Exploring relationship between media conglomeration and content diversity

The concept of diversity has been a long term subject for exploration to various theoretical disciplines in social science. For media research, concerns on media diversity need to be reconsidered due to the world wide inevitable trend of media conglomeration and ownership concentration, as well as media convergence. This study conducted a content analysis to investigate the influence of ownership concentration on media content diversity. The China Times Group acquired CTi (a satellite television) in 2002, and EMC acquired Ming-Chung Daily in 2000. The major focus of this study was the changes and differences in terms of content quantities and qualities before and after their acquisitions. The results indicated that media ownership concentration has significantly increased the content quantity and reporting quality regarding their mother companies' media.