Media Capture

Global media system literature is still by and large heavily dominated by the idealistic comparative western-centered normative tradition, focusing on what media ought to be and how it should act across different cultural and political settings, instead of what it actually is. How is it changing, where, and why? This work suggests a shift away from the long tradition of overgeneralization, towards a more historically and culturally grounded analytical approach, that delves with the emergence of new media structures, institutions, and conventions, and evaluates their impact on media performance and public behavior. This study looks at the dynamics happening within a specific media system, trying to explain and predict the factors contributing to the phenomenon of interest- the experienced deterioration of press freedom and quality journalism. This inside perspective focusing on indigenous qualitative exploration of local journalistic and societal social cultures is a much-needed chan...

• Mass media's collective coverage significantly influences political outcomes through manipulating the information non-partisans receive. • Taking social media into account, mass media reporting shows a possible collective bias. • The collective bias may lead society to a collective failure, in which an inferior policy is voted for and implemented.

In electoral democracies, news coverage of political campaigns is a vital resource that citizens use to make sound voting decisions. Nonetheless, it can be distorted by ‘media capture,’ understood as the systemic instrumentalization of journalism by extra-journalistic actors and vested interests that curtail journalists’ autonomy to advance their goals. In the context of campaign coverage, different actors may capture the media to obtain maximum benefit by coercing journalists into producing distorted news output that can be used for or against particular political agendas. This chapter unpacks the nature of capture-driven bias by reviewing different capture modalities and campaign coverage bias, describing both phenomena, their interplay, and dynamics, and outlining several modalities of capture that result in media bias.

The concept of media capture has invertedly helped bridge some
of the most contrasting arguments –from the radical and liberal perspectives—about the role of media in the face of governments and the market: the liberal argument of the State controlling the media to curtail their watchdog functions and the radical argument of media corporations exerting undue power for their own benefit to maintain the status quo. However, the conceptual and empirical expansion of contemporary stances on media capture now recognize various facets of capture perpetrators, mechanisms, and outcomes that overlap with traditional forms of media control and media power. We argue that media capture scholarship still needs (and is in the process of) theoretical maturing, conceptual systematicity and empirical evidence to move the concept forward and allow for better comparison across various dimensions. The concept’s flexibility means there is a need for a more apparent distinction between media controlled by politics and vice-versa.

Can journalism become a forum, equating it with the freedom of expression of every citizen, as a good fused in the collective intelligence benefited by virtual crowds?
Is it the role of journalism to accommodate all the ideas that society brings, when the media has a completely different task, from all these ideas, to select those that are based on facts?
Can the media remain withdrawn in its discretion not to infect the facts and events with excess coverage, precisely not to do the same thing that happens in social networks, where from the overdose of communication, nothing can be distinguished anymore, it is lost news, lose their goals, and degrade from virtuoso to vicious?
Can the market of ideas exist without the market of facts, without the language of factuality, of scientific validation?

Media capture is a concept originally created to understand this industry’s privatization in post-soviet countries. It refers to the process in which media lose autonomy to respond to vested interests instead of playing their informative role. This contribution aims to apply this concept to
the Chilean media system, where, despite strict neoliberal guidelines that shaped it during democratization, there is a high level of ownership concentration and a lack of state-led regulation that could prevent corporate capture. This article argues that media capture is an
economic dilemma with negative consequences for public communication in Chile, as it restricts journalistic pluralism and suppresses the diversity of ideas and voices necessary for deeper
democratic exercises. In front of such a dilemma, the article proposes to reflect on the importance of state-led regulation to mitigate the risks of media capture.

Over the past decade, the Hungarian media system has become one of the most frequently cited illustrations of politically controlled, captured media systems. The starting point for this chapter is that the repression of media freedom and the establishment of political control over the media system cannot be understood without the broader constitutional, economic, and social context that has eroded the instruments available to counter attacks on media freedom. The Fidesz government has used unlimited public funds to create a media system that is the perfect vehicle for the spread of state disinformation. State disinformation is of such a scale and effectiveness that the term “firehose of falsehood”, used to describe Russian propaganda, is perfectly applicable. In the last part of this paper, we will present one of the emblematic instruments of this disinformation flood, the institution of the so-called national consultation.

