Impact of New Media Laws on Content - Research Proposal Example

Impact of New Media Laws on Content: A Research Proposal 2008 Introduction The Australian media is controlled by seven major media organizations, most of which are global. The largest, News Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of the Asia-Pacific company, News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdoch, which also has interests also in the United States, Canada, Latin America and Asia, has interests in more that a hundred local and national newspapers as well as pay TV and online media. John Fairfax, the home-bred company is the other major publishing group in Australia. Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (PBL), owned by James Packer, owns over half the market share in television in Australia, besides its interests in newspapers, magazines and internet media. A possible merger of Murdoch’s and Packer’s media empires, though the deal failed to get through recently (BBC, 2008), would result in a highly concentrated industry. If the two groups merge, Murdoch, they would come to dominate the broadcast market in Australia, marginalizing the rest of the media organizations in the country. Packer has also for some time been trying to Fairfax. If this actually happens as a result of the relaxation of cross-ownership, there will be also be an overlap of the broadcast and publishing industry, thus increasing the concentration of the entire media industry even more. The ownership of the broadcast industry in Australia is complex with some of the stations having as many as 50 shareholders (Sheehan, 2002). The major Australian media companies are PBL, Channel 7, Rural Press, Village Austereo, Prime, McQuarie Radio, WA News, Fairfax, Southern Cross and APN (Giesecke, 2006). News Limited is a foreign company, not listed in the Australian Stock Exchange. Most of the print media organizations have associated television and radio licenses (Sheehan, 2002). Till recently, the Broadcasting Services Act, 1992 controlled media ownership rules in Australia. In 2007, media reforms relaxed many of the rules, particularly those with respect to foreign ownership and cross-ownership. The Foreign Acquisitions and Takeover Act was also removed for media although the sector was retained as a “sensitive sector” under Foreign Investment policy. Thus, the Australian media, which was to some extent shielded from foreign competition, has been opened up. At the same time, cross-media transactions, which had earlier been restricted on the basis of the number of audience reached by an organization and the number of media types owned by a company, have now been allowed for Australian media reforms in 2007 (Australian Government, 2006). The government claims that with the advent of the Internet, the ownership of traditional media establishments has become irrelevant as news travel faster through the internet than through television or newspapers. But analysts argue that the most popular websites in Australia are those owned by the traditional media (Giesecke, 2006). There had been demand for some time from the media organizations for some years to relax the cross-ownership rules as the emergence of various media types like the internet and cable television has made the ownership rules too stringent for competition to thrive. In particular, Packer had been lobbying for relaxing the cross-ownership rules, so that it that it could take over the Fairfax group, which controls the publishing industry in Australia. Even before John Howard came to power in 1996, there were rumors that he had agreed to review cross-ownership rules and it was not surprising that Packer endorsed Howard for the Prime Ministership on Nine Networks that he owned (Dawson, 2006). The reform package was finally passed through the Parliament in 2007 and it included, besides the ownership issues, the digital media, regulatory powers of Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and free-to-air television access (Hitchens, 2007). The main aim of the media reforms is ostensibly to make it more competitive. However, evidence from other countries shows that media reforms tend to increase, rather than decrease, concentration and thus limit competition. Literature Review The effect of the media policies affects the industry in all countries. But, over the last two decades or so, there is a trend in most countries to deregulate the media environment. The media has essentially come to be linked with the capitalist economy system in which the market is the ultimate arbitrator. Modern western democracies vouch for the free market in which the players have competitive freedom. Hence, most western economies, like the United States and the United Kingdom, have been engaging in media reforms that enable greater competition in the sector (Hitchens, 2007). However, as it has turned out, in most sectors of the economy – including the media – the markets continue to be ruled by the conglomerates, aided by the deregulated business environment that supports oligopolistic behavior by the major players. As McChensey (1999) notes, such democracies are closer to the libertian democracies of the 18th century, when the political system was ruled by the rich elite and not by the common citizens, as the democratic ethos dictates. In such a system, media reforms that promote the market-based system of concentrated media providing content that is also dictated by the rules of the market, are bad for the democracy. People then are provided with a flood of information through the market but the subjectivity of the information depends on the business interests of the conglomerates. This, according to McChensey (1999), has serious political implications. Neo-liberal proponents of free media assume that the commercial market-driven media system is fundamentally efficient and does not require to be regulated by the state. This neo-liberal stand is similar to that which is advocated for free markets for industries. It goes unnoticed that the commercial media feeds the audience content that it wants to. In America, the First Amendment Principle provides the Americans freedom of speech and expression but this is given a go-by in the interest of freedom of property rights, which essentially is what happens when the media is completely deregulated (McChensey, 1999). The core problems of media reforms, according to McChensey (1999), are the result of “a profit-driven, advertising-supported media system: hypercommercialism and denigration of