Ramon Lobato
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 780676 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ramon Lobato |
| PRENOMES | Ramon |
| SOBRENOME | Lobato |
| ASSINATURA | LOBATO R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Swinburne University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1689-7233 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 44 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 224 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 41 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2001 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Radio discovery in smart speakers
Internet-connected smart speakers have expanded the reach of radio by enabling easy access to broadcasts and podcasts from around the world. However, access to radio on smart speakers depends on the policies of voice assistant platforms including Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri; these platforms ultimately determine which audio services are available to users and which are excluded. Our paper presents findings from an empirical study of smart sp…
Video-on-demand affordability
This article considers how content fragmentation in online video-on-demand (VOD) markets shapes public access to, and affordability of, screen content. We offer a case study of Australia, a jurisdiction in which media and broadcast policy have traditionally prioritised some considerations of access and reach over commercial interests in exclusivity and market segmentation. To capture the affordability of screen content, we use a shopping basket a…
Video-on-Demand Research
Internet video-on-demand (VoD) services such as Netflix, Prime Video, and iPlayer have been with us for almost two decades. A tremendous amount of research has been produced, addressing diverse topics including VoD catalogs, content, interfaces, curation, users, and governance–but there has been surprisingly little reflection on the methods used to study VoD services. In such a context, how might we speak of methodological innovation in VoD resea…
Las paradojas de la piratería
Speaking about piracy as a thing, as a coherent practice, makes sense in certain situations. Yet it can also erase the difference between cultural and media practices that would be better considered on their own terms. Hence piracy often becomes a stand-in for incommensurable activities. This paper offers a critical review of the ongoing "1piracy debate"o by focusing on a particular problem that runs through the current conversation "”a problem o…
A streaming generation? Interrogating assumptions about young-adult audiences, content discovery, and engagement with broadcast television
Automated content recognition (ACR), smart TVs, and ad-tech infrastructure
Smart TVs, which enable unprecedented viewing data to be collected at device level, are reconfiguring business practices in television advertising and audience measurement. Using a video fingerprinting technology known as automated content recognition (ACR), most smart TVs can now recognize virtually all content displayed on the TV screen, allowing precise targeting and re-targeting of ads to users based on their viewing behaviour and prior ad ex…
Default viewing
When choosing what to watch, television audiences habitually default to particular channels, shows and apps as part of their everyday routines. Additionally, streaming platforms and devices also default to particular content, services or ads as determined by their software settings. In other words, television viewing is commonly shaped by both behavioural and technological defaults. How can television audience research account for these two disti…
Broadcaster video-on-demand in Australia
Over the last decade Australia's free-to-air commercial networks Seven, Nine and Ten have undergone a protracted digital transformation with the development of their online, ad-supported broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) platforms 7Plus, 9Now, and 10Play. The present article considers some of the questions these commercial BVODs raise for television policy in Australia, with specific reference to local content regulation. Through content audits …
Video-on-demand catalog and interface analysis
The global proliferation of internet-distributed video-on-demand (VOD) services has left in its wake a rich but scattered corpus of research into the catalogs and interfaces of these services. Using empirical methods and sources including scraping, observation, digital simulations, and third-party datasets, researchers have found many ways to study VODs, their content, and their recommendations. Our article provides a critical review of this rese…
Electronics and Expertise
This article considers how TV retailers shape public understanding of television as a cultural technology and household device. Drawing on interviews with Australian TV retailers, we identify four sales strategies used when selling smart TVs in-store: simplification, avoidance, empathy, and exploitation. Our analysis shows how these sales strategies seek to minimize and manage the smart TV’s technological complexity, thus downplaying its interact…
Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) original production in Australia
Original production by subscription-video-on-demand services (SVOD) is often associated with a U.S. model of premium drama, characterized by high production values, edgy storytelling, and narrative complexity. Yet the internationalization of SVOD production in recent years has complicated this assumption, revealing diverse national experiences. In this article, we test the notion of 'SVOD exceptionalism' through a content and production analysis …
Streaming Video
An international team of experts explores how streaming services are disrupting traditional storytelling. The rise of streaming has dramatically transformed how audiences consume media. Over the last decade, subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services, including Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+, have begun commissioning and financing their own original movies and TV shows, changing the way and the rate at which content is produced across the gl…
Streaming Video
