Week 1: Introduction: Defining
the media landscape
Look out for key concepts (in the textbook), important for assignments
What is the media industry?
- Includes: Broadcasting, print, film and recording industries. Advertising,
marketing, PR. Social media companies
- Doesn’t include: Not really media companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft
- Media company = a company whose primary function is to produce or
distribute media content.
o Conglomerates like Disney are both a brand and are media related.
Google started with search engines and now make many products,
but they aren’t necessarily media products. Whereas Netflix are a
media company, where they distribute entertainment and produce
original content.
- Boundaries, roles are changing
o ‘Industry’ implies something commercial, but this doesn’t always
suit individual artists
o Defining industry, helps us with scope, analysis easier with
precision, and those within the industry with thinking about
markets, competitors, strategies
- Mass media in the traditional sense if their primary role is to create or
distribute media content e.g. YouTube
o Mass media = media content, radio, tv, print papers
o 5 key characteristics
1 One to many, one-way: Identical message to a mass
audience
how people experience the same product in different
places
2 Experiential goods: Value = immaterial attributes
Originality, intellectual property, stories told
value comes from how we experience things, things we
associate with them, not a physical consumable
product
Its an intangible good, unlike a banana where you
consume it and get vitamins
3 High fixed / “first copy” costs
Low marginal costs
it costs a lot to produce just one media product, then
reproducing costs little in relative to the original
product, e.g. a movie costs a lot, but then its copied
into many DVDs, whereas a banana costs the same for
every banana
Economies of scale = The price per unit decreases as
quantity of output increases
o Linear decrease of cost
, First copy costs are very high, costs are only
associated with the first copy
4 Potential for (cheap) re-versioning: re-selling in
different formats, leads to economies of scope
Economies of scope = average production costs
decrease as variety of output increases
Re-versioning you can resell the same content that
took so much effort to make, e.g., making a cinema,
Netflix, DVD version of something OR spin offs, brand
products, e.g., Frozen backpacks cheaper for media
products
5 they are high risk: Consumer taste is ‘fickle’ and hard
to predict & High first copy costs regardless # of consumers
(because it costs so much to produce the first one), if no one
wants to buy the first one
Bomb is a budget connotation
o Not just movies, but papers, books, radio, television programmes
Defining the mass media market
- Dual product market not just a single product sold to a consumer
- Media companies produce two things:
o Content, sold to audiences & Audiences, sold to advertisers
o E.g. content on YouTube, and audiences to advertisers
- Attention economy (Attention is the real product being sold/bought)
o we experience the product, but our payment isn’t enough, its the
payment from advertisers that suffice the cost of media production
- Result: advertising goals influence content/strategy Problematic for
journalism, particularly adverts influence
o The commercial nature of the media field, it at conflict for some
media producers
o It is the advertiser’s interest to commercialize the media
o Creative industries versus commercial needs broader inherent
constant tension
- But the mass media market is changing
o Digitalisation
o 4 main outcomes of digitalisation
Convergence previously separate channels fused;
channels, content & computing
Interactivity two-way replaces one-way; users become
(mass) producers. We have more say as customers
Diversification heightened user control & choice;
fragmentation/expansion of content. Because we have more
choice, we are harder to reach, more diverse range of
content
Mobility media ‘on the go’ becomes norm; ‘always on’
culture. We can consume media at any location
- Some media organizations should be socially responsible
o There are some normative values we expect, but this is at tension
with commercial constraints.
, o Media should do more good than harm paparazzi killed Diana
o A few core responsibilities:
Forum for exchange of ideas/opinions
Integrative influence for diverse societies
Protection of core values/vulnerable audiences
When things change, we have strong reactions to them in media.
- McLuhan optimism technology itself matters
o New media that are less formal, liberate audiences,
o New tech extends senses (‘cooler’, media):
Liberate audiences from hierarchies, isolation
Away from officialdom toward ‘everyday talk’
Toward a global village but this also allows extremist
groups to express themselves too
- Postman’s pessimism
o Print age: detailed, relevant, localized, coherent, rational
o Post-telegraph: dazzling stories from afar outweigh the relevant,
local
o TV/images are superficial
o Attention, rationality decreases
o Passive audience
- Critique
o Technological determinism
o Both are too focused on technology, ignoring the social context and
power dynamics
o Being too focused on tech is problematic because it shifts the blame
o Technology itself = primary cause of social change
o simplifies & overplays tech, ignores social context
o ignores power relations behind development/use
o Optimism: tech as solution to manmade problems
o Pessimism: blames tech for social problems
- Du Gay’s (1997) Circuit of culture
o Tech’s significance best understood through 5 processes:
Production: how/when/why was it developed?
Representation: how is it talked about?
Regulation: how is it controlled?
Consumption: how do we use it?
Identity: what does it say about us, when we use it?
- Determinism vs constructionism
- Media industry has shifting borders, definitions
- Its products, market structures are unique
- It’s undergoing massive changes [t.b.c.]
- Theorists react to those changes very strongly
o And companies do, too [t.b.c.]
- But, we are constantly engaging with it Deuze media is so central to our
life we don’t notice them, We don’t live with media, but in media
, o 2 Manifestations we have our own personal/individualized
information space and are always available being connected
globally
o 2 consequences Overlap. Liquefied boundaries between
work/play/alone/interaction. Life now changed to
accommodate/exploit media.
o We change the way we live to accommodate media devices
o It matters what media industries are doing because we are so
immersed in it
Summary
- Media industry, mass media, & market:
o Unique characteristics, fuzzy borders
o Social resp./creative-commercial tension unique
- Rise of digital media = further challenges, changes
- Systematically opposed responses to change
- “media life”: one approach to theorizing media
o Importance of “individualized information spaces”
- We saw individuality in your own habits, in a corp. dominated
marketplace
Key concepts
- 5 characteristics of mass media
- Economies of scale, economies of scope
o Economies of scope, it costs artists a lot to make a record, but they
earn very little from reproducing it artists complaining about how
they don’t earn a lot from royalties
- Dual product market
o Interactivity of us as consumers are also producers (like the artists)
o Attention economy 2nd article,
- Convergence, Interactivity, Diversification, Mobility
- Media’s core responsibilities
- McLuhan’s optimism vs Postman’s pessimism
- Technological determinism
o Tech is the primary cause of social change unexpected for a
platform like Reddit had such an impact on stock market
- Circuit of culture
o Regulation: how is it controlled?
When they threw the fundamentals of stock trading out of the
window, they weren’t regulated, so this reduces the
significance of the platform of stock trading.
o Identity: what does it say about us, when we use it?
Shared identity with reddit users
- Media life
