How Has Internet Become a Threat to Movie Industry - Research Proposal Example

Research Title: How has online/internet become a threat to movie industry and how will it change in the future? Name Institution Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1.0 Introduction 1 1.1 Study background 1 1.2 Justification for the proposed study 1 1.3 Significance of the proposed study 3 2.0 Literature Review 3 2.1 The Movies industry value chain 3 2.2 Disintermediation 5 2.3 Bargaining Power 5 2.4 The shift in power relations 5 2.5 Intellectual Property’s political economy in the internet 6 2.6 Media consumption complexities 7 2.6 Conclusion and perspectives from literature review 8 3.0 Research objectives and questions 9 4.0 Methodology 10 4.1 Research Approach 10 4.2 Research design 10 4.3 Target population 11 4.4 Research procedure 12 5.0 Data analysis 12 6.0 Ethical considerations 13 7.0 Reference List 14 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Study background The movie industry is traditionally considered a high technology business. On the other hand, current progresses of digital technologies, particularly the internet, have had significant detrimental effects on the industry (Gauer 2013; Norkey 2015). In addition to having the potential to minimise the cost of the movie-making process, the internet technology has also had significant implications for structural shifts in the movie industry (Moran 2014). It allows the movie production houses and studios to circumvent traditional distributors and directly deliver the movies to the end-consumers using video-on-demand (VOD) technology. As a result, therefore, the Internet technology restructures the value chain, and shifts the bargaining power to the consumers (Pisharody 2013). This is expected to affect how the movie producers deliver their products to their audience. However, the VOD technology is a threat to the heart of movie producers and studios, as it is substantially challenging the profitability of content creators in the movie industry (Lodderhose 2014). 1.2 Justification for the proposed study Earlier studies have only concentrated on the view of the content creators and distributors. The proposed study targets the perspectives of the movies consumers online (Gauer 2013;Mansell 2011; Zhu 2011). This, therefore, will be a pioneering study that considers movie consumer’s perspectives on the effects of the internet as a threat to the movie industry. Online piracy has displaced the legitimate sale of movies. A recent survey by Ipsos research firm in 2015 showed that some 30 percent of the population in the United Kingdom were actively engaged in some movie piracy by either purchasing counterfeit DVDs or streaming content online. It is estimated that such kinds of piracy cost the movie industry nearly £500 million annually. The decline in revenue due to online piracy has as well contributed to the movie production houses and studio going for cheap productions (Norkey 2015). In the UK, the trend has been blamed on the coalition government reluctance to implement the Digital Economy Act, which is expected to address policy issues associated with online media, such as copyright infringement. Additionally, it is widely acknowledged by media reports that getting internet service providers to assisting in combating the trend has been tricky (Norkey 2015; Pisharody 2013). In the United States, online movie piracy is also considered a major problem. As showed by a recent study in 2015 by Columbia University, nearly 45 percent of population in the United States actively engages in some form of movie piracy (Norkey 2015). The Motion Picture Association of America examined the harmful effects of online movie piracy and established that it cost nearly $20.5 billion each year in the United States alone. These findings reflect an earlier study in 2005, which found that a 10-percent reduction in global piracy in four years would lead to 1.5 million more jobs and $400 billion in economic growth (Norkey 2015). What these imply is that the movie industry is making much smaller revenues because of piracy. It is based on this backdrop that this proposed study seeks to address the imminent disruption that the internet has on the movie industry value chain, particularly how the internet will in future affect the digital distribution of motion pictures, and how it is a threat to the industry. It is recognized that online piracy and the structural shifts in movie distribution are preludes of the phenomenon to come for the industry. 1.3 Significance of the proposed study The objective of the proposed study is to help promote a multifaceted understanding of the manner in which the audience engages with consumption of motion pictures in the age of the Internet. This will provide the movie producers, studios, and distributors with greater insight into the consumers’ behaviours in the internet age and in future, and recommend measures to control online piracy. The study will also provide a rationale for policy makers to come up with balanced policies that protect the rights of content creators and consumers. The study seeks to question the sufficiency of several evidence put across by the movies industry to criminalise the unauthorised access to copyrighted movies, as well as to justify the rationale for stricter policies that target copyright enforcement. Instead of relying on assumptions that the practices of movie audience is chiefly uniform and linear, it is crucial to look into and figure out the intricacies of film consumption in the internet age by bringing about new consumption patterns, and structural shifts in content distribution. Ultimately, the findings of this empirical analysis will be applied in questioning whether policies intended to curtail copyright infringement are anchored in the accurate perspectives regarding the manner in which the film viewers use copyrighted content in the internet age. 2.0 Literature