MEDIA LANDSCAPE NOTES
Lecture 1
Introduction: Defining the media landscape
Defining mass media content:
Mass media: “media” in traditional sense
radio, TV, print newspapers, magazines…
5 key characteristics:
1. One - way, One to many
Identical message to a mass audience
2. Experiential goods
Value = immaterial attributes
Originality, intellectual property, stories told
3. High first copy costs
[High fixed / “first copy” costs]
Low marginal costs
Economies of scale (=price per unit decreases as quantity of output Increases)
4. Low re-versioning costs
[Potential for (cheap) re-versioning]
re-selling in different formats, leads to economies of scope (= average
production costs decrease as variety of output increases)
But also: spin-offs, branded products, etc.
, 5. High risk!
Consumer taste is ‘fickle’ and hard to predict
High first copy costs regardless # of consumers
Defining the mass media market:
Media companies produce 2 things (dual-product market):
1. Content, sold to audiences
2. Audiences, sold to advertisers
“Attention economy” Attention is the real product being sold/bought
Result: advertising goals influence content/strategy
Problematic for journalism, particularly
Broader inherent tension:
Creative industries versus Comm€rcial n€€ds
… but, the mass media market is changing
• Focus of next weeks; for Hodkinson, digitalization /
digital technologies are biggest force
4 main outcomes:
,…another complication
Media organizations (at least some?) should be socially responsible.
A few core responsibilities:
Forum for exchange of ideas/opinions
Integrative influence for diverse societies
Protection of core values/vulnerable audiences
Mostly for journalism, but also others?
… hence: strong reactions to change
McLuhan’s optimism:
Technology itself matters
New tech extends senses
New, ‘cooler’, media:
Liberate audiences from hierarchies, isolation
Away from officialdom toward ‘everyday talk’
Toward a global village
… (more) strong reactions to change
Postman’s pessimism:
Print age: detailed, relevant, localized, coherent, rational
Post - telegraph: dazzling stories from afar outweigh the relevant, local stories
TV/images --> superficiality
Attention, rationality --> Passive audience
critiques of the critiques
Both: technological determinism
technology itself = primary cause of social change
simplifies & overplays tech, ignores social context
ignores power relations behind development/use
Optimism: technology as solution to man - made problems
, Pessimism: blames technology for social problems
Another approach?
Du Gay’s et al. (1997)’s “circuit of culture”
Tech’s significance best understood thru 5 processes:
1. Production: how/when/why was it developed?
2. Representation: how is it talked about?
3. Regulation: how is it controlled?
4. Consumption: how do we use it?
5. Identity: what does it say about us, when we use it?
[Determinism vs. constructionism tension will return in the next chapter]
so...
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 (And companies do, too [t.b.c.]
But, we are constantly engaging with it
Media life (Deuze, 2011)
Media now so central that we don’t notice them
We don't live with media, but in media
2 clear manifestations:
1. Personal/individualized information space
2. Always - available global connectivity
2 main consequences:
1. Liquefied boundaries between work/play/alone/interaction
2. Life now changed to accommodate/exploit media
Remember diversification, interactivity, mobility,
convergence? - All reflected here
Technological changes/responses create this new individualized connectivity (more
next weeks)
Summary:
Media industry, mass media, & market:
Unique characteristics, fuzzy borders
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
Importance of “individualized information spaces”
