Who owns the 35 most powerful media companies in America? The Media Capitulation Index shows how these conglomerates came to dominate the U.S. media landscape. Using a chicken scale, Free Press rates their ability to defend democracy during a time of authoritarianism.
Media Ownership Monitor
Mass media influences how facts are viewed and debated in a society, contributing to crafting its public opinion. Independence and pluralism...
Here’s Every Known Publication Owned by Brown Brothers Media, Which Buys News Sites and Turns Them Into AI-Powered Content Mills
The little-known company Brown Brothers Media operates a vast media empire. Here are the many sites we've linked to the network.
Democratic Ownership Funds: Creating Shared Wealth and Power
Recent decades have seen a rapid and little-discussed transformation in corporate ownership structure, with vital consequences for company behaviour and inequality.
The Rise of the Right-Wing Media Machine
This conservative media machine now rivals—and may well surpass—the power and the influence of the old-line press. It holds sway over much of the national agenda, deciding which ideas and...
Could this be the beginning of the end for the billionaire-owned media propaganda blitz?
A campaign to free our national press from foreign billionaires like Rupert Murdoch is gaining momentum and attracting big-name support
Web Browsers, AI, and the Politics of Media Power
The left keeps building media strategies on top of platforms built to undermine them. As browsers are rebuilt for mass surveillance and manipulation, the systems that decide what people see and who gets heard are being rewritten without us. Control over the browser is control over political reality.
The Metric Media network runs more than 1,200 local news sites. Here are some of the non-profits funding them.
<p>This is the first part of a two-part investigation. The second piece can be found here. As local news outlets across the US struggle to stay afloat, pop-up newsrooms are filling the void. Organizations with ties to political parties, special-interest groups, and lobbyists have emerged under the guise of news. One of the biggest such […]</p>
The right-wing press: power without responsibility?
Behind the stirring, ostensibly patriotic headlines how much power do the UK’s right-wing press wield, and how much do the public know about it?
Old Tricks, New Tech: How Legacy Media Capture Fuels Today’s Digital Authoritarianism
Marius Dragomir and Minna Aslama Horowitz discuss how digital authoritarianism is rising as states and Big Tech align, threatening independent media.
Media Influence Matrix – The World's Most Reliable Influence Tracker
This week’s edition reads five FY2025 reports against each other: Dnevnik (Slovenia), Delfi Latvia, Phoenix New Media (China), Hanza Media (Croatia) and Digi Communications (Romania). It finds two publishers separating their journalism from their balance sheets, a Croatian publisher closing a 35-year-old political weekly on a 1.1% net margin, a Chinese state-linked digital news group whose financial centre has quietly shifted from advertising to mini-program reading apps, and a Romanian telecom giant’s having its news channel walk off the must-carry list.
Media and Social Capital
We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Guided by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital—from social and political participation to interpersonal trust—in its benign and destructive manifestations. The impact of media technologies hinges on their content (information versus entertainment), their effectiveness in fostering coordination, and the networks they create as well as on individual characteristics and media consumption choices.
Media and Social Capital
We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Guided by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital—from social and political participation to interpersonal trust—in its benign and destructive manifestations. The impact of media technologies hinges on their content (information versus entertainment), their effectiveness in fostering coordination, and the networks they create as well as on individual characteristics and media consumption choices.
State Media Monitor Global Dataset 2025
This dataset provides comprehensive information on the governance, funding, and editorial independence of state and public media outlets worldwide. In 2025, the State Media Monitor covers 170 countries, tracking changes in media governance models, funding mechanisms, and degrees of political control. The dataset underpins the annual State Media Monitor Global Study and supports comparative research in journalism, media policy, and governance. Access the full dataset here: https://www.statemediamonitor.com
Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia
The world's richest man has joined a growing chorus of right-wing voices attacking Wikipedia as part of an intensifying campaign against free and open access information.
Free Our Feeds
Social media is broken: controlled by a handful of billionaires who shape what people see, say, and believe. These platforms profit from division, exploit user data, and lock people into closed systems.
Owning media again - Kedara.eu
This year, one of my aspirations is to rely less on the big streaming services for my entertainment. Why? Well, for one thing, if we give too much power to large corporations by getting overly …
