Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Far from being a concern of the past, media ownership concentration is a feature of hybrid media systems. This raises the issue of how to measure the concentration and allow for informed decisions to be made, especially for policymaking. Some of the most popular metrics are the concentration ratio (CRn) and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). However, the new hybrid context increasingly renders the usual economic concentration metrics obsolete to understand the power of communication players. This article provides a theoretical overview and methodological considerations on ways to interrogate ownership relations, advancing network analysis and visualization as useful tools to better grasp power relations alongside traditional economic metrics. We illustrate our proposal with an analysis of media ownership data from Denmark and Greece, as provided by the Euromedia Ownership Monitor in 2022. Our article goes beyond the approach of the monitor, as we incorporate additional components, such as the power of beneficial owners over the audience. This approach provides a broader analysis of media ownership concentration and can inspire scholarly work to explore more aspects of this topic.
Source: Media and Communication
DOI: 10.17645/mac.10141
Authors: Mariia Aleksevych, Tales Tomaz
Institution: University of Salzburg
Language: English
Topic: Media Influence and Politics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,132
Funder: Universität Salzburg
OpenAlex ID: W4413994557