Media Ownership Concentration, and Democracy

Ana Paulina Morales Apodaca 145645

Gabriela Matías Valencia 146852

Pily Galindo Papaqui 146370

Andrea Zavala Núñez 147525

Diana Michelle Chayo Ferreyro 146444

Andrés Muñoz Alarcón 144256

Media ownership

Media industries

Publich sphere: Internet

Political economy

Monopolize the ownership and distribution of cultural events

Global capitalism

Media haves and media-have-nots

Media ownership The progressively more concentrated nature of mass media by a small number of

transnational multimedia conglomerates.

The fact that these transnational conglomerates, control or have substantial interest in both media and non-media companies.

The continued shrinkage of the mass media’s publich sphere role arising from greater concentration and conglomeration

The consequences for news, current affairs and investigative journalism, given the macro shift towards entretainment, populism and “infataiment”

The redifinition of audiences as consumers rather than citizens.

The unequal acces to both media content and media technologies.

The political economic power of individual media moguls

Community/ not-for-profit-media

Local radio, e-zines, blogs or newsletter. Organized on a non-profit by a specific interest groups such as a women’s collective or an ethnic minority group.

Public or state-owned media

Controls newspaper, tv and radio- Ideological role to play.

Controls the issuing of broadcast licenses, it determines how much air time should be given over the publich broadcasting and it regulates how much air time can be expanded on advertising or sponsorhip

Private owned media organization

Controlled by companies or individuals, families, shareholders or companies.

Conglomeration, concentration and content.

Contraction of public sphere

The rise of “infontaiment”

The decline of much media work

The homogenizing tendencies

O’Sullivan

“The search for profit is seen as the key arbiter of what is produced in the media, first in the economic sense of achieving surplus reveneu and secondly in the ideological sense of the values and beliefs which support capitalism”-Ideology

Concentration and conglomerism

Conglomeration: Operates at the local, regional, national and transnational levels. Allocative control: Determines the overall direction of the media. Operational control: Decision on content and budget of specific program.

Vertical and horizontal integration

Vertical: Companies involved in production and distribution of a specific land of media.

Horizontal: “Refers to the process by which one company buys different kinds of media, concentrating ownership across different types of media rather than “up and down” through one industry.

=

Synergy

Throw- “The co-ordination of parts of a company so that the whole actually turns out to be worth more than the sum of its parts acting alone, without helping one another”

The political economic perspective

McQuail defines it as a “critical approach that focuses on the relation between the economic structure and dynamics of media industries and the ideological content of media”.

Media content selected

Ownership structure changes: Implications

Implications of concentration and conglomerations

Importance of the examination of the media owner

Why is this theory important?

Two key tasks of the perspective:

1. Examine the relationship between structures of ownership and cultural production.

2. Access to the growing number of media producers is being very privatized. The access of media technologies is not equal.

Habermas and public sphere.

As we are involved in a public sphere, it is important to question which public sphere it is and whose interests it has.

According to Jurgen Habermas there are 3 types of public sphere in society:

Private sphere

Sphere of public authority

Burgoise public sphere

The internet as a public sphere

Discussions created online

Weaknesses

“Rich Media, Poor Democracy"

Dos paradojas masivas

Es una época de avances deslumbrantes en comunicación e información tecnológica

Cada vez se encuentra más despolitizada la sociedad, las nociones tradicionales de los asuntos cívicos y políticos ha disminuido.

Medios comerciales gozan de privilegios

Los medios de comunicación juegan un papel central en la prestación de la base institucional para tener una ciudadanía informada y participativa.

Los medios de comunicación se han convertido en una fuerza antidemocrática significativa en los EE.UU. y en diferentes grados en todo el mundo. Los gigantes de los medios de comunicación corporativos más ricos y poderosos han convertido la mas pobre perspectiva de la democracia participativa

Los medios de comunicación no son la única causa o la principal de la decadencia de la democracia, pero son una parte del problema, y estrechamente vinculado a muchos de los otros factores.

sistema de medios de comunicación se ha convertido en un puñado de manos corporativas y esta concentración acentúa las tendencias principales de un lucro impulsada por los medios de publicidad apoyada sistema

Una reforma de los medios debe dar un explosión de los medios corporativos y la implosión correspondiente de la vida pública

Paradoja - medios ricos pobres democracia.

La paradoja democracia mediática, tiene dos componentes. Por un lado, la naturaleza del sistema de medios de comunicación es lo comercial de las empresas tiene consecuencias nefastas para nuestra política y la cultura en general. Por otra parte las mismas cuestiones de quién controla el sistema de medios de comunicación y para qué usos político corresponde

Neoliberalismo es un factor principal que explica el auge de los medios corporativos

Se postula que las sociedades funcionan mejor cuando en los negocios cuando hay tan poca posibilidad de interferencia del gobierno en ellos como es posible.

