AI and the Recentralization of the Global Media Economy

Beschreibung

“In this timely, comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and future-oriented volume, Vukanović demonstrates how artificial intelligence is reshaping global media industries, organizations, and products, while also advancing conceptual frameworks for understanding the emerging dynamics of media power.”—Eli Noam, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York

“This masterful and comprehensive study of the impact and influence of AI on the global media landscape is an intellectual tour de force, making a substantive and timely contribution to scholarship in media economics and management. It will prove indispensable to scholars and students as well as to industry professionals seeking a historically informed, strategically coherent understanding of AI’s expanding influence.”—Everette E. Dennis, Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University and Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

At an inflection point when artificial intelligence is becoming media infrastructure, this volume offers a system-level analysis of value chains, organizational architectures, and economic rationales. Drawing on economic theory and industry observation, Zvezdan Vukanović interrogates platform governance, strategic conduct, technological deployment, and regulatory design to explain how AI is reconfiguring production, distribution, monetization, and audience engagement. Across seven sections, he reconstructs adoption trajectories and specifies consequences for cost structures, capital allocation, revenue logics, and scale economies. He charts advertising’s shift from efficiency to algorithmic allocation, automated trading, and programmatic markets within a platform-centric, data-intensive ecosystem. Chapters examine automated journalism, neural dubbing, streaming optimization, OTT personalization, and AI-enabled television, alongside their ethical and regulatory dilemmas. The book argues that AI intensifies recentralization and reintermediation through closed platforms, enabling conglomerates to exploit data and compute advantages, manage antitrust constraints, and govern fragmentation. It closes with one hundred questions for researchers to explore.

Zvezdan Vukanovic serves as Associate Director of International Media Management at Columbia Business School’s CITI and as a member of the executive board of the International Media Management Academic Association (IMMAA).

At an inflection point when artificial intelligence is becoming media infrastructure, this volume offers a system-level analysis of value chains, organizational architectures, and economic rationales. Drawing on economic theory and industry observation, Zvezdan Vukanović interrogates platform governance, strategic conduct, technological deployment, and regulatory design to explain how AI is reconfiguring production, distribution, monetization, and audience engagement. Across seven sections, he reconstructs adoption trajectories and specifies consequences for cost structures, capital allocation, revenue logics, and scale economies. He charts advertising’s shift from efficiency to algorithmic allocation, automated trading, and programmatic markets within a platform-centric, data-intensive ecosystem. Chapters examine automated journalism, neural dubbing, streaming optimization, OTT personalization, and AI-enabled television, alongside their ethical and regulatory dilemmas. The book argues that AI intensifies recentralization and reintermediation through closed platforms, enabling conglomerates to exploit data and compute advantages, manage antitrust constraints, and govern fragmentation. It closes with one hundred questions for researchers to explore.

Autor*in

Zvezdan Vukanović

Themen in »AI and the Recentralization of the Global Media Economy«

Algorithmic Media AI in media industry Media economics media recentralization Platform governance programmatic advertising Reintermediation AI value chains media market concentration proprietary models neural dubbing localization creative automation Attention economy antitrust and platforms Economic policy

Stimmen zu »AI and the Recentralization of the Global Media Economy«

“In an era defined by rapid technological upheaval created by artificial intelligence, AI and the Recentralization of the Global Media Economy: Beyond Disruption stands out as a notable achievement. Zvezdan Vukanović delivers a sweeping, deeply researched, and future-oriented analysis of how artificial intelligence is fundamentally restructuring the global media landscape.” (Alan B. Albarran, Professor Emeritus, University of North Texas)

“This masterful and comprehensive study of the impact and influence of AI on the global media landscape is an intellectual tour de force, making a substantive and timely contribution to scholarship in media economics and management. It will prove indispensable to scholars and students as well as to industry professionals seeking a historically informed, strategically coherent understanding of AI’s expanding influence.” (Everette E. Dennis, Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University and Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences)

“A must-read for everyone who wants to deep-dive into the magic of AI and how it is changing the notion of intelligence itself.” (Jose van Dijck, Distinguished University Professor of Media and Digital Society, Utrecht University and former President, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)

“Zvezdan Vukanović masterfully deconstructs the paradox of the AI-driven media era. He reveals that while AI appears to democratize creation, its underlying economic momentum drives a structural decentralization of power. By framing ‘code as capital,’ Vukanović provides an essential, theoretically rich roadmap for navigating today’s consolidated algorithmic media landscape.” (Joshua Gans, Jeffrey Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Professor of Strategic Management, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Royal Society of Canada)

