Introductory description

Media, policy and markets provides a pathway for addressing the role of media policy in the contemporary media environment. It provides transferable knowledge for students entering professional roles in the media industry as well as enables them to analyse key theoretical debates in the field. Media policy is conceptualised as a combination of regulatory oversight of media infrastructure (including competition and ethical laws), institutional and corporate organisational management of media organisations, understanding of the public responsibilities of the media, and accommodation of the rights of consumers. Approaching policy from a perspective that emphasises the dynamics between the media industry and consumers enables the module to investigate many of the key parameters for producing, promoting, distributing, exhibiting and consuming media outside of the strict confines of technical policy development. By learning about the intersections of policy and business and evaluating how this impacts students as practitioners and consumers, they will be provided with necessary skills to evaluate some of the complex dynamics between media policy and an evolving industry.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

The following is an indicative outline of the seminars in a given year (subject to changes in tutor preference and module development in response to changing industry and global conditions).

Week 1: Institutions
Media policy needs to be understood as a set of parameters and codes of conduct established
according to specific cultural, social, political and economic variables. While regulations vary
according to the political context, but simultaneously, we operate in a global media environment.
This is especially true of convergent digital media that both has the power to transcend national
borders and also tie media production and consumption practices more firmly within territorial
boundaries. Media policy is one of the ways in which this is achieved in practice. This session will
explore the role of institutions (the UN, WTO, EU, national governments and institutes) in
establishing the general policy frameworks for the media sector. To provide an example of the
ways the media operates in different contexts, we focus on case studies of Ofcom and The State
Administration of Radio, Film and Television. We explore how these organisations operate as embodiments of governmental oversight of the media sector, evaluating questions of independent regulatory authorities as cornerstones of democracy. We also address the ways they, for example, navigate problems such as the relationship between censorship and economics, taking the case of video censorship and the BBFC to evaluate how commercial considerations have influenced policy over the years.

Week 2: Ownership Media policy is integrally connected to the political economy of global media. Exploring areas of ownership as they influence the global flow of media will be addressed through, for example, trade protectionism in the US and China, including the role of international organisations like WTO. Starting out from contemporary flashpoints like News International and Sky to evaluate how monopolies are challenged by different regulatory regimes, we interrogate the confluence of politics and economics. Other examples include the roles of Wanda and Legendary Pictures as part of the current negotiations of film co-production and distribution ventures in the East Asian markets. Both debates are integrally concerned with the concentration of media ownership in the hands of conglomerates and the diverse mechanisms that aid and restrict companies in their drive for market share. These mechanisms range from regulations on transnational production flows to politicised forms of competition policy.

Week 3: Organisational management This week will explore the ways state regulations and organisational KPIs interact. Media companies often have complex internal policies that both conform to and challenge national or international frameworks. Media companies are competitive organisations that have to comply with regulations but also often challenge the role of state governance. We will look at the ways this complex relationship works in terms of people working in media companies. We look at the role of the BBC as PSB and explore how it fulfils its mandate. The focus is in particular on its internal organisational management and how corporate policy operates in terms of the role of practitioners and managers at the company. The focus for this week will be on understanding how a public servant conducts their role in an organisation that is both a commercial organisation and one that needs to apply by the very strict standards of PSB operations. The discussion will involve a guest speaker from the company talking about their role as a form of policy management.

Week 4: Professionals Media policy is not only something set at state or senior management levels of governance. It influences all aspects of a professional’s daily performance. The case study for the week will come from the publishing company Schibsted and its focus on innovation as a part of the corporate brand. Innovation is a policy that influences all aspects of an individual’s work at the company and needs to be critically interrogated. We look at the roles of a wide range of staff – from procurement to head management – to evaluate how professional roles correspond and challenge existing policies. Part of this discussion is to evaluate how the role of the media professional is a constantly transforming idea because of the parameters established by policy on both the governance and organisational level. Here, we focus on the role of social media operators at Schibsted and the ways the constant pressure to be innovative – which is both a KPI and company policy – restrains and challenges existing employee roles.

Week 5: Introducing a new policy: environmental sustainability and the media A key area for policy producers is to anticipate new regulatory standards in both international and domestic media governance. A new form of media policy goes through multiple levels of oversight and influence. These sorts of incentives meet considerable resistance from all sectors including governance and the media companies in their own right. This emphasises the fact that policy can
often be perceived as an obstacle rather than something that will improve the level of work at an organisation. We take the example of establishing environmental sustainability policies for media production. This is an area that constitutes an ongoing problem for many parts of the media industry and provides insightful material of all the complexities involved in establishing policy for a competitive industry. This discussion will focus on understanding all the diverse stakeholders involved in shaping policy parameters and establishing strategy for its implementation. BAFTA’s carbon calculator Albert functions as our case study to highlight processes from planning to implementation, from consolidation to widespread adoption.

