scholarly journals The Media Industry's Structural Transformation in Capitalism and the Role of the State: Media Economics in the Age of Digital Communication

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.

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


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Indjov ◽  
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The study examines the applicability of the comparative framework of Hallin and Mancini (2004) with their three models of media‒politics relations (Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist Model, North/ Central European or Democratic Corporatist Model, and North Atlantic or Liberal Model) to a post-communist country like Bulgaria. The answer to this question is sought through a study of the role of the state in relation to the media system, particularly the state funding of media in its various forms. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the Bulgarian media system is most similar to the Mediterranean Model due to the power of еtatism (the state finances public media, and the government buys media love through state and municipal advertising). At the same time, ineffective media regulation favors media concentration and the instrumentalization of large government media groups. The processes of rapid liberalization, privatization and deregulation in the media sector after 1989 brought Bulgaria closer to the countries included in the Liberal Model. Therefore, its media system is hybrid to some extent, but the similarities with the Mediterranean Model remain in the lead. The clientelism through which they are tamed, resp. corrupt the media, brings Bulgaria closer to the Latin American countries where it is much stronger than in the Mediterranean region (Hallin, Papathanassopoulos 2002). The concluding part predicts that, in the future, the analysis of the Bulgarian media system can be enhanced with a study of the applicability of the concepts of the “captured liberal model” of the media (in Latin America) and the “captured media” in the post-communist world.


Author(s):  
Ullamaija Kivikuru

The 1990s brought radical changes to Sub-Saharan Africa. In the rhetoric, the ownership mode appeared as a crucial marker of freedom. However, neither the access to the media nor the media content has changed much. The media mode, inherited from previous phases of social history, seems to change slowly. Old modes reproduce themselves in new media titles disregarding ownership mode. In this chapter, empirical evidence is sought from Namibia and Tanzania. The empirical evidence is based on two sets of one-week samples (2007, 2010) of all four papers. In this material, a government paper and a private paper from one particular country resemble each other more than when ownership modes are compared. Bearers of the journalistic culture seem to be to a certain extent media professionals moving from one editorial office to another, but the more decisive factors are the ideals set for journalism. The “first definition of journalism” reflects old times.


Author(s):  
Dinçer Atli ◽  
Mehmet Yilmazata

This chapter investigates the development of neuroeconomics as a relative new sub-discipline in the fields of economics and behavioral science. After comparing paradigms of both classical and behavioral economics, the problem of the “conscious and rational consumer” is addressed in relation to more passive views of consumerism in neuroeconomics. Highlighting the most recent trends in neuroeconomics, the chapter also addresses the historical development of the discipline of neuroeconomics as an independent field of research within the fields of media and economics. The problem of new marketing strategies as well as the evolvement of neuroeconomics as an independent discipline in the age of digitalization is presented while considering the changing nature of the media industry.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-43
Author(s):  
Neha Jindal

With new media becoming the mainstay of the journalism industry, there is a change in curriculum and pedagogy in journalism education. Even with Web 2.0 becoming the main source of news dissemination, journalism educators will still be required to impart skills to the next generation on writing with clarity, organizing ideas cleanly and working efficiently as a team. The change will be in the methodology, and has to be accepted by the institution at the administrative level first. Since journalism education is required to develop a rational capacity in future graduates, and help them attain all skills essential to understand the media industry with regard to new media practices and changing trends, journalism administrators and educators have to be ably equipped with the skills, only then these can be delivered to the students. The study is about private and public (government) journalism schools in India and focuses on their willingness to adopt the requisite skill set and display adaptability towards using new media. It includes interviews conducted with administrators (who are also educators) in government and private journalism institutions in the country, concerning acceptance of new media and adoption in curriculum, instruction, evaluation and feedback, and arrives at results interpretatively.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511984752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sterne ◽  
Elena Razlogova

This article proposes a contextualist approach to machine learning and aesthetics, using LANDR, an online platform that offers automated music mastering and that trumpets its use of supervised machine learning, branded as artificial intelligence (AI). Increasingly, machine learning will become an integral part of the processing of sounds and images, shaping the way our culture sounds, looks, and feels. Yet we cannot know exactly how much of a role or what role machine learning plays in LANDR. To parochialize the machine learning part of what LANDR does, this study spirals in from bigger contexts to smaller ones: LANDR’s place between the new media industry and the mastering industry; the music scene in their home city, Montreal, Quebec; LANDR use by DIY musicians and independent engineers; and, finally, the LANDR interface and the sound it produces in use. While LANDR claims to automate the work of mastering engineers, it appears to expand and morph the definition of mastering itself: it devalues people’s aesthetic labor as it establishes higher standards for recordings online. And unlike many other new media firms, LANDR’s connection to its local music scene has been essential to its development, growth, and authority, even as they have since moved on from that scene, and even as the relationship was never fully reciprocal.


Author(s):  
Stefan Machura

Criminal justice and its institutions are key objects of popular culture and attract extensive media attention. The portrayal of the justice system, its rules, professions, and institutions has been invigorated with the invention of new media technology. The authorities’ reaction to wrong doing has proven not less exciting to the audience than the criminal acts themselves. French sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized that every member of society has an interest in social cohesion and wishes to see perpetrators appropriately punished. The media plays to this basic inclination. From the reactions of the justice system to crime people take clues not only for its effectiveness but the public also wants to see its basic values represented in the work of officials and their decisions. Therefore, aspects of procedural and distributive justice are picked up by popular imagination and exploited to the full by media producers. Beyond recognition that media depictions of criminal justice will follow media conventions and will therefore be distorted in systematic ways, it has to be acknowledged that those representations and the expectations they formed have become a major force in society. Political repercussions and influences on how crime is dealt with are a consequence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidi Sukmayadi

Democratization in communication is the starting point for mass media in achieving a prosperous information society. However, building an ideal democratic role of media is not trouble free. The incredible pace of the development of media industry in Indonesia in the last two decades poses at least two main threats to media consumers. First, the growth of the media industry in Indonesia has been driven by capital interests that lead to media oligopoly. Second, the integration of conventional media and the internet and social media technology place our society information flow on a stranglehold. The media consolidation gives the audience an illusion of information choice without realizing that actually they are losing their rights for reliable information. Hence, an upgrade of media literacy skill and a proper media policy are needed to cope with the current fast-paced world.


Author(s):  
Anthony M. Nadler

This concluding chapter discusses the intellectual resources of critical media studies and applies them to debates about the future of news. The changes taking place in news media concern not only content but the very modes through which people engage the media in everyday life, as well as the ways media connect individuals to larger communities. Although interactive media is not inherently destined to level hierarchies of power, it is certainly possible that societal appropriations of new media technologies could mean a reworking of the infrastructure that regulates which ideas and visions circulate from point to point in the media system. The issue lies in how crucial decisions at this critical juncture will be made and what course they will set for the years to come.


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