Concentration as a threat to opinions’ diversity

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Cultural and creative industries

6 classificações

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National Research University Higher School of Economics

Cultural and creative industries

6 classificações

Main objective of this course is to trace the development of the Cultural and Creative Industries as an idea and as concept and to identify the key points of changes within it in relations with contemporary digital connected world. Another important task of this course is to provide the deep understanding of the difference between cultural and symbolic meaning products (such as films, recorded music, book and periodicals, online media content etc) and other kind of goods. This course will help you to: - Identify main peculiarities of cultural and symbolic goods in their difference with other branches of economy in terms of production chain, risks, relationship between different stages of production. - Be able to analyze cultural products and symbolic goods from the organizational, economic, business model point of view. - Be able to invent new business models and analyze cultural products in terms of their productions risk. - Be able to analyze cultural policies and creative industries/clusters policies. Main prerequisite to this course is to be able to produce analytical texts in humanities. Normally the course addresses all students of master level interested in peculiarities of media and cultural economy and management. This course is strongly not recommended for those who: - Analyse any market or industry only in microeconomic terms (supply and demand, level of competitions etc). This course is not about market but about peculiarities of symbolic goods; - Try to interpret culture only in terms of marketing and management (i.e. culture is considered like a simple good to be sold to the consumer). This course considers it more broadly like a human agency to produce meanings of everyday life. That’s why cultural goods are different and can not be interpreted exclusively in terms of consuming and need more or less state support; - Try to interpret culture like pure “art” and consequently are absolutely not preoccupied by organizational aspect of its working. This course uses a large number of concepts coming from different fields of science: political economy of communications, cultural studies, sociology etc. Some aspects of the course are commented by known scholars in this field such as David Hesmondhalgh (University of Leeds), Phillipe Bouquillion (University Paris 13 Nord), Bernard Miege (Grenoble Alpes University).

Na lição

Concentration in the field of cultural industries

This week concerns concentration in cultural industries. We'll talk about the meaning of concentration processes for cultural industries. Also we'll trace the main changes in large media and cultural conglomerates.

Symbolic goods as hybrid goods5:32

Concentration as a threat to opinions’ diversity7:51

Economic science critic on the media concentration5:32

Political economy critic on the media concentration6:43

Critic of the international concentration7:27

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Iliya Kiria
Professor
Department of Media

First of all, the concentration in field of cultural industries and in

media could be considered as the threat to opinions' diversity,

and this is probably the first argument of

any political scientist in field of media also.

Why? Let's take a look on media in pre-commercial era.

In pre-commercial era, each media was financed by particular political party,

particular social field, social organization, et cetera, et cetera.

So, from this point of view,

we can't speak about this so-called exterior pluralism,

which means that, yes,

if you would like to have a landscape of point of views,

a set of different point of views,

you have to buy different newspapers of different parties,

and you will be more or less able to understand them

to make a difference between different political programs of different political parties.

So, it was the case when media wasn't the business.

Media was just the communication spendings for communicators.

So, for political or social groups which would like to spread out any information.

And they financed their own media outlets by themselves,

and then these media outlets was,

we'll say, read, consumed by the consumer.

What was the main shift in the commercial era?

In a commercial era, media started to compete for audience.

It means that one newspaper as the commercial service,

as the commercial good would like that all audience prefer to read it instead of reading

the competitor because each newspaper has

a particular owners and each political party would like to have a particular,

we'll say, access to this newspaper,

to have the ability to circulate their ideas,

their ideologies, their political programs to their audiences.

In this situation, they either can get

all the information about all parties in one newspaper.

And newspaper is not commercially interested

in spreading out just the ideology of one party.

It's much more interesting to spread out ideology of few parties,

to cover few parties activity,

because in this case,

it will probably brings the audience to this newspaper instead other newspaper.

And this is a period of so-called commercial era.

This is the period when we can speak about the experience of news journalism,

the culture of news,

the news as the multi-point of view,

coverage of events, et cetera, et cetera.

So, the ideology of modern journalism,

of the journalism of few points of view,

journalism without any particular political,

we'll say, position, et cetera,

it's coming from this commercial era.

And of course, this process of commercialization of media has been largely criticized.

And from this point of view,

we can distinguish two views on this economic issue, on this commercialization.

First view is the positivist view.

This positivist view argues that economy is just an extension

of the politics because politics also has a market.

It's a market of votes,

ideas about governing, and public goods.

And from this point of view,

media are regarded as a tool of informing people about the quality of

public goods at the same manner as

advertising informs people about the quality of commercial goods.

From this point of view, media are publicly important

because media are making able the population,

their audience to see the real quality of public good,

the real quality of governance,

the real quality of the city governance for example,

the real quality of roads,

and other public goods.

And as a reaction on this information,

the people are making their votes, their choices,

political choices, in the market of political vote.

So, this is the marketing dream in

a market driven view of how political system is working and what is media inside it.

And in the sense, media are not incorporated into

economic system and act independently as a tool of performing better,

as a tool of performing the society better.

This is a positivistic view of the role of media in the contemporary societies.

And from this positivistic point of view,

commercial media is good because commercial media are making media,

we'll say, have well ties between media and their audience.

So, more media is consumed,

more media has a revenue,

more media has a audience.

It means that the audience,

we'll say, respect it.

It means that the audience has a trust to this media.

And from this point of view,

the function of media as the information,

I will say, platform to

provide information about quality of public goods is working well.

The second view is the critical point of view.

The critical point of view argues that media is just a part of

any economic system because the economy is subordinated to the power relations.

And from this point of view, media are not independent

from economic or political system, media are inside it,

because media are owned by

a particular companies or people which has a particular political or economic interests.

And from this point of view,

any commercial media acts as an ideological machine of the alienation towards capitalism,

if we will use this term of Adorno.

And from this point of view,

any economic domination has its implication at the level of ideology.

And if we will try to use these optics,

we will obtain absolutely different, we'll say,

picture of the control,

how the control is working in media.

From this point of view, media cannot be considered as absolutely independent.

Media are always dependent,

just because they are inside simultaneously economic and political system.

Economic because they are making money, it's the business.

Political because the owners of media could have a particular political interests,

which means that media cannot be absolutely objective in

coverage of any political goods or any thing,

any story related with public goods.

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