journalism and public service”, which he thinks is poison pill for democracy. The social environment is significantly altered through messages transmitted by the media. As a result, social parameters like childhood, adulthood, femininity, masculinity and race are all qualified by the messages from the media. Different media types, however, have different capacities to change the social environment. The new media, particularly the electronic, for example, can alter the social environment significantly. The electronic media and the commercialization of the media together play a distinctive role in defining the cultural attitudes of the society that have grown apolitical in nature (Meyrowitz, 1996). With globalization of cultures and foreign ownership of media being allowed in most countries, including Australia, there is a tendency of homogenizing broadcast programming. As a result, despite the flood of information through various channels of media and the high exposure of the audience to global media content, awareness of local political issues has been on the decline. Besides, with increased concentration, there is the possibility of alternate media establishments broadcasting or printing similar content, thus refusing the viewers/ readers the choice of different viewpoints. Hence, the basis of democracy, that is the exercise of universal suffrage through access of information, gets downgraded by the media, which in a way shapes the cultural positioning of the society (McChensey and Nichols, 2001). Media reforms that result in a commercially-oriented, concentrated and globally-aligned media have crucial implications for the nature of the media itself. While the traditional approach to the role of the media considers it as a channel between the citizens and the government, in which the media is used to voice citizens’ opinion, the more radical approach harps on its association with partisan and investigative journalism (Dahlgren, 1993). In a situation that media becomes a tool for business interests, neither of these roles remain valid any longer. In the traditional sense, the media becomes a channel of information flow between the business and the consumer. In the radical approach, a business-associated media has no interest either in public service content or in investigative journalism. Hence, media reform in the neo-liberal sense is self-defeating in purpose and hence destructive for itself. In Australia, demands for a deregulatory media environment have been raised since the election of the Howard government in 1996. The arguments for a deregulated media in Australia are the same as those raised in the United States in the 1980s, leading to the Telecommunication Act in 1996 in the latter, which reduced the restrictions on mergers, takeovers, standardization and homogenization of programming and less requirement of localization and diversity of opinion. Over the decade since deregulation, the American media has become even more commercialized than before. In Australia, which has had an entrenched public service broadcast system, through CBS, there is the possibility that the media culture will tend towards commercial rather than public service media content (Jolly, 2007). Aim of the Research The aim of this research is to assess the potential of the new media laws of 2007 on concentration of Australian media ownership and the effects of increased participation of global media in Australia on the content of newspapers, television and radio. Research Questions The research question is whether the new media laws in Australia in 2007 will lead to higher or lower concentration in the media industry and the subsequent effect on programming content. The ultimate purpose of the research is to study whether media reforms that affect concentration makes the media a tool for business interests, foregoing its responsibility towards investigative journalism and independent opinion. For the purpose, it is necessary to study the existing level of concentration and the association with other businesses that media organizations in Australia have. The methodology of the study will include an analysis of ownership patterns of media organizations, the possibilities of mergers and takeovers as a result of media reforms and the subsequent changes in content. Research question 1: Will the new media laws of 2007 increase media concentration through mergers and takeovers? Research Question 2: Does increased concentration make the media a tool for business and advertising purpose? Research Question 3: Does increased media concentration reduce the focus on investigative journalism? Research Question 4: Does increased media concentration lead to repetitive content in different media establishments? Research Question 5: Will the new media laws encourage foreign participation in the industry? Research Question 6: Will increased foreign participation have an effect on the content of television and radio programs? Methodology To begin with, I will build the existing ownership chart of the major national, metropolitan and local media, including newspapers, television and radio networks. Then, I will conduct a media search on the potential candidates for takeovers and mergers of media organizations as well as for foreign ownership and build an alternative ownership chart that could possibly follow from the deregulation of the media industry in Australia. It is my hypothesis that the new media laws will lead to a more concentrated media industry in which global media organizations will be more powerful than now. The research on the effect of increased concentration on media content will be undertaken in three stages: 1) Quantitative Content Analysis, 2) Online Survey and 3) Focus Group Discussions. Content analysis will be used to extract the issues that are highlighted by the newspapers, magazines and online media in Australia. Content analysis is defined as “A detailed and systematic examination of the contents of a particular body of materials for the purpose of identifying patterns, themes or biases (Leedy & Ormrod, 2005, p 108, quoted in Johnston, 2005). Using the Leximancer computer program, a data-mining tool, articles from newspapers, magazines and other online media over the last decade will be studied to find whether there are any definite patterns in the content and themes and whether particular business interests are served by the media. By this method, the program will count the number of times that each issue is raised by the media. The articles entered into