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In this chapter, the main debate is about who controls the media and the question would be formatted similarly to ‘How far __ controls the media?’

Answers could be:

1. Government/state
2. Editors and journalists
3. Media owners, capitalists
4. Consumers

To gain a high mark, more nuance things can be discussed, e.g. how the differences between traditional and new media contribute to the extent of ownership of media, how digital divide, age divide, gender divide contribute to the extent of access to new media, etc

And try to use updated cases and data to make your essay stand out!

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Table of contents

1. Government/State
2. Editors and journalists
3. Media owners, media conglomerates, capitalist ruling class
4. Consumers, public, users

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Government/State

• Authoritarian regimes are often very successful in controling the media
  • In the authoritarian regimes, the state usually seeks to control both the traditional and new media in order to control public opinion.
  • In extreme cases such as North Korea, there are no independent traditional media sources and the government seeks to ban access to new media. The Korean Central News Agency is the only source of official news for the print and broadcast media and the people are fed a daily diet of stories praising the virtues of its leader Kim Jong-un.
    • According to the Open Net Initiative, online access within North Korea is exceedingly rare and limited to sites that comprise the domestic intranet, whose content is chosen by the authorities.
    • According to the Reporters without boarders (RSF), the widespread adoption of mobile phones, including smartphones, has been accompanied by technical measures allowing almost complete control over communications within the domestic intranet. North Koreans can be sent to a concentration camp for looking at an online media outlet based outside the country.
  • According to the NGO, in Malawi and Cambodia, governments use the threat of withdrawing state advertising from media outlets as a tool to pressurise them to avoid criticising the government.
  • In Turkey 2014, the internet law requires ISPs to store the data they collect on Web users’ activities for two years and to make it available to the authorities upon request
    • During the election process in 2022, the Economist reports that Erdogan will try to si­lence the free media, and he will try to ma­nipulate the election board to remain in the position.
  • In Russia, 2022 war with Ukraine, almost all independent media have shut down, and the government is block­ing access to some social media to prevent the spread of information that would change citizens’ thoughts.
  • [Evaluation] Walker et al. argue that most authoritarian regimes today do not seek total domintion of all means of mass communication in order to achieve economic modernisation and avoide international comdemnation.

• Even democratic governments have intervened to shut down media outlets considered undesirable. Ultimately, considerable power is available to national governments to set the limits within which media organisations operate; the threat of government censure or closure alone may be sufficient to ensure that media organisations take care to avoid displeasing the authorities.
  • Changes in government and in the political climate can lead to attacks on media freedom even in democratic societies
  • In the USA, the election of Donald Trump has seen repeated attacks on journalists, with Trump accusing them of being ‘the most dishonest human beings on earth’ and of deliberately spreading ‘fake news’.
  • In Poland, the legislation in 2015 brought public radio and television under its control and the replacement of the existing directors with government appointees. It also restrict the distribution of newspapers that were critical of the government and ordered all state agencies to cancel their subscriptions and not place any advertisements in the targeted newspapers
  • According to the RSF, despite the UK government’s stated commitment to defending global media freedom, domestic restrictions remained cause for concern. A secret government unit appeared to serve as a clearing house for freedom of information requests, and critical media outlets found themselves blacklisted or facing other restrictions. Critical reporting on the government’s Covid-19 response was met with vindictive official reactions.
  • More recently, although Reporters without boarders (RSF) shows that Norway has for years been at the top of all democracy and free speech rankings by 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic has undermined relations between media and authorities. Some media representatives have criticised the lack of access to important information, and even reporting restrictions that have affected coverage of the pandemic.
  • Even democratic regimes might lack of democracy. Cambridge Analytica, having contact with Conservative party in the UK,  was exposed for collecting 87 million users profile from Facebook to provide the benefit of Brexit for users in order to let them vote for leave the EU during the Brexit referendum. This has suggeted the the news presented to the new media users might lack of reliability as it is biased. It has also helped trump’s election to identify “persuadable” voters, how likely they were to vote, the issues they cared about, and who was most likely to donate.
  • [Evaluation] The state may press laws which limit the freedom of the press in ways which are seen as in the public interests, such as hate-speech legislation.
  • [Evaluation] Borris Johnson Partygate

Editors and journalists

• Editors and journalists shape media content in a professional way yet unconsciously reflects the class position.
  • Neo-Marxist Gramsci argues in the hegemonic model that most media professionals such as journalists, and editors shape media content in professional ways to maximise their audiences. However, unconsciously they produce a culture industry which indicates their class position and ideologically benefits the wealthy.
  • Private schools contain just 7% of the school population at the moment, but 54% of journalists had attended private school.
  • Harvey argues that media has incorporated neoliberalism into the common-sense way many people interpret, live in and understand the world.
    • In many states, from those emerging from the collapse of the USSR, old-style social democracies like New Zealand, China, the UK and USA have embraced neoliberal tenets such as deregulation, privatisation and the withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision. The neoliberalism penetrating through states then benefits the wealthy in terms of exacerbating income inequality as state control on redistribution of wealth has loosened; the wealthy could justify their dominant class position.
  • Therefore, media content is influenced by editors and journalists in a way promoting neoliberal ideas as hegemonic in almost all societies.
  • [Evaluation] the new media has allowed radical voices both on the left and on the right politically which is out of mainstream consensus and allows communication on the so-called ‘alternative media’.

