Transantional Media Essay Example for Free

Transantional Media Essay Introduction The media has played a very crucial role in the transformation of people, their culture and lifestyles world over. The media itself has been on constant revolution with some growing to become big multinational or transnational corporations. This growth and evolution has been necessitated by a few factors among them being: The shifting business environment The changes in communication technology The changes taking place in terms of politics Emergence of global business and the emergence of common markets like Free-Trade agreements such as NAFTA and Easy export and import of business culture and business interests Take an example of the Snow White and the seven dwarfs in the early 1930’s and the Disney world in the early 30’s. The Disneyland of today for example is a whole world of wonders consisting of: Movies Museum Mobile Arks Shop Television Radio Satellite Records Music On Ice Music on Broadway Cruises Resorts and Amusement This means that the effect created by such a transnational media would not only be felt in the mother country but world over as well. To this end however, it would not be wise to downplay the role the media corporations play without critically looking into the effects the very existence and expansion of such corporations have on the society in general. This is because the society of today values information significantly as a vital product in the market, Gershon R. A. – (2000) The other issue is that these media corporations are traversing a world with different cultures and lifestyles yet they themselves have a central origin with a particular culture. Therefore it would be good to know if they could influence others by such cultures and ultimately change their ways of living. What would be the reaction of the locals? Would they resist such external influence? How would they try to resist and would such resistance be effective or successful? These are some of the questions this article will examine and the main reason is because the world comprises people of different preferences, tastes, fashion and who live on diverse culture divides. What one culture might resist as not worth taking another culture may find no difficulty in its daily course of events and society’s mode of life. It may be even a serious challenge where such different cultures exist in such a way that they are mingled up and it is difficult to isolate or selectively come up with a particular group and claim to placed   it in a particular culture. It is also good to remember that the world, due to such technological developments such as the advent of the computer era and transnational media, has become such a small village in such a manner that people in the US, UK, Africa and Far East share or live on similar divide. Discussion The media imperialism thesis has for long argued against the expansion of Western media. It has maintained that such an expansion especially creating roots into the developing world has had great consequences resulting in the supremacy over the developing countries’ national media environments. The consequences of such domination would be to destroy the indigenous media production of the developing countries, (Kalyani Chadha, 2000). However, according to history, societies which live under despotic regimes created by superimposing media have constantly come up with alternative forms of communication as instruments of subversion. Most common forms include the use of underground newspapers though the issue is even completed further with the fact that the there are more sophisticated communication technologies in the modern world. These new communication technologies have made it possible for transnational media and the citizen to participate amicably with great empowerment. It should be realized that the transnational media has also been of great help in helping the citizens to creatively exploit new media to resist state propaganda roiled out through the mainstream media, (Moyo, D. 2007). Critical scholars time and again view media concentration as an expression of corporate free enterprise: that is, influential media owned and sustained by wealthy private interests. In liberal democracies, the media exerts its power and ability to influence the lifestyles of people through performance of three main duties. They act as watchdogs on governments provide conduits for the two-way flow of information between the people and their government, and lastly they act as source of information for the professed free bazaar of ideas, (Mowlana, H. (1996). Global communication in transition: The end of diversity. London: Sage). Critical mass in media industries is what this article is all about with empirical tenability being a critical point of examination. Great emphasis lies on emerging production centers like the Hollywood and the manner in which such media productions penetrate their businesses into other frontier market like East Asia and Africa. In order to understand the issue much better it is good to examine the growth models used by emerging media economies. More specifically, the framework critiques approaches that argue that global integration is normatively disadvantageous to peripheral industries and societies. These growth models are: De-territorialization Media,(low-cost outsourcing); Isomorphism (cloning culture); Cultural technology transfer (co-productions and franchise agreements); Niche markets (breakthroughs); and Cultural or industrial milieu (local clusters).   