Digital Information Ecosystems

1 How Do the Economy and the Press Influence Each Other?

This question is one of the key topics studied by the press economy that we will be presenting here. In order to do this, let us start by defining the concepts of media and information, before asking ourselves how the media and press economy developed in the early 2000s.

1.1. The concept of media

The dictionary defines media (noun) as “any medium for the dissemination of information constituting both a means of expression and an intermediary transmitting a message”. There are also other terms such as medium and news (in this spelling, the name becomes invariable). The word media comes from the Latin words medialis and medians, the origin of median words. The francization of the word média with an acute accent and an s in the plural dates back to 1973.

The expression mass media dates back to the 1950s. It was invented in the United States to describe a new phenomenon: the media likely to reach a very large audience (television, cinema). The term mass media is often used with a negative, media-phobic connotation. Mass media are often accused of manipulating minds, misinforming etc.

There is also the acronym MEDIA, which stands for “Measures to Encourage the Development of the Industry of Audiovisual Production”, a European program launched in 1991¹.

The word media has given rise to many neologisms: médiacratie (mediacracy) – a word popularized in France in 1984 by a political journalist named François Henri de Virieu, ...