Applying the structure‐conduct‐performance framework in the media industry analysis

Abstract

This article reviews the application of the Industrial Organization (10) framework of Structure‐Conduct‐Performance (S‐C‐P) in media market research. The constructs and premises of this economic model are restated, and the orthodox economic notions of market performance and the logic that underlies the model are clarified. Alongside these elucidations, this article discusses common conceptualizations and interpretations found in media market studies. Media issues such as content diversity and media concentration, which are often studied through the S‐C‐P approach, are also re‐examined. These deliberations are intended to contribute toward a more consistent framework for the study of media industries and markets.     

Limited competition without re‐regulating the media the case of the broadcasting industry in Thailand

Broadcast media is one of the high growth industries in Thailand; its expansion riding along with the present liberalization of the manufacturing and service industries supported by successive governments through the 1980s and ‘90s. This pace of change was quickened considerably by the 1992 up‐rising against the institutionalization of a nonelected prime‐minister, with calls for freedom of speech on radio and TV.

This article illustrates the on‐going liberalization process and asks if market forces have necessarily resulted in less censorship and more diverse and better quality programming. It also questions whether there is fair competition in the Thai broadcasting industry, and whether the subsequent reforms are working in the best interests of the public.     

Pranking rhetoric: “culture jamming” as media activism

This essay explores the practice of “culture jamming” as a strategy of rhetorical protest. Specifically, “pranksters” deploy the tools of the mass media and marketing in order to take advantage of the resources and venues they afford. Through the concept of “pranking,” this essay suggests that the most promising forms of media activism may resist less through negation and opposition than by playfully appropriating commercial rhetoric both by folding it over on itself and exaggerating its tropes.     

Spreading the word? European Union agencies and social media attention

Public agencies need to distribute information to their manifold audience quickly and directly. The emergence of social media platforms has sparked positive projections about future government-public interactions via the internet and almost every EU agency has created social media presences on the leading social media platforms. However, social media accounts of agencies receive strongly varying amounts of public attention and therefore display varying degrees of usefulness to connect with the public. This research examines which factors influence how much long-standing and temporal attention social media accounts of EU agencies receive. Using an extensive Twitter dataset of EU agencies and a new methodology that employs supervised text classification through the novel BERT language model to classify agency tweets, possible explanations of social media attention are tested. Results show that long-standing social media attention (i.e., size of the followership) is mostly explained by salience in traditional news, account age, and tweeting frequency, whilst a more interactive communication style tends to yield more temporal attention (i.e., number of retweets). The findings underline previous assumptions that employing a more interactive communication style maximizes public organizations' potential to connect with their audiences on social media.     

The media and the crisis of democracy in the age of Bush‐2

In this study, I demonstrate the consequences of the triumph of neoliberalism and media deregulation for democracy. I argue that the tremendous concentration of power in the hands of corporate groups who control powerful media conglomerates has intensified a crisis of democracy in the United States and elsewhere. Providing case studies of how mainstream media in the United States have become tools of conservative and corporate interests since the 1980s, I discuss how the corporate media helped forge a conservative hegemony, failed to address key social problems, and promoted the candidacy of George W. Bush in the 2000 US presidential election.     

Popular culture—Part two

READING FOOTBALL: HOW THE POPULAR PRESS CREATED AN AMERICAN SPECTACLE by Michael Oriard (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994—$29.95, ISBN 0–8078–2083–0, 319 pp.)

BASEBALL ARCHAEOLOGY: ARTIFACTS FROM THE GREAT AMERICAN PASTIME by Gwen Aldridge (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993—$29.95/ 18.95, ISBN 0–8118–0365–1 hard, ISBN 0–8118–0290–6, soft, 112 pp.)

MAN AS ART by Malcolm Kirk (photographs) and Andrew Strathern (essay) (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993—$22.95, paper, ISBN 0–8118–0478‐X, 144 pp.)

NEW YORK HOT: EAST COAST JAZZ OF THE 50S & 60S, THE ALBUM COVER ART by Graham Marsh and Glynn Cunningham (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993—$24.95, paper, ISBN0–8118–0416‐X, 111 pp.)

ITALIAN ART DECO: GRAPHIC DESIGN BETWEEN THE WARS by Steven Heller and Louise Hill (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993—$16.95, paper, ISBN 0–8118–0287–6,132 pp.)