Review 2.1 The Movies industry value chain Zhu (2011) identifies the value chain in the movie industry as including the production and distribution of movie content (See Figure 1). Zhu (2011) further considers movie production to be an intricate process involving varied owners, as well as suppliers. Owners comprise the producers, screenwriter and movie studies distributing the movie content. Figure 1: The value chain in the movie industry (Zhu, 2011) Gauer (2013) explains that before the emergence of the internet, the distribution channels, revenue models and the movie industry has minimal changes. However, as movies are continually being digitized, the structure of the industry is significantly going through substantial transformations. Consistent with this argument, Zhu (2011) digitisation is likely to bring about structural changes that are likely to happen in bargaining power, and disintermediation. This is in agreement with Gauer (2013) observation that the digitizing the movie production and distribution has disintermediated certain middlemen. Additionally, the movie production and studies are realising decreased bargaining power over that of the content producers and has the potential to reduce the amount of content producers, although it still lowers the costs of digitally generated movies. 2.2 Disintermediation As regards disintermediation, Gauer (2013) observes that movie production is gradually more digitized, while the Internet transforms into a practicable distribution channel, certain kinds of businesses in the traditional value chain, such as film manufacturers, duplicators and distributors are being eliminated. By distributing movies over the Internet, it also has a potential to eliminate the video rental stores. Indeed, when internet and video streaming technology transform to a point where the streamed movies have qualities that can compete against quality of DVDs, renting physical videotapes is likely to significantly decline. 2.3 Bargaining Power At present, the high costs associated with the production of movies has enabled movie studios to wield some level of bargaining power over the content producers. The reason for this is that many content producers need significant financing from the movie studios to be able to pay up the high associated costs of production. Zhu (2011) explains that the high production cost has tendency to centre on the whole movie industry around the few main movie studios with the finances that can fund the movie projects. Such high costs initially formed barriers for entry of movie producers into industry. However, increased digitization of movies, through the internet, has reduced costs of production and distribution, hence allowing the small independent producers the capacity to make and distribute own movie projects (Levine 2011). For these reasons, the movie industry is likely to be less concentrated, as well as transform into a competitive landscape. 2.4 The shift in power relations As discussed by Gauer (2013), the societal revolution can be linked to the rising new institutions that have been created by a shift in the power relationships. In turn, the proponents of the traditional institutions are likely to oppose the organisational shifts accompanying new institutions and technologies. Within the context of the movie industry, an ability to freely access creative content and an added ability to share the content among users counteracts the neoliberal economic structures, as well as how private goods are treated (Gauer 2013). As explained further by Maclean (2011), a new paradigm perceives the creative content as common goods instead of private property, then the manner in which the roles of varied stakeholders should be considered, as they are likely to shift with the shifting cultures. Hence, while the content creators may see the technology as a threat, the content consumers view it as an opportunity. Indeed, several studies have showed that the movie production houses and studios have resisted the internet technology because of the economic impacts of online piracy on reducing their revenues (Gibbs 2014). In particular, online piracy has displaced the legitimate sale of movies. On the other hand, several studies have also showed that the internet technology brings about opportunities linked to unlicensed file sharing and accessing movies on the Internet. For instance, Gauer (2013) opined that weaker copyright protection on the Internet has some social benefits, as it does not lead to the reduction of the number of films generated globally but instead increased the number of the audience. 2.5 Intellectual Property’s political economy in the internet Because of the inherent link between political and economic power, Gibbs (2014) observed that copyright in the internet economy tends to favour the rights holders’ interest (specifically the intermediaries like film distributors) more than those who share. For instance, Gibbs (2014) was critical of how the Motion Picture Association of America and Hollywood has collaborated to lobby jointly for a regulatory framework favouring their monopolistic self-interests one content distribution is restricted. According to Gibbs (2014), the possible outcome of technical requirements and restricted regulations, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 in the United States, imposes higher entry barriers into the industry. Gauer (2013) was concerned that as technology has significant social, human, and political values attached to it, stricter regulations tended to unreasonably restrict how the internet can be used to share intellectual and cultural content, which may hinder the development of normative virtues. 