The media in Turkey is under fire. In a climate where democratic norms are being eroded and human rights are being weakened by the state, the role of journalists in tracking human rights violations is more important than ever.
The Journalists Union of Turkey, as of 22 March 2018, reported 145 journalists and media workers have been jailed,1 the highest number world-wide, ahead of China and Egypt. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) stated that Turkey was the worst
country for media freedom in 2016. Reporters Without Borders’ Freedom of Information report claims that Turkey is 155 out of 180 countries in the world rankings in 2017. A report prepared by the World Justice Project demonstrated that Turkey ranked 101st among 113 states2 in the Rule of
Law Index. Turkey was ranked 107th for fundamental rights, including freedom of the press.
This paper aims to show the extent of the media coverage of human rights violations based on a comparison of two periods, namely the period before the attempt of the coup d’état of 15 July 2016, and the period after. Even though Turkey’s human rights record was not at its best prior 15 July, it
further declined after the declaration of the state of emergency on 20 July 2016. Human rights organisations and international organisations such as United Nations and the European Union reported brutal human rights violations as well as a significant decline in the freedom of the press in Turkey. During this period the numbers of journalists being arrested increased dramatically, and several newspapers, periodicals, TV channels, publishers were shut down. Self-censorship has increased in order to avoid being seen to support the attempt of coup d’état. Any media outlet or
journalist targeted by Government circles and the pro-government press has been subject to sanctions. In addition, the effect that the lack of press freedom has had on journalists will be included in this report too.

This study investigates similarities between two right-wing populist parties: The Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość party-PiS) party in Poland and the Hungarian Civic Alliance (Magyar Polgári Szövetség-FIDESZ) party in Hungary by examining speeches of Polish President Andrzej Duda, former-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Furthermore, the study is carried out on the actions of these parties during their governments. It aims to present the perspectives that PiS and FIDESZ have on identity and religion, democracy, and EU principles and looks at the two parties' strategies for gaining more power. Based on the studies, four main similar characteristics between these two parties are identified. (1) The PiS party and the FIDESZ party and their politicians regularly emphasize "Christianity" to emphasize their identity. (2) These two parties employ every available strategy to protect and increase their positions in the government. (3) They undermine liberal democracy as an authoritarian trend driven by majority rule. (4) The PiS party and the FIDESZ party have refused to follow the core values upon which the EU was founded. Furthermore, these parties use anti-EU rhetoric to increase their power by claiming that they are safeguarding national sovereignty. They believe in the concept of a "Europe of nations."

This paper analyses de-legitimisation and Eurosceptic attitudes in Turkey as reflected in newspapers during the COVID-19 pandemic between 15 March 2020 and 30 May 2021. Easton's (1975) specific support about concrete policy outcomes and Scharpf 's (1998) output-oriented legitimisation theories are utilised in testing the hypothesis on de-legitimisation of EU-rope in both pro and against government media in relation to EU-rope's policies towards the "fight" against COVID-19 since Euroscepticism influences the political discourse in general regardless of political or ideological position. In the paper, EU-rope is used, instead of European Union (EU) and Europe as two different terminologies, since the analysed newspapers utilise EU and Europe interchangeably. Five newspapers are included in the analysis for this study: Hürriyet, Sabah, Karar, Gazete Pencere and BirGün based on their political and ideological stances. In the research, online archives of the newspapers are utilised, and in each newspaper the op-eds are excluded from the analysis. The main focus is given to the news-headlines on Europe and the EU. Keywords that are looked for in newspapers are EU, Europe, vaccine, BioNTech, Sinovac, Coronavirus, COVID-19, and the pandemic. It has been observed that, regardless of political ideologies and the position of newspaper at the left-right political spectrum, Euroscepticism became a common attitude.

The coronavirus, which started in China and spreads almost all over the world, and whose source is not known exactly, but is regarded as illegally sold, can have a fatal effect on humans. Today, the number of people caught with coronavirus (Covid-19) is rapidly increasing. In order to eliminate this disease caused by the coronavirus, quarantine applications are carried out in many countries, curfews, curfews out of the country or out of the city, wear a mask, etc. Health professionals work day and night. However, the vaccine of the coronavirus has still not been found. In response to this situation, the World Health Organization has declared the Covid-19 epidemic as a pandemic. This study was carried out with the aim of evaluating the national news published in digital media regarding the coronavirus, which is declared as a pandemic worldwide. For this purpose, the keywords "Coronavirus, Koronavirüs, Covid-19, Pandemi, Covid 19, Kovid-19" were entered into the Google search engine. January 1, 2020-May 1, 2020 during the ten newspaper archives can be accessed on the number of the highest circulation national news website in Turkey, 150 news content was evaluated. In the study, content analysis, one of the qualitative research techniques, was used to analyze the data. As a result of the research, it has been determined that the most handled issues regarding Covid-19 in the news sites of the related newspapers are general information about Covid-19, about the current situation in Turkey coronavirus, the effects of coronavirus and that the coronavirus in the world, respectively. It has been determined that the least discussed issues in the news sites of the related newspapers are: the statements of the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the coronavirus, the criticisms about the corona virus, post-pandemic life and coronavirus data presented in famous individuals.

