Joint Seminar between LIEPP and the CEPR Media Plurality RPN.

Abstract

How Media Ownership Matters provides a new approach to understanding news media ownership, going beyond the typical emphasis on market concentration or media moguls to examine the influence of different forms of ownership on the production of news. Building on the sociological theory of "institutional logics," the book identifies four broad ownership forms—market, private, civil society, and public. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews of top executives and editors, an original and extensive collection of industry data, and a comprehensive content analysis of more than fifty news outlets in the United States, Sweden, and France, the book analyzes how these ownership forms—along with associated funding models and the social and political characteristics of owners and audiences—contribute to three civically consequential modes of power: public service orientation, political instrumentalism, and economic instrumentalism. 

Programme

4:00 pm | Introductory remarks by Julia Cagé
4:10 pm | Presentation by Rodney Benson
5:00 pm | Discussion with Anya Schiffrin
5:200 pm | Q&A session moderated by Julia Cagé and Felipe Lauritzen
5:40 pm | Cocktail

Speakers

• 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. 
• Julia Cagé is a Professor in the Economics Department at Sciences Po Paris. She is the recipient of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for a five-year project titled “Campaign Finance, Information and Influence: A Comprehensive Approach Using Individual-Level Data and Computer Sciences Tools” (PARTICIPATE) (legal information). She is a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), affiliated with the Economic History, Industrial Organization, and Public Economics programs, as well as a member of the CESifo Research Network. She leads the CEPR’s Research and Policy Network on “Media Plurality.” She received the Best Young French Economist Award in 2023 and the Yrjö Jahnsson Award in 2025.
• 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).  

Logistical information

1. If you are joining in person, the event will take place in room Salle d'Innovation at Sciences Po’s building at 1, place Saint Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris. We will meet you at the building’s main entrance 10 minutes before the event starts and will take you to the seminar room.
2.  If you’re joining online, you will receive an e-mail from Zoom with your unique joining link as a panellist. If you haven’t received before the event day, please let us know, and we will resend it to you. You should use this link to join the webinar, as it will provide access to the practice session where we will test your audio and video. Also, bear in mind the following instructions:
   a. To double-check whether everything works and ensure that everyone is ready, please aim to log in 10 minutes ahead of the start time of our webinar (so 3:50 PM CEST / 2:50 PM BST / 9:50 AM EDT)
   b. To join, you can simply click on the link that reads “Click here to join”. You may be prompted to install the Zoom interface on your laptop / PC. This will take no more than 10 seconds.
   c. When logged in, you will be seen and heard by other panelists. General participants won’t be able to join until we initiate the official broadcast.
   d. When in Zoom, please ensure your microphone is on mute, if you are not speaking. The mute button is located in the bottom left corner of your screen.
   e. If you have a headset/headphones, please try to use them. A headset is preferred because the sound quality is better.
   f. During the webinar, over the bottom of the screen and you should see a banner, click on the Participant icon and you will then be able to see who else has joined the conference on the right-hand side of your screen.
   3. If you intend to use slides, please send them to us in advance, so we have a backup version.

Should you have any questions about the event, please contact Felipe Lauritzen at felipe.lauritzen@sciencespo.fr or +33 07 68 38 37 99.