Week 6: Political economy of the media

Political economy of the media concerns itself with the nature of production and the wider social conditions under which it takes place. It focuses on the structure of media industries, patterns of ownership and control along with the survival strategies of media companies.

This weeks set reading suggests that younger audiences are deserting traditional news outlets for the advantages of the internet - it's immediacy, it's interactivity, it's low entry costs and it's abundant capacity. This makes traditional news outlets lose their ability to be the only ones delivering news to audiences, therefore making news more accessible and less elite. As news is more widely available it puts in to question how traditional news outlets are going to survive.

The decline in readers and viewers of traditional news outlets leads to more competition, less advertising and cost-cutting. The internets ability to target a niche group of people at low costs with its advertising has affected newspapers revenues and classified advertising. However, the reading argues that the major problem is not the decline in readers, but the degeneration of the existing business model that tied together news and advertising. Des Freedman suggests the traditional business model for delivering news is in 'crisis'. This puts in to question journalism/news as a public good, as the decline in money made is affecting the content. The industry seems more concerned with how it makes its money than it does with delivering quality news to the public.

In order to survive in this fast-paced, ever-changing industry. News outlets are having to change the way they produce and deliver their content to keep up with the changes. In the lecture we looked at ways media companies do this such as by using merchandise. Another way they do this is by using cross media. Elle magazine, Company magazine and Cosmopolitan magazine all belong to Hearst magazines. This company uses different technological advances to keep up to date with its audience, such as through Snapchat, other social media outlets, apps and new technology where readers can scan articles to read more online or find the products spoke about online such as outfits.

If I were to look into this further I would use organisational analysis to study whether the quality of news has deteriorated with the decline in popularity of mainstream and traditional news outlets and the wider availability of news content.

Bibliography:

1) Des Freedman(2010) 'The Political Economy of 'New' News Environment' in Natalie Fenton, (ed) New Media, Old News. London: Sage Publications

2) Mansell, R (2004) News media and society. Political economy, power and new media. Pages 74-83. Sage publications

3) Long, P. Wall, T. (2012), Media Studies, Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), New York, Routledge