The Modus Operandi of the New Media Platforms: The Digital Glocalization Advantage and the ROI Dilemma

This chapter analyzes the modus operandi of the new media platforms, at the center of the institutional logics of the leaders emerging victorious from the digital revolution, which are competing against the institutional logics forged by legacy media players over the past decades. The analysis underlines the necessity of fully embracing the features made available by the digital revolution on the one hand and the local adaptations of media content on the other. It particularly focuses on the new dynamics of the streaming platforms, sometimes originating phenomena of local productions with global distribution as in the case of Netflix. It also revisits the validity and profitability of different business models utilized in the legacy media landscape in the new digital one, such as advertising, subscriptions, and hybrid models, such as freemium, etc., and their adaptations in the new landscape with the new Return on Investment (ROI) challenges. It brings to the fore the new features of the digital media landscape, including global vertical integration.