THEA301 MEDIA ECONOMICS

Course Objectives

LET’S LEARN MORE ABOUT GLOBAL  MEDIA (WITH PAST AND RECENT APPLICATIONS) 

MEDIA ECONOMICS course covers  :

• Theory and Global Political Economy of Media and Communication;
• Media Politics, Regulation and Business Strategies;
• Media, Culture and Everyday Life 

Media Economics course focuses on the economic environment in which media operate, and discusses the main actors/forces that shape media, market and consumer attitute in a very changing climate of media technology. The course aims to reveal the marketing roles under different ownership and its effects on media content and function today and in future. Media Economics course seeks to review and analyse a range of different media markets around the world, more emphasize will be given on Turkish media market operations referring to previous and recent periods, covering transition years as well.  

Not only economic factors/policies but also political reasons/policies have helped to shape today’s world media and the markets: ‘Through expansion, privatization and convergence, the world’s media and media markets are undergoing fundamental shifts in the race to the new society.’ These changes are global and driven by economic policies as well as political policies of countries  in and/or abroad, suggesting the importance of understanding the economics of media and media markets. Electronic and print media ownership, finance and corporate structure, roles of new media technologies, the effects of different media contents and their functions will be in the description under this course. The objectives of the course are underlined by four following themes: Historical trends in the evolving stages of media technology, and its previous implications for competition, concentration and convergence in mass media and particularly in society, Market models, market and consumer behaviour, the impact of latest technologies on media industry and media firms,  

Media Economics as a concept means more than money and finance. It also involves the ownership and structure of industries. Therefore, the course also focuses how they operate and what contents they produce at different media products namely, broadcast and cable industries, motion pictures, print industry, internet and future of new media industry. 

It is a reality though we might struggle to imagine or remember how things used to be, a decade ago most online households were still using dial-up modems, and ten more years back it the internet was unheard of!

In this short space of time, media and communications have become even bigger business than they were before. Think of the companies and brands whose names have dominated the past ten years or so – Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, Apple, Nokia – and you’ll notice that they all fall under the media and communications umbrella.

Any claim, therefore, that media and communications studies are ‘soft’ or irrelevant, is rendered void. Real and immensely pertinent global issues and phenomena which affect the lives and livelihoods of different faces of the world’s population – think of the role played by social media in global affairs – are put under the microscope by these subjects.

Course Content

The course will explore the history and current practices of media systems both in Turkey and abroad. The students will be acknowledged by examining the particular strengths and weaknesses of broadcast television and print industry, media corporations, and audience research and therefore will able to evaluate and analyze the current trends in mass media and how the media market is operated and consumed.

Course Learning Outcomes

Attending the course the students are expected to:

• learn basic communication and economic approaches to media analysis,
• have an understanding of media and consumer behaviours
• be familiar with basic economic and mass communication concepts to analyse of a media firm or industry,
• become acquainted with emerging new media technologies,
• predict the impact and future of global media markets and media technology,
• make comparison between global media markets and Turkish media market
• become acquainted with the evolution of Turkish media, its structure, marketing strategies, Turkish media ownership/moguls
• predict the future of Turkish media industry