A New Approach to Media Cluster Research: Bringing the Human Factor back into Scope

Within industry cluster studies, media clusters have recently gained interest from the scientific and political world. However, there is no common agreement on a comparative framework that integrates the various facets of the phenomenon. After a thorough revision of existing literature, this article proposes a model for socio-economic analysis of media clusters in order to gather data on media cluster dynamics to fill this gap. Within the literature on (media) clusters, several parameters have been identified: place, proximity, pertinence, profile, path-dependency, policy, performance. We argue that these seven parameters - 7Ps - provide a solid foundation to grasp the dynamics of media clusters, which are composed of three essential entities: media institutions, media workers and media communities. We argue that the integrative and multidisciplinary framework brings together the existing heterogeneous approaches towards media clusters into one suitable analysis model.