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.