• Media content may be influenced by editors and journalists because news offers people particular ways of understanding what editors and journalists have selected.
  • Mcquail argues that news is a socially manufactured product as a result of the selective process by gate-keepers such as editors and journalists, making choices and judgement about what events are important enough to cover and how to cover them.
  • Hall argues that ‘framing’ presents an issue to the public or the ‘angle’ it is given by the news media.
    • It involves calling attention to certain aspects of an issue while ignoring or obscuring other elements. Powerful groups tend to be the ones whose frames provide the primary definition of events.
  • Contributed from gatekeepers and framing, GUMG argues that the result of journalistic consensus is the ‘agenda setting’ that discussion has been narrowed down to a certain extent and opinions questioning the current system and threatening interests of dominant groups have been avoided. The ordinary members of the public never really question the workings of capitalist society.
  • Therefore, media content may be influenced by editors and journalists because they present news in a biased way by omitting some elements of an issue.
  • [Evaluation] the agenda-setting theory does not apply to cases in which people already have their minds made up on an issue. So the media is merely confirming an already existing bias rather than shaping opinion.

Media owners, media conglomerates, capitalist ruling class

• Media is owned and controlled by the capitalist class who use them as a means to control the proletariat and keep them in a state of false consciousness
  • Marx argues that capitalists uses media to transmit certain ‘ideology’ to working class to persuade them that capitalism is fair and just, which ensures the stability of capitalist class. This is called the ‘false-class consciousness’ that blurs working-class’s sight to see their true position. Therefore, subject class people never be encouraged to be critical of capitalist system, and see capitalists ideology as ‘truth’ and ‘fact’
  • Miliband argues that the content of the media reflects the viewpoint of the dominant group in society and the ruling class have to convince the rest of the population to accept inequalities. The media creates illusions and produces a feeling of well-being, which keeps the working class quiet and encourages them to accept a system The reality is they are being exploited. This makes it deterministic because the economic base is seen as responsible for shaping all the other social institutions
  • Media owners, wealth-holders and the political elite are united in some sort of ideological conspiracy to brainwash the population.
    • There are many favourable representations of the wealthy. For example Royalty, millionaires on Cribs, the Kardashian 2022, and middle class lifestyles such as the more generally in all of those hideous programmes about spending £500K on a house in the country.
    • It spreads the ‘myth of meritocracy’. Dragons Den and The Apprentice are two wonderful contemporary examples of this.
    • The News often dismisses radical view points as extremist, dangerous or silly, and a conservative (ruling class) view of the world as normal.
    • Negative portrayals of ethnic minorities and immigrants serve to divide the ruling class and discourages criticisms of the ruling class.
    • Entertainment distracts the public from thinking critically about important political issues
    • In Italy, it has been demonstrated that Silvio Berlusconi’s control of three television stations (which reached 40% of the Italian audience) was instrumental in his party winning the general election in 1994 and Berlusconi becoming prime minister.
  • [Evaluation] The rise of the New Media especially undermines the Manipulative approach – New Media encourage audiences to be more active and allow for a greater range of people to produce and share media content. It’s simply not possible for owners to control such content.
  • [Evaluation] Trowler argues that ignoring or manipulating the demands can prove expensive. Owners are primarily motivated by economies than capitalist ideology
    • [further evaluation] actions of media owners like Murdoch do benefit capitalism in ideological as well as political way
    • Neo-marxists suggests that media transmit ruling class ideology to the rest of society that prevent them from questioning the unfairness of system.