An international team of experts explores how streaming services are disrupting traditional storytelling. The rise of streaming has dramatically transformed how audiences consume media. Over the last decade, subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services, including Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+, have begun commissioning and financing their own original movies and TV shows, changing the way and the rate at which content is produced across the gl…
Cultural policy between television and digital platforms
As subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services enter new markets, they become subject to national laws and regulations. This incorporation into national governance is driven by various priorities that include cultural diversity, censorship, and local protectionism. In this article, we provide a critical analysis of the attempted process of SVOD policy-making in Australia, where the entry of services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disn…
Ways of Seeing Netflix
The international expansion of Netflix -presently the world's largest and most significant subscription video-on-demand service -presents fascinating challenges for film research. How can scholars make sense of a platform that is available in 190-odd countries but which varies markedly in its offerings, pricing, business operations and market positions across the globe? What can be said about Netflix's geographically-mutable libraries and the eno…
The video years
This essay explores Stuart Cunningham's foundational contributions to screen industry research. Cunningham's work is grounded in the understanding that industrial and expressive processes are co-constitutive. More than a gestural attempt to articulate opposing fields (industry and culture), it is instead a career-long thinking-through of their mutual constitution. This manifests in Cunningham's close attention to the everyday work of screen indus…
Producing local content in international waters
Netflix’s supernatural crime series Tidelands (2019) was the subscription video service’s first commissioned original series to be produced in Australia. Shot in tropical Queensland with a diverse cast of local and international stars, Tidelands exemplifies the complex challenges involved in Netflix’s attempts to be a global producer creating content for national markets. This article builds on a tradition of research into international televisio…
Beyond Streaming Wars
Internet-distributed video services have attracted exceptional attention in recent years for their novelty and growth. Business and trade discussions frequently excerpt internet-distributed video services from the broader field of video and narrowly construct their relationship as one of direct competition (e.g., streaming wars). However, there are several distinguishing characteristics of these services that make their relationship more complex.…
The media geographies of Tom O'Regan
This essay reflects on the many contributions of Tom O'Regan to media scholarship in Australia. While O'Regan may be best known as a scholar of Australian film and television, we suggest that O'Regan was also - and always - a scholar of the global. His work was premised on the idea that national and global industries are co-constitutive, shaped by flows of content, technology, ideas and attention. These are, fundamentally, matters of media geogra…
Netflix Nations
How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging—including Netflix, the world's largest subscrip…
Imagining Global Video
Imagining Global Video:The Challenge of Netflix Ramon Lobato (bio) and Amanda D. Lotz (bio) Netflix has evolved swiftly and significantly over its two-decade history. The service that established itself distributing films on DVD by mail in the United States is now most aptly categorized as a global video service. Yet Netflix's often-claimed "global" status is always a matter of dispute, for film and media scholars as much as for audiences. Becaus…
Netflix Nations
How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging—including Netflix, the world’s largest subscrip…
Television device ecologies, prominence and datafication
A key element of the infrastructure of television now consists of various Internet-connected devices, which play an increasingly important role in the distribution, selection and recommendation of content to users. The aim of this article is to locate the emergence of streaming devices within a longer timeframe of television hardware devices and infrastructures, by focusing on the evolution of one crucial category of such devices, television set-…
Chinese video streaming services in the context of global platform studies
While recent platform theory within media and communication studies has been developed around US-based examples, platformization has taken a rather different path in China. Focusing on the video streaming service iQiyi, this article asks: What can we learn from approaching Chinese platforms not merely as exception to Western models, but as an opportunity for theory-building around platformization generally? We argue that Chinese online video repr…
Internet-Distributed Television Research
From Netflix and Hulu to iPlayer and iQiyi, the rapid growth of internetdistributed television services worldwide presents both opportunities and challenges for media industry scholars. Which business models are succeeding in different countries, and why? What frameworks help us explain and talk about television amid such a variety of industrial practices? This article provides a critical overview of the emerging research landscape and suggests f…
Rethinking International TV Flows Research in the Age of Netflix
This article considers how established methodologies for researching television distribution can be adapted for subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services. Specifically, I identify a number of critical questions—some old, some new—that can be investigated by looking closely at SVOD catalogs in different countries. Using Netflix as an example, and drawing parallels with earlier studies of broadcast and cinema schedules, I ask what Netflix’s inte…
Chinese video streaming services in the context of global platform studies
