How Media Ownership Matters: Session 11
- Julia Cage Anya Schiffrin Rodney Benson
- 20 Oct 2025
In this session, we explore issues related to media ownership as Rodney introduces his new book, "How Media Ownership Matters. " The book offers a fresh and insightful look into understanding news media ownership, moving beyond the usual focus on market concentration or media moguls. It explores how different types of ownership affect news production, guided by the sociological idea of "institutional logics." The book classifies ownership into four main categories: market, private, civil society, and public. It is enriched by over one hundred interviews with top executives and editors, a unique collection of industry data, and an extensive content analysis of more than fifty news outlets across the United States, Sweden, and France. This thorough analysis helps us see how these ownership types—along with their funding models, and the social and political characteristics of owners and audiences—shape three key roles: public service, political influence, and economic interests.
Rodney Benson is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Sociology, at New York University. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California-Berkeley and an MA in international affairs from Columbia University. In addition to his lead authorship of How Media Ownership Matters (Oxford, 2025; w/ M. Hessérus, T. Neff, and J. Sedel), Benson is the author of Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison (Cambridge, 2013; French translation, 2018), winner of the 2020 Doris Graber American Political Science Association Award for the Best Book of the Decade in Political Communication, and the editor (w/ E. Neveu) of Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Polity 2005; Chinese translation summer 2017). His research and theoretical articles have appeared in leading journals including American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, Poetics, American Behavioral Scientist, Political Communication, and the International Journal of Press/Politics. He has also written articles for Le Monde Diplomatique, The Conversation, and the Christian Science Monitor; his research has been featured in The Atlantic, NiemanLab, Axios, Columbia Journalism Review, Le Monde, Al Jazeera English, among others.
Dr. Anya Schiffrin is a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and co-director of the Technology Policy & Innovation Concentration. She has written on media trust and teaches on the topic in her course on "Policy Solutions for Online Mis/Disinformation". She’s edited three volumes on the subject of media capture including Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms and Governments Control the News (Columbia University Press 2021).