Book chapter
Location as Soft Power in the Media Services Industry: The Case of 'Hollywood East'
Locating Media Industries, pp.25-41
Routledge
2026
DOI: 10.4324/9781003498445-3
Abstract
This chapter draws on work on 'local Hollywoods', which has examined how locales around the world seek to attract foreign media production capital through offering tax breaks, cheap labour, low regulation and versatile locations. The focus is on the specific 'soft power' efforts of cultural diplomacy in illiberal Hungary, which is also one of the busiest production hubs for international productions. Based on extensive fieldwork by both authors, this chapter shows how soft power is generated from a service production sector where national space is almost completely erased. This is largely due to the work of official and unofficial cultural 'diplomats', including studio heads, producers, directors and leaders of state cultural institutions, many of whom come from the world of international diplomacy. The chapter shows how these cultural translators transform invisible places into projections that align with both state nationalist discourses and Hollywood genre codes. The latter is demonstrated with reference to recent spy thriller productions shot in Budapest.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Location as Soft Power in the Media Services Industry: The Case of 'Hollywood East'
- Creators
- Timothy HavensTimothy HavensAnikó ImreAnikó Imre
- Contributors
- Paul McDonald (Editor)Christopher Meir (Editor)Andrew Spicer (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Locating Media Industries, pp.25-41
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781003498445-3
- Publisher
- Routledge; London
- Alternative title
- Location as Soft Power in the Media Services Industry
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2026
- Academic Unit
- African American Studies; Communication Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9985164715802771
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