When media researchers and communication policy makers talk about media concentration, they

usually mean the concentration of ownership in individual media industries nationwide. When

economists and competition authorities talk about media concentration, they mean the

concentration of sales or production in the relevant market under consideration. The former, the

democratic perspective, emphasises the social, political and cultural consequences of

concentration, such as the power of large media groups to influence the news agenda. The la􀆩er,

the market perspective, is concerned with the competitive effects of concentration, such as

possible abuse of market power. The presentation argues that the two perspectives are not

contradictory, as industry concentration always has market effects and market concentration

always has democratic effects. From the democratic perspective, all markets are relevant. This is

also emphasised by the recent European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which states that when

assessing media mergers and acquisitions both the market and the democratic effects of the

transaction must be taken into account.

The paper demonstrates its argument by analysing the development of newspaper concentration

in Finland between 2000 and 2022 at both industry (nationwide) and relevant market (region) level

in parallel. Only their parallel analysis provides a sufficiently accurate picture of the nature of

concentration in the newspaper industry (Picard, 1988). Employing newspaper net sales as a proxy

for market power concentration rate is calculated by using standard measures of concentration,

namely CRn and HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index). Finland, a sparsely populated Nordic state with

its 5.6 million inhabitants, land area of 304,000 square kilometres and two official languages,

Finnish and Swedish, provides an ideal case for the analysis of press concentration. Press

readership is one of the highest in the world while Finnish people have the highest level of trust in

the news media (Newman et al., 2024, p. 11). At the same time, consolidation and concentration

of the press have accelerated in the 2000s, replacing local ownership of newspapers by a few large

corporate owners (e.g. Ylikoski & Ala-Fossi, 2024).

The results show that while at the national level the concentration rate is reduced by the large

number of firms operating in the sector, at the regional level the analysis reveals an extremely

concentrated market, with some regions exhibiting monopolies. While regional concentration

influences the relative strength of the newspapers in the local marketplace, it also narrows the

diversity of the media in the region. Similarly, national concentration increases not only the market

power but also the agenda se􀆫ng power of the buying firm.