Week 6 is reading week The next two sessions will focus on more practical cases requiring a level of field work. They are based on the idea of performing policy. This means that we look at the ways that policy impacts on the lived experience of media professionals and consumers in ways that are not often self evident.

Week 7: A lab project focusing on digital media communications as ‘hacking policy’. We explore the increasingly contentious implications of attempts to limit net neutrality in the US and how this may concern users worldwide. The session is explicitly focused on explaining how policy is not only a mechanical force structuring society for social good or an impartial force restricting media operations to meet these demands. It is an essential facet contributing to highlighting specific structures and behaviours for media on commercial exploitation of the markets, including challenges posed by participant cultures. The session will ask students to perform a number of tasks online to evaluate how regulations and user policies coordinate access. The tasks concern elements such as accessing specific forms of content (films, music), exploring corporate pages for information on internal data, the use of VPN technologies, monetizing clicks, all with the intention of illustrating how policy contributes to the business operations of media corporations, whilst it also sets limits on where users are allowed ‘go’.

Week 8: Group presentations

Week 9: Mediation of the everyday – field trip We explore the complex mediations explicit in the public space of Coventry and try to entangle their regulatory underpinnings. What or who governs what can be done in this space? Does it influence the ways individuals approach these spaces? The focus will be on advertisements and shop displays as screens through which media policy enters everyday life. Other areas to consider in combining public space and media policy involves areas like wifi coverage and how the politics of accessing different networks operate. We will do case studies of user policies of companies like Starbucks. How does the media infiltrate into other commercial sectors and what is the role of media policy here? How are, for example, uses of copyrighted music and intertextual advertisements negotiated in these spaces?

Week 10: Feedback session / field work evaluation and analysis

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of a range of theoretical frameworks and practical applications of media policy to contextual discussions and debates
• Construct theoretically and empirically informed arguments
• Articulate understanding of the complex methods for evaluating the role of media policy as an economic incentive
• Show awareness of the complex role of the user in the development of media policy
• Reason critically and debate interventions in media policy from a range of cultural contexts
• Work collaboratively with others in seminar discussions and group practice.

Indicative reading list

Chin, Yuk Chan. 2015. Television Regulation and Media Policy in China. London: Routledge.

Doyle, Gillian. 2002. Media Ownership: the Economics and Politics of Convergence in the UK and European Media. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Fitzgerald, Richard. 2012. Media, Policy and Interaction. Farnham: Ashgate.

Freedman, Des. 2013. The Politics of Media Policy, Cambridge: Polity.

Guaaybess, T. 2013. National Broadcasting and State Policy in the Arab Countries. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Guererro, M and Marquez-Ramirez, M. 2014. Media Systems and Communications Policies in Latin America. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Haynes, Richard. 2005. Media Rights and Intellectual Property, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Iosifidis, Petros. 2011. Global Media and Communication Policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Jones, Meg. 2016. Ctrl + Z: The Right to Be Forgotten, New York: NYU Press.

Kamau, Caroline and Berry, David. 2013. Public Policy and Media Organizations. Farnham: Ashgate.

Klimkiewitz, Beata (ed.) 2010. Media Freedom and Pluralism: Media Policy Challenges in the Enlarged Europe. Budapest: Central European University Press.

Leveson Inquiry (2012) The Report into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press

Mansell, Robin and Raboy, Marc. 2014. The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.

Moyo, Dumisani and Chuma, Wallace. 2010. Media Policy in a Changing Southern Africa. Unisa Press.

Pauwels, Caroline et al. 2014. The Palgrave Handbook of European Media Policy, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Psychogiopoulou, Evangelia (ed.) 2012. Understanding Media Policies: A European Perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Schejter, Schamit 2015. A Justice-Based Approach for New Media Policy, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Simpson, Seamus et al. 2017. European Media Policy for the 21st Century. London: Routledge.

Subject specific skills

Knowledge of a range of theoretical frameworks and understanding of the complex methods for evaluating the role of media policy as an economic incentive. Awareness of the complex role of the user in the development of media policy

Transferable skills

Reason critically and debate, construct theoretically and empirically informed arguments and work collaboratively with others in seminar discussions and group practice.