This article discusses policy and regulation of internet platforms in Latin America. It first addresses how internet platformization brings back to the political agenda the centrality of communication public policy and communication governance at a global scale. The article presents some global policy concerns on internet governance, while also analysing the regional specificities. It offers an overview of the tradition of communication policies in Latin America, to show continuities and shifts in the debates on internet governance highlighting key aspects, including the peripheral positioning and recognition of power asymmetries, and the role of states and the participation of society in the discussions. The presentation also portrays some of the current regulatory debates in the region and identifies at least three different approaches (and their pitfalls): taxation perspective; platform funding initiatives and content moderation regulatory projects under debate which, in many cas...

As a theoretical concept that has taken o  recently across a broad range of disciplinary studies, media capture has become useful to name and compartmentalize a range of similar but dispersed scholarship tackling the most long-observed issues across transitional democracies in the Global South: state control of the media, media power, media clientelism, censorship, or patrimonialism. Conceptually, media capture was first coined in economics literature but is a relatively new term as it helps media and communications scholars re-brand old-age intertwined phenomena. Broadly understood as the undue influences exerted by external forces on news content, it is often the status quo more than the exception in most developing democracies, where the outcomes and benefits of capture are the raison d’être of many news outlets. The undue influence of vested interests can take many forms at the macro, meso, and
micro levels, from regulatory capture to investment in media firms, political advertising, paid articles, subsidies, or bribes. Is capture a new form of media control or just another name? Can capture account for any form of deliberate control or just the subtle means of infl uence? Does capture materialize only in democracies or also in authoritarian regimes, where governmental control and intrusion in the media tend to be explicit? Does it only count at the macro-level of actors seeking to distort news media functions for their benefit or apply to the micro-level of
newsgathering and routines? This chapter argues that, although media capture is becoming a practical term to name familiar phenomena, the term risks becoming a meaningless “catch-all” concept, affecting all societal contexts indistinctively. Further scholarship must
adopt a more systematic approach to capture and aim for a more solid theorization to move the concept forward and allow for better comparison across various dimensions of media and journalism. The chapter’s purpose is to reflect and shed some light on the multiple pathways that research on media capture has taken, offering a cursory chartering of the various literature threads that address such trajectories, first by providing different stances that qualify as capture, then by tracing the origin and expansion of the concept in the literature. It briefly reflects on the multiple levels, objects, actors, and actions encompassing the concept of media capture. A call is made for a more systematic theorization of media capture for better trans-disciplinary use of the concept when studying media and journalism.

Free press and media can be defined as tools provided to media organizations which are not controlled or restricted by government censorship in political or ideological matters. The Constitution of India provides freedom to the press so that they can express and criticize the government as well as their actions in a balanced manner. While the exact definition is variable, politics can be generally defined as a component of a nation, structured in a hierarchical order, with a responsibility to govern and ensure the well-being of the citizens. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the relationship between Media and politics and the impact they have on each other. In total, 208 people were received and were used for the final analysis and to explore the current socio-political scenario in the country due to the lockdown imposed during April-May, 2021. The sample size satisfies the requirements for the result analysis The random sampling method was used to establish a link between media, politics and the people. The results revealed that there is a strong relationship between media and politics and they favour each other to further their own agenda and to strengthen their popularity and to remain in power and to dominate in the market. The study discovered a new dimension to the issue that even the people of this country are somewhat responsible for the present media crisis and political corruption. The media and the government are setting the trend of working together and are being accused of endorsing political propaganda instead of reporting the truth. The researchers dealt deeper into the reasons as to why the press had to incorporate politics and their agendas to survive and the impact the media has on people in sustaining democracy in a country like India. As this is a conceptual topic, one can find the application of a combination of both primary and secondary data for the study.

Free press and media can be defined as tools provided to media organizations which are not controlled or restricted by government censorship in political or ideological matters. The Constitution of India provides freedom to the press so that they can express and criticize the government as well as their actions in a balanced manner. While the exact definition is variable, politics can be generally defined as a component of a nation, structured in a hierarchical order, with a responsibility to govern and ensure the well-being of the citizens. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the relationship between Media and politics and the impact they have on each other. In total, 208 people were received and were used for the final analysis and to explore the current sociopolitical scenario in the country due to the lockdown imposed during AprilMay, 2021. The sample size satisfies the requirements for the result analysis The random sampling method was used to establish a link bet...

