Media - Assignment 1

Group 1

7-9-15 Different views on the news

Students at Radboud University receive news about the university life trough two different news channels, VOX and ANS. These newspapers are both funded by the same organisation, but very different in tone and attitude in their writing. How to analyse the media landscape (on a microscale)  that influences the content of VOX and ANS?

The study of the media was initially conducted in a variety of fields, like sociology, economics and political science. The two main disciplines that have helped Media Studies in its development are Political Economy and Cultural Studies. Between the two approaches of analysis of the media are notable differences. In the recent decades this divide has been dissolved, at this time Critical Media Studies emerged (Havens 2009).

The Political Economy approach is based in neo-marxist theory and the theorists of the Frankfurt school. It is based on the notion that economic, regulatory and institutional forces help shape media content. It therefore looks at ownership and the distribution of political and economical power. The media is owned by the upper classes; therefore the narratives and representations they produce are in favor of the powerfull, in contrast with the powerless. Political Economy is a critical disclipline, in the sense that it tries to uncover and dismantle these power structures which influence the media, especially the news content. Political Economy focusses mainly on the social-relational analysis of media production and the structurally limiting effect it has on the consumers (Fenton 2007).
The Cultural Studies approach moved away from an elitist methodology to approach culture and turned towards the study of popular culture practices. Instead of looking at how cultural products are created, it mainly focused on the discursive effect of text on the wider audience. It saw culture in a text-as-discourse paradigm. The discourse of a text was no longer just the given meaning of the artist, but the audience used culture in its own way and advantage. Cultural studies therefore focused mainly on audiences and the consumption of popular culture content. The emphasis was on the individual agency of the audience, as individuals and as a collective group (Fenton 2007).
A new development in the study of media is a ‘practical turn’ in research, looking at the industry that is supplying media content. In this approach there is no longer a clear separation between popular culture and news media. These two domains are related through a shared industry, as for instance becomes clear in the university newspapers. Researchers increasingly look at the people involved in production and distribution of media content. Instead of seeing culture as mainly a discursive construction or only looking at the powerstructures influence the narrative, research is now focusing on the mid-level industry practices. It therefore looks at the multilevel agency throughout the entirety of the industry, but also at its limitations by structures. Some researchers are arguing for a holistic approach to media, such as Natalie Fenton (Frenton 2007). This approach takes note of both the approaches of Cultural Studies and Political Economy and combines the best of both worlds.  
This new approach will be applied to the main case study of this blogpost, namely the student magazines ANS and VOX. Both magazines are (as already mentioned) funded by the Radboud University Nijmegen, but still have their own identity. In the following paragraphs, these identities will be analysed by a political, economy approach and later on a cultural approach. Those two combined will create the holistic approach, mentioned by Natalie Fenton.  

          ANS (Algemeen Nijmeegs Studentenblad – General Student Magazine from Nijmegen) and VOX have a lot in common. They main target and subject are university students and their articles are also written by them. Thereby their audience don’t have to pay to read the magazines, yet this doesn’t mean that both magazines are costless. They both need money to pay the printing costs, the copyrights and the employees. This last example, when looking at it from an Political Economy point of view, is already the main difference between both magazines.

The employees at the ANS are working there mainly on a voluntary basis. It’s  editorial staff consist fully of students and the only two members who are getting paid are the two editors in chief. They don’t get a salary, but a ‘bestuursbeurs’ / ‘scholarship’.  Which means that they get a fixed amount of money for a few months. This money doesn’t come directly from the University itself, but via linked organisations, namely SNUF (Stiching Nijmeegs Universiteitsfonds). This foundation is established by Radboud University and it is also the main source of income of ANS itself. Because of SNUF they can pay the costs of their magazines and are not fully independent of advertisement.

This in contrast to VOX. Their editorial staff consist of students, but also employees of the University. They both get a salary directly from this institution, whereby they get paid for each word. The University also pays for the costs and hereby seems to have a big influence on the magazine. It uses VOX as its mouthpiece. But is VOX independent of the University or also the other way around? What are the consequences in contradiction to the ANS, which is on first glance a bit more independent?

To answer these questions, a political view on this casestudy is needed. By only looking at the financial structure, there can’t be anything said about the real influences of the financiers. Thereby the Political Economy view will be combined with a cultural analyses. For this analyses the main core element of both magazines, namely texts, will be researched.  “For a long time […] culture was seen only as text.” (Krämer, Bredekamp 2013). A text says more about a discourse, than only the story it wants to tell. Every word is chosen and could easily be replaced by another, still the author has chosen that particular word. In this case both ANS and VOX write about a student demonstration against a cantus on the campus. They can both write the same story about the same event, but when looking at it closely, they both tell (between the lines) a different story. While VOX focusses more on the students behind the protest, ANS is merely focussed on the reaction of the University. There is no article on the ANS website about the protest itself, but several about the neglection of the University. The VOX choose to give their readers the bigger story, by interviewing students, professors and other universities in the Netherlands and asking them their view on this cantus. So although VOX gets money from the University, they are allowed to give their own view on something that the University organised itself. Well, on one condition: that they underpin their opinion thoughtfully. This is not completely the case with the ANS. They can stir the pot more by being really critical without a full substantiation of their opinion. This is also the image ANS wants to give their readers. They are the critical one of the two magazines, whereby they show themselves as more independent than VOX.

How the readers of VOX and ANS interpreted the magazines is really important for them. There is still competition between the two, although they are both part of the same institution. They both address two different groups of readers. ANS has more critical readers and VOX gets read by the students who wants background information, without being extremely critical. All of this is based on one single view, namely the cultural view. Most of the readers only know what the magazine itself state and what fellow students know. Most of them don’t look at it with an economical view or a deeper political view and thereby will not see the similarities between both magazines. This contributes to the idea of a holistic approach, because to create a fair opinion, all sides have to be taken into account.

Tweet: The best approach to studying the media is examining the individual agency and the structural limitations on all levels of the industry. (136 characters)

A.D.
E.T.
J.M.D.O.M.
M.v.d.V.
M.v.R.

Bibliography:

-  Timothy Havens, Aamanda D. Lotz & Serra Tinic (2009), ‘Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach’, in: Communication, Culture & Critique 2, pp. 234-253.

-  Sybille Krämer & Horst Bredekamp (2013), ‘Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text’, in: Theory, Culture & Society 30 (6), pp. 20-29.

-  Natalie Fenton (2007), ‘Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media', in: Eoin Devereux (ed.), Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates. London: SAGE, pp. 7-31.