Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

My research looks at media content through a trade perspective with India as a sample space. Key highlights of my study are one, as media content is not a tangible commodity it tends to flow freely across the boundaries without any export and import cost which makes it easy for the foreign players like Netflix to export more and more content free of charge. Two, as media content is not covered under the anti-dumping laws, the cost of the content provided by the foreign players are subsidised. For instance, Amazon Prime India provides membership at the cost of 129 rupees with the provision of unlimited streaming of newly released movies, while the price of watching a film at the theatre is around 200 to 900 rupees which makes it an unfair competition. Three, comparing the quality of the content, the foreign player tends to produce more standard content though it is a Eurocentric way of accessing a commodity, on the other hand for instance budget of Hollywood production is great than domestic production as the market for the Hollywood content is global. The methodology of this qualitative research involves secondary data analysis. Though my research tends to criticise the emergence of foreign players into the country, still it tries to strike a balance by stating that foreign direct investment is vital for the countries development.