While recent platform theory within media and communication studies has been developed around US-based examples, platformization has taken a rather different path in China. Focusing on the video streaming service iQiyi, this article asks: What can we learn from approaching Chinese platforms not merely as exception to Western models, but as an opportunity for theory-building around platformization generally? We argue that Chinese online video repr…
Internet-Distributed Television Research
From Netflix and Hulu to iPlayer and iQiyi, the rapid growth of internetdistributed television services worldwide presents both opportunities and challenges for media industry scholars. Which business models are succeeding in different countries, and why? What frameworks help us explain and talk about television amid such a variety of industrial practices? This article provides a critical overview of the emerging research landscape and suggests f…
Netflix Nations
How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging-including Netflix, the world's largest subscrip…
Imagining Global Video
Imagining Global Video:The Challenge of Netflix Ramon Lobato (bio) and Amanda D. Lotz (bio) Netflix has evolved swiftly and significantly over its two-decade history. The service that established itself distributing films on DVD by mail in the United States is now most aptly categorized as a global video service. Yet Netflix's often-claimed "global" status is always a matter of dispute, for film and media scholars as much as for audiences. Becaus…
Creative industries and informal economies
Since the emergence of its video industry in the 1990s, Nigeria has pioneered an innovative and highly successful model of film production and distribution. Lagos is now home to the fastest-growing film industry in the world, which releases well over 1000 titles a year without assistance from the government, NGOs or international film festivals. This article analyses the rise of ‘Nollywood’ through the lens of current debates in creative industri…
Beyond Streaming Wars
Internet-distributed video services have attracted exceptional attention in recent years for their novelty and growth. Business and trade discussions frequently excerpt internet-distributed video services from the broader field of video and narrowly construct their relationship as one of direct competition (e.g., streaming wars). However, there are several distinguishing characteristics of these services that make their relationship more complex.…
Netflix Nations
How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging—including Netflix, the world's largest subscrip…
Cultural policy between television and digital platforms
As subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services enter new markets, they become subject to national laws and regulations. This incorporation into national governance is driven by various priorities that include cultural diversity, censorship, and local protectionism. In this article, we provide a critical analysis of the attempted process of SVOD policy-making in Australia, where the entry of services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disn…
Television device ecologies, prominence and datafication
A key element of the infrastructure of television now consists of various Internet-connected devices, which play an increasingly important role in the distribution, selection and recommendation of content to users. The aim of this article is to locate the emergence of streaming devices within a longer timeframe of television hardware devices and infrastructures, by focusing on the evolution of one crucial category of such devices, television set-…
Producing local content in international waters
Netflix’s supernatural crime series Tidelands (2019) was the subscription video service’s first commissioned original series to be produced in Australia. Shot in tropical Queensland with a diverse cast of local and international stars, Tidelands exemplifies the complex challenges involved in Netflix’s attempts to be a global producer creating content for national markets. This article builds on a tradition of research into international televisio…
Default viewing
When choosing what to watch, television audiences habitually default to particular channels, shows and apps as part of their everyday routines. Additionally, streaming platforms and devices also default to particular content, services or ads as determined by their software settings. In other words, television viewing is commonly shaped by both behavioural and technological defaults. How can television audience research account for these two disti…
Gentrification, Cultural Policy and Live Music in Melbourne
This paper examines the regulation of nightlife in Melbourne, with a special focus on live music venues. Widespread gentrification of the city centre and inner suburbs has recently created considerable tension between residents and venues. Under pressure from both sides, the state government established the Live Music Taskforce in 2003, and its findings resulted in a semi-formal - albeit largely symbolic - policy reorientation towards the protect…
Automated content recognition (ACR), smart TVs, and ad-tech infrastructure
Smart TVs, which enable unprecedented viewing data to be collected at device level, are reconfiguring business practices in television advertising and audience measurement. Using a video fingerprinting technology known as automated content recognition (ACR), most smart TVs can now recognize virtually all content displayed on the TV screen, allowing precise targeting and re-targeting of ads to users based on their viewing behaviour and prior ad ex…
Broadcaster video-on-demand in Australia
Over the last decade Australia's free-to-air commercial networks Seven, Nine and Ten have undergone a protracted digital transformation with the development of their online, ad-supported broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) platforms 7Plus, 9Now, and 10Play. The present article considers some of the questions these commercial BVODs raise for television policy in Australia, with specific reference to local content regulation. Through content audits …
Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) original production in Australia
