key words

Key words:

  1. Cultural industries – The notion of cultural industries generally includes textual, music, television, and film production and publishing.
  2. Production – the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials, or the process of being so manufactured.
  3. distribution – The methods by which media products are delivered to audiences, including the marketing campaign.
  4. Media concentration – Concentration of media ownership is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.
  5. Exhibition / Consumption– the sum of information and entertainment media taken in by an individual or group
  6. Conglomerates – A media conglomerate, or a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, 
  7. Globalisation – the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
  8. Cultural imperialism – Cultural Imperialism Theory states that Western nations dominate the media around the world which in return has a powerful effect on Third World Cultures by imposing Western views and therefore destroying their native culture
  9. Vertical Integration – Vertical Integration is when a Media Company owns different businesses in the same chain of production and distribution
  10. Horizontal Integration – Horizontal Integration is a Media Company’s Ownership of several businesses of the same value. A Media Company can own a Magazine, Radio, Newspaper, Television and Books. 
  11. Mergers – a merger or acquisition in which one or more of the undertakings involved carries on a media business in the Page 2 State and one or more of the undertakings involved carries on a media business elsewhere.
  12. Monopolies – concentrated control of major mass communications within a society
  13. Gatekeepers – is a process by which information is filtered to the public by the media
  14. Regulation – a rule or directive made and maintained by an authority.
  15. Deregulation– the removal of regulations or restrictions, especially in a particular industry.
  16. Free market – an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.
  17. Commodification –  the act or fact of turning something into an item that can be bought and sold
  18. Convergence – media convergence, phenomenon involving the interconnection of information and communications technologies, computer networks, and media content.
  19. Diversity – It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences. 
  20. Innovation –  the process of not just an “invention” of a new value for journalism, but also the process of implementing this new value in a market or a social setting to make it sustainable

media insttutions- key terms

  1. Cultural industries – A cultural industry is an economic field concerned with producing, reproducing, storing, and distributing cultural goods and services on industrial and commercial terms.
  2. Production – Production is the process of combining various material inputs and immaterial inputs  in order to make something for consumption. It is the act of creating an output, a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals.
  3. Distribution-Content Distribution is the act of promoting content to online audiences in multiple media formats through various channels.
  4. Exhibition / Consumption-  consumption is defined as how your content audience reads, views and/or listens to information.
  5. Media concentration-  a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.
  6. Conglomerates- a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, motion pictures, theme parks, or the Internet.
  7. Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) -The production, distribution, and consumption of media products on a global scale, facilitating the exchange and diffusion of ideas cross-culturally.
  8. Cultural imperialism –  the over-concentration of mass media from larger nations, negatively affecting less powerful nations.
  9. Vertical Integration – when a Media Company owns different businesses in the same chain of production and distribution
  10. Horizontal Integration – a Media Company’s Ownership of several businesses of the same value
  11. Mergers – a merger or acquisition in which 2 or. more of the undertakings involved carry on a media business in the State
  12. Monopolies –  concentrated control of major mass communications within a society
  13. Gatekeepers – Gatekeeping is the process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the internet, or some other mode of communication
  14. Regulation – encouraging competition and an effective media market, or establishing common technical standards to achieve a goal
  15. Deregulation – deregulation of the telecommunications industry pertains to relaxing ownership rules regarding such items as the number of stations a single television or radio owner can possess in a market and whether or not a single corporation can own a newspaper, or television and radio station in the same market.
  16. Free market –  an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control
  17. Commodification  – critical view of the media sees the commodities and commodification with two things that connect the object and process.
  18. Convergence  –  the interconnection of information and communications technologies, computer networks, and media content.
  19. Diversity  – finding ways to make content both physically accessible and visibly diverse. 
  20. Innovation – is about change, and media products and services are changing

Key words

  1. Cultural industries  
    An industrialised culture concerned with producing, reproducing, storing and distributing good
  2. Production
    The creation of a piece of media
  3. Distribution
    How a piece of media is delivered to masses
  4. Exhibition / Consumption
    How media is presented and consumed by the masses of people
  5. Media concentration
    The ownership of a piece of media by a number of individuals
  6. Conglomerates
    A large company that owns the rights to multiple other company’s that are linked to media
  7. Globalisation (in terms of media ownership)
    The worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas.
  8. Cultural imperialism
    A theory that certain nations have a control over media around the world
  9. Vertical Integration
    When media company’s own multiple company’s in the same chain of production
  10. Horizontal Integration
    A media company that owns multiple company’s of the same value
  11. Mergers
    Acquisitions of a media company by another
  12. Monopolies
    When either an individual or a company has complete ownership of a genre or sub-genre of media
  13. Gatekeepers
    When people determine who can look at specific pieces of media
  14. Regulation
    When certain things are blocked from being published by the media
  15. Deregulation
    The idea that there should not be regulations on what media can be posted due to the right of free speech
  16. Free market
    A voluntary exchange and the law of supply and demand that provides for the economy
  17. Commodification  
    The transformation of the relationship, which is trafficked into things that are free of the commercial nature of the relationship.
  18. Convergence  
    The merging of media technologies and platforms through digitalization and computer networking
  19. Diversity   
    A diversity of ideas, viewpoints or content opinions on a certain media subject
  20. Innovation  
    An invention of a new value or idea for journalism

