Media industry

Question 1

Power and media industries - Curran and Seaton

Answer 1

• The idea that the media is controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by the logic of profit and power
• Media concentration generally limits or inhibits variety, creativity and quality
• The more socially diverse patterns of ownership help create the conditions for more varied and adventurous media productions

Question 2

Regulation - Livingstone and Lunt

Answer 2

• There is an underlying struggle in recent UK regulation policy between the need to further the interests of citizens, by offering protection from harmful or offensive material, and the need to further the interests of consumers, by ensuring choice, value for money, and market competition
• The increasing power of global media corporations, together with the rise of convergent media technologies and transformations in the production, distribution and marketing of digital media, have placed traditional approaches to media regulation at risk

Question 3

Cultural industries - Hesmondhalgh

Answer 3

• Cultural industry companies try to minimise risk and maximise audiences through vertical and horizontal integration, and by formatting their cultural products
• The largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries
• The radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit orientated set of cultural industries