1. April 18, 2012

2. Three Guiding Questions
 To what extent does the Internet media sector mimic
the long-established patters of concentrated
ownership in the broader print and broadcast media?
 To what extent has it altered the processes shaping a
central area of media content: news production and
distribution?
 What has been the effect of the phenomenon of file
sharing, the rise of open-source software, and other
intellectual property disputes?
Chadwick, chap. 12, p. 289.

3. Key Scholarly Works on Media
Concentration
 Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly
(6th edn. 2000)
 Eli Noam, Media Ownership and
Concentration in America (2009)
 Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor
Democracy (2000)
 Robert McChesney, The Political
Economy of Media (2008)

4. Concentration of Control

5. The Big Seven
 General Electric
 Walt Disney
 News Corporation
 TimeWarner
 Viacom
 CBS
 Bertelsmann

6. Media Concentration

7. Film Studio Market Share, 2009

8. Music Recording, 2008

9. Key questions
 How does the diffusion of ICTS affect the distribution
of power?
 Does it empower individuals and small groups or does
it privilege large organizations and institutions?
 Does it undermine existing hierarchies?

10. Definitions of Power
 Capabilities-based power
 Relational power
 Structural power
 Metapower

11. Definitions of Power
 Robert Dahl and Jack Nagel (relational power)
 Bachrach and Baratz (non-decisions)
 Steven Lukes (interests instead of preferences)
 Susan Strange and Steven Lukes(structural power)
 Joseph S. Nye (soft power)
“A Position of Power” video

12. ICTs and Firm Capabilities: Power
Transitions among Big Firms
 IBM
 Microsoft/Intel
 Google
 Facebook
 Twitter
 What’s next?

13. What is Google?
 Founded 1998 by Larry
Page and Sergey Brin.
 IPO 2004 ($23 billion)
 World’s most popular
search engine.
 World’s most popular web
site.
 Built on PageRank
technology.
ASU students video on Google

14. Google Executives
 Larry Page
 Eric Schmidt
 Sergei Brin
TED video
Ken Auletta talking about
his book, Googled

15. ICTs and national capabilities
 US is ahead in movies, music, software and web-based
businesses
 Taiwan and China are ahead in PCs
 Korea is ahead in broadband, but also in flat panel
displays (with Taiwan)
 China is coming up but is not in the top tier yet

16. Relational power
 Definition: A has power over B if A can get B to act
against his/her preferences but according to A’s
preferences.
 Relational power can be coercive or non-coercive.
 If A can persuade B to change his/her preferences to
be more like A’s, then A has influenced B without
using coercion.

17. ICTs and Relational Power
 Google vs. China
 Google vs. print publishers/authors
 Google vs. EU on digitized libraries
 RIAA and MPAA vs. average consumer of digital
music and video
 Cyberdiplomacy
 Cyber warfare

18. Google vs. China
 Jan 27, 2006 Google launches Google.cn
 Chinese government forces Google.cn to censor
certain Internet searches (Dalai Lama, Falun Gong)
 Chinese government hacks into Gmail accounts of
Chinese human rights activists
 Google redirects Google.cn searches to Google.hk
(Hong Kong), search results not filtered there
 Google establishes “evil meter” to monitor traffic
restrictions around the world
Attack of the Show video

19. Google’s Library of the Future
 Google makes deals with multiple libraries
 Google digitizes books for indexing on Google
 Libraries get free access to full text versions of digitized
books plus money
 In 2005, The Author’s Guild files a class action suit
against Google in defense of copyrights
 Nov 2008 settlement gives authors and publishers
royalties on sales of digitized books in exchange for
granting Google legal immunity from copyright
infringement

20. EU vs. Google
 European Union opposes Google policies of retaining
user information; wants it to follow EU privacy
policies
 Google agrees to anonymize data after 18 months; EU
not satisfied with this response
 Bibliotheque Nationale de France begins project
called Gallica 2 Project to digitize books of 50
European publishers; authors support this effort
 Dec 2010: Google opens an e-bookstore, potential rival
to Amazon

21. Cyberwarfare
 Wikipedia entry
 2008: Russian and Georgian sites attacked during the
war in South Ossetia
 2008: Defense Department reports espionage-
oriented attack in the form of a USB flash drive
 2009: cyber spy network called GhostNet, using
servers in China, taps into classified documents about
Tibet in 103 countries
 2010: US government uses Stuxnet worm to attack
nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran

22. Structural Power
 Definition: the ability to control outcomes that
derives from the ability to shape the rules of the
system.
 Example: the ability of the RIAA and MPAA to get the
copyright laws they want.
 Example: the ability of the US government to veto
decisions by ICANN
Example of attempt to alter structural power of
copyright holders via the Creative Commons

23. New Forms of Structural Power: Architectural
and Algorithmic Power
 Who determines ICT architectures?
 PC platform
 iPod/iTunes
 3G and 4G smart phones
 Who controls central algorithms?
 Google search engine

24. Meta Power
 Who is able to frame the issues in a way that permits
people and organizations to redefine their interests
and preferences?
 How does this reframing occur?
 Consider the cases of net neutrality and SOPA/PIPA
 How important were ICTs in enabling the Arab
Spring?

25. Lessons: Impact of Diffusion of ICTs
 Easier to organize and mobilize people who are separated
by great distances
 Internet users feel more empowered; seem to be more
active in politics
 Greater concern over the monopolization of control over
channels for the diffusion of digitized content and power
of large companies like Google
 Google and open source software may be undermining the
power of other companies and institutions; in some cases
this empowers individuals and small groups but not
always
 An important counterexample in the decline of print