Transantional Media Essay Example for Free

Transantional Media EssayIntroductionThe media has played a very crucial role in the transformation of plenty, their culture and lifestyles universe over. The media itself has been on constant revolution with some growing to become big multi topic or multinational corporations. This growth and evolution has been necessitated by a hardly a(prenominal) factors among them being The shifting air environmentThe changes in communication technologyThe changes taking place in terms of politicsEmergence of global business and the emergence of common markets like Free-Trade agreements such as NAFTA andEasy export and import of business culture and business interestsTake an example of the Snow white-hot and the s yet dwarfs in the early 1930s and the Disney man in the early 30s. The Disneyland of today for example is a whole world of wonders consisting of MoviesMuseumMobileArks fundTelevisionRadioSatelliteRecordsMusic On IceMusic on BroadwayCruisesResorts andAmusementThis means that the effect created by such a international media would not only be felt in the mother country but world over as well. To this end however, it would not be shrewd to downplay the role the media corporations play without critic on the wholey feeling into the effects the very outliveence and expansion of such corporations bind on the company in general. This is because the society of today values information signifi squirttly as a vital product in the market, Gershon R. A. (2000)The other extend is that these media corporations atomic number 18 traversing a world with several(predicate) cultures and lifestyles yet they themselves have a central origin with a particular culture. Therefore it would be good to know if they could cultivate others by such cultures and last change their ways of living. What would be the reaction of the topical anesthetics? Would they resist such external modulate? How would they try to resist and would such resistance be effective or successf ul? 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 cleaves.What one culture might resist as not worth taking another culture may find no difficultness in its daily course of events and societys 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 aggroup 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 calculating machine era and transnational media, has become such a small village in such a manner that people in the US, UK, Africa and Far eastside share or live on similar divide.DiscussionThe media imperialism thesis has for long argued against the expansion of Western media. It has mainta ined that such an expansion especially creating grow into the underdeveloped 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 employment 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 take on 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 ultramodern world.These new communication technologies have do 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 dish up in helping the citiz ens 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 meanness 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 susceptibility 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 hand 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 pro ductions penetrate their businesses into other frontier market like East Asia and Africa. In order to understand the issue such(prenominal) 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 encircling(prenominal) industries and societies. These growth models areDe-territorialization Media,(low-cost outsourcing)Isomorphism (cloning culture)Cultural technology transfer (co-productions and franchise agreements)Niche markets (breakthroughs) andCultural or industrial milieu (local clusters).Culture Society 2006 quick-scented Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and clean Delhi),Economic and organisational 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 entert ainment organizations based in advanced countries and whose production and distribution of film, television, and hot music creates a certain global control which basically depends on the economic standing of the media mother country rather than the cultural factors.And thats why the Statesn firms in particular have profited f fixed storage the size of their national market and the fact that funds for investment are avail adapted. Thus a minute itemize 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 conveyd to enter the market is so high, due to high be of production and distribution.Developing countries are locked out in a ambition by the developed ones thus it makes it easy for those vertically in tegrated corporations to make work outable 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 ResistanceBefore 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 move of the world. As we had seen in front, 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 pr osper 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 base 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 slow 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 sedate 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 attached that the same reporter cannot present all the news. Thir dly, there were financial obstacles which were as a result of the difficulty with which advertisement could be put into one broadcast 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 policy-making and technological. Most governments have deregulated their broadcasting and this has had the following consequencesA shift from everyday to private mediaNormative goals have shifted to commercial goalsA movement from political system to the market modelA shift from national media to transnational operatorsThe 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 ac complish. However, transnational medias 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. 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 at han d(predicate) 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 conspiracy 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 impart but r ather 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 th e 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, Valentines 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 Americas 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 exhibit 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 Tech nology, that is, Online Chat, e-mail and etc- C. Barker, (1999).ConclusionThe 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 todays 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 geographic 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).ReferencesPlaton and M. Deuze Indymedia Journalism A Radical Way of Making, Selecting and Sharing News? Journalism, elevated1,2003 4(3) 336 355.Gershon A. R. Communication Department, Western Michigan University.Publication Journal of Media Economics, April 2000 13 (2) 81 101Abshire, D. M. International broadcasting Western diplomacys 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 spile 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 Bea con 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).