Culture Society  © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Economic and organizational factors are the major lead forces causing cultural globalization. Yet this cultural globalization must have an organizational infrastructure. A form of such globalization comes about   as   a   product   of   the   actions   of   media   and   entertainment   organizations   based   in advanced countries and whose production and distribution of film, television, and popular music creates a certain global dominance which basically depends on the economic standing of the media mother country rather than the cultural factors. And that’s why American firms in particular have   profited   from   the   size   of   their   national   market   and   the fact that funds   for investment are available. Thus a minute number of media corporations, based in a few Western countries, control the production and global distribution of television, film, book publishing and popular music. Due to deregulation of national media industries and emergence of new technologies, global media market has developed. In this oligopolistic market the level of investment required to enter the market is so high, due to high costs of production and distribution. Developing countries are locked out in a competition by the developed ones thus it makes it easy for those vertically integrated corporations to make huge profits by selling very similar product in   different media thereby influencing the people in all areas: books, films, theater movies, cable television, CD- rom and others. The films which are expensively produced capitalize on technical effects that are much concerned with action, stunt and violence rather than character and emotion. This is because action films have a greater impact since they are simple to understand in diversity considering the diversity of languages spoken across the globe. Hindrances and Local Resistance Before looking at the effect and extend of local resistance, we should keenly look at some of the forces that have hindered the development and influence of the transnational media in the different parts of the world. As we had seen earlier, the transnational media corporations we have today have undergone several stages of development through a series of obstacles. Thus in a world of competition we expect some to prosper and others to flop. This is the reason as to why there are those that have grown while others have not. Those that grew are the ones that withstood the challenges. In the beginning of the desire to expand their influence, the media had a lot of trouble due to technical impediments that existed between the developed and the yet to develop nations. This meant that the influence could not penetrate easily to the required level. For example the fact that some nations had developed satellite while others depended on the cable for communication. And in fact communication in some countries was still very underdeveloped and therefore installation had to take place before further penetration- Richeri (1994) Another hindrance was the fact that there was a great divide caused by linguistic obstacle.   Considering this, you find that there was a great difference in the time of news broadcast, type and structure of news especially given that the same reporter cannot present all the news. Thirdly, there were financial obstacles which were as a result of the difficulty with which advertisement could be put into one platform to satisfy a wide range of audience with different needs. Lastly we meet the cultural obstacle. People have varied cultures which they want to preserve at all costs and would try to resist any force which may intend to change their culture.   This local resistance still meets various challenges especially which are political and technological. Most governments have deregulated their broadcasting and this has had the following consequences: A shift from public to private media Normative goals have shifted to commercial goals A movement from political system to the market model A shift from national media to transnational operators The above points imply that the media has become more liberal, now having owners, administrators and advertisers and the fact that political influence is not uncommon. Therefore local resistance becomes a difficult task to accomplish. However, transnational media’s political aspects have remained a thing of the past or completely failed or have survived precariously as a preserve of the business or political elite.   Ã‚  Collins (1996) However, some argue that the success of transnational media in influencing the culture of the world will fail automatically given the cultural diversity. It is argued further that due to vast dissimilar languages, diverse cultures, political practices and even trends in media usage attempts by the transnational media to influence the world culture would fail even if there were no attempts to interrupt such an influence. This is because for it to succeed effectively, it would require an existence of uniform political world, a world with one language, the one with homogeneous cultures or lifestyle. Yet creation of such a society is not nearly possible as consensus would not be probable. Although there are those who hold that the emergence of a global public sphere is already imminent and as such, they maintain, it is possible that a uniform cultured world is achievable or already being achieved. For example, based on this argument, they say that the public, its opinion and the world political system is already under a strong influence of the global communication rather than a particular political state or system.   (Volkmer, 1999: 119) Skeptics have their view.   Political economic tradition criticism maintains that global media corporations play an increasingly imperative role in that they in reality control media industries all over the world. These changes are primarily caused by commercial and industrial momentum thus both culture and communication becomes more profit-oriented and product-driven. (Schiller, 1993 also Spark, 1998).   