Media control or media chaos?

Media control or media chaos? Claims that the media act in the interests of powerful groups in society, replicating their principle ideologies while marginalising others, dominated media and communications research in the latter half of the twentieth century. Grouped together these theories form the ‘control paradigm’. As the antithesis of the ‘control paradigm’, Brian McNair’s book, Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World (2006), seeks to explain, firstly by illustrating the weaknesses of the ‘control paradigm’ and then by developing his own theory of ‘cultural chaos’, how previous concepts of control are no longer satisfactory when examining the media today.

In section one this essay will briefly contextualise McNair’s work by outlining some of the previous theories put forward to conceptualise media/power relations. It will then highlight the main arguments McNair puts forward in both his criticisms of previous sociological, cultural and economic attempts to analyse the media and his own theory of how the media can be examined through the ideas of chaos.

Section two will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of McNair’s work in relation to its economic drivers. Here I will argue that McNair’s exploration of capitalism - which he sees as the most successful economic system and one which removes the need for ideological control - forms a convincing part of his argument. When discussing how the commodification of journalism supports his new model, however, his work is weaker and in this section he lacks the support of substantial empirical evidence, while failing to consider more recent impacts of ownership concentration and commercial pressures in the media.

Lastly, the third section will focus on the role McNair sees the Internet playing in shaping media coverage both now and in the future. I will argue that although the author is correct in concluding that the Internet offers the opportunity for a more pluralistic media, his work fails to substantiate with empirical evidence how the Internet is affecting mainstream media and audiences, while at the same time understating the negative impacts of the Internet on media production and reception.