reaction paper 5

In chapter 4, the author evokes the concept of convergence, which talks of the effects of globalization on the work and the impact of major media conglomerates. Before globalization, specific organizations were involved with specific industries, with little overlap between them. However, after the beginning of the privatization trend and the development of media technologies, and especially after deregulation, media organizations slowly started to incorporate other elements into their range of work. A massive wave of acquisitions and mergers made it so that all kinds of industries were increasingly controlled by a single organization. Eventually, by the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21^st century, most media industries were at the hands of “less than ten corporations”, and one single corporation was likely to be in control of at least one platform from all different forms of mass media.

The transnational nature of these corporations also mean that the media platforms can be from a broad range of different locations and target all kinds of different audiences.

The major players that the chapter talks about are Time Warner (United States), Bertelsmann (Germany), Viacom (United States), the Walt Disney Company (United States), and Sony (Japan). These major corporations are all from Western countries, with Sony being a sort-of exception, although it is from one of the most developed countries in the world and a major economic force.

I think the convergence tendency that happened after globalization can have pretty negative consequences over the quality and diversity of media content. Overall, convergence has become synonymous with dominance. This becomes a problem when an organization has a specific view, especially when it comes to political affiliation, as certain views can be shared across all their platforms and be presented as different sources to the public, when in reality they come from the same ideology. This severely limits the co-existence of different points of views and their ability to be expressed equally.  In some cases, this can lead to a modern form of propaganda. A recent example that comes to mind is when several local television channels from different states in the United States broadcasted the same speech about “Fake News”, which falls under the Trump ideology. It was the same words spoken by different news anchors as if it were their own, but unknowing publics would not be aware of this. This is something that is very easy to miss, and under current trends of convergence could actually be very common. Because of this, it is very important to be aware of the major media corporations and what platforms fall under them, in order to be able to discern the message behind the media content that we consume.

reaction paper 8

In Chapter 7, the author demonstrates how the emergence of the internet and mobile telecommunications have accelerated the growth of international communication.

With the internet being by far the fastest-growing media industry, the increasingly reduced cost of use and the huge potential for revenue, media corporations are more and more reliant on electronic media, if not completely. Statistics going back almost 20 years ago show that sales were already dramatically increasing online back in 1999, with websites such as Amazon.com making $610 million dollars that year.

Media companies’ response to internet growth is to develop strategies of immersion into the “connected” world. One example is the creation of an “Internet-based media giant valued at around $350 billion”, the result of a merger between America Online and Time Warner. The merger was meant to bring together a diverse range of content, ranging from television, music, news broadcast to radio and other industries into one accessible platform, and perfectly represented the value of the internet as a content and service provider.

It is undeniable that the internet has taken over our world, and that the media industry is slowly moving away from the “traditional” to the digital world. This is especially happening in the news industry.

 I think it is a very positive thing, as the internet is one of the cheapest and most accessible platforms that allows people not only to have access to knowledge and information, but to have that knowledge come from a variety of different sources and from international perspectives rather than just a national one. As much as media platforms try to be objective, newspapers and television broadcasts remain mostly a one-way information flow, but the internet allows for people to do their own research and open up their minds to other viewpoints. It has also allowed for people to have a platform to express themselves and to relay the things that are happening around them, which means a much bigger flow of information.

However, the internet has also paved the way for a much greater amount of propaganda and of unverified and biased information to pass around freely and without restrictions or fact-checking. In a climate of fear-mongering and seemingly never-ending tragedies, these “news” are very much believed and have a huge influence on how people see the world, and as we have seen, can even change the course of elections as important as that of the president of the United States.

This trend has also been a death sentence for many media platforms, as the increase of online services and the easy accessibility have led people to stop purchasing traditional services, which is why many newspapers have had to shut down due to lack of funding and increasingly lower subscriber counts. But it is simply a part of the evolution of life and technology, and all platforms have to adapt if they want to survive.