Identities and Democratic values on European digital screens: Distribution, reception, and representation

This project focuses on how digital audiovisual platforms contribute to transform social and cultural dynamics in Europe at a time when digital platforms provide access to film and television from all over the world.

DIGISCREENS asks how the increased possibilities for audiences to watch audiovisual content from a great geographical diversity affect (a) the construction of identity and understanding of the other through global, yet culturally specific, mediations of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other social aspects, and (b) the negotiation of democratic values such as equality, inclusion, and solidarity.By investigating distribution, representation, and reception in Norway, Sweden, France, Spain and Lithuania, this project will probe the possibilities for transnational distribution and consumption of audiovisual content to create social encounters and a sense of global integration.

It will also problematise how this promise of creating common democratic values and models of identity is conditioned by different national distribution policies and individualised algorithms that govern commercial platforms, potentially creating “filter bubbles” in the consumption of film and television.DIGISCREENS is a transdisciplinary project that connects studies of distribution, reception, and representation in the light of the last decades’ policies for increased diversity and inclusivity on screen.

It will contribute to academic and societal knowledge by linking representations and receptions of socio-cultural identities to the production of democratic values.

DIGISCREENS will mix methodologies from media studies, cultural and political analysis, as well as ethnography, literature and psychology and involve PIs from Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Lithuania.

The project’s comparative approach will contribute to understanding how members of different social and cultural groups perceive their roles, rights and democratic participation in contemporary Europe