WSU Prof’s New Book Argues Corporate Media Influence Will Be Offset by Technology, Specialized Media

PULLMAN, Wash. – While mass media corporations will grow globally and reach more people than ever in the 21st century, a Washington State University researcher and media sociologist predicts that the media giants won’t influence the world marketplace any more than they have in the past.

In his most recently published book, “History and the Future of Mass Media,” David Demers, an associate professor with WSU’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, argues that the ability of global media corporations to control information and entertainment marketplaces in the future will be offset by the continued growth of the Internet communications and specialized media.

 “A great deal of evidence is piling up showing that the news media are losing some of their power to the Internet, which enables individuals to circumvent the media in the search for news, information and knowledge,” Demers said. “Some of the mass media’s power also will be checked by bloggers, who, serving as a self-anointed Fifth Estate, will continue to watch over abuse of power in the media themselves.”
 
Demers cites historical and other research which shows that market shares of most major print and broadcast media decline as social systems become more economically and socially complex. He also cites the historical research of British media scholar Jeremy Tunstall, whose most recent book, “The Media Were American,” provides evidence that Western global media are losing their impact because of the growth of indigenous and national mass media outlets in many non-Western countries.

“Although global media corporations will grow and reach more people, paradoxically their ability to control the information and entertainment marketplaces will decline,” he writes in the book published by Hampton Press Inc. “In metaphorical terms, the pie and its slices are getting larger, but each slice is proportionately smaller than the slice in the previous pie … In comparative terms, no single company or program will be able to dominate the global market to the degree that the state-run or private television broadcast networks did in Western countries during the 1950s and 1960s.”

Mainstream mass media will continue to play a powerful role in people’s lives for many decades to come, and they will continue to support powerful elites, institutions and values, according to Demers. But he argues that some of their power will be diluted by the increasing number of choices that people have for news, information and entertainment. 

In contrast to the views of many critics and other academics, he also argues that mass media often produce content that helps the poor and disadvantaged groups. Demers predicts that diversity in the marketplace of ideas — especially ideas critical of powerful people and institutions — will continue to grow and serve as a catalyst for social change as mass media systems become more complex. In fact, he argues that large-scale corporate media have played the lead role in facilitating many social changes during the 20th century and will continue to do so into the 21st.

“Critics of corporate and global media organizations have made many predictions and claims that growth in size of the media organizations is leading to less diversity and greater homogeneity in the news, information and entertainment programming people consume,” he writes. “Although case studies of certain media organizations and media industries (e.g., newspaper industry) may support such claims, when national or global media systems are examined, their predictions do not hold up very well. The trend clearly has been toward an increase in the number and variety of media outlets, as well as an increase in the diversity of content and programming they produce.”

In reviewing the book, Douglas Underwood, an associate professor of communication at the University of Washington, said Demers “offers here a refreshing counterpoint to the tide of scholarly opinion that blames the growth and power of media corporations for all that is wrong with mass media content today. Although Demers takes issue with the conclusions of many media scholars — including some of my own — I find his arguments to be important in the way they challenge the ‘group think’ that often dominates scholarly discussion of the … way the news is covered and portrayed. Demers has been waging for many years a nearly one-man campaign against the … neo-Marxist tilt of much media scholarship and backing it up with his own research that finds … corporate media development to be positive in facilitating social change.”

Demers teaches courses in media history, theory and research at WSU. His research on corporate media structure has won five national awards. He is author or editor of 13 books and more than 125 scholarly and professional articles.