Curran and Seaton

According to Curran and Seaton media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. What evidence is there to support this hypothesis in the UK newspaper market and what issues are raised by this model of ownership?

The Curran and Seaton theory says that “Newspapers should reflect the interests of an audience otherwise they will go out of business, they should be liberal and anyone should be able to make one. However, this does not happen in practice and the press can be used as a propaganda tool to influence the audience”. The evidence to support this is how newspaper businesses, such as The Times and The Sun, make sure their audience enjoy their content and it’s what they want to read about. For example, The Times will include a lot of politics as that’s what it focuses on and that’s what appeals to their target audience.

In the UK newspaper market, there is evidence of a certain media industry increasing its concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. This also link to oligopoly, where a small number of industries share a market. For example, in the UK newspaper market, the industries that dominate are, DMGT, Scott’s Trust, The Telegraph and Trinity Mirror. An example of a company that created a media oligopoly is Trinity Mirror as they have brought out a smaller company and is changing the company name to Reach PLC. This has made them more powerful, as they removed some competition, within the UK newspaper market.

The patterns of ownership and control are significant in how the media operates, media industries follow a normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership. Powerful news organisations, who have defended their oligarchy, still control the news. Media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern as capitalism is a system where a country's trade and industries re controlled by private owners for profit, just like the newspapers wend by companies such as DMGT and Scott's Trust, they all want to make money and profit, from the newspaper industry.

One issue raised by this model of ownership is the idea of one man, i.e. Rupert Murdoch, controlling a massive part of the UK's newspapers, this raises public concern as Rupert Murdoch has so much to do with politics and has such a big impact on newspapers, such as The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times, that this can sometimes cause political controversy. Another issue, which also relates to Rupert Murdoch's relationship with politics, is that a small number of industries and people control the media market, which then puts media integrity at risk. This especially occurs when media ownership and political centres have close relations, which causes them to have different views and opinions on situations.

 

Steve Neale: Genre Theory

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There are examples of different codes and conventions on every front page of newspapers, these include the masthead, skyline, headline, standfirst, byline, body text, photographs or graphics, caption, sidebar, crosshead, pull quote, standalone and editorial. This shows that genre is shared by producers and audience through weekly issues of newspapers. This theory is also represented in films as generic action/adventure films will use Todorov's narrative theory about the sequence of events and Propp's theory of character types. Through the repetition of weekly newspapers producers and audiences become familiar wit the codes and conventions seen on newspaper front pages and throughout newspapers.

Curran and Seaton

According to Curran and Seaton media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands.

What evidence is there to support this hypothesis in the UK newspaper market and what issues are raised by this model of ownership?

The Curran and Seaton theory says that “Newspapers should reflect the interests of an audience otherwise they will go out of business, they should be liberal and anyone should be able to make one. However, this does not happen in practice and the press can be used as a propaganda tool to influence the audience”. The evidence to support this is how newspaper businesses, such as The Times and The Sun, make sure their audience enjoy their content and its what they want to read about. For example, The Times will include a lot of politics as that’s what it focuses on and that’s what appeals to their target audience. Issues raised by the media ownership include piracy, which is the illegal distribution of media without the permission of its owner and advances in digital technology have made piracy easier, cheaper and better quality. Files can be leaked before a film’s release and the internet allows pirate material to be distrusted all over the world. Another issue is the big Hollywood production companies like Warner Brothers, Paramount and MGM are multi million pound industries which means they can dominate the international film industry because they release hundreds of movies and have lots of money to make them and distribute them. They want to make money so they invest time in making sequels however for audiences this means they have limited choices of films in cinemas, loads of sequels and poor-quality films. Currently there are more American films than British independent films, being shown at Odeon and VUE, this then lead the UK Film Council to be axed in 2010.

Media Ownership In The UK National Newspaper Market

Ownership means when you own something so the media ownership of national newspapers is the people who own certain newspapers. The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror have the highest circulation out of all UK newspapers, these dominate the newspaper market and therefore affect the media massively. They have a big influence on what people think and believe as they’re the highest selling newspapers and most popular, they will seem more reliable so the audience are more likely to believe and trust what is said. The red top newspapers like The Sun are owned by Rupert Murdoch who currently has the highest circulation of Newspapers and is a widely well-known newspaper owner. The Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror and The People are owned by Trinity Mirror,    The Guardian and The Observe are owned by Scott Trust Limited and The Mail and The Mail on Sunday are owned by Lord Rothermere.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Newspapers vs Print Newspaper

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Newspapers and Print Newspapers

The main advantage of online newspapers is that as it’s free, it’s online it is quicker and easier to access and read which means you can be reading the news off your phone, tablet or laptop straight away rather than having to go out and buy a newspaper, which saves time. A second advantage to online newspapers is that there is more info through the use of images and videos, which would appeal to younger audiences as they prefer to look at images and videos rather than read long, boring news stories. Another advantage is that it is free an available all day everyday as it is updated regularly to bring you the latest and most up-to-date news. However a disadvantage to this is because they are always updating news stories, they will always be bringing new information out or changing information, which gives you a fake stories as some information could be false or incorrect. Another advantage of online newspapers is that you can search for old news stories whereas with print newspapers once you’re finished reading it, it'll be thrown away and you can't read or access any of the old stories. However another disadvantage of online newspapers is that you have to have wifi and a device to access the news stories so you won't always be able to check the latest news unless you have access to wifi or mobile data. Also online newspapers often have ad pop-ups which for some readers can be annoying when trying to keep up-to-date with the news or read any news stories.

The main advantage of print newspapers is that you don't have to have wifi or a device to read them as you can take them with you anywhere and read them without having to be connected to wifi. One disadvantage of print newspapers is that you have to buy them and if you want to read about the news every day, you have to buy a new newspaper every day, his can be quite costly and would only appeal to older audiences who had been doing this for several years. Another disadvantage is that print newspapers would only appeal to older audiences as younger audiences will just use the internet if they want to look at the news and most social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, always come up with news stories that is either been shared or as an ad to read. A final disadvantage to print newspapers is that if you want to read updated news stories or any news that come out later in the day, you have to wait until the next day to read these as print newspapers are written an edited in the early hours of each day so once they are finalised and distributed they can’t be changed.