Archives

  • cover image

    Re-bordering the Archive
    Vol. 12 No. 24 (2023)

    Cover imageTwo decades ago, the European Union began a major effort to digitize heritage and make it available through European-scale portals such as Europeana and EUscreen. These efforts were explicitly aimed at removing barriers - both the barriers of access to the archives as well as the national boundaries of heritage - to allow for new narratives of shared experience to develop. In this special issue we seek to reflect on how these changes have re-drawn the borders of audiovisual archives. Drawing on ideas of borders as complex assemblages, it seeks to understand how archival borders are shaped and transgressed by (socio)technical elements, legal and organizational elements, and cultural elements.

    Edited by Alec Badenoch, Emily Clark and Marek Jancovic.

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    Curation and Appropriation of Digital European Heritage
    Vol. 12 No. 23 (2023)

    This special issue of VIEW was inspired by a call from the final conference of the project “European History Reloaded: Curation and Appropriation of Digital Audiovisual Heritage” (CADEAH). The project brought together interdisciplinary expertise in the curation of digital audiovisual heritage, contemporary European history and Digital Humanities to study the ‘afterlife’ of digitized audiovisual heritage once it was made accessible and shared online, something that has seen a great deal of growth throughout the first two decades of this century.

    What happens to digitized audiovisual heritage once it is shared online? How does audiovisual heritage circulate online? To what extent do users re-use or re-mix audiovisual heritage? And, more specifically from an archival perspective: How do strategies of curation shape the appropriation of digitized heritage? What new perspectives on European history and identity do digital curations and appropriations of audiovisual heritage create? How can audiovisual archives better foster the re-use of Europe’s audiovisual heritage?

    With this issue we wanted to broaden our view and discuss our insights with scholars from diverse disciplines and with diverse professional backgrounds. These articles showcase the methodological and conceptual approaches that are being used across Europe to understand, and encourage, the use of audiovisual heritage, investigating contemporary practices of re-use and the ways that archives themselves think about these challenges.

    Edited by Abby S. Waysdorf and Eggo Müller.

    Cover image: Sebastiaan ter Burg, CC BY 2.0

  • Television Satire in (Post)Socialist Europe
    Vol. 11 No. 22 (2022)

    Television Satire in (Post)Socialist Europe

     

    Co-edited by Sonja de Leeuw, Dana Mustata and Veronika Pehe


    This special issue of VIEW aims to shine a light on television satire in Eastern Europe during the period of state socialism and beyond. Satire has been studied as a vehicle for challenging political and religious power as well as established norms and values. Even more so, satire is powerful in challenging established (state) ideologies, values, beliefs, and conduct. Yet in the state socialist countries of the former Eastern Bloc, satire - including television satire - was also employed by the state apparatus to target ideological opponents. This issue looks into the complex and often subtle and contradictory ways in which satire has disputed the relations between television, audiences and power in this specific geopolitical region of Europe.


    Cover image: Still from Parrullat ('The slogans') by Gëzim Qendro, 1989, Central State Film Archives of Albania.

  • Education & TV: Histories of a Vision
    Vol. 11 No. 21 (2022)

    Education & TV: Histories of a Vision

     

    Co-edited by Sian Barber, Elena Caoduro and Kai Knörr


    The articles included in this issue take into consideration the relationship between television and education in its broadest sense, offering historical studies of television programming, national policies, audience attitudes and evolving socio-political contexts. It includes case studies of different broadcasters, specific educational programming initiatives, government or state education policy delivered through the television medium, the intersections between broadcast programmes and what is retained in television archives. They cover Turkey, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Finland and map the period from the 1960s to the present day. All of this material helps situate educational provision on television within broader histories of both television as a form and education as an overarching idea or objective.


    Cover image: GDR education. Pupils of the 10th polytechnic high school in Berlin-Adlershof look at a television, November 29th, 1982.
    Credit: (c) Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv / Waltraut Sandau

  • Race and European TV Histories
    Vol. 10 No. 20 (2021)

    Race and European TV Histories

     

    Co-edited by Sudeep Dasgupta and Anikó Imre


    This special issue on race and European television will begin the work of documenting and understanding the many ways in which television has both perpetuated and critically interrogated racialized regimes in Europe and in European countries’ ongoing relationships to their postcolonial geopolitical spheres. We have a dual goal for this issue: to break the silence and begin to describe, both retroactively and with a look to the future, television’s specific roles in visualizing, naturalizing, subverting and silencing race in Europe; and to account for the enduring reluctance to do this work in the first place.