HEROES WITHOUT LEGACY: AMERICAN AIRWOMEN, 1912–1944 by Dean Jaros (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1993— $24.95, ISBN 0–87081–312–9, 282 pp.)

COWGIRLS OF THE RODEO: PIONEER PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES by Mary Lou Compte (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993—$22.50, ISBN 0–252–02029–4, 252 pp.)

UNBEARABLE WEIGHT: FEMINISM, WESTERN CULTURE, AND THE BODY by Susan Bordo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993—$25.00, ISBN 0–520–07979–5, hard, 361 pp.)

SANDOW THE MAGNIFICENT: EUGENESANDOW AND THE BEGINNINGS OF BODYBUILDING by David L. Chapman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994—$26.95, ISBN 0–252–02033–2, 229 pp.)

THE CHANGING FICTIONS OF MASCULINITY by David Rosen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993—$29.95/14.95, ISBN 0‐ 252–02004–9, hard, 0–252–06309–0, paper, 234 pp.)

LAND OF IDOLS: POLITICAL MYTHOLOGY IN AMERICA by Michael Parenti (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994—price not given—ISBN 0–312–09497–3, hard, 0–312–09841–3 paper, 208 pp.)

THE TRAGEDY OF ABUNDANCE: MYTH RESTORATION IN AMERICAN CULTURE by Jerome O. Steffen (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1993—16.95, ISBN 0–87081–272–6, 129 pp.)

COMIC BOOKS AND COMIC STRIPS IN THE UNITED STATES: AN INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY ($85.00, ISBN 0–313–28211–0, 624 pp.)

COMIC ART OF EUROPE: AN INTENTIONAL, COMPREHENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY ($95.00, ISBN 0–313–28212–9, 688 pp.)     

Alone in Berlin? Israeli media and the German resistance to Nazism

The commercially successful Hebrew translation of Alone in Berlin (Fallada, 2010) stirred a conversation regarding the German resistance to Nazism, until then a rarely discussed phenomenon in Israel. The analysis of media items dealing with the book revealed that different memory frameworks shaped the discussion about it. Thus, this study contributes to contemporary discussion about the role of “old” and “new” media in the reconstruction of society’s memory.     

French media books—part one

Histoire Des Systèmes De Télécommunications: Avec ou sans Fil, Des Inventions Pour Communiquer / A HISTORY OF TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS: INVENTIONS FOR COMMUNICATION by Claude Nowakowski and Alain Roux (Paris: Technique et documentation, 1994–440 FF, 382 pp.)

AFP, Une Histoire de L'Agence France‐Presse: 1944–1990/AFP: A HISTORY OF AGENCE FRANCE‐PRESSE: 1944–90 by Bernard Ullmann and Jean Huteau (Paris, Laffont, 1992–160 FF, ISBN 2–221–05883–6)

Havas: Les Arcanes du Pouvoir / HAVAS: THE SECRET EXERCISE OF POWER by Antoine Lefebure (Paris: Grasset, 1992–148 FF, no ISBN given, 378 pp.)

Histoire du Journalisme et des Journalistes en France / A HISTORY OF JOURNALISM AND JOURNALISTS IN FRANCE by Christian Delporte (Paris: PUF [Que Sais‐je? No. 2926], 1994–40 FF, no ISBN given, 128 pp.)

Trois Siècles de Publicité en France / THREE CENTURIES OF ADVERTISING IN FRANCE by Marc Martin (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1992‐ 180 FF, ISBN 2–7381–0166–6, 430 pp.)

Presse, Radio et Télévision de 1631 à Nos Jours / PRESS, RADIO, AND TELEVISION FROM 1631 TO THE PRESENT by Elisabeth Cazenave and Caroline Ulmann‐Mauriat (Paris: Hachette, 1995–84 FF, ISBN 2–01–019634–1, 253 pp.)

L'invention du Journalisme en France: Naissance de la Presse Moderne à la Fin du 19ème Siècle / INVENTION OF JOURNALISM IN FRANCE: THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN PRESS IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY by Thomas Ferenczi (Paris: Plon, 1993–138 FF, no ISBN given, 278 pp.)

