hello and welcome to another video from oako fil and media today we're looking at the current and SE and theory of power and media Industries in relation to newspapers before we get started we're going to dive right into understanding the theory however before that please don't forget to like share subscribe so you can have more videos to help you with your A Levels what what is this theory about well current and suant essentially believe that the media we consume is controlled by a small number of companies who's predominant whose main aim is to create products that make profit so let's break that down first of all they say that the media we consume is controlled by a small number of companies this essentially says that the ownership of a lot of the media products we consume is quite concentrated okay says a lot of companies owned by a few selected people which we talk about later for example in newspapers this could be media bands um they also to argue that these these media companies their main aim is to create profit so they say that they create these media profit media products in aim to create profit they then argue that these media conglomerates are horizontally and vertically integrated to maximize profit we'll talk about that in the next slide lastly they also argue that their they say that ownership and control are the most significant factors in how the media operates so to them they say that these two things ownership control is extremely important for the operation of the media we to you right so we're going to go through some examples dive further in some things that we need to discuss so first of all horizontal integration you should have heard of this before it is essentially a business strategy in which one company Grows by buying similar companies and Industry at the same point of supply chain a perfect example of this would be Mark Zuckerberg and how he originally had Facebook but now he's grown and he's now consumed and bought other social media platforms such as as um such as Instagram and WhatsApp okay so before Facebook was one company but Mark Zu birs now created you know s called parent company meta and meta have now purchased um Instagram and WhatsApp so that's an example of horizontal integration vertical integration however is a bit different is where they the company sort of streamlines their their production process and they they essentially buy they control multiple stages of its production process and supply chain so for let's say for example Disney we have Disney Studios then we now have the Disney so dis Studio to create the movies or the TV shows and so forth and now as they've done the um production they've now gone to distribution as well by having their Disney plus platform equally as well perhaps in the in the marketing process as well or in the in the in the selling after the the TV show or the movie they also created Disney shops as as well so rather than relying on um for example bigger shops to sell their toys they created their own own store that sells predominantly Disney things so companies are vertically integrated they can minimize or eliminate the need to rely on other companies so current and Sean state that if you go back current and Sean state that media conglomerates are horizontally and vertically integrated to maximize profit so now I have a look at this examples it makes sense why Disney have been have vertically ated themselves it's all in a need to maximize profit but this video is focused on newspapers so how do we make this specific to newspapers well it's a bit difficult for horizontal integration is a bit more straightforward because we have papers like the Daily Mail the metro and the I which are all owned by the same company okay all owned by Associated Press this is an example of horizontal integration the sun and the times are also owned by the same person okay ruper Murdoch so this is an example of horizontal integration where these media Barons or these these media owners own multiple newspapers multiple newspapers it could be of different genres for example the sun is a tablet whereas the times is a broad sheet so that is how horizont integration is seen in newspapers vertical integration however is a bit more difficult where newspapers are essentially always going to produce their own um their own content distribution gets a bit difficult you may have seen one of these before and you also may not have because they're quite rare the sun do actually also have some of their own Corner stur they they aren't um they aren't huge stores they often are just corner stores or convenient stores but the sign does have stores like this so it could be an example of versal integration the last part of their Theory so curent and seon argue that media concentration negatively affects media content so what they mean by media concentration again is just the fact that there are a small amount of people who own a lot of media companies so they saying this negatively affects media content and the reason for this is because the business function so the idea of creating profit and and creating revenue for the media industry takes precedence so it's more important over the idea of being more creative or providing a service to the public this precedence therefore leads to the repetition of many successful formats dating shows being one for example love Island X on the beach and love is blind just to name a few K and seon go on to say that this Focus this President on products that create profits leads to minority interest content being pushed to the margin of the broadcast schedules so here we see the show don't haed players which is on around about past midnight1 12 whereas popular shows that said love violent was on 9:00 p.m. prime time to current in seon argue that these minority interests show are sort of cast aside in order to make space for the profitable successful shows of course media producers want to create the most successful things that create the most um profits which benefits them and benefits us as audiences who want it however what we do need to take into consideration is the underrepresented voices or those with Niche interests or those with nich Niche audiences who aren't being heard in newspapers this is particularly effective as we know the Daily Mail Metro and the I are owned by Associated Press the Sun and the times are owned by rert Murdoch just these five papers here take up a large readership of the country so if a few people own all of these titles then it howg you the fact that information that we may be receiving may not be totality and it may not be from a full range of voice so because we operating a free market which means prices of goods are determined by supply and demand is led to replication of successful formats think about the abundance and Fast and Furious shows there 1 2 3 4 Etc why has this happened it's because they're popular it's because they work audiences like it it brings in good Revenue so therefore producers do it again and again and again and this has seen a lot in newspapers as well so a lot of stories are often focused or sometimes focused on migration which we see again and again and again in papers when there's a when there's a huge story going on for example the day Rich soon that became our prime minister many uh newspapers covered it the thing um the Autumn budget statement