For the past four decades, Latin America has witnessed key
institutional and political changes that have greatly impacted media
systems and communication policies across the region. As a result,
we can observe two contrasting yet overlapping developments:
a high degree of media concentration fueled by market-oriented
policies on the one hand, and the re-emergence of state intervention
in media reform on the other. Both have operated within the
same context of clientelism and discretional, uneven application
of regulation and the law. This results from the way that media
systems and politics have been historically intertwined. Although
Latin American nation-states each have their own particularities
and unique histories, they share a common ground that goes
beyond merely linguistic, geographical or cultural affinities

This article discusses an instance of case-specific self-inflicted partial media capture, acknowledging the chilling effect of legislation consistent with partial state capture. In general, this case illustrates the ethical and legal dilemmas in the reporting of a specific type of large-scale corruption in the media, which involves the denial of all accusations by most sources and a controversial stand by state authorities and politicians on the issue, forcing the media to primarily report rumors or contradictory claims and denials (after controversial files regarding the corruption were made public anonymously on the internet) or desist from reporting altogether (before the files were made public on the internet, due to possible libel threats). The findings question the normative expectations expressed in democratic theory related to the role of the media as a watchdog, in the specific context of large-scale corruption in post-communist states. Moreover, this paper suggests the need to reexamine the methodological aspects of quantitative content analysis of media coverage of corruption. This paper has also attempted to update the emerging theory on media capture with the term partial case-specific media capture.

This article focuses on the forced transformation of the mass media as an institution in new authoritarian states. It aims to understand the methods used by theses states to control and manipulate the flux of news through the mass media. Turkey’s media system has been chosen as a case study because the recent political developments in the country offer worrisome und devastating examples. This article aims to answer to the following question: How can we classify methods and strategies used by the AKP government to capture the media in Turkey? Why and how do the methods used by the AKP government differ from those applied by previous governments? To answer to these questions, the article draws on media capture as a framework of analysis. It argues that the AKP captured the media by using new strategies which can be divided into three overlapping and interconnected categories: capture by creating its own private media, capture through financial sanctions, and capture by intimidating an...

In this chapter, we argue that the cronyism that defined the early distribution of broadcast licenses reinforced the symbiotic relationships between local elites and the federal government and, in turn, left an enduring legacy in today’s media landscape. Furthermore, the interdependence of media owners and politicians that continues in some regions in Brazil threatens the quality of democracy by inhibiting the media’s role in holding elected officials to account.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the disputes regarding the project of Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant took place in Turkish mainstream newspapers. The challenges of journalism and media ownership structure in Turkey are discussed as well as the coverage of nuclear energy in newspapers around the world. Based on a set of key events, 4 different periods between 2010 and 2015 are determined for researching 3 of the most read newspapers in Turkey: Hürriyet, Milliyet, and Sabah. The main research question is: How do the Turkish mainstream newspapers represent the support for and the opposition towards Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant?” The accompanying sub-questions are: What are the frames that can be revealed? Which sources are mentioned the most? To what extent the attention is drawn towards regional discontent and legal disputes about the project? The data is collected by using the online platforms of the 3 newspapers by entering the keyword “akkuyu” and selecting the news articles based on the 4 periods. Frame analysis is conducted to answer the questions. As a result, it is found out that the emerging frames are related to the concepts of safety, democracy, legality, economy, practicality, and international relations. The formation of 7 frames is observed: Safety threat, economic threat, abuse of power, incompetent management, all of which are used by the opposition; and international prestige, economic opportunity, and competent management, all of which are used by the support. Hürriyet and Milliyet made both the frames and the sources of opposition more visible compared to the support, and Sabah made the frames and the sources of support overwhelmingly visible compared to the opposition in its overall coverage. The most visible opposition in Hürriyet and Milliyet consists of non-parliamentary groups, and the most visible support in all 3 newspapers consists of ruling party members. The discontent and legal disputes about the project are emphasized in Hürriyet and Milliyet, mainly through quoting the opposition, however, neither of them provided independent investigative reports.