    Cover image credit: Treffpunkt Flughafen (DDR1, 1986)

  • Cover VIEW issue 19

    Smörgåsbord of European TV
    Vol. 10 No. 19 (2021)

    Smörgåsbord of European Television

     

    Co-edited by Mari Pajala and John Ellis 


    As VIEW enters its tenth year of publication, we present our first open issue. The resulting collection of articles represents a varied smörgåsbord of European television, covering television in Germany, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. Moreover, many articles discuss the transnational movement of television: a Turkish adaptation of a Danish series, the Portuguese framing of a Spanish historical series, East German films on Swedish television, Russian television programmes on the international market.


    Cover image credit: Pakeha, CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Tele(visualizing) Health
    Vol. 9 No. 18 (2020)

    Tele(visualizing) Health

     

    Co-edited by Tricia Close-Koenig, Angela Saward and Jessica Borge


    This thematic issue of VIEW brings together articles that show how television has been an instrument for, as well as a mirror of, public service and specifically health services. Two approaches to this are featured and teased out. The first approach concerns health communication and campaigns, where information is diffused via television and strengthened or reinforced by visual and filmic means. The second concerns the structures that offer, manage and model norms of health and healthcare services. In introducing elements of the history of health, we hope to draw attention to the intersection of public health and television over the twentieth century, such that thinking about the relationship between them might change our understanding of both.


    Cover image credit: La journée d'un médecin, réalisé par Nestor Almendros (IPN, 1967). Copyright Réseau Canopé

  • Canned TV Going Global
    Vol. 9 No. 17 (2020)

    Canned TV Going Global

     

    Co-edited by Damiano Garofalo, Dom Holdaway and Massimo Scaglioni


    The international distribution and circulation of audio-visual content is one of the most relevant in recent debates in media and television studies. This area has been the subject of much previous scholarship, particularly in terms of the relevance of TV formats, their centrality for the medium and its economy, and different practices of adaptation and “localization”. However, much less attention has been devoted to so-called “ready-made content” (or “finished content”) and its circulation among different countries and markets. “Canned” programming is typically the output of a specific national TV and media system, but it spills across borders when licensed into different territories, sometimes even globally. This special issue of VIEW focuses on the international circulation and distribution of ready-made content, in the form of scripted products.


    Cover image credit: S. D’Halloy – Image & Co | MIPTV

  • PSB in the Digital Age
    Vol. 8 No. 16 (2019)

    Public Service Broadcasting in the Digital Age

     

    Co-edited by Jérôme Bourdon, Mette Charis Buchman and Peter B. Kaufman


    This special issue proposes a reexamination of public service broadcasting (PSB) in the light of the most recent technological, political and economic developments. Traditional public service broadcasters, ideally designed to serve citizens rather than consumers to inform the national conversations in well-informed democracies, face the double challenge of commercialization (since the 1980s) and digitization (since the 1990s). The question of their survival in this context has been posed again and again. The need for a redefinition seems inevitable.

     

    Cover: Screenshots from The Mind of the Universe (VPRO, 2017)

  • Material Histories of Television
    Vol. 8 No. 15 (2019)

    Material Histories of Television
    Co-edited by John Ellis and Dana Mustata

    Television’s material culture offers a starting point into this exploration of television’s current status. Artefacts and material traces are imbued with social relations. They unearth for us the web of users, uses and meanings associated to television, both in its historical and present form. This edition of VIEW explores many ways in which television’s material heritage can be repurposed or exploited, bringing to the fore new emergent uses for this older medium.

     

    Cover: Dave Taylor with a Pye PC80 camera in the early 1970s and again in 2017

  • Cover issue 14 featuring the significant Italian pedagogue Alberto Manzi on his famous 1960s RAI television show, as annotated with the Semantic Annotation Tool of The Media Ecology Project

    Audiovisual & Digital Humanities
    Vol. 7 No. 14 (2018)

    Audiovisual Data in Digital Humanities


    Co-edited by Andreas Fickers, Pelle Snickars and Mark J. Williams


    This issue of VIEW provides a critical survey of new Digital Humanities methods and tools directed toward audiovisual media. While DH as a field seems dominated by a focus on textual studies, the mandate to improve the capacities to search, discover, and study AV is clear and unquestioned. New and emergent tools are reasonably expected to change this methodological landscape within the digitally accelerated near-future.


    Cover image: the significant Italian pedagogue Alberto Manzi on his famous 1960s RAI television show, as annotated with the Semantic Annotation Tool of The Media Ecology Project

  • Europe’s Audiovisual Heritage
    Vol. 7 No. 13 (2018)

    The Many Lives of Europe’s Audiovisual Heritage

     

    It is our great pleasure to present this special issue in honour of Sonja de Leeuw, one of the founding members of the journal. The issue brings together articles that honour Sonja’s inspiring contributions to television history and television historiography. This special issue of VIEW has been guest-edited by her colleagues at Utrecht University and University of Groningen to mark Sonja's pathbreaking engagement with, and achievements within, the field of digital television heritage.