• Role of the transnational media conglomerates control the new media.
  • Jenkins argues that new media developed as a result of invetsment by the big media corporation. The cross-media ownership, owning different types of media made it more desirable for companies to develop content across a variety of media platforms and delivery systems.
    • The inernet is dominated by a small number of media corporations. Most of internet’s viable content is therefore controlled by the big conglomerates.
  • Cultural pessimists argue that the New Media are primarily own by four large media conglomerates, which are Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon. Ownership is concentrated in the hands of these four companies and they use their platforms primarily to make a profit by selling advertising space, thus global popular culture mainly exists and is transmitted to sell advertising space and keep consumer culture going
  • All of these platforms accept money for advertising and greater levels of exposure, and/or targeted advertising using powerful algorithms
    • Twitter is currently being bought by Elon Musk.  Musk has particular views on ownership and control of the media
    • Facebook’s influence has been proven to be significant in a number of high profile elections and referendums including US 2018, Brexit, in the last few weeks an interesting case study is the Philippines
  • Mainstream political parties now run sophisticated advertising campaigns using big data to manipulate the public into voting for them: Trump’s campaign and the Brexit campaign are two examples of this. Larger political parties and corporations have more money to spend on advertising to keep their biased information at the top of internet search engines such as Google
    • Fortune, a financial magazine in the US, suggested that fake gossip about U.S. politics circulating on Facebook helped Trump, tipping the electoral balance in Trump’s favor.Trump’s campaign funneled $90 million to Parscale’s San Antonio-based firm, most of which went toward digital advertising. (new media)
    • The ex-CIA analyst claimed in 2015 that the British security services had the technology to access the information stored on people’s smartphones.
  • Even democratic regimes might lack of democracy. Cambridge Analytica, having contact with Conservative party in the UK,  was exposed for collecting 87 million users profile from Facebook to provide the benefit of Brexit for users in order to let them vote for leave the EU during the Brexit referendum. This has suggeted the the news presented to the new media users might lack of reliability as it is biased. It has also helped trump’s election to identify “persuadable” voters, how likely they were to vote, the issues they cared about, and who was most likely to donate.
  • [Evaluation] Neo-marxists argues that the notions of editorial independence and journalistic integrity are not entirely without substance.
  • [Evaluation] in 2010, Ireland to introduce cross-media ownership rules

Consumers, public, users

• Pluralists believe that the audience control media content as companies have to ensure that what they produce appeals to the audience or it won’t be consumed
  • They argue that in democratic, free market economies different media companies must compete for customers, and so they must provide the kind of content those customers want in order to make a profit and survive. If a company fails to provide the kind of news and entertainment that people need and want, customers will simply stop buying their media products and go elsewhere, forcing that company out of business.
  • Media are an important part of the democratic process. It gives different interest groups the opportunity to put forward their views
    • In the cases such as Brexit and elections, media play a crucial role. There is no way that parties can get their views across to millions of voters without access to the Media, where Facebook has contributed a lot to providing a platform for consumers of media to exchange and communicate ideas.
    • The news has commentators from different political parties, suggesting that the people are well represented.
    • Even political leaders and parties use Twitter and other outlets to voice their opinions, such as Donald Trump.
  • If some viewpoints have a greater range of media representing them, this is not necessarily biased. It merely mirrors what the  audience wants or sees as important. For example, if the majority of newspapers raise concerns about young people carrying knives, they are mirroring the concerns of the majority of citizens.
  • If women’s magazines seem to focus disproportionately on features about slimming, beauty  babies and weddings, it is because this is what the majority  of women want to read about
  • [Evaluation] There may be a range of viewpoints, but these viewpoints may be skewed in a particular direction. For example, the press in the UK is predominantly right-wing.

• Control over media content is highly fragmented in the case of the new media, with individual citizens being able to influence that content in numerous ways.This makes it harder for national governments to police and restrict content than is the case with the traditional media and the action taken by citizen journalists may lead to social change.
  • In the new media, Drudge claims that citizen journalism allows every citizen to be a reporter and have his or her voice equated with that of the rich and powerful
  • Couldry suggests that in the UK, citizen journalism refers to anyone who posts even one story or photograph on a mainstream news site. For example, BBC viewers are encouraged to text information or send pictures and video clips of news events direct to the BBC newsroom via their mobile phones. Pictures and copy of breaking news therefore can reach the newsroom long before professional journalists arrive at the scene. For example, most of the ‘live’ pictures from the London bombings of 7/7 came from the mobile phones of ‘citizen journalists’.
  • Murthy has empirically investigated the impact of Twitter, which had 140 million users worldwide in 2013, and claims that Twitter has proved extremely useful as a news-gathering medium in terms of communicating information about events such as social movements such as the Occupy protests and the Arab Spring. Murthy argues that Twitter was particularly effective in the Egyptian protests that toppled President Mubarak, in two ways. First, Twitter helped enable a mass movement of people out onto the streets protesting about high unemployment, persistent poverty and police brutality. Both the internet and Twitter were regarded by the Egyptian authorities as so threatening in their dissemination of activist information that they were shut down for a week by the government in January 2011. Second, Murthy argues that Twitter helped to bring international attention to what was going on by acting as a valuable news source for international journalists
  • [Evaluation] Keen argues that professional journalists acquire their craft through eation and through the firsthand experience of reporting and editing the news under the careful eye of other professionals. In contrast, citizen journalists have no formal training or expertise, yet they routinely offer up opinion as fact, rumour as reportage and innuendo as information. The more affluent and the better educated tend to have more voice in the new media.