This document outlines the assignments for a media studies course, including weekly questions, a Business Model Canvas assignment, and a SWOT analysis. For the weekly questions, students are asked to discuss the career paths and experiences of guest speakers, as well as changes in the media landscape. The Business Model Canvas assignment requires students to analyze a media company or startup using the nine categories of the BMC framework. They must submit a paper of 1,500-1,800 words analyzing the company. For the SWOT analysis, students are asked to evaluate their own intended media career, project, or idea by identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in three factors for each category. They must submit an analysis of 900-

1. Making Media:
The Assignments

2. •weekly questions for the Q&A
•Business Model Canvas assignment
•SWOT assignment
•multiple choice exam
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3. Weekly questions
• Career ambitions, path and choices of the guests
• Challenges, perks and experiences having to do with
their current position or job
• Changes in the media landscape and industry at large
(also related to the literature and lecture of the week)

4. Avoid generic questions
What is your advice to young people pursuing their
dreams in media production?

5. Business Model Canvas (BMC)

6. • Business Model: an abstracted and simplified view of
an organization’s architecture
• Osterwalder & Pigneur: ‘A business model describes
the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers
and captures value’
• Business Model Canvas: a canvas on which every
business model can be based
• Business Model Generation. A Handbook For
Visionaries, Game Changers, And Challengers (2010)
by Alex Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur

8. Business Model Canvas

9. BMC Assignment
Pick a media company or start-up (in one of the
main media industries) and analyse this
company using the Business Model Canvas
Research the company, using as sources: course
readings, scholarly work, news articles and
reports, company publications, year reports and
relevant blogposts or social media posts
Another additional research option: interviews
Form a group (maximum of 3 students)

11. Business Model Canvas
What’s compelling about the
proposition of the company?
Why do customers buy, use?

12. Business Model Canvas
Who are the customers?
What do they think? Do?

13. Business Model Canvas
How are the propositions
promoted, sold and delivered?

14. Business Model Canvas
How does the company
interact with the customer?

15. Business Model Canvas
How does the company earn
revenue?

16. Business Model Canvas
What strategic things does the
company do to deliver its
proposition?

17. Business Model Canvas
What strategic assets must the
company have to compete?

18. Business Model Canvas
What does the company let
other partners do so it can
focus on its Key Activities?

19. Business Model Canvas
What are the company’s major
cost drivers?

20. For more information,
read the BMC handout

21. The paper should contain
• a short introduction of the company
• separate paragraphs on all nine categories of
the BMC
• write each category up in the form of an
analysis, not as bullet points
Minimum of 1500, maximum of 1800 words
Deadline: March 1

22. common problems of start-ups

23. Naldi & Picard (2012)
• most media startup enterprises:
• have poor business plans
• have limited access to capital
• rely on mixed sources of funding
• entrepreneurs launching new ventures lack
reference points and close competitors
• prior knowledge and experience can hinder novel
thinking and behavior

26. Common problems of start-ups
• need for a better thought out structure of the BMC
• need for a clearer focus and vision
• not enough time, people, budget and resources
• not enough engagement with customers/public
• not enough presence on social media
• not enough of a competitive edge compared to the
competition
• not enough insight in the best practices elsewhere
• not enough insight in future developments and
scenarios (and consequences for the start up)

27. 9. Transformation and Innovation of
Media Business Models
Mikko Villi and Robert Picard
10. Shifts in Consumer Engagement
and Media Business Models
Sylvia Chan-Olmsted and Rang Wang

28. SWOT Assignment
Conduct a Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-
Threats analysis of your own intended:
• media career
• media start-up
• media project
• media format
• media platform
• innovative media tool
• et cetera

29. The analysis should contain
• a reflection on what inspired your idea
• a brief description of your idea
• three factors per category:
 Strengths
 Weaknesses
 Opportunities
 Threats

30. • Specific skills and
expertise
• Network
• Resource
availability
• Gaps in knowledge
and expertise
• Lack of long term
funding
• Lack of focus
• Technological and
infrastructural
developments
• Changing consumer
behavior
• Emerging markets
• Technological
developments
• Competitor activity
• Regulations

31. For more information,
check out
the guides and examples

32. Not just bullet points:
provide underlying arguments
and analysis, based on field
research, course literature and
other relevant literature
Minimum of 900, maximum of 1200 words
Deadline: March 15

33. 16. Precarity in Media Work
Penny O’Donnell and Lawrie Zion
17. Making It in a Freelance World
Nicole S. Cohen
19. Labour and the Next Internet
Vincent Mosco

34. Questions?