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Ownership and Control of the Media - Coggle Diagram
Ownership and Control of the Media
Hegemonic/ Neo Marxists
Agree with traditional Marxists that media transmits the ideology of the ruling class.
Suggest this is due to editors and reporters coming from ruling class backgrounds rather than owners controlling media content.
people employed to fit in with values of the organisation and these are set by the owners- media groups have particular ideological and political views.
Cultural factors not economic factors.
Glasgow University Media Group
GUMG found that majority of those in editor and senior reporter roles have similar backgrounds.
Largely Oxbridge education, white, mc backgrounds are dominant mainstream media.
51% of journalists from private schoools compared to 7% of the population
They protect the views of the establishment as they are part of it, so less likely to be critical of the same people as their own backgrounds
Agenda Setting
Media are able to set the parameters of what is in the public interest and this usually reflects the needs of the elite.
Such as the ignorance of poverty, and the focus on the economy.
Shift focus from social issues that conflict with privileged position of the elite onto issues that support their right to be in power.
The News- hearing from police instead of criminals.
Gramsci and Hegemony
Establishment of hegemonic ideas in social institutions- education, religion- leads individual journalists with ideology of ruling class
Middle of the road, centrists ideas promoted by media with radical or revolutionary ideas perceived as dangerous.
DIssenting voices as outliers in society rather than a reflection of the diversity of opinion.
Criticisms
Traditional Marxists argue journalists are subject to micro-management from owners and their political ideologies.
Whale argues that media reflects the demands of the audience- what is produced is a reflection of popular culture (PLuralist)
Critics argue in contemporary society there are a wide range of media sources and those in demand are reflection of population’s views.
Instrumentalist/ Manipulative
Media is dictated by those who own it.
Controlled by the ruling class.
Because of this, the media is used to dictate the poltical ideas in society, reflecting their own position in society.
Entertainment is a distraction from people thinking critically about improtant poltiical issues.
The News often dismisses radical points of view
Journalists are not free to pursue stories that conflict with ideological position of owners.
Milliband
Media played an important role in reproducing and legitimising
false class consciousness
Media owners have similar ideas that they transmit through controling content.
Issues are simplified and audience is not given full information.
Passive audience accepts information as if it were fact rather than critically analysing the source of media.
The media does not encourage people to be critical of capitalism.
Media representations of wealth are on the whole very positive.
Reinforcing dominant ideologies
Media owners can pick and choose soreness they publish, which often present one-sided account on social issues.
Entertainment programming is often dumbed down (
Barnett and Weymour
) as a distraction from the alienation and exploitation that individuals face.
Important social issues such as inequality are ignored.
Concentration of media ownership
Owners support the need to capitalism, promoting consumption
Political ties of owners mean rarely promote critical views of those that share similar ideologies, viewed with Tony Blair’s relationship with Rupert Murdoch.
Support for the Iraq War in 2003.
Spreads myth of meritocracy
The audience is passive and easily manipulated
Tunstall and Palmer
claim that governments are unwilling to regulate media concentrated ownership as it benefits them.
Pluralist
Modern capitalist societies are democratic, all interests given a media platform to express their views to the electorate.
Market Model
The free market and pursuit of profit supersedes imposition of poltiical will. Owners compete for viewership as audiences exercise consumer sovereignty (freedom of choice)
Diversification of the global media marketplace into segments means that corporations have limited influence on a mass audience.
Media producers tailor products to appeal to certain social groups, further empowering the consumer as they can acccess more diverse media products.
Audience choices can fail a product such as the Blackberry.
Media products are expensive to produce so ‘economies of scale’ to limit costs and maximise profits exist so media conglomeration is merely economic.
Whale
says ‘media owners have global problems of trade and investment to occupy their minds’.
Democratic Mirror
All point of view in society are created for as there is such a diverse variety of media products.
If some viewpoints have a greater range of media representing them, it is not necessarily biased, and is reflective of what the audience wants or what is improtant to them.
Public Service Broadcasting
Significant share of the UK media market is taken up by media outlets controlled by the state (impartiality)
The BBC was set up by a Royal charter in 1926 with a legal obligation to provide specific services.
Some argue BBC is losing PSB status by losing its audiences to satellite TV, so has become more commercialised and populist.
Pluralists argue BBC simply has to offer more choice such as setting up an internet news site to compete with Sky.
Regulation
Media owners are subject to government control such as the restriction of vertical integration and cross-ownership rules.
Ofcom is a pwoerful regulator, monitoring the content of BBC and commercial channels.
Media Professionalism
Journalist and editorial professionalism argues they would never compromise their independence as they have too mcuh integrity.
Investigative journalism often targets those in pwoer such as the Watergate Scandal in 1972.
Matt Hancock affair.
Evaluation
Curran
argues that media owners have undermined newspaper independence as conforming to owners’ requirements rewards them with promotions or interesting assignments.
Feminists argue that it is male-dominated whihc is not proportional to the wider representation of women such as sexual objectification.
Some people are given more of an opportunity to voice an opinion than others- thus it is not democratic.
Patterns of Media Ownership
Marxists and neomarxists argue that the control fo the media is by very few usually middle class.
Pluralists and PM express a diverse range.
Three media companies, DMG Media, News UK, and Reach dominate 90% of the national newspaper market, up from 83% in 2019.
Facebook (Meta) controls three of the top five social media services used to access online news in UK.
Increase in consumption of tabloids, opposed to broadsheets which counters the neomarxist ideologies thateditors and reporters only publish in the interests of the ruling class.
Pluralists argue that widespread readership reflects the demand of audiences,. Loyalties to certain media brands is stil allowed through digitalisation.
Curran
argues the presence of ‘press barons’.
Factors Increasing Media Ownership Concentration
Vertical Integration
One company owns all the stages of media products
Horizontal Integration
A company diversifies to own more than one type of media.
Lateral Expansion
Media operations branch out to non-media products such as Virgin Media
Global Conglomerates
Companies in one country buy up companies in other countries such as NewsCorp.
Synergy
A media product is sold in different forms such as books, films, spin-off TV series and soundtracks.
Technical Convergence
Traditional media companies partner with IT companies.
Doyle
argues that the concentration of media ownership is dangerous as a threat to democracy and abuses of power can go unnoticed.
Postmodernist
Postmodern society is media-saturated
Trowler
Baudrillard
Hyper-reality audiences are emerged in so much information they find it difficult to distinguish between real life and the media version.
Trowler
said media messages are polysemic
Individuals are becoming producers not just consumers in pace of global corporations.
Postmodernism underpinned by globalisation
Media transnational have used communications to remove the distinction between global and local to increase consumer choice.
Postmodern society is sceptical
No faith in absolute truths , which is both unattainable and irrelevant, stressing the relativity of knowledge
Levene
diversity of choice means that consumers can actively reject or challenge meta-narratives