Power and Media Industries - James Curran and Jean Seaton

Power and Media Industries - James Curran and Jean Seaton

• 'Diversity is in the public interest - but modern societies suffer from collective attention deficit disorders[...] the public interest has to work harder to be noticed, and we need agile but resourceful media to do that.' - James Curran and Jean Seaton

• In this day in age, we get distracted by our phones, and constantly check them throughout the day, it is digital technology, they in which have connection to the wifi therefore resourceful, attracting the audience.

• Monopoly - The exclusive ownership or control of something.

Who owns UK newspapers?

• Conglomerate - a large corporation consisting of multiple smaller companies.
• Subsidiaries - a smaller company owned by a large corporation.

Curran and Seaton on Monopoly

• Advantages to forming a Monopoly
• reduces competition
• audience manipulation
• 'It [extends] their range of business and political connections, [increases] their corporation's prestige and, through audacious editoral appointments, [contributes] to the maintenance of public opinion favourable to private enterprise.' - James Curran and Jean Seaton 
• It is essential to remember that conglomerate are primarily driven by the logic of profit and power.

• Issues with conglomeration
• Not much diversity
• Make their products look great
• e.g News Corp own 20th Century Fox and The Sun so when 20th Century Fox release a new movie they'll use the Sun to give it good 'fake' reviews.

• Key Facts with conglomerates and monopoly
• Having a monopoly means domination of multiple media industries
• If the focus on creating profit, generally conglomerates dont take risks with the media products that they produce.
• This often results in limited variety, creativity and quality.

• 'Anti-monopoly media regulation is needed not only to maintain fair competition but also to prevent the distortion of democracy.' - James Curran and Jean Seaton 

 What are the alternatives to conglomerate ownership?

• Partnership opposed to ownership
• Limit on how many companies you can own
• Boycott
• Make our own media

• 'Media policy should seek[...] to create the conditions of greatest possible competition, thus enabling consumers to exercise sovereign control. This produces media that people want, a wide range of choice, and media independence from government.' - James Curran and Jean Seaton

• Independent Producer
• free from outside control

• Institution
• A media industry with its own identity. 

• Industry
• The whole media industry

Different Perspectives

Different Perspectives

• Most people view the media as the 'news', yet media is a medium and it has vast different meanings.
• Representation is a re-presentation, how a group of event is constructed and presented.
• Producers use representation to get their ideologies across.
• Representation is used to draw in certain target audiences,e.g the target audience of The Daily Mail is women, and they would want to look at the women looking 'sexy' as they aspire to be like them.
• Producers may use representation to manipulate the audience, and its cultivating the idea that women should look this way.
• Entertainment value, it may be 'fun' to look at naked people.
• Finical reasons as It draws in an audience.
• It tells a story, and draws people to keep reading more.

• Some Questions that may appear in the exams...
• In what ways can [Media Product] incorporate viewpoints and ideologies?
• Or
• Explore how audiences can respond to and interpret the ideological perspectives of [Media Product].

• Paragraph Structure:
• the POINT you are making which links to the question asked.
• The MEDIA LANGUAGE that supports your point.
• The ARGUMENT or deeper ANALYSIS of this point.
• A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE which is used to confirm your point of view.

Perspectives of the Same Story

• The story is something that is news worthy.

• During horror films and crime shows, we see the investigation and the gory stuff, which we enjoy as we are positioned as the privileged person, as well get all the secret insight.

• The fact that it says 'Hammer Attack' sounds like it would be in a horror film.

• The fact that they mentioned the mans ethnicity, could be constructing a stereotype of Indian men, that they are the only types of people tat harm children, as The Times had no reason to mention it.

• Seeing the image of the couple being happy and 'in love' is obviously before everything went wrong, tis is their equilibrium, and that gets ruined from the hammer attack. The use of making this into a story line draws in threader much more, to get the target audience to buy and read it.

• The Daily Mirror would have had to of used more images, as the case is still going on and there is not much of a story to write about at the moment.

• Looking at the images, they are supposed to make us feel angry and sad, very persuasive ad manipulative.

• The body language of the child makes him look very worried, and it positions the audience as the killer.

• The face of the baby girl blurred makes the story seem so much more serious, as that baby now needs its identity hidden, as she is under the age of 18, and it really shows that this story is real, the baby boys face is not blurred as he has passed and his face is not hidden for privacy reasons.

• The man does not look British, he does not conform to the British stereotypes, which may be creating a stereotype for foreign members of society, as though they are outcasts and that they are very different to us.

• According to The Times he is Indian, and in the Daily Mirror, assumed he had mental issues, making him appear different to the rest of society.

• The Daily Mirror, did in fact not mention the man or women's race, as it is Left Wing newspaper, and they believe in much more equality for everyone. Yet The Times is far more Right Wig and they feel the need to mention the ethnicity of the couple.

Radio 4 - The Today Show

• Target Audience
• Middle Class, formal language and accent used.

• Finsbury Murder Story
• Didn't mention the males ethnicity.
• Quite short (seemed unimportant).
• From an ideological perspective the producer didn't mention much of the child.
• Didn't mention the weapon used, perhaps not to upset the audience.
• Discussed the charge rather than the actual crime.
• Mother is irrelevant so she is not mentioned.
• No mention of motive.
• It's stripped down to the bare minimum.

• Stories
• From political perspectives except from the murder of the child.

• Broadsheet
• If it was a newspaper it would be a broadsheet, as they talk about very political issues rather than say the 'celebrity gossip'

Explore how audiences can respond to an interpret the ideological perspectives of media products?

• Allows open comments for the audiences to share their ideologies with each other in order to get the story viral, and also gets them to gain money every time when someone else clicks on it.

Task: Find 5 News Stories from a variety of sources such as;

• BBC
• Guardian
• Daily Mail
• The Times
• Cambridge News