Pluralism Flashcards
Pluralism…
Pluralists argue that in democratic, free market economies, different media companies must compete for customers. Pluralist argue not only market forces but society is individualistic and seek self interests.
Competition…
The competition that arises from this may be:
> Economic - different newspaper groups competing for readers, for example.
> Ideological - different political groups competing to promote their views through the media. While media owners are potentially powerful players - they are in a position to demand their views are heard and expressed.
Pluralist approaches argue that control of the media is increasingly in the hands of what Galbraith (1967) calls a technocratic managerial elite who, however well Paid and regarded, remain employees rather than employers.
Those employers are called the media conglomerates. In essence these guys are bit more buisnessy.
There is not just 1 person in control…
Modern media organisations are owned by groups of shareholders rather than all-powerful individuals and where no single shareholder has overall control of a company, directors and managers are the main policymakers, running a company in the interests of shareholders but actually making all the important day to-day business decisions.
This means this is more so supply and demand rather than passive consumerism that later theories suggest.
In essence…
Finally, pluralists point out that on a purely practical level media owners of large global corporations cannot personally determine the content of all their media products, there are too many products and too many global-level management issues to keep them occupied.
Thus producers, editors and journalists have considerable freedom to shape media content, free from the control of the big bosses.
Supply and demand…
The ideological content of media messages comes a distant second to profitability.
This follows because where media companies must compete for customers, this gives power to consumers; if they don’t buy what’s on offer the seller goes out of business and the discipline of the market place ensures both competition and that consumers ultimately decide media content.
From the pluralist perspective audiences are active rather than passive and not easily manipulated. They are free to select, reject and re-interpret a wide range of media content, and they increasingly take advantage of new technologies and new media to produce their own content.
It is thus ultimately the consumers of media/ the wider audience who determine media content rather than the media owners.
Bernard and McDermott (2002)…
‘Current media ownership rules in the UK prevent any one entity acquiring excessive influence in the sector, thereby ensuring plurality of voice and diversity of content’
Globalisation…
From this perspective globalisation has given a new meaning to diversity and competition through what Davis and McAdam (2000) call a ‘new economic shift’.
Media corporations have become networks operating across national boundaries, with fluid organisational structures making them responsive to new technological developments.
Boost to diversity…
A further boost to media diversity involves the rapid growth of cheap, widely-available, computer technology, from desktop computers to smartphones, focused around a web-based distribution system (the Internet).
This has reduced the costs of media production, made entry into the media marketplace open to many different players and given producers access to potentially global audiences.
Summary…
Pluralists argue that in democratic, free market economies different media companies must compete for customers, and so they must provide the kind of content those customers want in order to make a profit and survive.
It follows that control over media content ultimately lies with consumers, not the owners of media, because the owners need to adapt their content to fit the demands of the consumers.
Media owners primarily want to make money and so they would rather adapt their media content to be more diverse and keep money coming in, rather than use their media channels to publish their own narrower subjective views and opinions.
Media content thus doesn’t reflect the biased, one sided views of media owners, it reflects the diverse opinions of the general public who ultimately pay for that media content. The public (being diverse!) generally don’t want one-sided, biased media!
The democratic process…
Pluralists suggest that the mass media are an essential part of the democratic process because the electorate today glean most of their knowledge of the political process from newspapers and television. Pluralists argue that owners, editors and journalists are trustworthy managers and protectors of this process.
Criticism…
Ultimately it is still owners who have the power the hire and fire journalists and they do have the power to select high level editors who have similar views to themselves, which may subtly influence the media agenda.
Murdock and Golding (1977), for example, argue the separation of interests between owners and controllers is more apparent compare to real since managers are increasingly also owners of the companies they control - and they think and act in much the same way as the individual media owners of the past.
Owners, editors and most journalists share an upper middle-class background and a conservative worldview.
What about censorship? Apple, for example, directly controls what may or may not be sold through its on-line store - if a song is deemed unacceptable it is excluded from sale. Individual song titles and lyrics are also subject to strict censorship - and since iTunes currently (2019) has a 63% share of the global download market the ability to exclude products from sale gives it significant control of media content.
Collins (2002) argues competition does not automatically guarantee media pluralism and diversity.
Economies of scale, for example, mean that the majority of consumer demands can be satisfied by a very few giant corporations (Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook…) that wield huge amounts of economic, political and ideological power - regardless of whether their ownership is concentrated in the hands of a single individual or a wide diversity of anonymous shareholders.