In this paper we examine the presence of agenda-setting effects by the print media in Argentina from June 2003 to December 2008. Using previously unavailable monthly data on newspapers mentions we test two hypotheses about the relationship between the different agendas. We find support for the hypothesis that there were media effects during our period of analysis. More specifically, we find that the total number of newspaper mentions of the President positively influenced public confidence in the government. Finally, there is also evidence of a strong and stable rela

En este capítulo reflexionamos sobre cómo puede entenderse el término captura de medios, reconceptualizarse y teorizarse a la luz de los aportes de la sociología de la producción de noticias y el estudio de las culturas periodísticas. Se parte de que, con la suficiente sistematización y definición conceptual, la captura puede ser el ancla que dé sentido a una gran variedad de fenómenos amenazantes y restrictivos de la autonomía periodística y las funciones democráticas de los medios, para posibilitar su análisis, medición y comparación. El propósito es repensar este concepto no como un término comodín, que aplique a todo escenario donde se obstaculice la materialización de los ideales democráticos del periodismo, sino como un constructo que posibilite —y no restrinja— análisis más sistemáticos, sofisticados y complejos de fenómenos ya históricamente estudiados en el campo de la investigación en periodismo. Se trata de visibilizar niveles de análisis que, como argumentamos en este texto, aún no se han problematizado del todo en la creciente literatura sobre captura de medios. Para ello, analizamos las justificaciones teóricas, los argumentos y los hallazgos que han apuntalado los estudios sobre captura de medios en la literatura, y en aquellos trabajos con un énfasis en el periodismo mexicano que, sin ser conceptualizados como captura, han dado cuenta de fenómenos similares.
Encontramos que, por su generalidad y utilidad conceptual, la captura ha seguido una trayectoria de lo macroestructural a lo microinstitucional, abarcando diversos tipos de escenarios y situaciones. Finalmente, defendemos la idea de que sin el necesario diálogo que debe establecerse entre los estudios sobre periodismo y las disciplinas económicas donde el concepto se originó, y sin el reconocimiento de las múltiples dimensiones en que se manifiesta la captura —en especial su índole microinstitucional— se corre el riesgo de caer en la ambigüedad, redundancia e indefinición conceptual del término.

Global media system literature is still by and large heavily dominated by the idealistic comparative western-centered normative tradition, focusing on what media ought to be and how it should act across different cultural and political settings, instead of what it actually is. How is it changing, where, and why? This work suggests a shift away from the long tradition of overgeneralization, towards a more historically and culturally grounded analytical approach, that delves with the emergence of new media structures, institutions, and conventions, and evaluates their impact on media performance and public behavior. This study looks at the dynamics happening within a specific media system, trying to explain and predict the factors contributing to the phenomenon of interest- the experienced deterioration of press freedom and quality journalism. This inside perspective focusing on indigenous qualitative exploration of local journalistic and societal social cultures is a much-needed chan...

How does a highly polarized media system respond to a catastrophic event? The July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey provides fertile ground to examine how a catastrophic event has shaped the editorial policies of news media outlets in a highly polarized media system. This article hypothesizes that, mainly due to the peculiarities of the Turkish media system, even at the time of a catastrophic event, the framing strategies of media outlets converge only to a limited degree on a sphere of consensus. Adopting a content analysis methodology, we analyze the framing strategies of four national newspapers affiliated with specific sociopolitical camps (the pro-government Sabah , the moderate Hurriyet , and the oppositional Sozcu and Cumhuriyet ). We reach the counterintuitive conclusion that these news outlets used different framing strategies in the immediate aftermath of the coup attempt and that the gap between them widened over the period of analysis.

This article analyzes two digital-native journalistic shows created during the pandemic and hosted from Madrid by Peruvian journalists: La Encerrona [The Confinement] and Sálvese Quien Pueda [Every Man for Himself]. In a context of political instability (with four presidents within a year), social turmoil, a devastating public health crisis, and a highly polarized presidential election in the Bicentenario (the 200th anniversary of the independence of the country), these digital projects counterbalanced the poor performance of mainstream media, which was accused of partisanship and polarization, of firing critical journalists, and of promoting disinformation and disseminating “fake news.” Contrastingly, these entrepreneurial journalistic operations offered alternative contents, perspectives, and sustainability practices within a hybrid alternative media model of production that combines professional experience with editorial and financial independence and a DIY mentality. Through int...

This policy study aims to shed light on the media capture strategy that the current autocratising governments in Hungary and Poland have pursued since coming to power. In the first part, the four tactics of this strategy are described: Concentrate, nationalise, centralise; weaponise state advertising; Polarise to delegitimise, and Enforce (autocratic) law. The second part reviews the actions of the European institutions to protect media freedom and pluralism in these two countries by dividing them into three main categories: Finding, Funding and Fining. In the last part, four policy recommendations are proposed to contribute to the EU policy making on this increasingly strategic battleground in the fight against autocratisation in the Union. Data was collected first-hand through semi-structured interviews with nine investigative journalists, recent reports from independent research centres and secondary literature.

