• Media concentration / Conglomerates / Globalisation (in terms of media ownership)

Concentration of media ownership is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.

A media conglomerate is a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, motion pictures, theme parks, or the Internet.

the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.

• Vertical Integration & Horizontal Integration

Vertical – the combination in one firm of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate firms.

Horizontal – Horizontal integration is the process of a company increasing production of goods or services at the same part of the supply chain. A company may do this via internal expansion, acquisition or merger. The process can lead to monopoly if a company captures the vast majority of the market for that product or service.

• Gatekeepers

an attendant employed to control what comes in and out of the company, selective choices.

• Regulation / Deregulation

a rule or directive made and maintained by an authority

the removal of regulations or restrictions, especially in a particular industry

• Free market vs Monopolies & Mergers

• Neo-liberalism and the Alt-Right

• Surveillance / Privacy / Security / GDPR

David Hesmondhalgh (cultural industries)

Two of Hesmondhalgh’s key ideas are:

• the idea that the largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries
• the idea that the radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit-orientated set of cultural industries.

Hesmondhalgh argues that major cultural organisations create products for different industries in order to maximise chances of commercial success. In relation to online products, he argues that major IT companies now compete with the more traditional media conglomerates within the cultural sector: ‘Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon are now as significant as News Corporation, Time Warner and Sony for understanding cultural production and consumption.’

Rupert Murdoch

Murdoch’s holding company, News Corp, owns The New York Post, The Times of London, and The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Company, among many other assets. Murdoch, now 88 years old, currently spends his days at the helm of another News Corp property, Fox News.