Key Sociologists - Ownership and Control

Curran

In 1937 four men owned approximately half of all newspapers sold nationwide (including local newspapers)

Miliband

Editors and journalists - depends on the owners for their job

• will not use any apparent autonomy - leads to the dissemination of bourgeois ideology

Whale (Instrumental)

Proprietors are predominantly businessmen, not editors

• “media moguls” are busy dealing with global business matters, not what story to run in a particular national newspaper

Jones

media as a privileged “closed shop”

• 51% of top journalists in Britain are privately educated

• decline of local newspapers has removed one route that working-class could take a journalism career

Whale (Hegemonic)

views and approaches contained within mainstream media is not a result of the social background of editors and journalists - result of the market demands of the audience

Davies

contemporary society for journalists and editors to be the neutral reliable professionals - a lot of output might lack fact-checking and in fact reveal basis

• still a choice of audiences to pick the media they prefer!

Levene

ownership of the media is not concentrated but rather fluid

• people can easily reject any hegemonic messages from the powerful and create their own narratives instead

Bagdikian

Owners of these media conglomerate the Lords of the Global Village to demonstrate their dominance over the ‘information creation process’

• media owners have both single and cross media ownership - vertical and horizontal ownership

Barnett & Seymour

pressure to attract new audience and gain profit - limits choice

• rise of infotainment - pushing bland unchallenging narratives to the public

• people attracted to the candyfloss of tabolidisation - replaces serious journalism

Curran & Seaton

lots of evidence of owners directly manipulating media content

• “press barons” serving the interests of their wealthy owners

Gramsci

explained hegemony as a system of dominance where the acceptance and conformity through persuasion framing ideology as just common sense