Why Does Media Ownership Matter? The Press, Propaganda, and Power

Media Ownership and Power

In this course, Dr Justin Schlosberg (Birkbeck, University of London) explores the relationship between media ownership and power. In the first module, Dr Schlosberg explores why media ownership matters, offering some historical context for the relationship between media and power in the UK, before moving on in the second module to discuss two alternative perspectives on media power: the liberal-pluralist perspective, which sees media power optimistically as tending towards diffusion, and the radical-critical perspective, which sees media power more pessimistically as tending towards concentration. This module also explores Curran and Seaton’s arguments concerning media power. In the third module, we explore the concepts of gatekeeping and agenda setting, before in the fourth and final module turning to the nature of media power in a digital age, with some comments on online and social media, algorithms, and search engines.

Why Does Media Ownership Matter? The Press, Propaganda, and Power

In this module we explore why media ownership matters, focusing in particular on: (i) the history of news media ownership in the UK, e.g. the newspaper ‘press barons’; (ii) propaganda and the nature of media power; (iii) hypodermic needle theory; (iv) radical critical responses to media power, e.g. Marxist ideas; (v) possible associated effects of media ownership.