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