代写 MULT10018 Power and the Media assignment
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代写 MULT10018 Power and the Media assignment
Dr Andrea Carson
Thursday 20 April 2016
MULT10018 Power
and the Media
Overview
• What is Power
• What is the Media?
• How do they intersect?
• Exercise of media power and contested theories
about the mass media and its relationship with
society…
– The ‘Fourth Estate’ (liberal democratic theory)
– Political Economic theories - Control (propaganda theory)
– Cultural theories- Chaos theory
• The Panama Papers
• News of the World
• Summary
What is power?
• The idea of power is a way to grasp the
character of social relations.
• Investigating power can tell us about
who is in control and ‘who benefits’
from such arrangements – Cui Bono.
(Craig, Geoffrey (2004) The Media, Politics and Public Life, p.24)
• Power can be a zero-sum game of
domination. It can also be about people
acting together to enact freedom.
What is power?
• Political power – inherently requires
legitimation
• Social power – rests on status within a society
and is generally attached to positions within
functional systems
• Economic power – a special form of social
power
• Media power – is based on the technology
and infrastructure of mass media (traditional
view – Foucault would argue differently)
Habermas, 2006, Europe the Faltering project, pp. 167-168
What is the media?
“ The media surround us. Our everyday lives are
saturated by radio, television, newspapers, books, the
Internet, movies, recorded music, magazines and more.
“In the 21st century, we navigate through a vast mass media
environment unprecedented in human history. Yet our
innate familiarity with the media often allows us to take
them for granted. They are like the air we breathe, ever
present yet rarely considered.”
Croteau and Hoynes (2003) Media Society: Industries, Images and Audiences, p.3
“Those social institutions that are concerned with the
production and distribution of all forms of knowledge,
information and entertainment’ (Heywood 2007, p. 232)
In the West: Media power includes power ...
• To shape perceptions
• To structure definitions of reality
• To influence public opinion
• To confer status and legitimacy
• To encourage citizens to participate in
politics (or not)
Different theories shift the emphasis of these
capacities
Consider the media’s role in non-
democratic political systems…
Media roles might include:
• Contributing to stability
• Maintaining ‘social harmony’
• Strengthening ‘social cohesion’
• Strengthening ‘national unity’
• E.g. see People’s Daily (China) editorial -
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/7331657.html
Political power includes power
over the media...
• To regulate and censor the media
• To suppress and ‘spin’ information
• To overwhelm media with media
management staff and techniques
• To provide ‘information subsidies’
• To impact commercial
environment/profitability of media
(including political and government
advertising)
代写 MULT10018 Power and the Media assignment
Why examine Media Power?
• “The media are businesses and yet they are ascribed a
special function in the democratic health of a society; the
media are the news media and function as journalism, but
they are also the entertainment media and provide escape
from the pressures of everyday life.”
Craig, Geoffrey (2004) The Media, Politics and Public Life, p.3
• We will focus primarily on NEWS MEDIA - examining
print, radio, television, internet and digital technologies.
• We will look at both media and politics, and their
intersection, as sources and purveyors of power in society.
Media and Democracy?
• Jürgen Habermas (1989) The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere
• public sphere is an ‘ideal’, which emerged in Europe in
C17th coming out of the coffee house and tea salons
and early pamphlets, which developed into
newspapers
• a public ‘space’ for political discussion set apart from
both state and market (beforehand had to be private)
• For capitalism to develop there had to be freedom of
thought and action over wealth
• A sphere for critical thinking about issues that affect
society
• The newspaper became its ‘preeminent institution’
The ‘liberal’ narrative of
media power
• Oldest
• Celebrates the evolution of constitutional
law and structures of British parliament
• Rise of mass democracy
• Positive appraisal
• Sees democratisation as strengthened by
the media
1. Media free of government
2. free media empowered the people.
Source J. Curran, 2002, Media and Power pp. 4-5
What are the characteristics of
democratic politics?