Original production by subscription-video-on-demand services (SVOD) is often associated with a U.S. model of premium drama, characterized by high production values, edgy storytelling, and narrative complexity. Yet the internationalization of SVOD production in recent years has complicated this assumption, revealing diverse national experiences. In this article, we test the notion of 'SVOD exceptionalism' through a content and production analysis …
The cyberlocker gold rush
This article examines the content distribution practices and regulatory anxieties generated by a particular cloud computing technology: the cyberlocker, or one-click file-hosting site. Cyberlockers, which offer an easy and free way to share media files, are widely used for content piracy. Over the last decade, usage of cyberlockers has increased rapidly; however, an intellectual property crackdown in 2012 has had far-reaching consequences for the…
Living and Labouring as a Music Writer
Like many other creative endeavours, music writing is a proto-professional practice built on the back of amateur enthusiasm, unpaid labour and informal networks of referrals and recruiting. Drawing on interviews with Australian music critics and journalists at different stages of their careers, this article examines the highly specific configurations of cultural, social and economic capital at work within this field. The authors begin by explorin…
Transnational Piracy Research in Practice
The following is an edited transcript of an interview with lead investigators on the Media Piracy in Emerging Economies project. The discussion took place online in June 2011
An Introduction to Informal Media Economies
This special issue of Television and New Media showcases current research on informal media production and distribution networks. Situated partly or wholly outside regulated, consolidated, and policy-governed audiovisual industries, the networks studied here include video circuits in West Africa, new media infrastructures in the Caribbean, user-driven streaming sites, and transnational VHS piracy. Together, these accounts provide glimpses of what…
Netflix Nations
How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging-including Netflix, the world's largest subscrip…
Gentrification, Cultural Policy and Live Music in Melbourne
This paper examines the regulation of nightlife in Melbourne, with a special focus on live music venues. Widespread gentrification of the city centre and inner suburbs has recently created considerable tension between residents and venues. Under pressure from both sides, the state government established the Live Music Taskforce in 2003, and its findings resulted in a semi-formal - albeit largely symbolic - policy reorientation towards the protect…
Amazing Grace
What follows is an attempt to reconstruct a time and space that probably never existed, and that I cannot claim to have lived through in any case. Equal parts homage and hagiography, it concerns a certain type of displaced nostalgia, one that, like the diva in question, tends to rear its head in unexpected places. It is an experiment in fantasy and a fantasy of experimentation. It is about Grace Jones
Secret lives of Asian Australian cinema
This article examines some of the material dimensions of Asian Australian cinema through an analysis of selected regional production and post-production flows since 1980, and the debates surrounding them. It begins with a theoretical discussion of the role of labour within the global film industry, before moving on to consider controversies around the offshoring of film production to lower-cost destinations. Specific examples of production relays…
Crimes against urbanity
The relationship between crime narratives and generic urban space is the central concern of this article, which will attempt to pose some tentative answers to a set of mysteries that lie at the heart of the contemporary crime movie---what are the aesthetics of detection? How do criminal fictions negotiate the postmodern city? Why do hotels, airports and railway stations make such evocative crime scenes? And what can the genre teach us about the w…
Creative industries and informal economies
Since the emergence of its video industry in the 1990s, Nigeria has pioneered an innovative and highly successful model of film production and distribution. Lagos is now home to the fastest-growing film industry in the world, which releases well over 1000 titles a year without assistance from the government, NGOs or international film festivals. This article analyses the rise of ‘Nollywood’ through the lens of current debates in creative industri…
Constructing the Pirate Audience
Digital copyright has become a key site of debate and dissent as a generation of consumers accustomed to file-sharing of proprietary content seeks to assert its rights more aggressively. A vocal anti-copyright movement has emerged, rallying around a free-speech defence of piracy honed in opposition to the hardline approach to intellectual property (IP) enforcement pursued by the US entertainment lobbies. This article discusses recent attempts at …
Amateur Media
Roland Barthel once said that 'myth has the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal. There is a certain myth associated with informal economies that posits these as productive and even natural in the same way as other enterprises, except that they fall outside the law. The fascinating, subtle and complex chapter by Lobato, Thomas and Hunter put forward a number of examples in construct…
Shadow Economies of Cinema
How do people access movies today? What are the most popular and powerful channels for media distribution on a global scale? How are film industries changing in the face of media convergence and digitisation? To answer questions such as these, argues Ramon Lobato, we must shift our gaze away from the legal film business and toward cinema's shadow economies. All around the world, films are bought from roadside stalls, local markets, and grocery st…
Shadow Economies of Cinema
How do people access movies today? What are the most popular and powerful channels for media distribution on a global scale? How are film industries changing in the face of media convergence and digitisation? To answer questions such as these, argues Ramon Lobato, we must shift our gaze away from the legal film business and toward cinema's shadow economies. All around the world, films are bought from roadside stalls, local markets, and grocery st…