This thesis analyzes media coverage of the labor movements by taking main underlying dynamics into the attention, in which the neo-liberal policy implementations ideologically contradict with the will of the workers. The media representation of working class will be evaluated on the base of the most striking contradictory area, privatization. The study will generally discuss the main dynamics before going through the news analyses of four national and nine local newspapers. This news of national and local media will be evaluated by the methods of content and discourse analyses. The study will finally try to find out the attitude of the workers towards their media representation and their trust in the media through the method of interviewing. The national and local media will be compared during the evaluations presented within this thesis.M.S. - Master of Scienc

In the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, a former British territory in southern China returned to the People’s Republic as a semi-autonomous enclave in 1997, media capture has distinct characteristics. On one hand, Hong Kong offers a case of media capture in an uncensored media sector and open market economy similar to those of Western industrialized democracies. Yet Hong Kong’s comparatively small size, close proximity, and broad economic exposure to the authoritarian markets and politics of neighboring Mainland China, which practices strict censorship, place unique pressures on Hong Kong’s nominally free press. Building on the literature on media and politics in Hong Kong post-handover and drawing on interviews with journalists in Hong Kong, this article examines the dynamics of media capture in Hong Kong. It highlights how corporate-owned legacy media outlets are increasingly deferential to the Beijing government’s news agenda, while social media is fostering alternativ...

In the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, a former British territory in southern China returned to the People’s Republic as a semi-autonomous enclave in 1997, media capture has distinct characteristics. On one hand, Hong Kong offers a case of media capture in an uncensored media sector and open market economy similar to those of Western industrialized democracies. Yet Hong Kong’s comparatively small size, close proximity, and broad economic exposure to the authoritarian markets and politics of neighboring Mainland China, which practices strict censorship, place unique pressures on Hong Kong’s nominally free press. Building on the literature on media and politics in Hong Kong post-handover and drawing on interviews with journalists in Hong Kong, this article examines the dynamics of media capture in Hong Kong. It highlights how corporate-owned legacy media outlets are increasingly deferential to the Beijing government’s news agenda, while social media is fostering alternativ...

As a common expression; media, is a word that used for " communication environment " or " communication tools ". When the media Notion handled with the largest meanings of it, it includes oral, written, printed and visual texts and images, it appears as a phenomenon that involve the whole information tools. In democratic regimes, the practitioners of the politics which named as art of solving the social problems, defend that the the respect to the political choices is the extract of the democracy, by a continious emphasize for the freewill Notion. By the way, establishing a relationship with the freewill Notion and true informing Notion would be pertinent. The dependence of the media and the political preferences can be observed by considering the determination of political choices and benefits from the political choices of the media which has the power of directing the crowds according to its will. Particularly, in the democratic regimes, politics appear as a ph...

Free press and media can be defined as tools provided to media organizations which are not controlled or restricted by government censorship in political or ideological matters. The Constitution of India provides freedom to the press so that they can express and criticize the government as well as their actions in a balanced manner. While the exact definition is variable, politics can be generally defined as a component of a nation, structured in a hierarchical order, with a responsibility to govern and ensure the well-being of the citizens. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the relationship between Media and politics and the impact they have on each other. In total, 208 people were received and were used for the final analysis and to explore the current sociopolitical scenario in the country due to the lockdown imposed during AprilMay, 2021. The sample size satisfies the requirements for the result analysis The random sampling method was used to establish a link bet...

This article focuses on the forced transformation of the mass media as an institution in new authoritarian states. It aims to understand the methods used by theses states to control and manipulate the flux of news through the mass media. Turkey’s media system has been chosen as a case study because the recent political developments in the country offer worrisome und devastating examples. This article aims to answer to the following question: How can we classify methods and strategies used by the AKP government to capture the media in Turkey? Why and how do the methods used by the AKP government differ from those applied by previous governments? To answer to these questions, the article draws on media capture as a framework of analysis. It argues that the AKP captured the media by using new strategies which can be divided into three overlapping and interconnected categories: capture by creating its own private media, capture through financial sanctions, and capture by intimidating an...