? Constitutionality – an agreed set of procedures and
rules governing the conduct of elections, the
behaviours of those who win them, and legitimate
activities of those who dissent
? Participation – needs to be a large portion of the
population who participate in the democratic process
? Rational Choice– the participants (citizens) must have
choice and must be able to exercise
McNair, Brian (2003) ‘Politics, Democracy and the Media, pp 18
The ‘ideal’ role of the news
media in a democracy
• To inform citizens
• To educate as to the meaning and significance
• of the facts
• Provide a platform for public political
discourse
• To give publicity to governmental and political
institutions
• Serves as a channel for the advocacy of
political viewpoints.
McNair, Brian (2003) ‘Politics, Democracy and the Media, pp 21-22
Fourth estate
• Openness, transparency and accountability of the elected
representatives to the people have been central tenets of a
well-functioning democracy.
Edmund Burke 1729-1797‘: ‘there were Three Estates in
Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a
Fourth Estate more important far than they all'.
• The print media has been recognized for this role — no less
in the first amendment of the US Constitution.
In Australia and Britain, the role is not codified in law, but
recognised in High Court interpretations of its Constitution, and
successive inquiries into the print media.
Critiquing the ‘Fourth Estate’
• ‘ The ideal of the news media successfully fulfilling
a political role that transcends its commercial
obligations has been seriously battered.
• Its power, commercial ambitions and ethical
weakness have undermined its institutional
standing.
• There is now a widespread, and reasonable, doubt
that the contemporary news media can any longer
adequately fulfill the historic role the press created
for itself several hundred years ago.’
• Schultz, J. Reviving the Fourth Estate: Democracy, Accountability and the Media, Melbourne:
Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 1.
Critiquing the ‘Fourth Estate’
• $$ Commercial interests - advertising
• Tabloidization – Entertainment values in news
• Rise of ‘clickbait’ arising from difficult
economic environment for print newspapers
– Difficulty also for free to air television
– Accusations of dumbing down content
• Further resources
• Sideshow – Lindsay Tanner
• John Lloyd reading – second reading
Structural transformation of
the public sphere - Habermas
• For Habermas, this liberal
interpretation of the power of the
media theme trails off, around the
1880-90s when two new themes
become prominent in liberal histories
of the press—
1) falling editorial standards and 2) the
rise of the press barons.
Source: James Curran, Media and Power p. 6
2. Political economy of mass
media– UK
• Ralph Miliband, - media are shaped by
‘a number of influences—and they all
work in the same conservative
direction’.
• These merge together, rendering media
‘weapons in the arsenal of class
domination’
• (Miliband 1973:203–13).
Ownership structures
• Family-owned print media – 18 th and
19 th centuries
• Barons – early twentieth century
• Conglomerates late 20 th century
• Multinationals – 21 st century
Source:Jean Chabalay (1998) ‘ The formation of the journalistic field’ in
The Invention of Journalism
The rise of Media Oligopolies
• Since the turn of the 20 th century mass media outlets and
capitalist industries in general have tended toward
concentration – toward systems of oligopoly where a few big
players dominate.
• The logic of oligopoly in a ‘competitive’ economy is brutally
simple: the bigger you are, the more market share you have
and the more you can dominate and or incorporate your rivals.
• The history of the US media industry, as Dennis W. Mazzocco
(1994) has shown, is one of relentless expansion and
concentration (deflected only occasionally and temporarily by
antitrust laws).
• With fewer player around the media product tends to have
limited diversity – you stick with what sells. In general terms
this restricts innovation, choice and difference.
Robert Hassan 2004 ‘Hegemony and Mass Media’ in Media, Politics and the Network Society, p. 44
Political economy –
‘Manufactured consent’
• Herman and Chomsky - controls
within media organizations mesh with
wider controls in society to render
American media ‘effective and
powerful ideological institutions that
carry out a system-supportive
propaganda function’ that supports
elites and capital
(Herman and Chomsky 1988:306)
Control or ‘dominance’ view of
the media
Herman and Chomsky propaganda model
• Money and power filter out the ‘news fit to print’
• No need for state to own or intimidate media
• Five ‘filters’ that determine the definition of news as well as
what is actually printed/broadcast
Source: Chomsky and Herman Manufactured Consent: political
economy of the mass media
Five Filters
1. Size, ownership, and profit orientation
2. Reliance on advertising
3. Sourcing mass media news
4. Flak and the enforcers
5. A form of dominant ideology that
galvanises the citizenry to a common cause
and against a common enemy
Chomsky: The myth of the
liberal Media
2012 Independent Media Inquiry:
“The obvious dangers of concentration are:
• · a lack of diversity in the views that are given
voice
• · the possibility that a handful of people
(media owners or journalists) will unduly
influence public opinion
• · a decline in standards because of the absence
of effective competition.”
