Big media - concentration, globalization and user data

The position of media in relationship to censorship is versatile - technologies, politics and marketplace will have impact on it. Trends of concentration, consolidation, convergence and globalization are evident among media and information industries (Cooper, 2007, Fuchs, 2010, Noam, 2011). US. media marketplace describes the setting of concentration well: 5 companies control 85 % of media sources, Universal Music Group, BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI have 85 % of the music market and 5 largest cable companies have control over 74 % of the cable subscribers nationwide (Lessig, 2005).

Globally, the trend of concentration varies in different countries, but in many countries there are major media companies, typically owned by major shareholders or families (Noam, 2011). Large international media conglomerates include National Amusements, Viacom, CBS Corporation, Time Warner, News Corp, Bertelsmann AG, Sony, General Electric, Vivendi SA, The Walt Disney Company, Hearst Corporation, Organiza??es Globo and Lagard?re Group (Wikipedia).

Concentration and globalization have taken specific forms on information industries. In spite of trend of concentration, the structure of media industry seems not to be purely monopolistic, but rather an oligopoly with a "long tail": Few "integrator" firms co-operate with numerous content providers (Noam, 2011, s. 8). Media corporations are typically nationally grounded, but their operations, outsourcing, subcontracting, assets, sales, profits and affiliates have become in a certain degree of global. Transnationality also seems be an emergent quality and tendency for information industries - so, it is likely that the trend of globalization will deepen. (Fuchs, 2010).

Big data has also implications on media environment. Joseph Turow expects that the next major challenge for the media is based on the use of consumer data in advertising business which will have deep and structural impacts for the media. Media needs to get into the food chain of personalized services if it wants to survive. Through the analysis of personal data, readers become as profiled groups, whom media offers more targeted services and contents. This approach is also likely to move content producers outside of the traditional journalism: to integrate contents for different media and entertain their users with other type of related products and services, like games and quizzes. In this setting the position of journalism will also become redefined. (Turow, 2011)

Media redefined

The impacts of structural changes of media industry may not lead to direct censorship, but rather transform conditions of journalism and change the emphasis of contents. Concentration has turned out to decrease culturally diverse, locally-oriented and public interest contents (Blosser et al., 2007). Consolidation may lead to narrower presence of different stakeholders in a society - withering institutional diversity (Cooper & Cooper, 2007). From a broader perspective, media concentration also associates with the poor government, less democracy and freedom, more corruption, less effective regulation, lower research and development, lower economic growth and lower digital access (Noam, 2011).

Government may also put new pressures on media for control of their users. Media, as other online service providers, can be held accountable of the behavior of their users and become responsible to monitor and control their users on the net to in order to prevent sharing of copyrighted materials, hate speech or to screen out other possible criminalized contents. Control mechanisms may be extended as well to restrict anonym communications within internet services or to limit the protection of sources.

Ubiquitous surveillance in relation to protection of sources has already raised concerns among journalists. If people feel themselves vulnerable by contacting journalists because of possible surveillance of their mobile and email communication, it will be more difficult for journalists to handle controversial, marginal or politically sensitive issues. Journalists do not feel comfortable with the trend of increasing data surveillance and intercepting of phone lines and email becoming commonplace. If protection of sources is valued working principle of the media, communication between journalists and their data sources should be well protected. (Verclas & Dunn, 2012)

Big data

Big data has become a concept which describes the conditions of extended data collection. We become classified, profiled, categorized on our every click on the internet - and this data is mainly stored permanently (Solove, 2004).

Google, Facebook and Microsoft have data on hundreds of milliards of users. The ubiquitous environment extends the dimensions through locating and recognition of individuals, real-time collection and integration of data - and especially by increased amount and depth of data. Data pools expand rapidly due to the data growth in transactional databases, expansion of multimedia content, popularity of social media and proliferation of applications of sensors in the Internet of Things. (Manyika et al., 2012). And there is more interest on accurate and personal data as well. Personal location data is among the 5 leading fields of data collection globally (Manyika et al., 2012).

Big data doesn't refer to the increased amount of data only, but to the technologies which are used to gather, analyze, link, and compare large data sets and to the analysis of the data used to identify patterns in order to make economic, social, technical, and legal claims. (Boyd & Crawford, 2012, s. 2). The picture offered for consumers of the uses of data e.g. in ubiquitous environment emphasizes providing of personalized services, and personalized marketing. Data becomes as a tailor made suit: personalized services and products are offered for users based on their profiles, classifications and probabilistic predictions of their data.

The other side of the coin is use of the same data for many other purposes: decision making, evaluation and for definition of user's rights, access, benefits and restrictions. Data practically defines citizen's position in a society. And from the perspective of surveillance and censorship, the same data may be utilized to strip citizens from their rights and benefits or even to destroy them.

It becomes less useful to discuss of censorship and data surveillance in specific connections, within a certain institution or even nationally, since the context of data ownership and management has changed. There is no one Big Brother or surveilling party, but a group of possible globally and locally networked actors, public-private partnerships and merging of data from different sources to large data warehouses.