The premise of this article is that the reaction of the Argentine mass media system to the 2008 international financial crisis exhibits peculiar features due to the country's history over the last three decades, when economic crises became part of the "Argentine normalcy" rather than the exception. To present the argument for this premise, the article points out relevant events in Argentine history over the last 35 years, emphasizing the sequence of economic, political, and social crises, the structure of Argentina's mass media system, its main actors, the process of concentration of ownership, which is considered of "conglomerate nature," and the characteristics of the news coverage of the 2008 international financial crisis by the main media groups. On the threshold of this crisis, the Fernández administration promoted a media reform bill, which led to a major clash with the most important mass media owners. The law, passed by Congress in October 2009, stirred up criticism directed by large media groups against the government-criticism that had started during the international financial crisis.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Carolina Muzzillo, IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION OF CROATIAN DIASPORA: THE CASE OF CROATICUM
2. Amar Karađuz, CAPTURE OF COMMERCIAL MEDIA IN SERBIA: MISUSING THE 2014 LAW ON PUBLIC INFORMATION AND MEDIA
3. Nejira Pašić, THE RISE OR DEMISE OF RELIGIOUS NATION-BUILDING
IN MONTENEGRO?
4. Giulia Russo, RISE OF CAPITALISM AND DEMISE OF THE COMMONS: A
CASE-STUDY OF INEQUALITY IN SERBIA

Hungary and Poland have seen the most widespread erosion of democracy in the European Union since Fidesz and Law and Justice started their authoritarian remaking in 2010 and 2015, respectively. Despite the EU's introduction of various doctrinal innovations, it could not force these regimes to comply with the core values of the EU. While the literature has focused on the formal violation of the rule of law, the links between informal power and the limited constraining role of the EU have remained undertheorized. This article aims to fill the gap by studying the informal exercise power of the Fidesz and PiS governments that helped them to create an uneven political playing field. Connecting the literature on hybrid authoritarian regimes and informality, it will be shown through three main domains how the Hungarian and Polish governments (1) distributed informal political-economic decisionmaking power informally throughout clientelist corruption, (2) captured the media through loyal oligarchs/allies, and (3) employed electoral clientelism to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor. While the study proposes a theoretical framework related to the Hungarian and Polish examples, it is also a warning for the EU to take the informal exercise of power seriously.

Hungary and Poland have seen the most widespread erosion of democracy in the European Union since Fidesz and Law and Justice started their authoritarian remaking in 2010 and 2015, respectively. Despite the EU's introduction of various doctrinal innovations, it could not force these regimes to comply with the core values of the EU. While the literature has focused on the formal violation of the rule of law, the links between informal power and the limited constraining role of the EU have remained undertheorized. This article aims to fill the gap by studying the informal exercise power of the Fidesz and PiS governments that helped them to create an uneven political playing field. Connecting the literature on hybrid authoritarian regimes and informality, it will be shown through three main domains how the Hungarian and Polish governments (1) distributed informal political-economic decisionmaking power informally throughout clientelist corruption, (2) captured the media through loyal oligarchs/allies, and (3) employed electoral clientelism to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor. While the study proposes a theoretical framework related to the Hungarian and Polish examples, it is also a warning for the EU to take the informal exercise of power seriously.

Reporting Facts: Free from Fear or Favour provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which independent media are being undermined by both powerful external actors and decision-making structures or individuals within media organizations. Among the developments tracked is media capture, a form of media control achieved through a series of premeditated steps taken by governments and powerful interest groups, which undermines the ability of journalism to serve as a public good. These include taking over regulatory control, state-owned media operations, public advertising, and politically linked ownership of private media.

The collusion between political class and media owners has reached unprecedented levels, leading to a phenomenon known as media capture, a situation where most or all of the news media institutions are operating as part of a government-business cartel that controls and manipulates the flow of information with the aim to protect their unrestricted and exclusive access to public resources. This paper analyzes the key components of this phenomenon.

This edited book aims at bringing together a range of contemporary knowledge that can shed light on the relationship between media pluralism in Latin America and different processes of democratization and social justice. In doing so, the book's authors propose a variety of empirically grounded discussions about the extent to which questions about media pluralism - broadly understood as the struggle for diverse and inclusive media spheres - should be an essential part of academic debates on media and democratic governance

Este capítulo propone un diálogo entre el concepto de captura mediática y las dificultades que enfrenta la práctica del periodismo en Chile. A partir del análisis de resultados a preguntas abiertas incluidas en la última Encuesta Estado del Periodismo Nacional, se construye inductivamente un diagnóstico respecto a la práctica de la profesión en la actualidad, revelando claros puntos de tensión y una dificultad general del campo periodístico para operar bajo criterios propios en un sistema de medios que se percibe como restrictivo y limitante. Teniendo en cuenta lo anterior y a partir de la revisión de literatura sobre captura mediática, se propone la necesidad de distinguir entre los medios como campo institucional y el periodismo como campo profesional, reconociendo que un periodismo que opera al interior de medios capturados es uno devaluado y con una capacidad disminuida de aportar al ejercicio del derecho a la comunicación.

