4. The Political Economy of New Media

4.    

The Political Economy of New Media

This week’s lecture taught me that money is power and when it comes to media ownership, if you own the media you own society. This statement sounds rather extreme and one could argue that people are intelligent; they are not so easily fooled, just as audience are no longer believed to be passive, however, the theoretical approach to this lecture posed the question: Whose interests are served in the media? The answer is the media owners and this affects not only the economy of society but the audience and society as a whole.

The worrying thing is that a lot of New Zealand media is owned by international companies and even though people may not easily be fooled by the media and they may not be passive, the media still play a significant role in our lives because it is part of our daily routine.  Furthermore, those who own the means of production also control the dominant ideology in society. Ideology is a set of beliefs, a worldview, and that is something that is not easily contested or denied.  Concentrated ownership means diminished voices which can be seen as deliberate manipulation as any debates or alternative views from alternative sources are not seen and heard and therefore do not seem to exist.

A contrasting view of media ownership can be found in liberal pluralism where it is believed that the media play an important role with free speech and also provide a forum for opinion and debate and thus, provide a range of voices. This view says that ownership does not deliberately manipulate and therefore, they encourage free thinkers and believers. If one thinks about how the range of competitors are disappearing as ownership becomes concentrated one can only see that media owners are ruled by commercialism and have greed and their own interests at heart. This does not bode well for the audience and society.

There is a number of different ways and definitions of how convergence potentially impacts the ownership and control of new media. In Lister’s definition digitality in the main idea where everything has its own characteristics such as newspaper and television, but all are now digitised and you can find them on the internet. This affects ownership as it changes production and distribution and will also affect profits. The other way and definition of converge that affects ownership is in the way previously separate owners once operated in different sectors but due to convergence these separate entities are now owned by the same owner which can be seen in the I-phone as the one owner, Apple, makes profit from the separate entities of phone service, music, film, television and the internet. With convergence, the owners can increase their profit margin and new media convergence gives them the chance to do this. 

With money comes power, and in my opinion convergence allows media owners to increase their power and their profits. The media do not control our minds, but they do help shape our values and beliefs. If you own the media, you own society. If you own global media, you own the world.  

Alarmed? I think we should be.