2.6 Media consumption complexities According to Gauer (2013), consumption of the creative content online is not necessarily a linear practice. Rather, the social, cultural, technological, political, and economic factors influence where the consumption should occur. According to Richardson (2005), acknowledging the intricacy of phenomena does not mean inability to scientifically explored. Rather, they have to be critically analysed. In considering such complexities, some scholars like Gauer (2013) made a theoretical review of the consumption of movies in cinemas and television and concluded that while television and cinema appeared to be serving similar purposes and generate similar stimuli, they are consumed differently. Some scholars like Silver (2015) also recognised that the practices used in consuming media consumption are as result of a range of factors like technological and societal shifts, as well as the exercising of power from a range of stakeholders, such as policy makers, media companies and the audience, who tend to have opposing interests. In the current internet age, the convergent media environment appears to highlight such complexities. As established by Gauer (2013), consumption that has recently emerged, which is associated with a participatory culture,’ highlights such complex modes of consumption. Gauer (2013) were of the view that viewership of video online potentially creates economic and cultural values as they augment public visibility of the online content. In addition, within an environment with similar content, which are legally and illegally accessible, the consumers tend to view the varied economic and social factors while making their purchasing decision of the content. Lastly, large corporations have attempted to track and predict the behaviours of consumers within an environment to decide what to pay for the content (Pisharody 2013). As observed, it seems apparent that film consumption has various complexities that can create, challenge, integrate, and reflect cultural, social, and political-economic pressures. 2.6 Conclusion and perspectives from literature review Most current reviews in the literature review section attempted to look into the self-reported incidences of online piracy and their effects on reducing legitimate sales by concentrating on the perspectives of the content creators (Levine 2011; Gauer 2013; Norkey 2015). Conversely, the proposed study will concentrate on the content users. In view of the idea that individuals have a potential to misreport the extent to which they engage with unlawful practices, in addition to the idea that measurements of the influences of unlicensed file-sharing are recognised to be detrimental, the proposed study will use a different strategy. It will seek to differentiate between legal and illegal perspectives of movies online for without costs, as people tend to be confused regarding what makes up a lawful or unlawful consumption of movies online. Second, rather than just investigate the effects of such practices on the society or national economy, the proposed study will attempt to conceive the intricacies of movie consumption online by investigating into the needs, preferences, expectations and behaviours linked to online film consumption. Put different, in addition to seeking to examine causality, the study also seeks to discover the possible non-linear and multi-layered consumption patterns. 3.0 Research objectives and questions The proposed study has four foci: It seeks to examine the complexities of film consumption brought about by internet technology It also seeks to examine the effects of the internet on copyright protection of the movie industry. Whether stricter regulations can reasonably regulate how the internet can be used to share intellectual and cultural content to promote development of normative virtues. The study also seeks to examine the structural shifts in the movie industry brought about by the internet technology. Rooted in the literature review as well as the conceptual framework suggested for the study, the proposed research question is: How has the internet become a threat to the movie industry, and how it will change in the future? What are the complexities of film consumption brought about by internet technology? What are the effects of the internet on copyright protection of the movie industry? Can stricter regulations reasonably regulate how the internet can be used to share intellectual and cultural content to promote development of normative virtues? What are the structural shifts in the movie industry brought about by the internet technology? 4.0 Methodology 4.1 Research Approach The ethnographic approach to qualitative research will be used for the proposed study. The approach is concerned with the participants’ attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, or behaviors in their work and societal context and how they particular phenomenon shape or control them. The theory also places emphasis on participant’s personal interpretations of experiences (Wilson & Chaddha, 2010). The approach seeks to ensure that the world is viewed based on the participants’ perspectives. These attributes are particularly consistent with the objective of the proposed study, and rationale the selection of the ethnographic approach. In the proposed study, the researcher expects the interpretation of how the internet has become a threat to the movie industry, and how it will change in the future to be anchored in the participants’ attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors. 4.2 Research design As the proposed research question “How has the internet become a threat to the movie industry, and how it will change in the future?” is explorative in nature, qualitative research study approach is proposed for the study. The research question requires a general overview of the present situations in the movie industry so as to identify the effects of the internet. Figure 2: Process map of the research study (KCE, 2009) 4.3 Target population The targeted participants include content users, as earlier studies have only concentrated on the view of the content creators and distributors. This, therefore, will be a pioneering study that considers movie consumer’s perspectives on the effects of the internet as a threat to the movie industry. The selection of the participants will be using purposive sampling. Selection will be deliberately based on a criterion, where only individuals who are actively engaged in the online consumption and sharing of movies (legitimately or illegitimately) for more than six months will be considered. The reason for relying on at least six months involved is that the investigator believes that the period is sufficient for any online consumers to have acquired sufficient experience of the dynamics or complexities of media consumption online. 