Abstract

The emerging shape of screen industries in the twenty-first century encapsulates deep changes in consumer habit and expectation and content production related “to a larger trend across the media industries to integrate digital technology and socially networked communication with traditional screen media practices” (Holt and Sanson 2013: 1). This emerging new screen ecology has given rise not only to major challenges to established media, but is being shaped by a set of newly prominent online screen entertainment platforms, most prominently Apple, Amazon and Netflix, but also and pre-eminently Alphabet/Google/YouTube. Cunningham and Silver (2013) have previously examined the broad contours of this phenomenon. Arguably one of the most challenging and innovative elements of the evolving screen ecology is a very low-budget tier of mostly advertising-supported online channels driven mainly by the professionalisation and monetisation of previously amateur content creation. We call this “social media entertainment” (SME) and distinguish it from the professionally generated content (PGC) strategies of Netflix, Amazon and others, that constitute the other part of the new screen ecology.