Media Pluralism Or Content Diversity Essay

Media pluralism or content diversity is one of the most essential features in a democracy as the people require a variety of contending viewpoints to consolidate perceptions of nation-wide aspects (Hrvatin 2004). Nonetheless, it has been suggested that human agency in the media industry has gradually been manipulated due to political or economic affiliations, which may result in the dissemination of biased or even fraudulent information. For example, Groseclose (2003) stated in a piece of quantitative research that during the period of time between 1993 and 2002, a staggering prejudice can be observed – 4991 sentences and only 2111 sentences respectively from Conservative and Liberal think tanks were cited in the articles of Fox News, which

In essence, media conglomeration refers to the convergence of outlets from a wide spectrum of media businesses to the ownership of a powerful media corporation (Croteau and Hoynes 2014). In fact, it has been a widely held view that media conglomerates have curtailed media pluralism, encompassing demographic, format and idea diversity (Gamson and Latteier 2004), leading to the Homogenisation Hypothesis – stating that the rising concentration of media ownership is directly proportional to the increasing amount of homogeneity in media content (Bagdikian 2004). Although sceptics remain adamant about the perspective, there is ample evidence to justify the presence of homogenisation of media products through the political and economic aspects. Politically, media ownership would lead to prejudice in media content, as politicians who possess ownership of media conglomerates recognise it as a platform for the dissemination of propaganda. For example, the establishment of various political benefits at the expense of media pluralism in the products of Mediaset Group had contributed to the three electoral victories for former Italian prime minister and prominent media magnate Silvio Berlusconi (Razzoli, Guerreri and Savini n.d.), who arguably had the ownership of approximately 90% of televised media in the nation-state (The Economist 2001). According to Croteau and Hoynes (2014), the appearance of Berlusconi in the content of his extensive network of media outlets was 400% higher than the other electoral candidates during the 2001 Italian electoral campaign. On the other hand, economically, it is perceived that the advent of media conglomeration has a primary purpose of achieving profit maximisation. In fact, while one of the most effective approaches to increasing financial benefits is the establishment of synergistic interrelationship between