It is imperative the public be made aware of major media policy decisions to help take part in and shape the industry that they rely on to be an informed citizenry in a democracy. However, in an increasingly concentrated media landscape where fewer owners control our channels of information and reign over a vast array of holdings, the system is firmly positioned to conceal or marginalize policy stories that negatively affect its business interests. This study explores mainstream TV news coverage of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA– legislation proposed to reduce counterfeit purchases online that came under fire from critics for potentially threatening the fabric of free expression on the Internet. By asking, “How much attention did major television news networks whose parent companies supported SOPA devote to the bill during their nightly broadcasts?” and “How much attention did major television news networks whose parent companies supported SOPA devote to the bill during their nightly broadcasts after the Internet Blackout protesting the Act?” it finds those networks whose parent companies sought to benefit from the Act’s passage failed to report on the legislation at crucial times before and after the SOPA debate. The results largely fall in line with the mainstream media– namely the broadcast industry’s– historical self-censorship of significant media policy stories. / text

In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act which increased the proportion of the national television audience a media company could reach to 35%. Seven years later, the FCC further deregulated ownership, increasing the proportion of audience a media company could reach to 45%. This change also allowed crossownership of media outlets in larger local markets. This paper will research how media ownership groups have changed by documenting the acquisitions and sales of four of the largest media companies in comparison to four smaller ownership groups. It will also discuss what effects those changes have had on ownership diversity. This thesis will answer the following question: has media ownership become less diverse since the 2003 Biennial Review of the 1996 Telecommunications Act?

The primary goal of this master thesis was to analyze the development of ownership of daily newspapers in the Czech Republic in the period 2008 - 2016. The development of media ownership in the monitored period was analyzed in the context of the long term structural problems of media sector, which were intensified by the economic crisis beginning in 2008. In addition to the economic context, the thesis also deals with the historical context, specifically the changes of the Czech daily newspapers market after 1989. In connection with the transfer of ownership of the Czech publishing houses to the hands of domestic businessmen, often with direct links to politics, thesis also deals with the issue of ownership concentration and the relations between media and politics. I also mention the phenomenon of emerging new, alternative media projects by the journalists in reaction to ownership changes threatening pluralism and freedom of speech. In the end, I also compare the development of ownership of the daily newspapers in the Czech Republic with the development of ownership in other countries of the CEE region, such as Slovakia, Poland, Hungary or the Baltic States.

Student Number : 0413406F - MA dissertation - School of Journalism and Media Studies - Faculty of Humanities / This study examines the rise and fall of ThisDay newspaper by examining its strategies to break into the South African media market. The study places ThisDay in the context of certain factors of the political economy of the South African media and examines how the dynamics of advertising contributed to the collapse of the newspaper. By analysing perspectives from Bagdikian (1983) among others, that the success and failure of the media depends on its success or failure to attract advertising revenue. The study examines the specific strategies used by ThisDay’s management to attract advertising as a key source of revenue to determine how the failure or lack of such strategies could have played a contributory role in the collapse of the newspaper. Among the factors examined is the further consolidation of ownership in the competing media companies. The intricacies and complex relationships that existed between the South African media its owners and advertisers are examined, to determine whether the actions of the competition contributed to ThisDay’s failure. The findings of this study show that ThisDay’s entry met what was arguably a major need for quality news in South Africa’s daily newspaper market; this however, did not prevent its closure. It had to grapple with too many challenges, most of them internal. The underlying reason for most of the problems management encountered was the unavailability of financial resources to run a paper of ThisDay’s magnitude. However the strategies that its management adopted as well as the business plan were way off the mark. The demise of ThisDay newspaper is a loss to South African journalism in two aspects; the industry lost a quality newspaper which greatly improved the level of South African journalism (the quality of which many now say is in a decline). Secondly, its failure will serve as a deterrent to any aspiring entrepreneur who would like to put together a quality product, the perception being that quality newspapers are not profitable. With the demise of ThisDay newspaper and recently the Nova, it seems that the South African print media environment has closed its doors to new entrants.

This research contributes to the study of the journalism by analysing the changes in journalistic practice and news production as a result of digital media and the implications thereof. I critically analyse the role of digital media on news production and journalistic practices and argue that the rise of digital media has significantly changed the roles, practices and structures of the journalistic profession in Nigeria. I also argue that these changes require a practice centred approach to explore changes in perceptions of identity and journalistic labour; attitude towards multi-skilling, working conditions of journalists and the commercialisation of news which have the potential to compromise journalistic performance and the news they produce. A proposed combined approach of Pierre Bourdieu’s Field theory and Howard Becker’s Social Worlds was used. I support Dickinson’s argument that the meso-level analysis offered by field research requires the micro-level analysis of the news world to present a “socially situated, empirically grounded and contextually located” analysis of journalists’ adoption/appropriation of media technologies. To this end, the combined approach provides a more rounded understanding of journalism and news production in Nigeria by presenting a contextual understanding of the socio-cultural and political economic context that shape to the changes that are occurring in the newsrooms in Nigeria. Empirical evidence is drawn from five media organisations in Nigeria (Guardian newspapers, ThisDay, Vanguard, Channels TV and Nigeria Television Authority) to examine these from the perception of journalists. It also argues that the adoption of particular technologies is “socially and culturally determined” and understanding these nuances would contribute to the broader debates on news production and journalism.

