Ariane Beldi

I'm a Ph.D. Candidate in Media & Communication Studies and will finish my dissertation by Dec. 2011. I'm working on the role played by the DVD in the reception of Japanese animated TV series (or "animes") in Switzerland. I'm particularly interested in understanding the position held by a digital delivery technology used for transnational traffic of audiovisual contents, like the DVD, in the sociotechological evolution of television as a media system interlinked with another one, cinema, and different audiovisual entertainment industries like video games and online editions (online games, VoD, etc.). Animes, and the Japanese audiovisual entertainment industry in general, are, in my view, a particularly good examples of the reconfiguration of these relationships both in economic and technosocial terms.

In general, I'm very interested in the evolution of such notions as "culture" (for which they are already hundreds of definitions), "media", "technology" and "public" in the context of increased transnationalism, a term I prefer to that of "globalization", fragmentation of audiences and social groups in general, and the profund changes that have been affecting media systems since the begining of the 20th century.