Playing to the crowd: The audience’s role in team-operated media

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mirer

Sports leagues and teams have entered the media industry, producing news content about themselves for broad consumption. The content producers behind these stories still largely position themselves as journalists, despite their lack of independence. They do so by engaging in boundary work, a process in which professional authority is won by enlisting other stakeholders in recognizing an occupational group’s jurisdiction over a societal task. While much of the debate over in-house reporting focuses on acceptance within the journalistic community, readers are also an important and underexplored stakeholder. This textual analysis of reader response to in-house coverage of athlete protest suggests that fans may respond to this content in ways that contest the commercial mission of a team website. As such, readers may be drawing their own boundaries in a media system with in-house content producers, and scholars should explore these questions.

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino

This chapter introduces the argument and analyses. It explains the broader political importance of media coverage and public opinion during policy debates. The chapter also discusses how structural and institutional factors in the media system can contribute to often unforeseen or unintended effects on news content, and can ultimately shape the ideological direction of public opinion. It summarizes the book’s data and key claims about corporate news media’s role in rising economic inequality across the neoliberal era, and discusses the broader implications of the book’s argument and evidence for American democracy. The chapter ends by previewing the structure of the book.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-485
Author(s):  
Svetlana L. Urazova

Accelerated adoption of technological innovations and the transition to a digital economy raise many debatable issues, and they affect the media industry. At the same time, the national media industry in the era of technological, sociocultural and economic transformations has the role of an information integrator of innovations. Transformations in the media sphere, the reform stage, raise a number of issues requiring substantiation. The article is aimed at posing a multidimensional problem, namely, the problem of the media component of digital reforms. This aspect of the study allows us to reveal both the positive factors of improving the media sphere during its transition to a new level, and to reveal the gaps of the media system developing in the digital paradigm. The article offers an analysis of the modern concept of the media industry. In the 21st century, media appear as a multifunctional system, where priority is given to the interdisciplinarity of knowledge, competencies and skills, this also updates the criteria for media education. The justification of the term “ecosystem” in this article as applied to media helps to trace the relationship between the fundamental vectors of development of this most important social institution - it is these vectors that underpin the media structure as a market entity.


Author(s):  
Manfred Knoche

Abstract: This paper discusses how the capitalist media industry has been structurally transformed in the age of digital communications. It takes an approach that is grounded in the Marxian critique of the political economy of the media. It draws a distinction between media capital, media-oriented capital, media infrastructure capital and media-external capital as the forms of capital in the media industry. The article identifies four capital strategies that media capital tends to use in order to try to maximise profits: a) The substitution of “old” by “new” media technology, b) the introduction of new transmission channels for “old” media products, c) the definition of new property rights for media sectors and networks, d) the reduction of production and transaction costs. The drive to profit maximization is at the heart of the capitalist media industry’s structural transformation. This work also discusses the tendency to the universalization of the media system in the digital age and the economic contradictions arising from it. It identifies activity fields of the media industry’s structural transformation and shows how the concentration of the capitalist media markets is an essential, contradictory and inherent feature of the capitalist media system and its structural transformation. The paper identifies six causes of why capital seeks to employ capital strategies that result in the media industry’s structural transformation. They include market saturation, overaccumulation, the tendency of the profit rate to fall, capital-concentration, competition pressure, and advertising. The paper finally discusses the role of the state as an agent of capital in general and media capital in particular. It discusses the role of the state in privatisations, neoliberal deregulation, the formation of national competitive states, and various benefits that the state provides for media capital. This contribution shows that capital and capitalism are the main structural transformers of the media and communications system. For understanding these transformations, we need an approach that is grounded in Marx’s critique of the political economy.Translation from German: Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Miguel Paisana ◽  
Ana Pinto-Martinho ◽  
Gustavo Cardoso

In order to understand the role of contemporary journalism and the media system it is vital to consider consumers’ relationship with news content in terms of trust and perception of dubious content. This analysis is particularly relevant in a context where intense flows of information raise serious questions about individual ability to interpret, validate, and reproduce content. This analysis explores a news literacy scale used by Maskl et al. (2015) and Fletcher (in Newman et al., 2018) to investigate the links between news literacy profiles and their relationship with content, with particular focus on illegitimate/doubtful news pieces. Results suggest individuals with higher news literacy tend to trust news in general but not when content originates in social media. Higher literacy profiles are also associated with increased concern regarding online content legitimacy. These conclusions are particularly relevant in the currently volatile media sphere, highly dependent on a substantially informed public to ensure the legitimacy and importance of journalistic content and to distinguish it from other kinds of content flooding communication networks. These efforts depend not only on the journalistic sphere but also on democratic systems themselves as they rely on a well-informed public to guarantee a healthy and inclusive debate.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110471
Author(s):  
Dasniel Olivera Pérez ◽  
Mariana De Maio

This paper analyzes the relationship between media and politics in Cuba during the presidency of Raúl Castro (2006–2018). It contributes to the theoretical discussion about the approaches concerning change and continuity in media systems with empirical evidence from interviews with communication and political science experts, and an analysis of non-standardized content in academic, political, legal, and professional documents. The (re)structuring of the media system is explained by the most important political, economic, technological, and cultural events of the period studied: the survival of the Soviet media model, the impact of the U.S. conflict with Cuba on domestic politics, and a (de)territorialized notion of system boundaries. The patterns of change and continuity are discussed through the relationships among the State’s participation in media and the fulfillment of media’s democratic functions, the media policy projection and journalism cultures, and the political articulation of the media and development of the media industry. The articulations among these patterns highlight the relevance of a multidimensional approach as an interpretive dimension of media systems.


