User:Tuh00694/Ramon Lobato (media and communication)

Ramon Lobato is an author, researcher, and professor of media and communication at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He serves as a Senior Research Fellow with the Technology, Communication, and Policy Lab at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University. Lobato's research includes media markets, accessibility to streaming services, distribution of digital content, piracy, and media infrastructures.

Education
Lobato earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Film/Cinema/Video Studies from the University of Melbourne. After graduating from the Honors program in 2006, Lobato received his Doctor of Philosophy in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Melbourne in 2010. In 2013, he obtained his Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching from Swinburne University.

Career
Before his career in research, Lobato worked as an Editorial Coordinator for Beat Magazine, an entertainment magazine, in Melbourne, Australia from 2000 to 2001. In this role, Lobato served as a music reporter. He then joined Sensis, a marketing and advertising company in Melbourne, as an Associate Editor. Lobato worked in that position from 2003 to 2006.

Lobato became a PhD Researcher in 2006 while enrolled in the Doctor of Philosophy program at the University of Melbourne. His PhD thesis, titled, "Subcinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution," examines the distribution of movies on an international scale. After receiving his doctoral degree, Lobato transitioned to Swinburne University of Technology as a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Social Research. In this role, Lobato was heavily involved in several projects pertaining to media policies and technologies. Lobato also taught in the Cinema and Screen Studies program and developed the Cinema Studies and Global Screen Studies units. He created an integrated seminar class in the School of Arts, Social Science and Humanities as well. This training for graduate students focuses on research methods. In 2017, Lobato became a Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University.

Lobato co-founded the Global Internet TV Consortium with Amanda Lotz, a media studies professor at Queensland University of Technology and Peabody Media Center fellow. The research site aims to gather and analyze studies from various media scholars based on the effects of television and movie streaming services, such as Netflix, on a global scale.

In addition, Lobato works as an editor for the Media Industries Journal, a peer-reviewed journal that promotes critical studies and analyses of global media markets and regulations, and serves on the editorial board for the International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Publications
Lobato has published several novels and edited collections regarding video streaming and distribution platforms. His first book, Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution (British Film Institute, 2012), discusses how movies are commonly distributed and obtained through shadow economies and how these methods affect global media industries. This book received the Best International Film Studies from the Udine Film Forum in 2013.

Amateur Media: Social, Cultural, and Legal Perspectives (Routledge, 2013) offers critical analyses of amateur media pre-and post-Web 2.0 from various media scholars.

The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015), co-authored by Julian Thomas, the Director of the Swinburne Institute for Social Research and a media and communications professor, investigates the grey market and its relationship with formal media distributors.

Geoblocking and Global Video Culture (Institute of Network Cultures, 2016) analyzes media streaming and markets on a global scale. The collection studies platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, and Periscope and discusses the cultural impact these applications have on international markets and audiences. The collection is co-edited by James Meese, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. This study was published as a part of Lobato's Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award and fellowship through the Australian Research Council from 2015 to 2017.

His latest work, Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution (New York University Press, 2019), details Netflix's complex infrastructure to distribute media to a global audience. For example, in chapter three of Netflix Nations, titled "Infrastructures of Streaming," Lobato identifies the complicated infrastructure of Netflix and how the company ensures that its content exists wherever possible, technologically and culturally. He analyzes how Netflix is not a singular system, but rather is built upon many others systems to maintain its status of a global media content provider.

=== Books ===


 * Netflix Nations (New York University Press, 2019)
 * Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution (British Film Institute, 2012)
 * The Informal Media Economy (with Julian Thomas, Polity, 2015)

Edited Collections

 * Amateur Media: Social, Cultural, and Legal Perspectives (with Dan Hunter, Megan Richardson, and Julian Thomas, Routledge, 2013)
 * Geoblocking and Global Video Culture (with James Meese, Institute of Network Cultures, 2016)

Critical Reception
Lobato's first book, Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution, was well-received by critics, as scholar Hayley Trowbridge from the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool wrote, "What Lobato achieves in this chapter is an analysis of the complexities of piracy and through this brings piracy into the discussion of contemporary film distribution, elevating its status to the same level that more formal, legitimate methods of distribution have been afforded in the discipline of film studies...Lobato successfully argues that informal methods of film distribution should be afforded the same standing and critical attention in discussions of film distribution as more formal methods, with the many faces of piracy being symptomatic of some of these informal methods."

Lobato and Thomas's book, The Informal Media Economy, was applauded by critics, as Tom Evens, an assistant professor in Media, Innovation, and Communication Technologies at Ghent University, states, "The main contribution of this fascinating book is that it focuses on informal media, which have largely been neglected in traditional media and communications research, and debunks a range of clichés about the informal media economy...It therefore enriches how we think about contemporary (media) industries by providing a deeper understanding of the dynamics and possibilities of the informal media economy."

Lobato's latest book, Netflix Nations, also received praise from critics, as Luzhou Li, professor in the School of Media, Film, and Journalism at Monash University, wrote, "For scholars and students interested in digital media industries, global media studies, and television studies after TV, this is an essential text, a rich and fascinating account of how emerging media institutions, technologies, and practices are transforming a medium once known as television." The Washington Book Review also stated, "It is one of the first studies of the global geography of online television distribution that explores the digital media landscape and how the internet's capacity for world distribution of television clashes with national media trade, and taste and moral values...This well-researched, nuanced, and brilliantly-written will [change] the way you think of media, globalization, and power."