Transnational Piracy Research in Practice
The following is an edited transcript of an interview with lead investigators on the Media Piracy in Emerging Economies project. The discussion took place online in June 2011
An Introduction to Informal Media Economies
This special issue of Television and New Media showcases current research on informal media production and distribution networks. Situated partly or wholly outside regulated, consolidated, and policy-governed audiovisual industries, the networks studied here include video circuits in West Africa, new media infrastructures in the Caribbean, user-driven streaming sites, and transnational VHS piracy. Together, these accounts provide glimpses of what…
Amateur Media
The cyberlocker gold rush
This article examines the content distribution practices and regulatory anxieties generated by a particular cloud computing technology: the cyberlocker, or one-click file-hosting site. Cyberlockers, which offer an easy and free way to share media files, are widely used for content piracy. Over the last decade, usage of cyberlockers has increased rapidly; however, an intellectual property crackdown in 2012 has had far-reaching consequences for the…
Living and Labouring as a Music Writer
Like many other creative endeavours, music writing is a proto-professional practice built on the back of amateur enthusiasm, unpaid labour and informal networks of referrals and recruiting. Drawing on interviews with Australian music critics and journalists at different stages of their careers, this article examines the highly specific configurations of cultural, social and economic capital at work within this field. The authors begin by explorin…
Informal Mobile Economies
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The Informal Media Economy
How are 'grey market' imports changing media industries? What is the role of piracy in developing new markets for movies and TV shows? How do jailbroken iPhones drive innovation? The Informal Media Economy provides a vivid, original, and genuinely transnational account of contemporary media, by showing how the interactions between formal and informal media systems are a feature of all nations - rich and poor, large and small. Shifting the focus a…
The cultural logic of digital intermediaries
How has YouTube evolved as a cultural and commercial infrastructure? What institutional forms has it produced? The present article takes up these questions through a discussion of multichannel networks (MCNs) and their role within the digital video system. MCNs are a new breed of intermediary firm that link entrepreneurial YouTubers with the advertising, marketing and screen production industries. This article considers the functions of MCNs vis-…
Rethinking International TV Flows Research in the Age of Netflix
This article considers how established methodologies for researching television distribution can be adapted for subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services. Specifically, I identify a number of critical questions—some old, some new—that can be investigated by looking closely at SVOD catalogs in different countries. Using Netflix as an example, and drawing parallels with earlier studies of broadcast and cinema schedules, I ask what Netflix’s inte…
Internet-Distributed Television Research
From Netflix and Hulu to iPlayer and iQiyi, the rapid growth of internetdistributed television services worldwide presents both opportunities and challenges for media industry scholars. Which business models are succeeding in different countries, and why? What frameworks help us explain and talk about television amid such a variety of industrial practices? This article provides a critical overview of the emerging research landscape and suggests f…
Netflix Nations
How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging—including Netflix, the world’s largest subscrip…
Television device ecologies, prominence and datafication
A key element of the infrastructure of television now consists of various Internet-connected devices, which play an increasingly important role in the distribution, selection and recommendation of content to users. The aim of this article is to locate the emergence of streaming devices within a longer timeframe of television hardware devices and infrastructures, by focusing on the evolution of one crucial category of such devices, television set-…
Chinese video streaming services in the context of global platform studies
While recent platform theory within media and communication studies has been developed around US-based examples, platformization has taken a rather different path in China. Focusing on the video streaming service iQiyi, this article asks: What can we learn from approaching Chinese platforms not merely as exception to Western models, but as an opportunity for theory-building around platformization generally? We argue that Chinese online video repr…
Netflix Nations
How streaming services and internet distribution have transformed global television culture. Television, once a broadcast medium, now also travels through our telephone lines, fiber optic cables, and wireless networks. It is delivered to viewers via apps, screens large and small, and media players of all kinds. In this unfamiliar environment, new global giants of television distribution are emerging—including Netflix, the world's largest subscrip…
Imagining Global Video
Imagining Global Video:The Challenge of Netflix Ramon Lobato (bio) and Amanda D. Lotz (bio) Netflix has evolved swiftly and significantly over its two-decade history. The service that established itself distributing films on DVD by mail in the United States is now most aptly categorized as a global video service. Yet Netflix's often-claimed "global" status is always a matter of dispute, for film and media scholars as much as for audiences. Becaus…
Computer Science (22 obras) · Political science (22 obras) · Business (21 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Sociology (14 obras) · Advertising (13 obras) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (13 obras) · Media studies (13 obras) · Art (12 obras) · Cinema and Media Studies (11 obras)