Market Model, Public Sphere Model

1
Market Model, Public Sphere Model

• Two approaches to the analysis of media

2
MARKET MODEL

• Basic principles
• Societys needs best met through unregulated
  supply and demand
• Media are like all goods and services
• Private, unregulated ownership best
• Consumers, not regulators, call the tune

3
Advantages of markets

• Promote
• efficiency
• responsiveness
• flexibility
• innovation
• Markets can deliver media like any other product

4
Market structures

• Level of ownership concentration
• Number of firms supplying a product
• Amount of product differentiation
• Types of entry barriers facing new competitors
• Extent of vertical and horizontal integration

5
Public Sphere Model

• Basic principles
• Societys needs not met entirely through market
  system
• Consumer power is not democracy
• Media are not like other products
• Profitability not sole determinant of value
• Government has necessary role.

6
Vision of public sphere model

• Media as primary information sources and
  storytellers
• Media as forums for social dialogue
• Need open mass media system that is fully
  accessible
• Ownership/control should be diverse
• People citizens first, then consumers.

7

• Citizens need from media
• information about personal rights
• about public political choices
• to voice criticism, register alternatives
• to recognize themselves in media representations

8
The Limits of Markets

• Markets
• are undemocratic one dollar one vote
• reproduce inequality
• are amoral
• do not meet all social needs
• do not meet all democratic needs

9
Toasters with pictures?

• Market OK for media consumers, not for media
  citizens
• Advertising inserts itself between product and
  consumer
• Media are resources for citizenship
• Media have unique role in democracy, recognized
  in US legal protections

10
Basic Dilemma

• Mass media are businesses
• But they also are providers of information and
  conduits of culture
• Tension between profit public interest

11
First Amendment

• Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the
  freedom of speech, or of the press . . .
• e.g., news media as the Fourth Estate, as a
  watchdog