The Capture Effect: How Media Capture Affects Journalists, Markets and Audiences

As the literature aimed at defining and explaining media capture has grown in recent years so has the interest in documenting the impact of capture in greater depth. There is still a relatively wide gap between the literature focused on defining and describing the concept, which is rich and increasingly sophisticated, and the body of research aimed at measuring the impact of capture, which now consists of a collection of disparate analytical papers primarily focused on case studies. This paper aims to contribute to this second body of knowledge: building on existing research, it looks to identify the changes that media capture leads to in three key areas: journalism (with a focus on the impact of capture on professional standards and the performance of journalists), market (with a focus on the effects of capture on free competition, market health and viability of investments), and audience (analysing the content limitations that audiences are faced with in environments where propaganda media is dominant).