Source: Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media
Regulation p. 280
Australia: daily metro newspapers
Concentration of ownership -
intensifying
• From 1988 to 2004 the share of the top
5 US media companies more than
doubled 12.5 per cent to 28.4 per cent
• In Australia, about 90 percent of metro
daily newspapers owned by two
companies, News Corporation
Australia and Fairfax Media
Media ownership - concentration
• Horizontal integration = trying to control
as much of the output in a particular field as
possible. Ultimate form of this is monopoly.
• Conglomeration = having major holdings
in two or more sectors of the media such as
music, book publishing, etc
• Vertical Integration = Owning operations
and businesses across various industries and
verticals. When company produces the
content but also owns distribution channels
that guarantee display of that content.
Source: Businessinsider.com.au
50 concentrated thru. A&M to 6
A snapshot of multinationals
Critiquing control theory:
Limits to proprietor power
• Ignores structural forces at work
• Ignores role of journalists and editors
in producing news
• Assumes readers/viewers have little
agency
• Ignores changing nature of media
organisations
• (source: Tiffen, R, 2006, Political economy and the news, pp 28-42.)
Revisionist theories: Revival of
pluralism
Post-modernism
• There is no dominant ideology in
media content
• People are faced with a proliferation of
images from which no objective truth
can be drawn
• Media texts are ambiguous
McNair’s Chaos theory
• Brian McNair borrows a 1944 term cultural
chaos from German critical theorists Theodor
Adorno and Max Horrkheimer, and playfully
turns it sideways to describe the current state of
the global media as a state, which in a positive
way, is underscored by anarchy and disruption
and allows for:
• ‘… dissent, openness and diversity rather than
closure, exclusivity and ideological
homogeneity.’
McNair, Brian. Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised
World, p. vii.
Chaos Theory: Old and New
media
Freeze frame
• Newspapers
• Radio
documentaries/ news
• TV pre –
records/programming
Flow frame
• Radio talk shows
• Live TV
Both
• Online media
• Blogs
• Microblogging ie
Twitter
• Social networking
sites
‘Crisis’ or new frontiers…
• Crowd sourcing – The Guardian MP rorts
• Data journalism — Crime stats; govt spending; court
lists, etc
• Collaborations —Wikileaks; ABC and Fairfax
• Pro-am journalism (radio example of Iraq contractors;
Huffington Post during election campaigns)
• Citizen journalism —eyewitness accounts
• Monitory Democracy
– John Keane identified the digital age was a time of
'communicative abundance' and provided exciting, new
mechanisms for observing and reporting abuses of power.
The Panama Papers
• More than 370 journalists worked on the
Panama Papers, a 12 month investigation that
covered almost 80 countries and involved
more than 100 media organizations.
• Files reveal the offshore holdings of 140
politicians and public officials from around
the world
• More than 214,000 offshore entities appear in
the leak, connected to people in more than
200 countries and territories
• Major banks have driven the creation of hard-
to-trace companies in offshore havens
The Panama Papers
Leaks of a different kind?
News of the World Scandal
Source: Wheeler, Mark (1997) ‘The traditional paradigms: Political theories of the mass media’
pp.1-27 in Wheeler, M., Politics and the mass media, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, p.4.
In Sum
Media is a source of power in society
Several theories to further our
understanding of this exercise of media
power
• Liberal democratic
• Political economy
• Return to pluralism theories
– Post modern theories of the media
代写 MULT10018 Power and the Media assignment