Accolades
Lobato has earned several awards and grants for his work throughout the years. He has also received two fellowships through the Australian Research Council from 2011-2014 and 2015-2017.

2011

 * Australian Research Council Discovery Project and Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship, "Informal Economies and Audiovisual Industries" (2011-2014, with Thomas, Cunningham, Hunter)

2013

 * Best International Film Studies from the Udine Film Forum for Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution

2014

 * Dean's Award for Outstanding Research from Swinburne University

2015

 * Faculty ECR Award for Research Excellence from Swinburne University
 * Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellowship, "Geoblocking, circumvention, and the organisation of digital media markets"

2016

 * Outstanding Young Scholar award from the International Communication Association Popular Communication Division
 * Australian Research Council Linkage Project, "Music Usage Metrics and the Future of the Australian Music Industry" (with Wikstrom et al, 2016-2018)

Additional Publications
Lobato has also written numerous journal articles that analyze video streaming, distribution platforms, and other similar topics on a global scale. These articles have been published in various journals, books, and edited collections.

A-E

 * "A Sideways View of the Film Economy in an Age of Digital Piracy" (in NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, 2012)
 * "An Introduction to Informal Media Economies" (with Julian Thomas, Television & New Media, 2012)
 * "Australia: Circumvention Goes Mainstream" (with James Meese, Institute of Network Cultures, 2016)
 * "Chinese Video Streaming Services in the Context of Global Platform Studies" (with Wilfred Yang Wang, Chinese Journal of Communication, 2019)
 * "Crimes Against Urbanity: The Concrete Soul of Michael Mann" (Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2008)
 * "Communication Networks, Cities, and the Informal Economies" (Cities, Cultural Policy and Governance, 2012)
 * "Constructing the Pirate Audience: On Popular Copyright Critique, Free Culture and Cyber-Libertarianism" (Media International Australia, 2011)
 * "Creative Industries and Informal Economies: Lessons from Nollywood" (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2010)
 * "Cultures of Sharing in 3D Printing: What Can We Learn from the License Choices of Thingiverse Users?" (with Allen et al, Journal of Peer Production, 2011)

F-L

 * "Gentrification, Cultural Policy and Live Music in Melbourne" (Sage Journals, 2006)
 * "Histories of User-Generated Content: Between Formal and Informal Media Economies" (with Julian Thomas and Dan Hunter, International Journal of Communications, 2015)
 * "Informal Mobile Economies" (with Julian Thomas, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, 2014)
 * "Informal Translation, Post-Cinema and Global Media Flows" (with Tessa Dwyer, The State of Post-Cinema: Tracing the Moving Image in the Age of Digital Dissemination, 2016)
 * "Internet-Distributed Television Research: A Provocation" (with Amanda Lotz and Julian Thomas, Media Industries, 2018)
 * "Introduction: The New Video Geography" (in Geoblocking and Global Video Culture, 2016)
 * "Invisible Audiences for Australian Films? Cinema and Its Many Publics" (Australian Teachers of Media, 2009)
 * "Living and Labouring as a Music Writer" (with Lawson Fletcher, Cultural Studies Review, 2013)

M-S

 * "Piracy and Promotion: Understanding the Double-Edged Power of Crowds" (Film Marketing into the Twenty-First Century, 2015)
 * "Prestige and Professionalisation at the Margins of the Journalistic Field: The Case of Music Writers" (with Lawson Fletcher, Amateur Media, 2013)
 * "Rescaling" (Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, 2018)
 * "Rethinking Genre Studies Through Distribution Analysis: Issues in International Horror Movie Circuits" (with Mark Ryan, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2011)
 * "Rethinking International TV Flows Research in the Age of Netflix" (Television & New Media, 2018)
 * "Streaming Services and the Changing Global Geography of Television" (Handbook on Geographies of Technology, 2017)

T-Z

 * "Television Device Ecologies, Prominence and Datafication: The Neglected Importance of the Set-Top Box" (with David Hesmondhalgh, Media Culture and Society, 2019)
 * "The Business of Anti-Piracy: New Zones of Enterprise in the Copyright Wars" (with Julian Thomas, International Journal of Communications, 2012)
 * "The Cultural Logic of Digital Intermediaries: YouTube Multichannel Networks (MCNs)" (Convergence, 2016)
 * "The Cyberlocker Gold Rush: Tracking the Rise of File-Hosting Sites as Media Distribution Platforms" (with Leah Tang, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2014)
 * "The Middle-Aged Mobile" (Australian Policy Online, 2013)
 * "The Paradoxes of Piracy" (Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South, 2014)
 * "The Politics of Digital Distribution: Exclusionary Structures in Online Cinema" (Studies in Australasian Cinema, 2010)
 * "The Streaming Wars" (with James Meese, Australian Policy Online, 2016)
 * "Writing about Streaming Portals: The Drama of Distribution" (Writing About Screen Media, 2019)