Associate Professor Merja Myllylahti and Professor Wayne Hope have once again produced the most important public academic report of the year, the AUT Journalism, Media and Democracy Research Centre Media Ownership Report and they released the report at Galbraith’s last night.
You CAN NOT comment on politics in this country if you don’t understand who owns the media on which those narratives are constructed.
This year’s startling insight was the nature of who owns the media now.
This from Professor Wayne Hope…
By late November 2025 the world’s top seven corporates were all tech related, an
unprecedented development. The combined market capitalisation of NVIDIA, Apple,
Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Broadcom and Meta/Facebook exceeded
US$21.9 trillion. The equivalent figure for the top ten media corporates was a mere
US$381.2 billion, down from US$399.44 billion in 2024.
…the media companies who create the content are valued at $381.2billion where as the Tech companies whose platforms that content appears on are valued at $21.9 trillion, that is an extraordinary change of power and influence over the entire media landscape with profound implications.
The attempt by Australia to protect their under 16s from the destabilising social damage that they create highlights that challenge.
We are once again in the debt of AUT and Associate Professor Sarah Baker, Rachel Daniels, Dr Peter Hoar, Professor Wayne Hope, Dr Atakohu Middleton, Associate Professor Paul Mountfort, Associate Professor Merja Myllylahti, Dr Danielle Selman Julian and Dr Greg Treadwe. Their work is crucial to then debate an no one else in NZ is achieving this level of insight and oversight of the NZ media landscape.
Professor Wayne Hope will be blogging on the report Monday next week.
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