“Zvezdan Vukanović argues that AI is not just changing how media is made—it is changing who holds influence over how media markets work. By looking at economics, strategy, and regulation together, the book shows how AI can both expand creative possibilities and strengthen the dominance of major tech and platform companies. The result is a clear, accessible framework for understanding how AI is reshaping the future of media power.” (Richard A. Gershon, Professor Emeritus, Western Michigan University)

“With breadth and depth, this book traces how expansion and concentration advance together, revealing how data, models, and platforms are hardening into new gatekeepers of culture, coverage, and capital.” (Andreas Kaplan, President, Managing Director, and Professor of Digital Transformation, Kühne Logistics University)

“Everyone is talking about AI-generated content, but that is the wrong story. The real transformation is unfolding at the infrastructure layer: foundation models, data pipelines, compute, and ranking systems are becoming the new chokepoints of global media, concentrating power in ways that make traditional media consolidation look quaint. This book shows precisely how AI lowers the barriers to creation while raising the structural barriers to competition at scale—and why those who control the infrastructure stack ultimately control the entire system.” (Lev Manovich, Presidential Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York)

“In this timely, comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and future-oriented volume, Vukanović demonstrates how artificial intelligence is reshaping global media industries, organizations, and products, while also advancing conceptual frameworks for understanding the emerging dynamics of media power.” (Eli Noam, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York)

“This book’s power lies in its remarkable interdisciplinary breadth. By providing a unified intellectual architecture, it correctly frames AI not merely as a technological shift, but as a potent political-economic instrument. It is a timely exploration of how AI is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of media capitalism.” (John Oliver, Professor Emeritus, Bournemouth University and former President, European Media Management Association)

“Artificial intelligence has emerged as the defining buzzword of today’s media landscape, driving many firms to embrace it before fully grasping either its capabilities or its implications. Professor Vukanović cuts through the noise, moving beyond technical distractions to examine what AI will actually do to media companies and the industries in which they operate. He contends that while AI will certainly transform content production, its most consequential effects will be felt in the structure of media organizations and in the operating logic of the media industries themselves. He demonstrates how established content distributors—publishers, networks, channels, and studios—will be fundamentally reshaped as AI redistributes power and control away from these traditional infrastructures. Broad in scope and sharp in insight, this book is indispensable for executives and for anyone striving to understand and respond strategically to AI.” (Robert G. Picard, Professor Emeritus, FRSA Senior Research Fellow, Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, Affiliated Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School)

“By situating AI, cloud computing, algorithmic hyperscale infrastructures, synthetic and multimodal media, interoperable modular architectures, and the post-linear, programmable, and massively personalized logics of content production and distribution—together with platform governance, marketing, and monetization models—as mutually constitutive elements of a single socio-technical ecosystem, Vukanović renders the book’s central thesis of platform recentralization not merely convincing but operational. The resulting framework is analytically robust, institutionally actionable, and methodologically teachable: it makes the complexity of the global digital media industry intelligible to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers without trading rigor for accessibility. In so doing, it reframes the sources of competitive advantage while simultaneously exposing the growing mismatch—and, increasingly, the insufficiency—of legacy antitrust and regulatory frameworks in the face of contemporary platform power.” (Alfonso Sanchez Tabernero, Professor and former President, University of Navarra)

“Impressive in its scope and ambition, Professor Vukanović’s new book is a tour de force, examining the impact of AI on virtually every component of multiple media value systems and then exploring the implications for the media sector as a whole and media governance. It is sure to become a touchstone for future work on the impact of AI on media.” (Steven S. Wildman, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University; former Chief Economist, Federal Communications Commission)

“AI and the Recentralization of the Global Media Economy: Beyond Disruption is a groundbreaking work that is a must-read for media scholars, policymakers, and business strategists. The insights provided throughout this work are foundational and will inform AI media research and inquiry for years to come.” (Mike Wirth, Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Media, College of Communication and Information, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

“Rather than ask simply whether AI will ‘save’ or ‘ruin’ media, Vukanović intricately maps how the two are now fused. This book moves beyond simplified headlines to examine how the media looks more fragmented and democratized from the outside, while control consolidates within a few technology stacks inside. For policymakers, industry leaders, scholars, and anyone concerned with where media power is actually going, this is a bracing and helpful guide.” (Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law, Harvard Law School; Vice Dean, Library and Information Resources; Faculty Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society; Professor of Computer Science, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Professor of Public Policy, Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University)

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