Publishers’ Power: The Influence of Ownership on the Framing of Media Mergers

Abstract

Presenter: Doris Bukman, University of Amsterdam Discussant: Sophie Lecheler, University of Vienna Chair: Johanna Burger News owners can promote a political agenda by influencing what information is covered, how frequently it appears, and what framing is used (Hamborg et al., 2019). Press can also foster economic instrumentalism: coverage that promotes the economic interests of owners or allied actors (Neff & Benson, 2021). Conflicts of interest are particularly pronounced when outlets cover mergers involving their parent company. Journalists may highlight the positive implications of the deal or point to the detrimental effects of market concentration. This criticism may be affected by direct pressure from owners or subtle organisational and hiring dynamics (Jost & Koehler, 2021). The newspaper market of the Netherlands is characterised by substantial market concentration. Over the past two decades, Flemish publishers DPG Media and Mediahuis have acquired a market share of over 90% (Commissariaat van de Media, 2024). While this has raised concerns about fair competition and news diversity (Hendrickx & Ranaivoson, 2021), little scholarly attention has been paid to editorial independence. Newsrooms typically deny the existence of ownership pressures (Klok, 2024; Mossink, 2024). However, journalists may be unaware of their biases, and ownership influences may play out on higher management levels (Chomsky, 2006). Therefore, this research investigates: a) How do Dutch newspapers frame news media mergers and resulting media concentration and b) to what degree is this framing affected by whether the newspaper’s parent company is involved in the merger? In order to assess whether ownership affects news output, this paper will employ a content analysis focused on the presence of frames related to news media mergers. It takes an inductive-then-deductive approach. For the creation of the codebook, we start by open-coding a sample of articles, focused on the highlighted implications of media mergers and media concentration. These are first organised into overarching categories (e.g. pluralism, editorial independence), and then classified as either justifying frames, which present these developments favorably, or critical frames, which highlight potential harms. Afterwards, two coders apply the codebook to a sample of ~1000 articles published between 2003 and 2022. We differentiate between outlets owned by DPG Media, Mediahuis and those owned by neither, taking into account changes over time. If ownership influences how journalists write about mergers in which the parent company is involved, there will be more justifying and less critical framing, compared with news articles by the competing owner or others. Simultaneously, newspapers owned by the rival conglomerate will likely exhibit more justifying and less critical framing than newspapers owned by neither, given that they are in a similar precarious situation. The results of statistical tests which assess these differences between ownership categories and over time will be presented.