the computer program will be pre-read and categorized according to markers so that the articles are relevant to the particular subjects. Articles will be chosen from the period since 1996, that is since the demand for deregulation has been voiced. The results will be critically analyzed through matrices for subjects and repetitions, followed by a narration of results. Approximately 100 articles will be passed through Leximancer. Although computer-aided content analysis with Leximancer allows for coding of a variety of articles in different media, it is limited to the extent that it can accommodate only online articles. Hence, only the articles from traditional and online media that are online can be analyzed. Besides, there may often be an excessive amount of text available online, making quantitative content analysis very complex. Hence, computer-aided content analysis, which is the first step of a systematic study of the major themes in Australian media, needs to be followed by other methods of study. The second stage of research will undertake an online survey of audiences/ readers with the questionnaire focusing on public versus commercial interests of media organizations, opinion on article/ broadcast content, gender/ community stereotypes, political viewpoint, etc. According to Leedy and Ormrod (2005, p 183), “Survey research involves acquiring information about one or more groups of people – perhaps about their characteristics, opinions, attitudes, or previous experiences – by asking them questions and tabulating their answers (quoted in Johnston, 2005). The intention of our survey is to find out whether the audience/ readers view the media interests to be in clash with public interest or not and whether the Australian media have over the last decade become more aligned to the global culture and focus less on local issues. The data from the online surveys will have generic items like age, sex, education, country of origin, profession, and so on. This data will reveal the social, religious, cultural, ethnic, and other affiliations of the people surveyed. The results of the online survey will be subject to statistical tests of significance. Online surveys are cheaper and faster than other forms of surveys as it eliminates postage, telephone and paper costs. Besides, data generated from the online surveys can be quickly converted into the database. However, online surveys are limited to people who have internet connections and respond within the time frame. Besides, there are possibilities of bias and manipulation since the data sample cannot be perfectly scrutinized. At the third stage, focus group discussions with media practitioners will be held in three cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. There will be about 36 focus groups – 12 each among print journalists, broadcast journalists, Public Relations professionals and audiences/ readers. Care will be taken not to have representatives of the same organization in each focus group. Different focus groups will be formed for business, political and cultural reporters. Discussions will be conducted in such a manner so as to lead towards certain topics without imposing views on the participants. The intention of the focus group discussions is to get the practitioners’ view on newspaper/ television/ radio content being influenced by business interests of sponsors, advertisers and owners of the media organizations; whether media content is deliberately aligned to global culture and politics and less on local issues; whether ethnic, local and public interest issues are of interest to the media owners. The discussions at the focus group meetings will be recorded and transcribed and categorized according to issues immediately after the meeting. Data Sample The data for the study of media ownership will be collected from government and trade publications as well as newspaper and magazine articles. For the content analysis, the information will be collected from online media sites as well as the internet archives of traditional media organizations. The online surveys will be conducted across the population connected with internet. The sample will be random, but categorized later according to age, education, profession, location and community. For the focus group discussions, journalists (Senior & Junior) from newspapers, radio, television and Public Relations professionals as well as audiences and readers in the three cities will be requested to participate. The audience/ readers will be called on the basis of age, profession, education and community, care being taken to form a homogenous group in each focus group. This will allow for the discussions to flow smoothly instead of being divisive. Time Scale Ownership data analysis: 25 manhours Content Analysis: 50 manhours Focus Group Surveys in 3 cities: 108 manhours Writing of the report: 100 manhours Total hours: 283 manhours Resources 1) Newspaper, radio, television archives 2) Leximanceer software 3) Hotel room, invites printing, audiovisual gadgets, snacks, etc for focus group discussions 4) Travel costs 5) Computer Works Cited Australian Government, Meeting the Digital Challenge: Reforming Australia’s Media in the Digital Age, March 2006, http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/37572/Media_consultation_paper_Final_.pdf Dawson, Emma, Media ownership in Australia, timeline of developments: 1991-2006, 15 March, 2006, http://cpd.org.au/article/media-ownership-australia,-timeline-developments:-1991-2006 Giesecke, Terry, The Federal Government's Media Reform proposals, do they address key media issues? April 2006, http://members.pcug.org.au/~terryg/media3.html Hitchens, Lesley, Australian Media Reform: Discerning the Policy, UNSW Law Journal Forum, Vol 13, No 1, 2007 Jolly, Dr. Rhonda, Media Ownership Deregulation in America and Australia: In the Public Interest? Parliament of Australia, Department of Parliamentary Services, Research Paper, No 1, 2007-08, 24 July, 2007 Johnston, K, RFID Privacy and Security: A Content Analysis, Faculty of Informatics Thesis, University of Wyoming, 2005 McChesney, Robert W., Rich Media Poor Democracy; Communication Politics in Dubious Times, University of Illinois Press, 1999 McChensey, Robert W and John Nichols, “The Making of a Movement”, The Nation, December 20, 2001, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020107/mcchesney Sheehan, Paul, Media Ownership in Australia, 20 May, 2002, http://www.tmc.org.au/Sydney/documents/Media%20Ownership%20in%20Australia.doc Read More