The Political Economies of Media: the Transformation of the Global Media Industries
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Arsenault, Amelia. "The Structure and Dynamics of Communications Business Networks in an Era of Convergence: Mapping the global networks of the information business." The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media Industries. Ed. Dwayne Winseck and Dal Yong Jin. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. 101–120. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 23 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849664264.ch-004>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 23 September 2021, 09:43 UTC. Copyright © Copyright in the collection and in any introductory and concluding materials © Dwayne Winseck and Dal Yong Jin 2011. Copyright in the individual chapters © the Contributors 2011. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 4 The Structure and Dynamics of Communications Business Networks in an Era of Convergence Mapping the global networks of the information business Amelia Arsenault Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania isney Corporation boasted a market capitalization of US$63.7 billion, Demployed 144,000 employees around the world, and earned US$37.8 billion in revenue in 2009. 1 It owns the major movie studios Walt Disney Pictures, Miramax, Pixar Animation, and Touchstone Pictures and television channels available in 190 countries, including the Disney Channel, ABC networks, ESPN, SOAPNet, Lifetime (37.5 percent), Jetix (Latin America and Europe), SuperRTL (Europe), and Hungama (India). In addition to these media outlets, Disney maintains theme parks, resorts, and cruise lines and produces merchandise ranging from books to home décor. What can we infer from this long list of properties? Are large communications conglomerates like Disney, News Corp., and Time Warner worthy of consideration because they own countless numbers of studios and television stations in countries and markets around the world? Or should we evaluate their power in terms of how much money they make, their political infl uence, or their market share? A number of scholars have documented the increased size, market concentration, and vertical and horizontal integration of global communications business conglomerates. 2 This chapter takes a slightly different approach by examining the implications of media ownership concentration through the theoretical lens of networks. Scholars such as Eli Noam (2001) and Yochai Benkler (2006) have wrestled with the transformational power of computer-mediated networks. However, there has been little substantive engagement by political economists with the body of theoretical and empirical work that considers networks as a set of socially embedded processes and the defi ning feature of contemporary social organization rather than an exogenous variable (e.g. Castells 2000, 2009; Latour 2005). As this chapter will argue, technological and accompanying 101 CH004.indd 101 6/10/2011 6:18:34 PM 102 THE POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF MEDIA social, organizational, and economic changes have made networks the defi ning feature of contemporary media and communications businesses, and as such a consideration of networks should be incorporated into political economic inquiry. While theoretical consideration of networks predates the radical transformations wrought by the digitization of information, the majority of network theorists agree that technological innovations have propelled the reconfi guration of contemporary society into networks. Castells (1996) goes so far as to posit that we are living in a “network society ” and that Dominant functions and processes in the Information Age are increasingly organized around networks. While the networking form of social organization has existed in other times, the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure. (Castells 2000: 500) Similarly, Actor–Network–Theory (ANT), most closely associated with the work of Bruno Latour, maintains that while technology has intensifi ed the importance of looking at network associations, the social has always been organized around networks. Therefore, sociology should be redefi ned as the tracing of network associations (Latour 2005: 5). Building upon these theories, in this chapter, I identify networks as the dominant social structure guiding the operations of contemporary communications businesses. This investigation approach complements rather than replaces more traditional political economic approaches. Key thinkers from Marx to Schumpeter called attention to the central role of technology in driving innovation, organizational change, and relationships between individuals and mechanisms of production. Schumpeter (1943/1996), for example, argued that technological innovation, not capital, was the key driver of innovation, a “perennial gale of creative destruction” that “incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one” (Schumpeter 1943/1996: 84). Following Schumpeter, we can identify the technology and social transformations of the second half of the twentieth century as part of this continual process of “creative destruction” leading to the emergence of networks as the principal structural form around which media and communications businesses are organized. Therefore, in this chapter, I adopt what might be called a network political economy approach. The network political economy approach differs from traditional political economy approaches in a number of respects. First, the primary focus of analysis is on the processes, programs, and structures that constitute a given network rather than capital or markets. While we may talk about television networks or computer networks, “networks” in this chapter refer to social architecture rather than purely tangible structures. A network is a series of nodes (these nodes can be businesses, offi ces, individuals, or even machines) that are linked to one CH004.indd 102 6/10/2011 6:18:35 PM COMMUNICATIONS BUSINESS NETWORKS IN AN ERA OF CONVERGENCE 103 another. These links may take many forms, including interpersonal interactions, strategic corporate alliances, and fl ows of information between and within groups. Nodes and associations are constituent elements of the network, but their specifi c characteristics are made relevant or redundant according to the program (i.e. goals) of the network at hand. Thus, networks as a framework for academic analysis are bounded by the overarching consideration of who is (or is not) associated with whom, why, and to what social effect. Second, traditional political economy tends to focus on how organizations expand their hierarchical control over properties or markets through mergers and acquisitions, that is, the takeover of other fi rms. The network approach, however, sees power as embedded in networks rather than something that is a function of corporate hierarchies. A corporation may amass hierarchical control over a stable of media properties, but its ability to do so successfully is predicated upon its ability to leverage the larger network within which it is embedded. Power is thus not necessarily concentrated within any single company but embedded in the processes of association between key nodes in the network, which may include regulators, relevant political agencies, and equipment manufacturers. These key nodes may change, while the network itself continues to thrive. Third, traditional political economy focuses on competition and, perhaps even more so, consolidation within media markets. Competitive practices are a subject of concern, but the network approach assigns equal, if not greater, signifi cance to the processes of collaboration between actors. Fourth, in examining media and communications networks, we are concerned with many of the same measures used by other political economists, such as strategic alliances, joint ventures, and the movement of capital. However, these measures are used and individual institutions (i.e. nodes) or subnetworks are examined with the ultimate goal of better understanding systems-level network processes . Even a cursory glance at the evolution of communications corporations over the past decade illustrates that there are few constant players, and those that remain undergo constant metamorphosis, suggesting that it is particularly instructive to understand the programs guiding the network within which they operate. Individual media companies, particularly large ones like Disney, wield signifi cant infl uence. However, the processes of power at play within the global network of communications networks are greater than the sum of the bottom line of individual media or telecommunications companies or the movement of capital. Mapping the network, neither individual companies nor resources, is thus the focus of this approach. As this chapter will demonstrate, contemporary media and communications companies are organized around a core global network of diversifi ed multinational communications organizations that are interlinked with large national and regional companies and to their local counterparts in different areas of the world. Disney, to return to our opening example for a moment, is a large multinational CH004.indd 103 6/10/2011 6:18:35 PM 104 THE POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF MEDIA corporation that has offi ces and businesses around the world connected by formal contracts, the exchange of money, and person-to-person