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212 Interventions and change

Conclusion
Are there media power problems and if so how should they be addressed? The
aim of this book is to promote those questions being answered by readers across
myriad media systems and situations. There are, though, some general points
that arise from the discussions above.

1 Mass media and old problems persist
Mass and electronic media remain the most important means by which people
across the world form views on reality beyond their individual experience. So it
matters profoundly how key problems facing the world are addressed in public
media from ecological destruction to military imperialism. ‘Old’ problems persist,
from media concentration to marketisation and the subordination of public to
private interests. We have encountered critiques that marketisation and the
expansion and power of corporate media damages the public sphere, cuts down
space for debate and involves a number of structural biases that tend to make it
conservative in orientation. This makes corporate media an unreliable basis for a
properly inclusive, open, diverse and democratic media. If that is so, then action
is required to put it right.

2 New media have new problems
Digital media environments involve new controls (instrumental and structural)
over production, circulation and exchange arising from private ownership, state
surveillance, marketers’ advertising and other forms of monetisation. Access to
communication resources and to benefits of communication are unequally dis-
tributed generating digital divides and democratic deficits. Big Data, something
of a buzzword in 2013, nevertheless highlights how the collection and use of
digital communications data connects state, corporate and commercial interests.
Data from social media, video streaming and personal communications is subject
to management and exploitation by commercial providers and varying degrees of
state surveillance. Such manifestations of ongoing convergence need an analytically
convergent CPE to address issues of control, privacy, security, environmental
damage, labour and social use.

3 Old and new media are interconnected, and so too are problems
The Internet has certainly aided the circulation of voices and expanded publishing,
yet the financing of newsgathering remains a problem across old and new media.
Research has shown that bloggers and citizen journalists rely heavily on journalists
for information (Mitchelstein and Boczkowski 2009). An analysis of postings on
Indymedia and Slashdot found that ‘not only do few weblog writers engage in
any independent news reporting, most weblog writers cover the same topics as