Professor Terry Flew's presentation at City University London, 21 Oct 2013

1. Changing Influences on the
Concept of ‘Media Influence’
Presentation to Department of Sociology Seminar Series,
City University, London
21 October 2013
Professor Terry Flew
Journalism, Media and Communications,
Creative Industries Faculty,
Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane, Australia

2. The Concept of ‘Media Influence’
• ‘the social organization of symbolic power … *to+
intervene in the course of events, to influence the
actions of others and indeed to create events, by
means of the production and transmission of
symbolic forms’ (Thompson 1995: 17).
• Katz and Lazarsfeld – ‘two-step flow’
• Maxwell McCombs – agenda-setting
• Stuart Hall, David Morley – hegemony theory
• Jeremy Tunstall – power influences on the media
professions

3. News Corp newspapers and the 2013
Australian Federal election

4. Opposition to Finkelstein Review

5. 2013 Federal election results
Australian state
Swing against Labor (2PP)
National
3.65%
New South Wales
2.82%
Victoria
5.97%
Queensland
1.31%
South Australia
5.54%
Western Australia
1.23%
Tasmania
11.27%

6. Trends in Australian newspaper
circulation
Source: Finkelstein Review 2012: 69.

7. Purposes of Broadcasting Regulation
• To ensure universal availability to the general
population of the country of broadcast services;
• To allocate frequencies in an equitable and orderly
manner and supervise adherence to rules laid down;
• To ensure a wide range of services and access
opportunities according to the needs of society meaning diversity in social, political, cultural and
local/regional terms;
• To promote high quality of content provided as far as
possible according to locally decided values and
standards, with particular reference to information,
education, advertising, culture, taste and decency.

8. UK Communications Act 2003:
considerations for Ofcom
(a) the degree of harm or offence likely to be caused by the
inclusion of any particular sort of material in programmes
generally, or in programmes of a particular description;
(b) the likely size and composition of the potential audience
for programmes included in television and radio services
generally, or in television and radio services of a particular
description;
(c) the likely expectation of the audience as to the nature of a
programme’s content and the extent to which the nature of a
programme’s content can be brought to the attention of
potential members of the audience;
(d) the likelihood of persons who are unaware of the nature of
a programme’s content being unintentionally exposed, by
their own actions, to that content (Ofcom 2013:71-72).

9. Drivers of change in the Australian
context (ALRC Classification Review)
• the now quite large audiences such channels attract, accounting for
up to 25 per cent of television viewing in Australia;
• the existence of various specialist channels offered by the public
broadcasters, including two children’s channels offered by the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC);
• the growth of catch-up TV viewing through services such as the
ABC’s iView (similar to the BBC’s iPlayer) as well as through the
Internet;
• the quite different rules that apply to such matters as time-zone
restrictions (‘watershed hours’) for programs broadcast on the
digital multichannels as compared to the main channels; and
• the availability of parental locking devices on all new televisions
sold in Australia.
• Near-universal availability of competers/Inteernet/mobile devices
to access ‘over-the-top’ video services (YouTube, Vimeo etc.)

10. Changing Broadcasting Content
Landscape

11. Content Service Enterprise: A concept
for convergent media ?
• Convergence Review Committee (2012) in
Australia defined a CSE as:
– Having control over the content that is supplied
i.e. it is professionally-produced media content;
– Having a large number of Australians who use or
access that content;
– Deriving significant revenue from supplying that
content to Australians.