A content analysis of news Web sites reveals how many multimedia and interactive components both converged and non-converged media organizations include on their Web presence. The sample included four news Web sites considered to be highly converged with their print and broadcast counterparts (TBO.com, chicagotribune.com, DallasNews.com, and Azcentral.com), one newspaper Web site not affiliated with a broadcast media organization (buffalonews.com), and one broadcast news Web site not affiliated with a print news organization (kfmb.com). A multimedia and interactivity score was given to each Web site based on the quantity of these components each site used. Both kfmb.com (a non-converged organization) and chicagotribune.com (a highly converged news organization) offered significantly more multimedia components than the other four organizations, but only chicagotribune.com provided a statistically significant number of interactivity components on its Web site. The results of this study revealed that among the four converged news organizations (azcentral.com, dallasnews.com, chicagotribune.com, and tbo.com), the only organization demonstrating the characteristics of a converged news organization was chicagotribune.com.

Despite a rising democratic defict in dominant Canadian media they continue to hold much influce on policy-makers, government officials and citizens. While some scholars argue that recent advancements in communication technology change the dynamics of media production, making it more accessible, others argue that online media reflects what occurs offline. To test which position is correct, this thesis compares dominant and alternative news media websites. Overall, it appears that online media practices are a reflection of offline media. At best, alternative media adopt a hybrid model of production where they chose to selectively incorporate dominant media practices in the aim to meet the goals of alternative media.

Since the early 1990s, regulators in the UK and in many other countries have faced increasing pressure from media industry participants to liberalise media and cross-media ownership restrictions. Many countries, including the UK, have responded to this pressure by amending their domestic legislative frameworks in such ways as to remove at least some restrictions which had previously been established in order to protect pluralism. The main aim for this study has been to assess the 'economic' case in favour of de-regulating media and cross-media ownership in the UK. The principal method of investigation has been to analyse the relationship between, on the one hand, the size and vertical or diagonal structure of a selection of UK media firms and, on the other, their recent economic performance. Findings suggest that, although factors other than size will affect performance, there is generally a strong and positive correlation between the market share and the operating profitability of firms who are involved in either television or radio broadcasting, or national newspaper publishing. This correlation reflects efficiency gains through economies of scale and scope and, also, revenue advantages arising from increased market power. On the other hand, there is little evidence that previous monomedia ownership restrictions represented a threat to the economic viability of the industry or that developments in the late 1990s have introduced significant 'new' gains for enlarged monomedia enterprises. Nor is there evidence that de-regulation of monomedia restrictions would have any positive impact on the exports performance of traditional UK media firms. With regard to diagonal expansion, there is no evidence that cross-ownership between radio and television or between television and national newspapers yields important economic benefits. This thesis would argue that, taken as a whole, the de-regulation of UK media ownership in 1996 has delivered relatively few enhancements to the economic efficiency or prospects of the UK media industry while, at the same time, has engendered a considerable welfare loss through lower safeguards for pluralism. This outcome reflects serious systemic problems at the national UK level in the policymaking mechanism which is supposed to curb the political influence of media owners. This study finds that the scope - via a shift in responsibility for policy-formulation to the transnational European level - for overcoming such problems will be limited, not least because the protection of pluralism remains outside the official competence of the European Commission.

This dissertation investigates the nature of Korean media giants among members of Asian media conglomerates in the era of media marketization. Since the 1980s, each state in Asia has adopted neoliberal media laws and policies that have made its media systems more market-driven. This neoliberal media reform led to the restructuring of media systems from state-controlled systems to profit-oriented ones and facilitating the emergence of Asian media conglomerates. However, scholarship on the nature of Asian media giants has been sparse in critical media studies. Thus, I conduct a case study to explore the nature of Asian media giants with a focus on the interplay between media ownership and media markets in order to determine the major beneficiaries of Asian media marketization. I focus on the three Korean media conglomerates of Samsung, CJ and JoongAng Ilbo groups during the period from 1998 to 2012 when the Korean state applied the neoliberal media mode to the Korean media systems. Utilizing the theoretical approach of political economy of communication, I examine three points: (1) the relationship between the era of neoliberal media and the structures of four media markets (e.g., advertising, daily newspaper, cable television and film); (2) the interconnections among media expansions, media ownership and informal ties (e.g., blood and marriage ties); and (3) the relationship between the changed structures of those four media markets and corporate censorship of the three chaebol groups. To address these questions, I used both institutional and corporate profiling techniques and then analyzed both governmental and secondary documents, including those covering structures of media markets, media ownership, boards of directors, media expansions and emergent issues in the information and entertainment markets. Consequently, my analysis finds that neoliberal media laws and policies led to forming centralized market structures controlled by chaebol groups with connections to Western media conglomerates and/or foreign capital. Also, I find that the Lee family members used family connections to expand their media businesses and control multiple media operations, thereby becoming the media emperor in Korea. Finally, my analysis shows that a media-oriented ideology has rarely guaranteed free competition among market players but has instead led to increasing the market polarization between a few market controllers and many independent media companies. In other words, my study indicates that the neoliberal media mode allowed family capitalists in Korea with foreign capital to control the structures of media markets.

There seems to be growing amount of doubts about the independance of Czech media and its position in the public space since the mid 2013, when Andrej Babiš - the second wealthiest Czech entrepreneur and since 2014 also the minister of finance -- has bought MAFRA media house, which issues among others two Czech daily papers Mladá fronta DNES and Lidové noviny. Aim of this thesis is to find out, how the change in the ownership of the MAFRA media house affected the content of the two daily papers. Such effects are analysed in articles published in Mladá fronta DNES and Lidové noviny, firstly in general in the foreign policy topics, secondly in representation of the name of Andrej Babiš and thirdly in representation of the distinct subsidiaries of the Agrofert group. Data collection is divided into two separate periods -- before and after the acquisition of MAFRA media house by Andrej Babiš. Quantitative content analysis has been chosen as the method of research.