The Influence of Ownership on the Valence of Media Content: The Case of Movie Reviews

Working Paper #27, Summer 2003

Gabriel Rossman
Department of Sociology,
Princeton University

ABSTRACT
Theories of political economy often argue that corporate ownership of the mass media biases its content and furthers capitalist hegemony. Previous studies have not disentangled the effect of ownership from other factors such as advertising or ideology. Furthermore previous studies have relied on content analysis, which introduces an element of measurement error. This paper shows that contrary to expectations derived from the literature, publications do not give especially generous reviews to films distributed by their corporate parents, suggesting that ownership may not be a major source of valence bias.

This paper is not available for download. Please contact the author for a copy-- rossman@princeton.edu.