Changing forms of ownership in a democratic corporatist media system: how digitalization leads to less transparency and the risk of media capture

Digitalization has led to a crisis in traditional news media and to an upheaval in media ownership. A primary research concern has been that the motives driving media owners will shift from financial and public service to overt political and ideological. The term ‘media capture’ as been suggested to describe, how various interest may take control over news media outlets. In this paper, we add to the study of the effects of digitalization on media ownership in three ways. First, our analysis is based on new analytical parameters developed as part the Euromedia Ownership Monitor. Second, we compare types of ownership across legacy news media and digital news media, as each media type run a different risk with regards to capture. Third, we focus on transparency of ownership, especially that of beneficial owners. Our case study is Denmark, part of the democratic corporatist media system, and based on international ratings one of the most democratic and transparent media systems in Europe. We analyze 34 Danish news media, 12 legacy news media and 22 new news media, selected through a combination of audience reach and media-type diversity. We find that private legacy print media is mostly still owned by non-profit foundations, while legacy public service news media is owned by the state or is listed as self-owned. Regarding new digital news media, we find a greater variety of ownership forms, some with private owners, some owned by foundations. However, only new digital news media have ownership by sole proprietor. Regarding transparency, we find transparency of direct and beneficial owners are more accessible in legacy news media, than in new, digital news media. We also find that there is no tradition in the media industry of publishing ‘natural persons’ possible affiliations to either political or other commercial interests. The two last findings seem especially relevant, as new digital news media outlets, unlike legacy media, sometimes are owned and funded by private investors, whose main business interests lie outside the news media, and whose motives for owning a news media may differ from traditional ownership thus leading to a risk of media capture by ownership. These new types of owners have mostly been associated with less established media systems than the democratic corporatist media system, but findings indicate that they are beginning to emerge here also.