Media, Information and Technoculture 2100F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Asteroid Family, Oligopoly

• School: Western University
• Department: Media, Information and Technoculture
• Course: Media, Information and Technoculture 2100F/G
• Professor: Nick Dyer- Witheford

Document Summary

Tendency for a sector of the economy to be dominated by a small number of companies. Monopoly: industry owned by a single company. Oligopoly: industry owned by a few companies. Emerges from a process of mergers and acquisitions, in which companies either agree to combine, or buy other companies. Results in creation of conglomerates, large corporations with many subsidiary units. Horizontal integration buying companies involved in same activity (e. g. ) Owning a chain of movie theatres, or newspapers, or several animation studios. Vertical integration: buying companies involved in different but connected activities (e. g. ) In cinema: owning film studio, movie theatres, television network, theme parks, video game companies. In practices, large media corporations practice both types. Canadian media (cid:272)orporatio(cid:374)s (cid:373)ore (cid:862)(cid:272)arrier(cid:863) tha(cid:374) (cid:862)(cid:272)o(cid:374)te(cid:374)t(cid:863) orie(cid:374)ted. Canada the good: by revenue based measures of media concentration, canada today has one of the highest intensities of media concentration in the world. Growth of cultural industries creates needs for specialist companies (e. g. )