Streaming, Small Nations, and the Nordic Model: The Impact of Global Platforms on National Film Policies

This article examines how audiovisual industry stakeholders in Finland, Denmark, and Norway framed cultural sovereignty versus economic pragmatism during final consultations on AVMSD Article 13(2) implementation. Applying qualitative comparative analysis informed by stakeholder theory, the study analyses consultation submissions across six stakeholder categories: global streamers, domestic broadcasters, telecom operators, producer associations, talent guilds, and film institutes. Findings reveal that producers and guilds consistently mobilised cultural-sovereignty repertoires emphasising intellectual property retention and small-nation vulnerability, while platforms deployed economic-pragmatism arguments stressing administrative burden and proportionality. Broadcasters occupied hybrid positions. Significantly, the analysis demonstrates that small-nation fragility functions not only as structural condition, but as flexible discursive resource invoked by both advocates and opponents of platform obligations in the discursive governance. The study contributes to Nordic media policy scholarship by connecting small-nation cinema research to platform governance debates, while refining stakeholder theory for small-state contexts where vulnerability itself becomes argumentative currency.