Media Concentration:  A Critical Political Economy Perspective

Manfred Knoche

doi:10.31269/triplec.v19i2.1298

Manfred Knoche Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i2.1298

Keywords: media concentration, critique of the political economy of the media and communication, transformation, international comparison

Abstract

This article presents foundations of the analysis of media concentration from the perspective of the approach the critique of the political economy of the media and communication. It outlines the dangers and problems of media concentration, discusses the question of how to measure media concentration, identifies different types of media concentration, and gives a systematic overview of empirical studies of media concentration. As a result of the country comparison on a theoretical (macro) level with an analytically required high level of abstraction, first and foremost identities, commonalities and similarities with regard to the development of media concentration including its causes and consequences can be recognised. The author argues that media concentration also needs to be theorised. The paper distinguishes and discusses two such theoretical approaches: apologetic-normative competition theories of media concentration and critical-empirical theories of media concentration. Critical-empirical theories of media concentration situate media concentration in the context of the development of capitalism, which requires to use the critique of the political economy as theoretical foundation.

Author Biography

Manfred Knoche, Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg

Manfred Knoche is professor emeritus of media economics at the University of Salzburg in Austria. He studied journalism, sociology, political science and economics at the University of Mainz and the Free University of Berlin. He obtained his PhD (1978) and defended his habilitation (1981) at the Free University of Berlin. He was research assistant in the years 1974-1979 and assistant professor for communications politics in Berlin in the years 1979-1983. From 1983-1994, he was professor of media and communication studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, where he was also the director of the Centre for Mass Communications Research. From 1994-2009 he held the chair professorship for journalism and communication studies with special focus on media economics at the Institute for journalism and communication studies at the University of Salzburg in Austria, where he was the head of the department for media economics and empirical communication research. He chaired the German Association for Media and Communication Studies’ (DGPuK) media economics-section. He is author of many publications on the critique of the political economy of the media. His work has especially focused on the critique of the political economy of media concentration and the media industry’s structural transformations.

http://www.medienoekonomie.at,
https://kowi.uni-salzburg.at/ma/knoche-manfred/
Twitter: @Medoek

Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Knoche