The Media Business

Abstract

Media businesses are the organisations that produce media texts. Media businesses are not, in themselves, necessarily institutions; but the way the organisation operates, and the processes by which texts are produced, are probably ‘institutionalised’ — that is, they work in set ways. For instance, journalists usually structure their reports around a particular series of questions: the ‘who?’, ‘what?’, ‘when?’, ‘where?’, ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ of the event. Similarly, while we can consider the individual businesses that make up Hollywood, Hollywood itself is an institution because it describes the way in which films are made by all these businesses. This chapter focuses on the dynamics of business and assesses how this influences both the way texts are produced and the contents of those texts.