Media regulation

About: Media regulation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 520 publications have been published within this topic receiving 10329 citations.

Comparing Media Systems: three models of media and politics

Abstract: This book proposes a framework for comparative analysis of the relation between the media and the political system Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables that have shaped their evolution They go on to identify three major models of media system development, the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist, and Liberal models; to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems; and to explore the force of change that are currently transforming them It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication, and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context

Who Owns the Media

Abstract: The authors examine patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world. They find that almost universally the largest media firms are controlled by the government or by private families. Government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media. Government ownership is generally associated with less press freedom, fewer political and economic rights, inferior governance, and, most conspicuously, inferior social outcomes in education and health. The adverse effects of government ownership on political and economic freedom are stronger for newspapers than for television. The adverse effects of government ownership of the media do not appear to be restricted solely to instances of government monopoly. The authors present a range of evidence on the adverse consequences of state ownership of the media. State ownership of the media is often argued to be justified on behalf of the social needs of the disadvantaged. But if their findings are correct, increasing private ownership of the media--through privatization or by encouraging the entry of privately owned media--can advance a variety of political and economic goals, especially those of meeting the social needs of the poor.

Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences

Abstract: List of Exhibits Preface Acknowledgments Part I. Media/Society 1. Media and the Social World The Importance of Media The Rise of Mass Media Media and Society A Sociology of Media A Model of Media and the Social World Applying the Model: A Civil Rights Movement Conclusion Part II. Production: The Media Industry and the Social World 2. The Economics of the Media Industry Changing Patterns of Ownership Consequences of Conglomeration and Integration The Effects of Concentration Mass Media for Profit The Impact of Advertising Conclusion 3. Political Influence on Media The Case of "Pirate Radio" Common Features of Media Regulation Debates The "First Freedom" The "Public Interest" and the Regulation Debate Regulating Media Content and Distribution Informal Political, Social, and Economic Pressure Conclusion 4. Media Organizations and Professionals The Limits of Economic and Political Constraints Decision Making for Profit: Imitation, Hits, and Stars The Organization of Media Work The Rise of User-Generated Content Occupational Roles and Professional Socialization Norms on the Internet, New Media, and New Organizations Conclusion Part III. Content: Media Representations of the Social World 5. Media and Ideology What Is Ideology? Theoretical Roots of Ideological Analysis News Media and the Limits of Debate Movies, the Military, and Masculinity Television, Popularity, and Ideology Rap Music as Ideological Critique? Advertising and Consumer Culture Advertising and the Globalization of Culture Conclusion 6. Social Inequality and Media Representation Comparing Media Content and the "Real" World The Significance of Content Race, Ethnicity, and Media Content: Inclusion, Roles, and Control Gender and Media Content Class and the Media Sexual Orientation: Out of the Closet and Into the Media? Conclusion Part IV. Audiences: Meaning and Influence 7. Media Influence and the Political World Media and Political Elites Media and Individual Citizens Media and Social Movements The Internet and Political News Politics and Entertainment Media Global Media, Global Politics Conclusion 8. Active Audiences and the Construction of Meaning The Active Audience Meanings: Agency and Structure Decoding Media and Social Position The Social Context of Media Use Active Audiences and Interpretive "Resistance" The Pleasures of Media Conclusion 9. Media Technology The Nature of Media Technology Technological Determinism and Its Limits The Social Construction of Media Technologies How Media Technology Matters New Media Technology and Social Forces The Threat to Privacy: The Expansion of Behavioral Targeting In Search of an Audience: The Long Tail and the Fragmentation of Media Using New Technologies Conclusion Part V. Globalization and the Future 10. Media in a Changing Global Culture What Is Globalization? The Global Media Industry Global Media Content Global Media Consumption: Limits of the "Global Village" Regulating Global Media Afterword: The Ubiquity of Change and the Future of Media Appendix: Selected Media-Related Internet Resources References Index About the Authors

From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Toward Sustainable Commons and User Access

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Constructing our information environment as one composed of information "from diverse and antagonistic sources"(1) has been a central focus of structural regulation and its First Amendment justification for half a century. In the twentieth century, structural media regulation meant tinkering with the configuration of a mass media market aimed at eyeballs. For example, group ownership and duopoly rules, licensing criteria like diversity and localism, financial interest and syndication rules, or cable access rules, took the basic structure of mass media markets as given, and tried to make sure that this basic structure delivered somewhat more diverse content than it would if left to its own devices. Technology now makes possible the attainment of decentralization and democratization by enabling small groups of constituents and individuals to become users--participants in the production of their information environment--rather than by lightly regulating concentrated commercial mass media to make them better serve individuals conceived as passive consumers. Structural media regulation in the twenty-first century must, in turn, focus on enabling a wide distribution of the capacity to produce and disseminate information as a more effective and normatively attractive approach to serve the goals that have traditionally animated structural media regulation. As the digitally networked environment matures, regulatory choices abound that implicate whether the network will be one of peer users or one of active producers who serve a menu of prepackaged information goods to consumers whose role is limited to selecting from this menu. These choices occur at all levels of the information environment: the physical infrastructure layer--wires, cable, radio frequency spectrum--the logical infrastructure layer--software--and the content layer. At the physical infrastructure level, we are seeing it in such decisions as the digital TV orders (DTV Orders), or the question of open access to cable broadband services, and the stunted availability of license-free spectrum. At the logical layer, we see laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)(2) and the technology control litigation that has followed hard upon its heels, as owners of copyrighted works attempt to lock up the software layer so as to permit them to control all valuable uses of their works.(3) At the content layer, we have seen an enclosure movement aimed at enabling information vendors to capture all the downstream value of their information. This enclosure raises the costs of becoming a user--rather than a consumer--of information and undermines the possibility of becoming a producer/user of information for reasons other than profit, by means other than sales. At all these levels, the fundamental commitment of our democracy to secure "the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources"(4) which has traditionally animated structural media regulation, should be on securing a significant component of the information environment for creative use by users. To implement such an agenda would require a focus on identifying resources necessary for the production and exchange of information and fashioning regulatory policies that make access to and use of these resources equally and ubiquitously available to all users of the network. Developing a series of commons in such resources is an important mode of implementation of this commitment. Other modes could include access and carriage requirements aimed specifically at making possible the development of a network of peer users. Identifying and sustaining commons and securing access to communicative resources are more important focuses for information policy concerned with democracy than assuring that there are eight rather than three broadcast networks or that no two networks are under common ownership. II. AT THE CROSSROADS The basic structure of mass media markets emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. …

Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenge to State Power

Abstract: Media have been central to government efforts to reinforce sovereignty and define national identity, but globalization is fundamentally altering media practices, institutions, and content. More than the activities of large conglomerates, globalization entails competition among states as well as private entities to dominate the world's consciousness. Changes in formal and informal rules, in addition to technological innovation, affect the growth and survival or decline of governments. In Media and Sovereignty, Monroe Price focuses on emerging foreign policies that govern media in a world where war has information as well as military fronts. Price asks how the state, in the face of institutional and technological change, controls the forms of information reaching its citizens. He also provides a framework for analyzing the techniques used by states to influence populations in other states. Price draws on an international array of examples of regulation of media for political ends, including "self-regulation," media regulation in conflict zones, the control of harmful and illegal content, and the use of foreign aid to alter media in target societies.