     

    The launch of this issue coincides with the symposium The Many Lives of Europe's Audiovisual Heritage Online, held at Utrecht University on May 16th, 2018, the day of Sonja's farewell lecture. Support comes from the projects MediaDNA & DARIAH-EU.

  • 1968 in the Media
    Vol. 6 No. 12 (2017)

    1968 in the Media


    Co-edited by the FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission

     

    On March 20, 2017 EUscreen and the FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission organized a joint seminar about ‘1968 in the Media’. The Media Studies Seminar was devoted to the media coverage of different political and social events that took place in 1968 across the globe. The day was split in four panel sessions with different perspectives: Politics of Representation chaired by Lisa Kerrigan (British Film Institute), Researching 1968: Stories, Perspectives and Sources chaired by Dana Mustata (University of Groningen), Filming 1968 chaired by Andy O’Dwyer (University of Luxembourg) and Curating Histories chaired by Liam Wylie (RTÉ Archives). In this short, special issue, we present a selection of invited papers on the topic of '1968 in the Media’. 

  • History of Europe’s Commercial TV
    Vol. 6 No. 11 (2017)

    History of Private and Commercial Television in Europe


    Co-edited by Luca Barra, Christoph Classen, and Sonja De Leeuw


    The history of European televisions’ commercialization is interesting and complex. In many European countries, early attempts to launch some form of private television took place on a local, national, or even supra-national basis. The process of television commercialization in Europe didn’t just start during the 1980s. Its implementation happened from the very beginning, and followed very different paths in each country. This issue on the History of Private and Commercial Television in Europe may help deepen our understanding of how the commercialization of television has shaped media culture in Europe. It offers a scholarly view on the history of private and commercial television in Europe, addressing institutional, technological, political, and cultural perspectives, and their entanglement, so as to allow for transnational comparison.

  • Non-fiction Transmedia
    Vol. 5 No. 10 (2016)

    Non-fiction Transmedia


    Co-edited by Arnau Gifreu-Castells, Richard Misek and Erwin Verbruggen


    Interactive digital media have greatly affected the logics of production, exhibition and reception of non-fiction audiovisual works, leading to the emergence of a new area called “interactive and transmedia non-fiction”. One of its key points is that it can deal with factual material in such a way that it influences and transforms the real world around us. With this issue we aim to offer a scholarly perspective on the emergence of transmedia forms, their technological and aesthetic characteristics, the types of audience engagement they engender, the possibilities they create for engagement with archival content, the technological predecessors that they may or may not have emerged from, and the institutional and creative milieux in which they thrive.

     

    Cover image credit: Gebrüder Beetz Filmproduktion / Artline Films

  • TV Formats
    Vol. 5 No. 9 (2016)

    TV Formats and Format Research: Theory, methodology, history and new developments


    Co-edited by John Ellis, Andrea Esser, and Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano


    During the last 15 years format research has grown into a notable, distinct field of academic investigation alongside the dramatic expansion of the trade in TV formats.

     

    This special issue of VIEW builds on existing format scholarship to deepen our understanding of the history and the continuing growth of the TV format business from a European perspective.

     

    Cover image credit: © FremantleMedia Spain

  • Archive-Based Productions
    Vol. 4 No. 8 (2015)

    Archive-Based Productions


    Co-edited by Claude Mussou and Mette Charis Buchman


    In 1927, when Esfir Schub released her commissioned film The fall of the Romanov Dynasty to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, she hardly knew that her extensive use of film footage and newsreels of the event would mark the invention of a new ‘genre’: the archive-based production or compilation genre. Television has adopted this genre, but audiovisual archives have fuelled a wide array of programmes and genres beyond compilation productions.


    Government, business, broadcast and film archives as well as amateur collections and home videos are commonly used to spark memories and re-enact events from the past in various contexts. They are made widely accessible and re-used in traditional broadcast productions or given a second life in digital environments through online circulation.

     

    In this issue of VIEW, scholars, archivists, and other media practitioners consider, highlight and elaborate on the use and re-use of moving image archives in various productions.

     

    Cover image credit: DR Kulturarvsprojekt and Martin Luckman

  • TV Archaeologies
    Vol. 4 No. 7 (2015)

    Archaeologies of Tele-Visions and -Realities


    Co-edited by Andreas Fickers and Anne-Katrin Weber


    This issue presents archaeological inquiries into the multiple pasts of tele-visions. It aims to assess the many lives of television and highlights from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives what has shaped television as a technical infrastructure, political and social institution, cultural phenomenon and business model.

     

    Cover image credit: Solinda Keth.

