Definitions

• Media concentration / Conglomerates = this is a company which owns numerous companies involved in the distribution of mass media enterprises. An example of a conglomerate is the BBC and FOX.
• Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) = this is the world wide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas.
• Vertical Integration & Horizontal Integration =Horizontal integration is the process that a company or an institution uses to increase the production of goods. However, vertical integration is when a company integrates multiple stages of a production line to a small number of production units. Horizontal integration contrasts with vertical integration

• Gatekeepers = A gatekeeper is a role given to a person who filter certain information for distributing out on public service broadcasts. A gatekeeper exerts power.
• Regulation / Deregulation = A regulation is a law, procedure or a rule that is put in place by an authority and deregulation is the opposite – it is when you remove rules, procedures and laws from a certain industry.
• Free market vs Monopolies & Mergers = The free market is an economic system which is based on supply and demand that has very little or no government control whereas a monopoly is when a company dominates a certain sector of an industry.

• Neo-liberalism = this is a form of liberalism that tends to favour free market capitalism.
• Surveillance / Privacy / Security / GDPR = General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU law that states that there needs to be protection against data for all individuals and citizens withing the EU and European Economic Area.

David Hesmondhalgh

• Wikipedia link = David Hesmondhalgh
• He critically analysed the relationships between media and the media industry.
• He wrote a book called “The Culture Industries”, which says that “the distinctive organisational form of the cultural industries has considerable implications for the conditions under which symbolic creativity is carried out“.
• In an article he wrote with Banks (Banks, M., & Hesmondhalgh, D. (2009). Looking for work in creative industries policy. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 415-430, he said that “there must be serious concerns about the extent to which this business-driven, economic agenda is compatible with the quality of working life and of human well-being in the creative industries.“
• Hesmondhalgh notes, “one feature of cultural work in the complex professional era is that many more people seem to have wanted to work professionally in the cultural industries than have succeeded in do so. Few people make it, and surprisingly little attention has been paid in research to how people do so, and what stops others from getting on.“
• Angela McRobbie (2002) (2016 ) and others, (Communian, Faggian, & Jewell, 2011); (O’Brien, Laurison, Miles, & Friedman, 2016); (Hesmondhalgh, 2019) have argued, the study of creative work should include a wider set of questions including the way in which aspirations to and expectations of autonomy could lead to disappointment and disillusion.
• Banks and Hesmondhalgh argued that “in its utopian presentation, creative work is now imagined only as a self-actualising pleasure, rather than a potentially arduous or problematic obligation undertaken through material necessity“

The Cultural Industries: A book by Hesmondhalgh

• His book The Cultural Industries (Sage) is an analysis of changes and continuities in television, film, music, publishing and other industries since the 1980s, and of the rise of new media and cultural industries during that time.
• The fourth edition, published in December 2018, is a thoroughly revised, updated and expanded version of the third, published in 2012.
• It’s now unrecognisable from the first edition of 2002, and has grown to over 600 pages. It’s been translated into various languages, including Chinese, Russian and Italian.

Rupert Murdoch: Media Empire

• His media empire includes Fox News, Fox Sports, the Fox Network, The Wall Street Journal, and HarperCollins
• Murdoch sold the majority of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets to the Walt Disney Company for $71.3 billion.

Media and Society

1. Media Ownership and Structure

• A Large business or company, a combination of multiple businesses entitles operating in entirely different industries under one main group/business
• Example = Murdoch. Murdoch’s large influence over politicians allowed him to create a monopoly over tabloids and news BSkyB, in a way that can be linked to manufacturing consent as under Thatcher monopolies were illegal, however due to Murdoch and how his support would benefit her, she allowed him to control lots of the print media in Britain.
• Horizontal integration in Murdoch’s empire include Murdoch purchasing his son’s rapping company.
• Manufacturing consent can be linked = Chomsky
• Althusser can be linked to this

2. Media Regulation

• The government allowing certain types of media to be published or not
• The media is decided by the government on whether it can be published
• Murdoch only able to own 39% of Sky, even though he had 100% control over print media, such as the Sun and the Sunday Times
• A gatekeeper exerts power and the Prime Minister could be seen as a gate keeper, as they can say what media is allowed and what type of media isn’t.

3. Media Power and Control

• Relate to Chomsky’s 5 filters in Manufacturing consent
• An example of this can also be Bombshell (Film) and Murdoch’s empire including his main company News International.
• Roger Ailes was at the top of Fox News, and was pro-trump, however, Murdoch was anti-trump.

4. The Media informing/coercing policy and decision making

• Links to Habermas and the transformation of the public sphere
• In the Murdoch Dynasty, it links to Brexit as Murdoch forced Tony Blair to get the UK to leave the EU

5. Media working practices (Promotion, success & financial reward and journalistic practices)

• Links to Murdoch as his link to the Labour Party election in 1997, because Murdoch promoted Labour party to try and get people to vote for them.
• David Hesmondhalgh can be linked to this.
• Hesmondhalgh explores working practices