La democracia liberal es una forma de gobierno que consiste en una democracia representativa donde la capacidad de los representantes para la toma de decisiones políticas se encuentra sujeta al Estado de derecho y normalmente moderada por una Constitución que la regula en la protección de los derechos, libertades individuales y colectivas

The Global Media

Purpose: To contribute to an understanding of the economic and political dynamics of growth and the effects of the globalization of the media, while pointing up alternative and arguably more democratic media structures and policies

Media operations abroad are not new

Role of the media

The media provides a link to the larger society and at least indirect connections to other human beings, and in varying degrees a sense of connectedness and solidarity (Herman, E. & McChesney R. , 1997)

POLITICAL LEVEL

Public Sphere: All the places and forums where issues of importance to a political community are discussed and debated, and where information is presented that is essential to citizen participation in community life.

IMPORTANCE: A democratic society depends on an informed populace making political choices

Threats to the Public Sphere

Government control and censorship

Government control over broadcasting through ownership, regulation, and partial funding of public broadcasting services poses serious problems of government intrusion and damage of the public sphere.

Public broadcasters are under direct government control and serve as straightforward propaganda agencies of the controlling party.

Private systems of control: self-censorship

Private systems of media control pose a threat to the public sphere for 2 reasons:1. They rest on ownership control

and therefore will tend to represent a narrow class interest.

2. Privately owned media depend on advertising revenue and must therefore compete for advertiser attention and serve advertiser interests to prosper.

The media/advertisers complex prefers entertainment over cultivation of the public sphere

Media Globalization Effetcs Positive effects

The global media´s competitive pressure on, state controlled broadcasting systems and energized into extending and deeping their services.

There is a flow toward the cultural centers, and horizontal flows within regions as well, that may open new vistas and enhance understanding of different cultures within dominant and subordinate states.

Carrying across borders some of the fundamental values of the West: individualism, skepticism of authority and the rights of women and minorities.

Negative effects

The commercial model has its own internal logic and, being privately owned and relying on advertiser support, tends to erode the public sphere and to create a “culture of entertainment” that is incompatible with a democratic order.

Media outputs are commodified and are designed to serve market ends, not citizenship needs

The central features of the media globalization:1. Larger cross-

border flows of media outputs

2. The growth of media TNCs and the tendency toward centralization of media control

3. The spread and intensification of commercialization.

The New Public Sphere: Global civil society, communication networks and global governance.

• Media have become the major component of the public sphere in the industrial society.

• Inseparable from: institutional construction:

Civil Society and the State

Cultural/informational exchange of ideas feeds the debate which influences the decisions of the state.

Process depending on cultural materials

International arena shaped by relationships between states and global non-state actors.

Globalization and the nation-state

Not everyone is globalized, networks connect and disconnect at the same time. They connect everything that is valuable.

Critical issues are shaped by globally interdependent processes

Global civil society seeks a redefinition of the global system

Political crises:

1.- Crisis of efficiency.

2.- Crisis of legitimacy.

3.- Crisis of identity.

4.- Crisis of equity.

The global civil society

Is a generic label-gathers contradictory and competitive forms of organization and action.

Local Civil Society to face social problems

Rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGO´s)

These organizations function and work through the media

Social Movements

Aim to control the process of globalization

Building networks of action and organization to induce justice.

Zapatistas

Movement of Public Opinion

Turbulences of information in a diversified media system

Spontaneous, autonomous networks of communication. Iraq, 2003

Global governance and the network state

Nation-states inability to confront and manage the processes of globalization

System transformation by 3 mechanisms:

1) Nation-states: networks of states (sovereignty sharing).

2) The built of a network of international institutions and supranational organizations to deal with global issues (general or specialized purposes).

3) States decentralization of power and resources- trying to increase legitimacy or intercept forms of cultural or political commitment through the devolution of power to local governments and to NGO´s, that extend the decision-making.

Network State

Shared sovereignty, responsibility, flexibility of procedures of governance.

Greater diversity in the relationship between governments and citizens in terms of time and space.

Coordination problem: organizational, technical and political.

Confront and ideological and geopolitical problems.

Governments take it as an opportunity to maximize their own interests instead of governing in union as political institutions.

The New Public Sphere

Emerges from the preexisting and previous nation-states, without dissolving them into a global government.

Constituted around the media system

Global and local at the same time

Through the media the non-state actors can influence the minds of the people to induce social change, apart from the institutionalized interests in the political system

References

Herman, E., & McChesney, R. (1997). Introduction. In The global media: The new missionaries of corporate capitalism. London: Cassell