TY - JOUR
T1 - Media Ownership and Public Service News
T2 - How Strong Are Institutional Logics?
AU - Benson, Rodney
AU - Neff, Timothy
AU - Hessérus, Mattias
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The New York University (NYU) University Research Challenge Fund and the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit provided financial support for this research.
Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank Ella Shoshan, Elly Hanauer, Laura Bullon-Cassis, and Rodrigo Ferreira for their research assistance. French sociologist Julie Sedel conducted interviews with CEOs and editors and participated in discussions that contributed to the framing of a larger study of media ownership, of which this article is a part. We received helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper from colleagues at presentations to the International Journal of Press/Politics Oxford conference in September 2017 and the University of Stockholm Department of Media Studies in October 2017. Kate Wright, Martin Scott, and Mel Bunce also provided helpful feedback on an earlier draft; Jonas Ohlsson, Kristina Riegert, and Emanuel Karlsten helped fill out our portrait of contemporary Swedish media. Two anonymous reviewers provided excellent, detailed suggestions that substantially strengthened the article. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The New York University (NYU) University Research Challenge Fund and the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit provided financial support for this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2018/7/1
Y1 - 2018/7/1
N2 - This article analyzes the extent to which diverse institutional logics (stock market, privately held, civil society, public) are linked to the exercise of one important mode of media ownership power: public service orientation. The research draws on a content analysis of a total of fifty-one news organizations in Sweden, France, and the United States, representing, respectively, Hallin and Mancini’s democratic corporatist, polarized pluralist, and liberal models. We find that two types of institutional logics—affordance and homogenization—shape the amount and type of public-service-oriented news. On average, public-service-oriented news was highest at civil-society-owned media, but there was significant variation within this category: We call this kind of institutional logic an affordance logic because it affords but does not guarantee a certain kind of news content. Public media, on the other hand, exhibited the least deviation across outlets within each country, thus exemplifying a strong homogenization logic. All forms of ownership, but especially privately held and civil society media, exhibited significant variations across individual organizations. Economic field dominance, as in the United States, did not produce greater homogenization across ownership fields as predicted by field theory.
AB - This article analyzes the extent to which diverse institutional logics (stock market, privately held, civil society, public) are linked to the exercise of one important mode of media ownership power: public service orientation. The research draws on a content analysis of a total of fifty-one news organizations in Sweden, France, and the United States, representing, respectively, Hallin and Mancini’s democratic corporatist, polarized pluralist, and liberal models. We find that two types of institutional logics—affordance and homogenization—shape the amount and type of public-service-oriented news. On average, public-service-oriented news was highest at civil-society-owned media, but there was significant variation within this category: We call this kind of institutional logic an affordance logic because it affords but does not guarantee a certain kind of news content. Public media, on the other hand, exhibited the least deviation across outlets within each country, thus exemplifying a strong homogenization logic. All forms of ownership, but especially privately held and civil society media, exhibited significant variations across individual organizations. Economic field dominance, as in the United States, did not produce greater homogenization across ownership fields as predicted by field theory.
KW - France
KW - Sweden
KW - civil society media
KW - comparative research
KW - content analysis
KW - investigative reporting
KW - journalism
KW - media ownership
KW - privately held news companies
KW - public media
KW - public service orientation
KW - stock market traded news companies
KW - the United States
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U2 - 10.1177/1940161218782740
DO - 10.1177/1940161218782740
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049609688
SN - 1940-1612
VL - 23
SP - 275
EP - 298
JO - International Journal of Press/Politics
JF - International Journal of Press/Politics
IS - 3
ER -