Media Innovation
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Course code
BFM7388.FK
old course code
Course title in Estonian
Meedia innovatsioon
Course title in English
Media Innovation
ECTS credits
6.0
Assessment form
Examination
lecturer of 2023/2024 Spring semester
Indrek Ibrus (language of instruction:English)
lecturer of 2024/2025 Autumn semester
Not opened for teaching. Click the study programme link below to see the nominal division schedule.
Course aims
New media products are being developed and applied within increasingly complex local and global innovation systems. This course, therefore, offers an introduction to perspectives on the socio-technical, cultural, organisational, and economic processes contributing to innovation within media sector. The course will enable students to develop their understanding of the processes of innovation at the levels of individual media enterprises, national media and innovation systems as well as global media and communications industries.
Brief description of the course
The course introduces, firstly, the theoretical perspectives on the social and economic transformations that have been accompanying both the historical and the contemporary processes of media innovation. The interdisciplinary approaches to the innovation processes in the media sector, their specific characteristics will be discussed. Concepts and phenomena like path dependence, technological trajectories, remediation, collective memory, uncertainty, risk, convergence, divergence, technology diffusion, strategic management and innovation systems will be introduced and their role in the processes of media evolution discussed. The second half of the course will focus on intellectual property rights and the related issues of contemporary media regulation and governance, open source as groundbreaking innovation strategy. Throughout the course empirical examples will be discussed to illustrate the theoretical discussions. Most lectures have accompanying seminars where attending students are expected to give one presentation per term based on the literature suggested by the seminar teacher.
Learning outcomes in the course
Upon completing the course the student:
- is able to critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of contending perspectives to the contemporary processes of media innovation and will understand some of the key issues that are of concern to business leaders in the media sector, policy-makers, and citizens and consumers.

Teacher
Indrek Ibrus, PhD
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