David Hesmondhalgh stats that the media business is a very “Risky Buisiness”. However company’s work towards minimising the risk of the business.

An example of this would be companies acquiring other smaller company’s that are

Murdoch x25

  1. He is worth $17.1 billion.

2. Born on the 11th of March 1931

3. Born in Melbourne, Australia.

4. Went to a very prestigious uni, Oxford.

5. In his early life he was an Australian newspaper publisher.

6. He was also a media entrepreneur.

7. This was largely because his father was a famous war correspondent and publisher.

8. His father died in 1953, leaving him to inherit two newspapers in Australia.

9. He was able to increase the newspaper’s circulation by emphasising the problems of sex, crime, and scandals.

10. He bought and built up the Perth Sunday Times in 1956.

11. In 1960 he bought the significantly declining Sydney Daily.

12. He turned the Sydney Daily into the most bought newspaper in Australia.

13. He became a US Citizen in 1985 in order to be able to expand his market to US television broadcasting.

14. For his first job, he worked as an editor on Lord Beaverbrook’s London Daily Express.

15. In Britain in 1989, he inaugurated Sky Television.

16. Murdoch’s media empire includes Fox News, Fox Sports, the Fox Network, The Wall Street Journal, and HarperCollins.

17. He wrote papers which supported the labour party in 1997, 1001 and 2005 for the elections.

18. In 2011, Murdoch along with his son James provided testimony before a British parliamentary committee regarding phone hacking.

19. This was after a young girl who was murdered had her phone hacked by reporters/journalists in order to make a story. 

20. He attended a private meeting in London with the family of the girl, where he personally apologized for the hacking of their murdered daughter’s phone.

21. In 2012 a panel wrote a critical report about him, stating that he was not fit to lead a major company.

22. In 2015 Murdoch was succeeded as CEO at 21st Century Fox by James, his son.

23. In 2017 he agreed to sell most of the holdings of 21st Century Fox to the Disney Company.

24. Two years later this deal with Disney closed and was valued at about $71 billion.

25. Fox News and various other TV channels were excluded from the sale, and they became part of the newly formed Fox Corporation.


rupert murdoch : news uk

  1. It has been alleged that News Group staff were accused of engaging in phone hacking, including Clive Goodman, illegally accessed voicemail for the mobile phones of thousands of public figures, including politicians and celebrities.
  2. News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group), is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun newspapers
  3. Rupert Murdoch is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian), in the US (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post)
  4. After his father’s death in 1952, Murdoch took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father. In the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World.
  5. In 1981, Murdoch bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and, in 1985, became a naturalized US citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership.
  6.  Murdoch formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of over $5 billion.
  7. In July 2011, Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty, and public citizens. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.
  8.  Ownership of The Times came to him through his relationship with Lord Thomson, who had grown tired of losing money on it as a result of an extended period of industrial action that stopped publication
  9. . In England, the move roused the anger of the print unions, resulting in a long and often violent dispute that played out in Wapping, one of London’s docklands areas, where Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper purpose-built publishing facility in an old warehouse.
  10. The Guardian newspaper, citing official company accounts, claims Rebekah Brooks received a £10.8m payoff for leaving News International.
  11. Times Newspapers was formed in 1967 when the Thomson Corporation purchased The Times from the Astor family and merged it with The Sunday Times, which it had owned since 1959. The company was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News International in February 1981. The acquisition followed an intense 21 days of negotiations with the print unions, conducted by John Collier and Bill O’Neill. The Times Literary Supplement, Times Educational Supplement and Times Higher Education Supplement were also part of the group; the latter two publications have since been sold.
  12. The London Paper was the first newspaper to be launched by News International rather than bought. It was an evening freesheet distributed at bus and rail stations in London. It was published five days a week from September 2006 to September 2009, when it closed down, faced with competition from other free papers.
  13. In contrast to News International’s earlier denials of knowledge, The Guardian cites suppressed evidence revealing that News of the World‘s editorial staff were involved with private investigators who engaged in illegal phone-hacking, and that both reporters and executives were commissioning purchases of confidential information; this is illegal unless it is shown to be in the public interest