Cinquante Ans de Presse Parisienne / FIFTY YEARS WITH THE PARIS PRESS by Hervé Mille (Paris: La Table ronde, 1992‐price and ISBN not given)

Histoire Générale de la Radio et de la Télévision / A GENERAL HISTORY OF RADIO AND TELEVISION by Christian Brochand (Paris: La Documentation française, 1994‐ 400 FF for each volume: Tome 1 (1921–1944) 692 pp.; Tome 2 (1944–1974) 690 pp., or 700 FF for the two, no ISBN given)

La Télé: Dix Ans D'histoires Secrètes / TELEVISION: TEN YEARS OF SECRET HISTORY by Marie‐Eve Chamard and Philippe Kieffer (Paris: Flammarion, 1992–150 FF, ISBN 2–08–066505–7, 701 pp.)

Haute Fidélité: Pouvoir et Télévision (1935–1994)/ HI‐FIDELITY: POWER AND TELEVISION (1935–94) by Jérôme Bourdon (Paris: Seuil, 1994–145 FF, no ISBN given, 373 pp.)

Le Général Ferrié / GENERAL FERRIÉ by Michel Armondy (Grenoble:, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1993–150 FF, no ISBN given, 424 pp.)     

Medical publishing and the drug industry: is medical science for sale?

The pharmaceutical industry produces an abundance of special‐purpose knowledge, flooding the markets it is most interested in. To gain the largest scientific impact and market value from research, drug company articles placed in medical journals are often written under the names of independent medical researchers. Pharmaceutical company statisticians, reviewers from a diverse array of company departments, medical writers, and publication planners are only rarely acknowledged in journal publications, and key company scientists only sometimes acknowledged. The public knowledge that results from this ghost‐managed research and publication is a marketing tool, providing bases for continuing medical education, buttressing sales pitches, and contributing to medical common sense and further research. In the pharmaceutical industry, knowledge is a resource to be accumulated, shaped, and deployed to best effect. In this paper, I describe this process and discuss ways in which it might be addressed.     

Covering the world‐class downtown: Seattle's local media and the politics of urban redevelopment

Local disputes over land use and urban development generate some of the most heated struggles in American politics. Yet the role of local media organizations in covering debates over urban development has been woefully understudied by media scholars. To address this soft spot in the critical media literature, this article offers an investigation of how the local press covered a particularly bitter debate over one urban redevelopment proposal in Seattle during the mid‐1990s. Drawing on Hallin, who predicts that reporters will abandon professional codes of neutrality and balance when they perceive the political field to be unified around a single position, an examination of sourcing patterns in the Seattle case suggests that local reporters cover debates over urban development from a spurious assumption of “consensus”—an assumption that privileges the voices of downtown business leaders and pro‐development public officials. A concluding section offers suggestions for future investigation into the intersection of local media and urban development politics, drawing particularly on Bourdieu's notion of “symbolic capital” to explore how such presumptions of consensus are cultivated, maintained, and contested within the local public sphere.     

Trusted by whom? TDRs,standards culture and the nature of trust

The first part of this paper examines the notion of trust within the suite of standards that anchor the trustworthy digital repository (TDR) concept. The second part traces the short and confusing trajectory of the TDR project at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and explores the extent to which the failure of LAC TDR should be understood in relation to organizational funding, operational decisions, TDR standards culture or other factors. In the conclusion I suggest that the notion of trust within TDR standards culture is itself evolving in a positive direction that emphasizes user perceptions of trust rather than seeking to establish objective evidence of trust.     

Rewiring the DMCA’s history: 20th-century new media and the expanding imaginary for infringement

This article analyzes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as a refinement of governmental techniques developed for technologies such as piano rolls, reprography, DAT, and VCRs. The technological history recontextualizes legal transitions in copyrights during the 20th century and builds on poststructuralist work on law, technology, and government. Building on Kittler’s understanding of symbolic/technical media and storage/processing, I develop a framework for disentangling the relationship among copyright, DRM, and media technologies. The case studies indicate ICTs are vectors for extending copyright into previously unimagined territories. I argue cultural practices become problematized as they are remediated in new technologies. The evidence suggests the shift from governing storage to processing corresponds to broader rearrangements in power, binding our rituals and means of perception ever more tightly to articulations of industry and state.