Media industry meets education industry: a study in digital disruption

The thoroughgoing digital disruption of the entertainment-based screen industries has now been well documented . But the factors that drive digital disruption are in no way unique to mainstream media industries. The distribution and use of screen content in education – whether that content is produced for educational use in the first instance, or whether it has been produced for entertainment or other purposes and is repurposed or reused in educational settings – in many ways parallels the experience of the broader screen industries. Just as traditional entertainment platforms, particularly broadcast television, cinema and DVD, are being challenged by new online services, so too traditional modes of distributing and accessing screen content in education are being disrupted by new online services. This paper analyses these disruptions through close analysis of the production and distribution of educational screen content in Australia