Author(s):  
Sarphan Uzunoğlu

This chapter analyzes the politics of media in Turkey and the formation of Turkey’s so-called new media order characterized by polarization, corporatization, widespread censorship, and lack of journalistic independence. It argues that Turkey’s ongoing media crisis arose due to structural transformations starting from the early 1980s and becoming more accelerated and visible under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The chapter discusses Turkey’s media crisis in three steps. Firstly, it contextualizes Turkey’s traditional media system within globally recognized media systems and provides a historical understanding of the impact of political elites and the government on the media industry. Secondly, it discusses shifts in media consumption habits and media ownership structure under AKP rule and shows how these shifts served the party’s political agenda. Finally, it offers a critical overview of several existing prescriptive approaches to Turkey’s media crisis and argues that techno-determinist and overgeneralizing approaches are incompatible with Turkey’s social reality.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Knoche

This paper discusses how the capitalist media industry has been structurally transformed in the age of digital communications. It takes an approach that is grounded in the Marxian critique of the political economy of the media. It draws a distinction between media capital, media-oriented capital, media infrastructure capital and media-external capital as the forms of capital in the media industry. The arti- cle identifies four capital strategies that media capital tends to use in order to try to maximise profits: a) The substitution of “old” by “new” media technology, b) the introduction of new transmission chan- nels for “old” media products, c) the definition of new property rights for media sectors and networks, d) the reduction of production and transaction costs. The drive to profit maximization is at the heart of the capitalist media industrys structural transformation. This work also discusses the tendency to the universalization of the media system in the digital age and the economic contradictions arising from it.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110173
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ittefaq ◽  
Waqas Ejaz ◽  
Shahira S Fahmy ◽  
Ammar Malik Sheikh

Based on the hierarchy of influences model, we explored journalists’ understanding and perceptions about media convergence in Pakistan’s media industry and its influence on journalistic practices and routines. In-depth interviews with Pakistani news practitioners revealed several challenges hindering the successful implementation of media convergence in Pakistan. These challenges included the lack of resources for incorporating digital technologies, the lack of financial incentives, and stringent journalistic work routines, we found that technology-induced routines have severely affected both the personal and the professional lives of media practitioners. The adoption of convergence in Pakistan has been largely based on economic and commercial concerns rather than attempts to improve the quality of media content. Overall, the work contributes to the media convergence literature by providing insights from an emerging non-Western media system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rianne C. Prins ◽  
Sonja Billerbeck

Abstract Background Fungi are premier hosts for the high-yield secretion of proteins for biomedical and industrial applications. The stability and activity of these secreted proteins is often dependent on the culture pH. As yeast acidifies the commonly used synthetic complete drop-out (SD) media that contains ammonium sulfate, the pH of the media needs to be buffered in order to maintain a desired extracellular pH during biomass production. At the same time, many buffering agents affect growth at the concentrations needed to support a stable pH. Although the standard for biotechnological research and development is shaken batch cultures or microtiter plate cultures that cannot be easily automatically pH-adjusted during growth, there is no comparative study that evaluates the buffering capacity and growth effects of different media types across pH-values in order to develop a pH-stable batch culture system. Results We systematically test the buffering capacity and growth effects of a citrate-phosphate buffer (CPB) from acidic to neutral pH across different media types. These media types differ in their nitrogen source (ammonium sulfate, urea or both). We find that the widely used synthetic drop-out media that uses ammonium sulfate as nitrogen source can only be effectively buffered at buffer concentrations that also affect growth. At lower concentrations, yeast biomass production still acidifies the media. When replacing the ammonium sulfate with urea, the media alkalizes. We then develop a medium combining ammonium sulfate and urea which can be buffered at low CPB concentrations that do not affect growth. In addition, we show that a buffer based on Tris/HCl is not effective in maintaining any of our media types at neutral pH even at relatively high concentrations. Conclusion Here we show that the buffering of yeast batch cultures is not straight-forward and addition of a buffering agent to set a desired starting pH does not guarantee pH-maintenance during growth. In response, we present a buffered media system based on an ammonium sulfate/urea medium that enables relatively stable pH-maintenance across a wide pH-range without affecting growth. This buffering system is useful for protein-secretion-screenings, antifungal activity assays, as well as for other pH-dependent basic biology or biotechnology projects.


Author(s):  
Liana MacDonald ◽  
Adreanne Ormond

Racism in the Aotearoa New Zealand media is the subject of scholarly debate that examines how Māori (Indigenous Peoples of New Zealand) are broadcast in a negative and demeaning light. Literature demonstrates evolving understandings of how the industry places Pākehā (New Zealanders primarily of European descent) interests at the heart of broadcasting. We offer new insights by arguing that the media industry propagates a racial discourse of silencing that sustains widespread ignorance of the ways that Pākehā sensibilities mediate society. We draw attention to a silencing discourse through one televised story in 2018. On-screen interactions reproduce and safeguard a harmonious narrative of settler–Indigenous relations that support ignorance and denial of the structuring force of colonisation, and the Television Code of Broadcasting Practice upholds colour-blind perceptions of discrimination and injustice through liberal rhetoric. These processes ensure that the media industry is complicit in racism and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document