JOUR1111-Lecture 6

The topic of this week's lecture was commercial media. This was one of the more interesting lectures for me personally because of the large role that commercial media plays in my overall opinion of media today. Commercial media is the primary discourse of media that I associate with. Aside from sources of social media, commercial media is the most widely used and viewed form of media. Due to this I think that evaluating its uses, purposes and effects is of paramount importance to any aspiring journalist wishing to understand the world of modern media. 

The main purpose of commercial media is to generate audiences. In doing this they make themselves viable options for advertising companies to invest in. They charge premium prices for the privilege of advertising on their media sources and as such turn a large profit. 

Commercial Media:

Not government funded.

Profit driven.

Its main agenda is creating an audience.

Profits from selling access to this audience to advertisers. 

The main players in commercial media. 

The realm of social media is dominated by several large corporations. These are the people that choose how media is presented to us and therefore have a large role is shaping society.

These are just a few of the main players in current commercial media.\

 7 West Media

Nine Entertainment Co.

Fairfax Media

News Limited

  This is one of the issues I take with commercial media. Commercial media places profit as a higher priority than social responsibility. It is for this reason that I cannot condone commercial media. It is within their power to control media and as such should be their responsibility to place to good of society at a higher priority in their business mission. 

This was an interesting lecture that has lead me more than ever to believe that commercial media is detrimental to society through prioritising profit over audience awareness.