Despite the differences between the political system of Portugal, where the military regime started in 1926 and where Salazar´s dictatorship was installed in 1932/1933, and the democratic Czechoslovakia, the bilateral diplomatic relations were good until the interruption of contact in 1937. The cessation of Portuguese diplomacy was followed closely by the weakening of Czechoslovakia through the Munich dictate in September 1938 and then the dissolution of the Czecho-Slovak Republic in March 1939. The so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1945), as a part of the Nazi Germany, had no possibility of developing foreign politics on its own. Nevertheless, some contact remained in the diplomatic activities of Joaquim Rodrigues Dias Correia and František Čejka. For the isolated Czech nation, this culture represented an open door to keeping in touch with the distant Portuguese nation. In addition to numerous translations of Portuguese books and articles on Portugal in the Czech press of that time, the biographic novel by František Kožík "A poet never dies" (1940), describing the life of Luís de Camões, is typical evidence of the cultural proximity between the two nations. At the end of the war, the Portuguese press was attracted by the liberation of Prague, thus restoring the image of the free Czechoslovakia among the Portuguese.

This article examines the distribution of advertising in newspapers in Turkey and the impact of the government on the allocation, in particular, of official announcements and of advertising by partially state-owned enterprises and private companies loyal to the ruling party, as well as pressure on other commercial advertisers, during the rule of the Justice and Development Party between 2002 and 2020. It demonstrates that the government has, in the last decade, largely used the advertising sector as a “carrot and stick” tactic to control newspapers through the distribution of official announcements and advertising by state-owned enterprises. It further finds that the state has emerged in recent years as the largest advertiser financing the “captured media,” control of media ownership has proved to be not enough to ensure docile news media. Turkey has shifted to competitive authoritarianism in recent years, and this article demonstrates the selective allocation of advertising, which is a strong component of suppressing the independent media. The article uncovers the impact of government on advertising, using two data sets to show: (i) the total spend on official announcements received by each newspaper and (ii) how much advertising space in square centimeters state-owned enterprises have placed in each newspaper. Interviews with editors-in-chief of newspapers also expose the direct role of government in the distribution of advertising.

This paper provides a nuanced picture of demo­cratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland by analyzing the uncodified, informally enforced interactions of the Fidesz and PiS governments that create an uneven playing field to their benefit. This can take various forms of clientelist exchange that create a twofold system of dependence—between the electorate and the government, and within circles closely allied with the regime. It is crucial for the EU to pay greater attention to these problems of informal power in member states like Hungary and Poland because its existing proce­dures for dealing with democratic and rule-of-law backsliding mainly monitor the institutional and legal systems and are ill-suited to address informal mechanisms used by governments.

For the past four decades, Latin America has witnessed key institutional and political changes that have greatly impacted media systems and communication policies across the region. As a result, we can observe two contrasting yet overlapping developments: a high degree of media concentration fuelled by market-oriented policies on the one hand, and the re-emergence of state intervention in media reform on the other. Both have operated within the same context of clientelism and discretional, uneven application of regulation and the law. This results from the way that media systems and politics have been historically intertwined.

The paper focuses on the manifestations, causes, and consequences of the failure of so-called public service media, especially in the field of news and journalism. Those media that, unlike private media, are funded from public sources. The public service, which citizens are obliged to pay through taxes or direct fees, is supposed to provide quality information, to produce and to disseminate content that satisfies the democratic, cultural, and social needs of the society, with a task at hand to preserve media pluralism. The major obligation of public service media is usually for them to provide objective, validated, and balanced information for people, so they can choose freely where they stand on any given issue. However, examples of the failures of two public service media operating in the Central European Czech Republic, Czech Radio (ČRo), and Czech Television (ČT), as well as the failures of the statutory control boards of these media, show that the required high quality public service prescribed by law, especially in the field of news and journalism and other programs, is not always kept. Public service media may be partisan and apply elements of modern censorship. This is a censorship that the law of the public service media does not impose and does not allow to carry out. Such censorship, which is a result of unilateral subordination of the influence of specific political parties, interest groups, and opinion streams, is reflected in information manipulation, purposeful agenda development, selection of information and information sources, spiral of silence, in the preference of some political parties, partisan, interest interpretation, and adaptation of reality in broadcasting.