or the budget segment we have throughout the year again many papers cover this same with the Royals Royals is a huge popular story especially within FR um newspapers that often covered so what you may be thinking though is but we have the internet right the internet should be able to share voices and share people's opinions but unfortunately the internet does not effectively this upt this mainly because it doesn't offer a Level Playing Field for diverse voices to be heard so where we have massive oligarchs so oligark being a small group of people who have a control of a of a country or an organization they hold the most weight unfortunately over the mass so often times there people's is people with more resources whose voices going to be heard as opposed to the smaller voices C and Satan argue that if there is more diverse owners in the me industry this will lead to a more diverse range of products and voices they claim that a free market is detrimental for the hearing of the voices of minority and underrepresented audiences so to summarize there are three main Concepts you need to fully understand this Theory number one media ownership is concentrated into a few hands whose main goal is to make profit number two the lack of diverse voices in media leads to only mainstream media that appeals to mass audiences which it produces which therefore minority which therefore leads to minority voices and underrepresented voices not being heard finally ownership and control are the most significant factors in how the media operates it's who owns these media products or these media companies these media conglomerates who the media Barons are and that is a significant factor in how the media operates according to current season without further Ado let's get to part two applying the theory to newspapers so it's all well and good and understanding the theory of current and seon but if you're unable to apply to the case studies so for OCR being the guardian of the daily male you are hindering and you're limited amount of marks you can get so let's think about this now does this Theory does current theory fully apply to our case studies so let's talk about the Daily Mail First so the Daily Mail their first their front cover they're talking about a story of Harry and Megan a very popular story that's going to appeal to the masses so we can say yes it definitely is um supportting their Theory because they're pushing a story that um the majority of the audiences or majority of readers would be interested in but now let's look on the left look at the guardian while their main image is of Harry and Megan and they are talking about the Harry and Megan documentary let's have a look at their main headline Iranian forces shooting at face and genitals of female protesters this here is not a main stream story in fact the guardian is the only paper on the St that actually covered this story and what we know about the guardian the fact they owned by the Scots trust so they are owned by essentially charity and they have an independent sort of belief whereby they want to further and always push investigative journalism even at the expense of profit so the Guardians of company who has never chased profits while they do of course want to make a revenue they put an EMP emphasis on um presenting high quality journalism as opposed to just things that are popular so we can say Yes actually this Theory does apply to our case studies it applies to daily male because they often push popular stories whereas a guardian who's owned by the Scots trust and places a large emphasis on high quality and vestive journalism we cannot apply this Theory to or we can apply it to less okay let's get to the final part evaluating the usefulness of the theory what you will looking at is you need to think how is this Theory helping me understand the newspaper industry how newspapers are produced how they're distributed how um context have affected newspapers or so forth okay so essentially telling the examiner how the theory is useful or how it's limited all take into consideration print newspapers and online take into consideration both so what I like to do is I like to have this sort of table esque format so when it comes to your your R Vision you can just go straight to looking at the table as opposed to looking through your abundance of notes so I just go for a brief explanation first of all so brief explanation of the theory in my own words so make sure your teacher's words it's your own words so you know what it is and you can essentially paraphrase it yourself so this what usefulness so I said it draws attention to the forms and effects of ownership and control and how journalists work and the issues of risk and profitability so essentially it's highlighting the seriousness and the effects of ownership and control and how it can deeply affect audiences audence interpretation how it affects news values and so forth it also highlights what there narrow range of political opinions expressed by the British national papers which are usually proc capitalistic or Pro capitalism as well so it's essentially highlighting the fact that why we see so many viewpoints that are quite similar that either left wi or right right wing we don't often see anything in between nor do we often see um you know other views lastly it directly links to the long history of press Barons o owning newspapers in order to achieve status and wield political power if you're slightly unsure about this one i' would highly recommend that you Google the Sun newspapers involvement in the 2016 brexit referendum limitations wise it this theory is quite limited because it focuses too much in the effects of ownership and control it doesn't really Aid our understanding of the ideologies the audience choice or media language convention to determine media content it doesn't really say how for example if we look if we talk about the guardian the daily Mod example we looked that the fact that the guardian is more of a broad sheet paper maybe that's why they include an Iranian story because there's more emphasis on hard news on global news whereas for Daily Mail the midm market more so Tabloid they wouldn't place that type of information on that um that type of genre so is it is it because they want to seek profits or is it because they're tabloid and they know that that is a convention that's what the audience expects that's a question we could say why this theory is limited so in this video we looked at an overview we replied it to newspapers and we evaluated it in relation to newspapers as well so should current season come up with an media messages paper you should be well equipped if you now want to apply your learning to a practice question you can have a go of answering this it's a 10 marker so she only spend around about 15 minutes on this question it says evaluate the effectiveness of one of the following theories understand how newspapers are produced and I suggest of course doing a current and seat one remember in this you need to also you need to give examples as well and demonstrate a clear understanding of how the theory is useful but how it's also Limited in understanding how newspapers are produced I hope that was another informative and helpful video for you again please don't forget to like share and subscribe for more AEV media studies and film studies videos