Media and Ownership Around the World
October 20, 2015
Background
Media concentration has been an issue around the world. To some observers, the power of large media conglomerates has never been greater. To others, the Internet has brought openness and diversity. Which perspective is correct? The answer has significant policy and business implications.
The answer to the empirical question is not as obvious as many sincerely believe. Although numerous large-scale mergers have taken place, the sector itself has grown rapidly. Also, de-mergers have taken place. And with digital convergence and globalization, firms have been crossing industry and national lines.
Why extend the analysis to the world at large? Because if we can identify common trends, we can seek the drivers, whether technological, economic, or political. This has policy implications. When drivers are fundamental in nature it is difficult to deal with them through regulatory policy. But when a country or a region is an outlier, with a media market that is different from similarly positioned countries, a corrective policy might be more effective.
To address this question, this conference analyzes the media sector, across countries and across time, and identifies its dynamics, concentration, and ownership trends. The conference will discuss the findings and implications of a CITI-led study on international media concentration. This project brought together author teams from 30 countries examining 13 media industries in the platform, distribution, and content sectors. The result is a book published by Oxford University Press, to be unveiled at the conference. The book is 1300 pages in length and includes 800 figures and tables. It aims to provide a serious data analysis of questions of media concentration trends, their drivers, the impact of technology, and variations across countries and industries.
Agenda
8:30-9:00am Registration and Breakfast
9:00-9:10am Welcome and Introduction of Topic, Project, and the International Collaboration on Media Industries
- Eli Noam, Columbia University
9:10-9:20am Media Concentration and the OSI
- Marius Dragomir, Senior Manager, Open Society Foundations, London.
The conference format is a series of short panels on overarching themes, with reference to specific countries, provided by the authors of the country chapters.
9:20-10:00am Trends of Concentration in Content Industries: a Problem? What are Policy Approaches?
- Jo Groebel, Germany/Belgium
- Kiyoshi Nakamura, Japan
- Paulo Faustino, Portugal
- Dwayne Winseck, Canada
- Moderator: Eli Noam
10:00-10:40am Media Concentration in the BRICs and Developing Countries and what to do about it?
- Min Hang, China
- Anuradha Bhattacharjee, India
- Moderator: Raul Katz, CITI, United States
10:40-11:20am Is Concentration an Effective Tool for Industrial Policy?
- Raul Katz, CITI, United States
- Joost van Dreunen, Netherlands
- Moderator: Eli Noam
11:20-11:35am Coffee Break
11:35-12:15pm High Concentration and Democracy: What is the Interaction?
- Jo Grobel, Belgium
- Juan Enrique Huerta, Mexico
- Moderator: Jason Buckweitz, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information
12:15-12:55pm The Role of State Ownership in Media Concentration: Pro and Con
- Huseyin Bayazit, Turkey
- Min Hang, China
- Ben Compaine, CITI, United States
- Moderator: Marius Dragomir, Senior Manager, Open Society Foundations, London
01:00-1:40pm Lunch
01:40-2:00pm Lunch Speaker
Alfonso Sánchez-Tabernero, Rector, University of Navarra “Media Ownership and the Future of Journalism”
2:10-2:50pm Media Concentration in Authoritarian Countries, and How Should Others Respond?
- Huseyin Bayazit, Turkey
- Sergio Godoy Etcheverry, Chile
- Moderator: Marius Dragomir, Senior Manager, Open Society Foundations, London
2:50-3:30pm The Impact of Globalization on Concentration: Pros and Cons
- Kiyoshi Nakamura, Japan
- Anuradha Bhattacharjee, India
- Juan Enrique Huerta, Mexico
- Moderator: Ben Compaine
3:30-4:10pm Is the Internet the Solution to Market Concentration, or the Problem?
- Dwayne Winseck, Canada
- Moran Yemini, Israel
- Daeho Kim, South Korea
- Moderator: Robert Pepper, VP Public Policy, Cisco, United States
4:10-4:20pm Coffee Break
4:20-5:00pm Institutional Ownership: a Problem?
- Paulo Faustino, Portugal
- Sergio Godoy Etcheverry, Chile
- Ben Compaine, CITI, United States
- Moderator: Jason Buckweitz, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information
5:00-5:40pm The Google/Facebook/Netflix Problem, and Regulatory Approaches to Market Power in the Information Economy
- Joost van Dreunen, Netherlands
- Moran Yemini, Israel
- Moderator: Robert Pepper, VP, Cisco, United States
5:40-6:00pm Conclusion
6:00pm Reception