Media Conglomeration, Automation, and Alienation: A Marxist Critique
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Date
2023-09
Authors
Tokos, Lauren
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
The rise of the so-called “digital age” in the twenty-first century absorbs individuals’ livelihoods and disconnects them from the natural world. Over time, modern society has adapted to digital news and entertainment media’s unremitting chokehold on daily life. What enabled this change and how does the corporate structure of digital news and entertainment media impact the everyday worker? The contemporary American digital news and entertainment media market is almost exclusively regulated by five major corporations: AT&T, The Walt Disney Corporation, NewsCorp, Paramount Global (formerly Viacom CBS), and Comcast. Although the titles and rank of these corporations have changed over time, their ownership has stayed consistent. Through corporate conglomeration and horizontal and vertical integration, the major five media corporations vie for control over the media marketplace. Those in positions of power seldom experience the effects of their decision-making; instead, the worker, producing intellectual or material commodities, fails to truly experience the creative realization of their labor. Instead, the worker’s labor is the property of the corporation for which they work. Media workers are alienated from the product of their labor, as it belongs to the owners of the means of production. Mass media stakeholders, as owners of the means of production, maintain structural control over the dominant social ideology, reflected in the economy, government, and media. Media workers, beholden to mass media stakeholders, are unable to realize their full creative capacity, as they are confined to the restrictions set forth by the capitalist media economy.
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Keywords
media conglomeration, digital news, entertainment media, capitalism