This video was recorded when I was sick so apologies for the muffled voice.
Dialogue below:
Media has become a marketplace for billionaires that are willing to invest their money, but it is causing a problem. The people buying these companies are creating profit off of whatever they can. Leading to censorship of certain ideas. Censorship as explained by ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union is, “the suppression of words, images or ideas that are “offensive.”
For my own report I am going to use the recent twitter takeover by Elon Musk as a case study, drawing from the research article, ‘Media ownership- does it matter,’ and journal article, ‘From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy.’ These will allow me to build an in-depth research report on the problem of media censorship and how billionaires have the potential to change the media we read.
The research article, ‘Media ownership-does it matter.’ puts forward an idea of “the possibility that private entrepreneurs will always tend to monopolise the marketplace of ideas in the name of economic efficiency and private profit.” Suggesting that the businessmen that are buying these media companies don’t understand the importance of media, rather they are finding the most efficient way to make more money. This is equating to important ideas being suppressed because of the lack of traction that they are creating on the internet.
The problem is something that many people don’t know about because of suppression and censorship, in my report I shall describe in-depth the problems surrounding the media marketplace and the suppression of media, giving basic solutions to how we can put a stop to media owners dictating our media.
The major solution to making sure our media doesn’t change is strengthening the protection rights for our country and enforcing federal laws. In a quote by Mr Justin Warren, Chair of EFA he explains that if Australia had these things than it wouldn’t matter who owned Twitter because our federal laws would be strong enough to protect us.
Hailee Pickering’s Blog 