  • Convergent Television(s)
    Vol. 3 No. 6 (2014)

    Convergent Television(s)

     

    Co-edited by Gabriele Balbi and Massimo Scaglioni


    The history of media convergence, especially of convergent television, is a field that needs to be further investigated. Media convergence is often considered a taken-for-granted phenomenon, a kind of ‘irresistible’ force that has changed and is continuously changing media ecosystems. Furthermore, it seems to be mainly an American phenomenon because it has involved US politics and companies and because the most relevant reflections and publications on this topic come from American scholars.

     

    This issue of VIEW tries to deal with this complex and polysemic concept from different points of view, adopting several theoretical and methodological frameworks. It attempts to counteract some of the aforementioned taken-for-granted ideas, analyzing TV convergence from a historical and long-term perspective, considering symmetrical case studies of success and failures, concentrating on the European dimension through the lens of transnational, comparative, and national contributions.

  • (Post)Socialist TV Histories
    Vol. 3 No. 5 (2014)

    Television Histories in (Post)Socialist Europe


    Co-edited by the European (Post)Socialist Television History Network


    While recent comparative and transnational approaches in the field of European television history have demonstrated the need for (post)socialist television histories in Europe, there is currently limited scholarship dedicated to this geopolitical area of television in Europe. This area of study has mostly been relegated to the margins of other disciplines and remained isolated by national languages inaccessible to non-native scholars.

     

    This issue is guest edited at the initiative of the European (Post)Socialist Television History Network. It opens up new perspectives on television histories from Eastern Europe and situates this emerging area of study beyond the political histories of the nation-state, Cold War isolation and East-West antagonism.


    Cover image credit: Edyta Wojtczak. Photo by Jerzy Troszczyński, Filmoteka Narodowa.

  • Hidden Professions of Television
    Vol. 2 No. 4 (2013)

    Hidden Professions of Television


    Co-edited by Andy O'Dwyer and Tim O'Sullivan


    We know little about the ‘behind the scenes’ of television. While the booming field of production studies has been shining a light on the work processes and the personnel in production spaces, there is still a lot to be learnt about the ‘hidden’ professions of television. This issue of VIEW provides a rich but fairly eclectic series of contributions based on the theme. The articles presented here bring under scrutiny the ‘behind the scenes’ activities of television and their hidden, often unrecognised and uncelebrated personnel and processes. They engage across a wide range of organisational, administrative and technical activities that have played their understated, often ‘invisible’ part in the historical formation and development of television.

     

    Just like in the previous issues, articles in this issue are divided across two separate sections: ‘Discoveries’ that zoom into the ‘behind the scenes’ of specific programmes and broadcasters and use innovative and original sources; and ‘Explorations’ that shine a light on different professions of television: from the continuity announcers, to the 1st AD, to the TV retailer or audience interpreters.

     

    Cover image credit: 1950, at BBC Alexandra Palace. Picture shows Eunice Gayson and Jeanette Tregarthan in make up. 

  • European Television Memories
    Vol. 2 No. 3 (2013)

    European Television Memories


    Co-edited by Jérôme Bourdon and Berber Hagedoorn


    In the context of the fast development of memory studies, the third issue of VIEW: Journal of European Television History and Culture highlights debates around the moving borders of national memories, fostered by television in the context of European history.

     

    The articles in this issue focus on the contribution of European television researchers, covering all three areas of media studies (production, text and reception), and touch upon a broad range of topics including: the reconstruction of the national past after regime changes (in both Southern and Eastern Europe); competing versions of the “same” past; the fragile fostering of a European identity; and the regional/would be national past. The issue emphasizes the different uses (ethnographic, historical) of life-stories of television viewers and hints at the possible changes to memory formation brought about by television in the post-network, digital era. Finally, this issue charts the field of European television memories, but will also suggest ways it can be researched further, both nationally and transnationally.

     

    Cover image credit: © Special collection Bibliothèque Forney

  • Europe on and Behind the Screens
    Vol. 1 No. 2 (2012)

    Europe on and Behind the Screens

     

    Co-edited by the VIEW editorial board


    This second issue of VIEW enables a discussion of European television through different themes, approaches and case studies. The Discovery articles zoom in on case studies from different corners of Europe, while the Explorations offer different approaches to writing Europe’s television history and advancing theoretical discussions in the field.


    Cover image credit: Philips Television Month - June / July 1954, window poster: "See 8 Countries... During one whole month!"

  • Making Sense of Digital Sources
    Vol. 1 No. 1 (2012)

    Making Sense of Digital Sources


    Co-edited by the EUscreen Conference Board


    This first issue of the Journal of European Television History and Culture follows up on the central theme of the first international EUscreen conference held in Rome in October 2010.

     

    The articles reunited in this first issue explicitly address the challenges of contextualising television material online and touch upon such a broad variety of questions as: the ontological status of digitised sources, analysing and interpreting them, how online access to audiovisual sources affects historical storytelling and whether the “archival turn” shapes a new historical consciousness for our European cultural heritage.

     

    Cover image credit: Arhiva TVR