Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions
- Production
- Research
- 2 Media Industries: A Decade in Review
- 3 Media Production Research and the Challenge of Normativity
- 4 Access and Mistrust in Media Industries Research
- 5 Cultural and Creative Industries and the Political Economy of Communication
- 6 The Platformization of Making Media
- Economics and Management
- 7 The Disappearing Product and the New Intermediaries
- 8 Value Production in Media Industries and Everyday Life
- 9 Transformation and Innovation of Media Business Models
- 10 Shifts in Consumer Engagement and Media Business Models
- 11 Media Industries’ Management Characteristics and Challenges in a Converging Digital World
- Policy
- 12 Global Media Industries and Media Policy
- 13 Media Concentration in the Age of the Internet and Mobile Phones
- Practices
- Innovation
- 14 Making (Sense of) Media Innovations
- 15 Start-up Ecosystems Between Affordance Networks, Symbolic Form, and Cultural Practice
- Work Conditions
- 16 Precarity in Media Work
- 17 Making It in a Freelance World
- 18 Diversity and Opportunity in the Media Industries
- 19 Labour and the Next Internet
- Affective Labour
- 20 Affective Labour and Media Work
- 21 Affective Qualities of Creative Labour
- 22 A Business of One or Nurturing the Craft: Who are You?
- Professions
- Music
- 23 Music in Times of Streaming: Transformation and Debate
- 24 Popular Music, Streaming, and Promotional Media: Enduring and Emerging Industrial Logics
- Television
- 25 Show Me the Money: How Revenue Strategies Change the Creative Possibilities of Internet-Distributed Television
- 26 Flexibility, Innovation, and Precarity in the Television Industry
- Social Media
- 27 Creator Management in the Social Media Entertainment Industry
- 28 #Dreamjob: The Promises and Perils of a Creative Career in Social Media
- Public Relations and Advertising
- 29 Redefining Advertising in a Changing Media Landscape
- 30 Perceptions and Realities of the Integration of Advertising and Public Relations
- Digital Games
- 31 Game Production Logics at Work: Convergence and Divergence
- 32 Reflections on the Shifts and Swerves of the Global Games Industry
- Journalism
- 33 ‘It Never Stops’: The Implicit Norm of Working Long Hours in Entrepreneurial Journalism
- 34 Transmedia Production: Key Steps in Creating a Storyworld
- Conclusion
- 35 Making Media: Observations and Futures
- Author Biographies
13 - Media Concentration in the Age of the Internet and Mobile Phones
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions
- Production
- Research
- 2 Media Industries: A Decade in Review
- 3 Media Production Research and the Challenge of Normativity
- 4 Access and Mistrust in Media Industries Research
- 5 Cultural and Creative Industries and the Political Economy of Communication
- 6 The Platformization of Making Media
- Economics and Management
- 7 The Disappearing Product and the New Intermediaries
- 8 Value Production in Media Industries and Everyday Life
- 9 Transformation and Innovation of Media Business Models
- 10 Shifts in Consumer Engagement and Media Business Models
- 11 Media Industries’ Management Characteristics and Challenges in a Converging Digital World
- Policy
- 12 Global Media Industries and Media Policy
- 13 Media Concentration in the Age of the Internet and Mobile Phones
- Practices
- Innovation
- 14 Making (Sense of) Media Innovations
- 15 Start-up Ecosystems Between Affordance Networks, Symbolic Form, and Cultural Practice
- Work Conditions
- 16 Precarity in Media Work
- 17 Making It in a Freelance World
- 18 Diversity and Opportunity in the Media Industries
- 19 Labour and the Next Internet
- Affective Labour
- 20 Affective Labour and Media Work
- 21 Affective Qualities of Creative Labour
- 22 A Business of One or Nurturing the Craft: Who are You?
- Professions
- Music
- 23 Music in Times of Streaming: Transformation and Debate
- 24 Popular Music, Streaming, and Promotional Media: Enduring and Emerging Industrial Logics
- Television
- 25 Show Me the Money: How Revenue Strategies Change the Creative Possibilities of Internet-Distributed Television
- 26 Flexibility, Innovation, and Precarity in the Television Industry
- Social Media
- 27 Creator Management in the Social Media Entertainment Industry
- 28 #Dreamjob: The Promises and Perils of a Creative Career in Social Media
- Public Relations and Advertising
- 29 Redefining Advertising in a Changing Media Landscape
- 30 Perceptions and Realities of the Integration of Advertising and Public Relations
- Digital Games
- 31 Game Production Logics at Work: Convergence and Divergence
- 32 Reflections on the Shifts and Swerves of the Global Games Industry
- Journalism
- 33 ‘It Never Stops’: The Implicit Norm of Working Long Hours in Entrepreneurial Journalism
- 34 Transmedia Production: Key Steps in Creating a Storyworld
- Conclusion
- 35 Making Media: Observations and Futures
- Author Biographies
Summary
Media concentration is more important than ever in an age of mobile phones, the internet, and information abundance. Taking Canada as an example, this chapter investigates how telecommunications, internet and media industries are becoming more concentrated, and whether the fear of domination by internet giants like Google and Facebook is justified.
Introduction
This chapter offers a guide on how to study the media industries in the age of the internet and mobile phones, using Canada as a case study. It is based on research done as part of the Canadian Media Concentration Research (CMCR) Project and reflections on how to recast how our field thinks about the political economies of communication. It draws on lessons learned from work done as part of the International Media Concentration Research Project, a project spearheaded by Eli Noam that resulted in the publication of Who Owns the World's Media (2017) – an authoritative and detailed review of the telecommunications, internet, and media industries in thirty countries. It also relies on experience gained from participating in several contentious policy and regulatory proceedings that have shaped the internet, mobile wireless, and media in Canada in recent years.
The starting premise of this chapter is that we must take the media industries as serious objects of analysis, and clearly define what we mean by ‘the media’. Media concentration is more important than ever in an age of mobile phones, the internet, and information abundance. This chapter will introduce some of the essential sources, tools, and challenges that are present in this sort of research. The aim is to encourage engaged, independent, and critical scholarship that is reliable, reasonably easy to use, and open to others to verify and use for their own research.
Like everybody, media researchers have limited time, resources, and knowledge and, consequently, they must set a hierarchy of research priorities. This means putting the structure, dynamics, economics, evolution, and forces that shape the media industries at the top of the list (Garnham, 1990). This focus is crucial because we live at a critical juncture in time when decisions made in the near future will shape the media landscape for decades – if lessons from the ‘industrial media’ set down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are any guide.
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- Information
- Making MediaProduction, Practices, and Professions, pp. 175 - 190Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019