Week 7

Reading Diary: Week 7

Political Economy of the Media

This week we had the opportunity to become more aware about the political economy of the media. One of the key points that I researched is the decline in the consumption of the printed media outlets due to the spectacular growth of online advertising. A big number of newspapers and magazines are feeling in danger because of the significant rise of Internet.

By reading “The Political Economy of the ‘New’ News Environment” I could definitely see Des Freedman`s concern about the technological, social and economic changes of the news journalism and the consequences for the democracy. Because of the fact that Internet is reaching a level of saturation and widespread adoption throughout the world most news agencies try to integrate their products to a digital format. “All news organizations now have a web presence (see Sparks, 2000 for an analysis of the original business rationale for turning to the internet) and an online audience that is generally much higher that their offline audience.” (Freedman, 2010 Page 43) This means that journalists have to present their stories for both print and web form. Therefore, more payment is expected but they are facing more deadlines which lead to pressure and push them to use more information from PR agencies or so-called churnalism which Davies defines as “rapid repackaging of largely unchecked material”. (Davies, 2008: 60, Freedman, 2010: 41) 

After reading Chapter 5 from Media Studies (Long, P. & Wall, T. 2012) I raised awareness about the public sphere and ‘citizenship’. Modern media offers the opportunity of a proxy public sphere where interactions are magnified but people are perceived as clients. When it comes to the citizenship we can consider it as a political identity where people are privileged to have certain social rights. According to Graham Murdock “the right to participate fully in existing patterns of social life and to help shape the forms that they may take in future” is citizenship. (Murdock, 1994:158, 2004; Long, P, Wall, T 2012, p.184)

I do agree that online advertising prevails the offline but I do not agree that the traditional model is in ‘crisis’ and soon will be down. As Murdock thinks the media should serve us: information, knowledge, representation and communication so I believe that journalists could keep the balance and make profits. For my further investigation, by organizational research, I will focus on a comparison between the content of The Daily Mail and MailOnline.

Referencing:

Freedman, D. (2010) Chapter 2: The Political Economy of ‘New’ News Environment in Fenton, N. (ed) (2010) New Media, Old News. London Sage Publications

Long, P and Wall, T. (2012) Media Studies: Text, Production, Context 2^nd Ed.