Political Economy of Media

‘The media landscape is becoming more chaotic and fragmented due to the confluence of technological advances’.[i] To improve my understood of week topic, The Political Economy of Journalism, I read The Political Economy of the ‘New’ News Environment (Freedman, 2010, pp. 35-50) and Challenges: What’s Happening to Our News (Currah, 2009, pp. 11-28). Needless to say, the Internet leaves its mark on almost every domain. Political economy has the roots in Marxist theory about economics[ii], yet how much the news is changing its nature? How harmful is Internet for newspapers?

Digital revolution refers to a new powerful technology, sophisticated software applications and the most important: Internet domination on market. This leads to a gap between ‘digital immigration’ of old generation and ‘digital natives’. (Currah, 2009, p. 11)

The newspapers are facing difficult times and this decline will dramatically increase over the next years, as the number of print readers is continuously decreasing. [iii] However, there can be depicted a significant increase in unique readers of online newspapers (Currah, pp. 21-22).

Internet dominates now the advertising sector, having a spectacular rise from 0.1 percentages in 1998 to 15.6 per cent in 2007, only the television having a higher rate than it.[iv] The most visible consequences of this domination can be seen in the regional newspapers’ battle for survive on the market because their main financial source was the advertisement.[v] According to Freedman (2010, pp. 39-40), the risk of investing money in Internet was a major issue for a lot of international and national newspapers as there were no evidence of its development.Although, Internet brings a lot of advantages to newspapers as recording the traffic, yet tracking audience’s preferences, direct contact with customers by feed-backs.[vi]

The journalists’ transaction from prints to online, forces them to make a double work for the same income, yet the ‘churnalism’ occurs as the sources are not checked and the deadlines are multiplying (Freedman, 2010, p. 41). As the Internet takes the control, newspapers’ directors are searching for new ways to lead the market as collaborations with mobile phones’ companies or to expand themselves in online platforms[vii]. The consequence of this movement is that they have more online readers than buyers of prints, BBC News Online leading the online market.

According to both readings[viii], as online newspapers should be free, their incomes came from specialist columns, games and the most important: advertisement. However, the economic crises also affect this sector, yet there is predicted a decrease in online advertisement.

The flexibility of this industry allow it to fit in almost every environment[ix], yet even if over the next years the print newspapers will disappear, the news will be available in other forms (Freedom, 2010, p. 48). I do consider that Internet’s dominance has its own good sides as it gives people the freedom to read almost every new for free. In terms of research, I would carry out rhetorical analyse in explore the field in wider dimensions.

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References:

Currah, A. (2009) What’s Happening to Our News, Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

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

Long, P. and Wall, T. (2012) Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context, 2n dEdition, Essex: Pearson Education Limited

Bibliography:

Currah, A. (2009) What’s Happening to Our News, Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

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

Long, P. and Wall, T. (2012) Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context, 2n dEdition, Essex: Pearson Education Limited

Thomson, S. and Steve, J. (2007) Public affairs in practice: a practical guide to lobbying, [Electronic], Available: http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=85161&src=0 [12 March 2014]

[i] (Currah, 2009, p. 11)

[ii] Outlined in Lecture by Dr Ayo Oyeleye

[iii] (Freedman, 2010, pp. 35-37; Currah, 2009, pp. 23-28)

[iv] (Freedman, 2010, p. 38)

[v] (Freedman, 2010, pp. 38-39)

[vi] Methods known as ‘clickstream’ (Currah, 2009, p. 12)

[vii] (Freedman, 2010, p. 42-43)

[viii] (Currah, 2009, p. 13; Freedman, 2010, p. 45)

[ix] Online newspapers can be read from any foreign country without extra fees such as printing. (Currah, 2009, p. 12)

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