Another faction of the skeptics holds that based on cultural and institutional analysis of the current processes which lead to development of the transnational media, transnational media does not have a wide reach but rather regional such that even within its primary reach it is yet to make a universal penetration, (e.g. Collins, 1994, 1996 1998; Schlesinger, 1993 1999). In addition, you find that in most countries the usage of transnational media channels is restricted only to the well educated cadres and the business or political elites and mostly only applicable as a back-up to the national news channels viewed by a majority. According to this view it means that international media corporations cannot play a worthwhile role in formation or creation of a world public sphere or global culture. But there is still a point to consider in our argument. Technological development led to globalization especially invention of satellite which contributed to the development of mass media and more so electronic media which rather created a global village. Therefore people interacted and lived on a global scale since space and time barriers in human communication were collapsed. For example as mentioned in the introductory part, Disney culture can be found in many countries today in the world due to the Globalization of Culture different audiences can be brought different cultural experiences. Thus people in Japan, China and other far Eastern countries have learnt about Christmas Day, Valentine’s Day much from mass media making such events more popular in those parts of the world. Today, Disney is among the largest media and most popular entertainment corporations known in the world. Yet this Disney has been part of America’s cultural identity. This shows an example of how transnational media has influenced culture across the globe. Disney Theme Parks for example are found in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Paris showing a transfer of this culture from the original cradle to other countries despite it being commercialized. On the other hand, Internet incites a globalization of both public sphere and news media. It enables more interactive passage of information via its bidirectional communicative Technology, that is, Online Chat, e-mail and etc- C. Barker, (1999). Conclusion The hindrances that earlier on faced the expansion and influence of the transnational media corporations are no longer effective as the world becomes more liberal in handling of its affairs. Hence, as media companies of today grow persistently and continuously keep expanding, the challenges of staying competitive globally become all the time more difficult but the corporations use strategic planning to deal with environmental dynamics that affect their business. This means that penetration of other cultures in a region is not as difficult as it used to be earlier on when it had just started making in roots. Linguistic obstacle that used to be is no longer a problem since people are able to understand gestures, picture motions and other physical aspects of communication even if language is not availed: – audio- visual effects of today’s communication C. Barker, (1999). This therefore implies that local resistance would not be sufficient to counter the effects and impact of multinational media corporations in influencing cultural aspects of the world we live in today. Information is a major product on high demand and the way this information is channeled to the end user will have a significant impact on the behavior of the user after reception of the information. Thus so far, as we acknowledge the role played by the media in reducing the global geographical distance between societies, individuals and cultural spheres, we need to also accept that it will be impossible to curtail it from creating a global sphere. Hence continued dominance of the transnational media corporations in the world media market is a sure threat to the cultural diversity that exists at present yet local resistance has been made impossible unless political interventions are signed out, which are also prone failure- Akwule, R. Global (1992). References: Platon and M. Deuze Indymedia Journalism: A Radical Way of Making, Selecting and Sharing News? Journalism, August  1,  2003; 4(3): 336 355. Gershon A. R. Communication Department, Western Michigan University.Publication Journal of Media Economics, April 2000; 13 (2): 81 – 101 Abshire, D. M. International broadcasting: Western diplomacy’s new dimension of. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. (1976). Akwule, R. Global telecommunications: The technology, politics, and administration. Boston: Focal Press. (1992). Goff, H. D. A. B. Albarran, (Eds.). Understanding the Web: Social, economic, and political dimensions of the Internet. Ames, Iowa: ISU Press. (2000). Alexander, A. et al. (Eds.). Media economics: Theory and practice (2nd). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, (1998). Megamedia A.D.: Dominance of Giant Corporations in Mass Media, How competition is distorted and democracy endangered. Lanham, MD: Rowman Litlefield(1998). Miller A. D. International communication and international power, New York: St. Martins Press. (1995). Bagdikian, H. B. The monopoly of the media (5th ed.). NY: Beacon Press. (1997). Barker, (1999). Television, globalization and cultural identities. London: Open University Press. Schlesinger B, E. The Media and Conglomerates. New York: New Press. (1998). Spark, The global village: Dead or alive? Ohio: BGP Press, (1998).