Advertising and the Media System

Media systems (especially broadcasting) can be classified in two different types:

Public Media Systems: Government control over broadcasting through ownership, regulation, and partial funding of public broadcasting services.

Private Media System: Ownership and control lies in the hands of private companies and shareholders.

Both systems can exist in various forms, according to the degree of control by governments and private companies, with mixed systems (public and private) as the third main kind.

Whereas public media systems are usually at least partially funded by governments, private broadcasting solely relies on advertising revenue. Still also public media systems cannot exclude advertising as a source of revenue. Therefore both types are to a certain degree dependent on money coming in by advertisers.

And this implies consequences on the content provided by the media. As the attraction of advertisers becomes critically important, interests of the advertising industry frequently play a dominant role concerning the structure of content and the creation of environments favorable for advertising goods and services within the media becomes more and more common.

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The "Corpse-Conversion Factory"-rumor

Supposedly the most famous British atrocity story concerning the Germans during World War I was the "Corpse-Conversion Factory"-rumor; it was said the Germans produced soap out of corpses. A story, which got so well believed that it was repeated for years - without a clear evidence of reality at that time. (Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p.180)

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The World Wide Web History Project

The ongoing World Wide Web History Project was established to record and publish the history of the World Wide Web and its roots in hypermedia and networking. As primary research methods are used archival research and the analysis of interviews and talks with pioneers of the World Wide Web. As result a vast of collection of historic video, audio, documents, and software is expected. The project's digital archive is currently under development.

http://www.webhistory.org/home.html

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Scientology

Official name Church Of Scientology, religio-scientific movement developed in the United States in the 1950s by the author L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86). The Church of Scientology was formally established in the United States in 1954 and was later incorporated in Great Britain and other countries. The scientific basis claimed by the church for its diagnostic and therapeutic practice is disputed, and the church has been criticized for the financial demands that it makes on its followers. From the 1960s the church and various of its officials or former officials faced government prosecutions as well as private lawsuits on charges of fraud, tax evasion, financial mismanagement, and conspiring to steal government documents, while the church on the other hand claimed it was being persecuted by government agencies and by established medical organizations. Some former Scientology officials have charged that Hubbard used the tax-exempt status of the church to build a profitable business empire.

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