are Janus faced.
 
Competition, collaboration, and craft do have common element: struggle. Struggle with craft is about solving knotty problems in design, prototypes and supply chains. Collaboration, like competition, brings struggle with other people, in negotiation, compromise and prioritization. It is a contentious process. The 21st Century media industry is accelerating, but is yet in early days. Perhaps competition may hold primacy in our thinking about economic struggle, but collaboration is extending its influence.

Media Industries in Global Frames master class poster