David hesmodhalgh

David wrote a book called “the culture industries”He argues that major cultural organisations create products for different industries in order to maximise chances of commercial success. His work is about tracing the relationship between media work, workers, and the industry.

for every individual who succeeds, there are many who do not. For many, it will be the result of a perfectly reasonable personal decision that the commitment and determination required is not for them’

david hesmondhalgh

David is a professor of media, music and culture at the university of Leeds. His research focus and interests are on the media and cultural, creative industries, cultural policy the politics of musical experience, and how ‘cultural platforms’ are transforming media. He joined the University of Leeds in 2007.

production, contribution and reduction

David Hesmondhalgh says about the culture industry:

products exist as a result of their economic context:

* products are made within a commercial context and media is manufactured to create profit.

The media industry is a high risk business

*the impossibility of predicting audience tastes coupled with the high costs of production and the effects of mass competition mean that the business of making commercially successful media is very difficult.

The media industry is reliant on marketing and publicity functions

*Products need the oxygen of publicity if they are to thrive

Media products have limited consumption capacity

*Unlike other businesses, films, television and music – based products tend to be consumed as ‘one off purchases

David Hesmondhalgh

  • In the present day, a lot of people aspire to be in a creative occupation however it is a struggle when you aren’t in a family or know people who can get you into it, no matter the creative ability you have, e.g 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.
  • David is currently a Professor of Media, music and culture at the University of Leeds.
  • He has wrote books such as Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity (Maidenhead Open University Press, 2005), Media Production (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), Media and Society, 6th edition (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019) and many more.
  • Hesmondhalgh analyses the relationship between media and work as well as the media industry.
  • Applying/getting a job requires luck or a family member to be successful.
  • David Hesmondalgh says that the creative/cultural industry is a risky business.
  • Businesses are divided into three sectors such as production, distribution and consumption.
  • The strategies that minimise the risks are strategies such as the ‘Horizontal integration’ which enables large-scale institutions to achieve scale base cost savings while also allowing them to maximise profits by positioning brands so they do not compete with one another. A second way to minimise the risks is the vertical integration, this is where production, distribution, marketing specialist subsidiaries and media conglomerates can control all aspects of their supply chain while also achieving significant cost saving efficiencies. The final strategy of minimising risk is the multi-sector integration, this is the buying of companies across the culture industry, allowing for further cross-promotion opportunities and the deployment of brands across media platforms.

David Hesmonhalgh

David Hesmondhalgh is a British sociologist. He is currently Professor of Media, Music and Culture at the University of Leeds. His research focusses on the media and cultural industries, critical approaches to media in the digital age, and the sociology of music.

Hesmondhalgh Theory:

Hesmondhalgh argues that major cultural organisations create products for different industries in order to maximise chances of commercial success.

Most products are consumed when used and have to be bought again, but media products are bought once and continually used – they never wear out. So, companies have to make a lot of money out of their products initially, because they don’t often resell the same product repeatedly.

His books include The Cultural Industries, first published in 2002, described by Herbert et al. He is acknowledged as a key figure in developing the “cultural industries” approach to media, which emphasises the complex and contradictory nature of cultural production under capitalism. He is frequently named as one of the leading analysts of cultural labour, partly based on his book Creative Labour, co-written with Sarah Baker

In his book, he also talks about the relationship between media work, media workers and the media industries.

Hesmondhalgh states that going into the cultural/media industry is a risky business.

“All business is risky” “but the cultural industries constitute a particularly risky business”

Production – Distribution – Consumption

  • The media industry is reliant on marketing and publicity functions.
  • Media businesses are reliant upon changing audience consumption patterns.
  • Media products have limited consumption capacity.

The internet is dominated by a relatively small number of suppliers. Hesmondhalgh points to the dominance of search engines and their ability to point users to a small number of sources.

David Hesmondhalgh

He wrote a book called Cultural Industries.

He argues that major cultural organisations create products for different industries in order to maximise the chances of commercial success.

His research focuses on the media and cultural industries, critical approaches to media in the digital age, and the sociology of music.

In his book, he also talks about the relationship between media work, media workers and the media industries.

He notes that the most successful creative people are born into the industry. E.g. They’re the son / daughter of a successful creative person.

‘for every individual who succeeds, there are many who do not. For many, it will be the result of a perfectly reasonable personal decision that the commitment and determination required is not for them’

The individualising discourses of ‘talent’ and ‘celebrity’ and the promise of future fame or consecration, have special purchases in creative work and are often instrumental in ensuring compliance with the sometimes invidious demands of managers, organisations and the industry (Banks & Hesmondhalgh, p. 420).