Who Owns The World S Media

This publication moves beyond the rhetoric of free media and free markets to provide a dispassionate and data-driven analysis of global media ownership trends and their drivers. Based on an extensive data collection effort from scholars around the world, it covers 13 media industries, including television, newspapers, book publishing, film, search engines, ISPs, and wireless telecommunication, across a 10-25 year period in 30 countries.

Describes in detail the most recent rapid growth and cross border activities and linkages of an industry of large global media conglomerates.

Publisher Description

Media ownership and concentration has major implications for politics, business, culture, regulation, and innovation. It is also a highly contentious subject of public debate in many countries around the world. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi's companies have dominated Italian politics. Televisa has been accused of taking cash for positive coverage of politicians in Mexico. Even in tiny Iceland, the regulation of media concentration led to that country's first and only public referendum. Who Owns the World's Media? moves beyond the rhetoric of free media and free markets to provide a dispassionate and data-driven analysis of global media ownership trends and their drivers. Based on an extensive data collection effort from scholars around the world, the book covers thirteen media industries, including television, newspapers, book publishing, film, search engines, ISPs, wireless telecommunication and others, across a ten to twenty-five year period in thirty countries. In many countries--like Egypt, China, or Russia--little to no data exists and the publication of these chapters will become authoritative resources on the subject in those regions. After examining each country, Noam and his collaborators offer comparisons and analysis across industries, regions, and development levels. They also calculate overall national concentration trends beyond specific media industries, the market share of individual companies in the overall national media sector, and the size and trends of transnational companies in overall global media. This definitive global study of the extent and impact of media concentration will be an invaluable resource for communications, public policy, law, and business scholars in doing research and also for media, telecom, and IT companies and financial institutions in the private sector.

The emergence of a few powerful individuals in control of large sections of mass communication industries has coincided with world-wide media de-regulation. In the first book to take a close look at media moguls as a species, Jeremy Tunstall and Michael Palmer show how a handful of own-and-operate entrepreneurs run their empires with a highly eccentric and highly political management style. Individuals such as Berlusconi, Hersant, and Murdoch, in France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the US, are considered in the context of the changing European media industry. The book considers other, non-mogul trends: the emergence of a European media policy and a European-US-Japanese world media industry. Additional case studies focus on Reuters as a news-and-data super-agency and the part played by advertising and other media lobbies in shaping media policy.

This thorough update to Benjamin Compaine's original 1979 benchmark and 1982 revisit of media ownership tackles the question of media ownership, providing a detailed examination of the current state of the media industry. Retaining the wealth of data of the earlier volumes, Compaine and his co-author Douglas Gomery chronicle the myriad changes in the media industry and the factors contributing to these changes. They also examine how the media industry is being reshaped by technological forces in all segments, as well as by social and cultural reactions to these forces. This third edition of Who Owns the Media? has been reorganized and expanded, reflecting the evolution of the media industry structure. Looking beyond conventional wisdom and expectations, Compaine and Gomery examine the characteristics of competition in the media marketplace, present alternative positions on the meanings of concentration, and ultimately urge readers to draw their own conclusions on an issue that is neither black nor white. Appropriate for media practitioners and sociologists, historians, and economists studying mass media, this volume can also be used for advanced courses in broadcasting, journalism, mass communication, telecommunications, and media education. As a new benchmark for the current state of media ownership, it is invaluable to anyone needing to understand who controls the media and thus the information and entertainment messages received by media consumers.

The US model of media control and policy making - corrupt and dominated by powerful special interests - is being rapidly exported across the world. Some countries are attempting to preserve their own cultural production, and there are moves to try to keep culture out of the control of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Many books on the political economy of communications have either focused on general tendencies internationally, or have focused on the links between markets and media freedom in specific countries and regions. This book focuses on both local and international forces. While critiquing international capital, it also acknowledges the bargains that are struck between the local operators and transnationals. The contributors demonstrate the misfit between media ownership and public accountability and look ahead for ways to enable citizens around the world to become effective participants in media policy making.