4.4 Research procedure To this end, primary data will be collected through semi-structured interviews. Data collecting process will involve verbal delivery questions, where the researcher will ask the respondents questions using pre-set questions (Heyvaert e al., 2013). Semi-structured interview method is proposed, as the investigator requires the participants respond to similar sets of stimuli, as this would allow for a realisation of identical combination of stimuli (Cohen et al., 2007). The interview sessions will be rooted in a one-off basis. The investigator will first provide the interviewees with brief of the purpose, extent and use of the collected data. Notes will be taken as a means for recording the responses. On the other hand, secondary data will collected from the relevant scholarly research literature, industry reports, movie creators’ databases, and internet sources. In particular, the secondary data will be crucial, as it will help gain a critical outlook of the roles of the movie consumers in the industry (Ellis & Levy, 2008). 5.0 Data analysis Data analysis will be undertaken subsequent to the interview session based on the notes taken. The researcher will personally complete all the transcripts. Each interview scripts, which consists of interviewees’ responses will be were reviewed (Heyvaert e al., 2013). Notes will be on the likely themes that emerge from the combined set of participant’s responses. The activities would involve developing coding scheme or classification, which contribute to easy theme generation and ideation. Review of the responses will be based on a line-by-line review of interview transcripts. Figure 3: Conceptual diagram of data analysis (KCE, 2009) One the recursive coding progression is completed, the coding data will be categorised based on the themes. This will enables themes to emerge as the data unfolds. Once the themes are identified and recorded, second cycle coding will be used to group the coded data the related threads. After each level if analysed, the narrow themes would then be categorised like broader topics to allow the major themes to come out. The themes would then be fleshed out into descriptive data (Heyvaert e al. 2013). 6.0 Ethical considerations By using a qualitative research design, it is expected that ethical issues that revolve around the participants’ official consent are likely to emerge. Therefore, the official consent of the participants will be obtained through a consent form. The investigator will also explain to the participants the intent and extent of the study, as well as the demands and risks imposed on them to help them decide to take part in the study. Participation in the study will be wholly voluntary and without coercion. The research will ensure the privacy and confidentiality of the participants is protected by providing them anonymity and keeping the information they requested to be kept private confidential. Data interpretation and analysis will directly reflect the responses without any alteration. The researcher will also ensure the physical and emotional safety of the respondents by conducting interviews in safe and secure environment and asking non-provoking questions. 7.0 Reference List Cohen, L, Manion, L & Morrison, K 200, Research methods in education, 6th ed., Routledge Falmer, London Ellis, T & Levy, Y 2008, “Framework of Problem-Based Research: A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem,” Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdisciplin,e vol 11, pp.17-33 Gauer, L 2013, Online freedom? Film consumption in the digital age, London School of Economics and Political Science, London Gibbs, S 2014, “Hollywood director: piracy is necessary, and doesn't hurt revenues," The Guardian, viewed 7 May 2016, Heyvaert, M, Hannes, K, Maes, B & Onghena, P 2013, “Critical Appraisal of Mixed Methods Studies,” Journal of Mixed Methods Research vol 20 no 10, pp1-26 KCE 2009, Introduction: About Good Clinical Practice (GCP), viewed 8 May 2016, Levine, R 2011, "How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers,"" The Guardian, viewed 9 May 2016, Lodderhose, D 2014, "Movie piracy: threat to the future of films intensifies," The Guardian, 9 May 2016, Mansell, R 2011, “New Visions, Old Practices: Policy and Regulation in the Internet Era’,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol 25 no 1, pp19-32. Moran, S 2014, "Could Netflix Kill the Movie Theater Industry?" ScreenRant, viewed 9 May 2015, Norkey, T 2015, "Film Piracy: A Threat to the Entire Movie Industry (with sources)," Movie Pilot, viewed 9 May 2016, Pisharody, A 2013, The Future of Television: Will broadcast and cable television networks survive the emergence of online streaming?, viewed 8 May 2016, Richardson, K 2005, “The Hegemony of the Physical Sciences: An Exploration in Complexity Thinking’” Futures, vol 37 no 7, pp615-653. Silver, J 2015, Aare movie theaters doomed? Do exhibitors see the big picture as theaters lose their competitive advantage? 7 May 2016, Wilson, W & Chaddha, A 2010, “The Role of Theory in Ethnographic Research,” Ethnography vol 10 no 4, pp549-564 Zhu, K 2011, "Internet-based distribution of digital videos: The economic impacts of digitization on the motion picture industry," Electronic Markets, vol11 no 4, pp.273-285 Read More