FOURTH ESTATE: The journalist, reporters, and other media representatives who keep a watchful eye on the evil-doings of the first and second estates and hopefully provide valuable information to the consumers, workers, and taxpayers of the third estate. However, in that news and journalism has become, along with other businesses, a mega-gadzillion dollar industry, many fourth estate watchdogs have become card-carrying members of the second estate (and some even the first estate). As such, some journalists are more concerned with protecting and promoting business and government interests than consumer interests.

     See also | information | first estate | second estate | third estate |

FOURTH ESTATE, AmosWEB GLOSS*arama, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: July 9, 2025].

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A family of measures of the proportion of total output in an industry that is produced by a given number of the largest firms in the industry. The two most common concentration ratios are for the four largest firms and the eight largest firms. The four-firm concentration ratio is the proportion of total output produced by the four largest firms in the industry and the eight-firm concentration ratio is proportion of total output produced by the eight largest firms in the industry. Concentration ratios are commonly used to indicate the degree to which an industry is oligopolistic and the extent of market control of the largest firms in the industry. A related measure is the Herfindahl index.

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