The Term Media Globalization Can Be Defined as

These Twitter updates—a revolution in real time—show the role social media can play on the political phase. (Photograph courtesy of Cambodia4kidsorg/flickr)

Engineering science, and increasingly media, has e'er driven globalization. In a landmark book, Thomas Friedman (2005), identified several means in which technology "flattened" the earth and contributed to our global economy. The get-go edition of The World Is Flat, written in 2005, posits that cadre economic concepts were changed by personal computing and high-speed Internet. Access to these 2 technological shifts has allowed core-nation corporations to recruit workers in call centers located in Red china or India. Using examples like a Midwestern U.S. woman who runs a business concern from her dwelling house via the call centers of Bangalore, India, Friedman warns that this new world order volition exist whether core-nation businesses are gear up or not, and that in gild to keep its key economic office in the globe, the United states of america will need to pay attention to how it prepares workers of the 20-first century for this dynamic.

Of class not everyone agrees with Friedman'due south theory. Many economists pointed out that in reality innovation, economic activity, and population however get together in geographically attractive areas, and they keep to create economic peaks and valleys, which are by no means flattened out to mean equality for all. China's hugely innovative and powerful cities of Shanghai and Beijing are worlds away from the rural squalor of the country's poorest citizenry.

It is worth noting that Friedman is an economist, not a sociologist. His work focuses on the economic gains and risks this new world social club entails. In this section, we will look more than closely at how media globalization and technological globalization play out in a sociological perspective. As the names suggest, media globalization is the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas, while technological globalization refers to the cross-cultural development and exchange of technology.

Media Globalization

Lyons (2005) suggests that multinational corporations are the principal vehicle of media globalization, and these corporations command global mass-media content and distribution (Compaine 2005). It is truthful, when looking at who controls which media outlets, that there are fewer independent news sources as larger and larger conglomerates develop. The United states of america offers most one,500 newspapers, 2,600 volume publishers, and an equal number of television stations, plus six,000 magazines and a whopping x,000 radio outlets (Bagdikian 2004).

On the surface, there is endless opportunity to find diverse media outlets. But the numbers are misleading. Media consolidation is a process in which fewer and fewer owners control the majority of media outlets. This creates an oligopoly in which a few firms dominate the media market place. In 1983, a mere l corporations owned the majority of mass-media outlets. Today in the United states of america (which has no regime-owned media) just five companies command ninety percent of media outlets (McChesney 1999). Ranked by 2022 company revenue, Comcast is the biggest, followed by the Disney Corporation, Time Warner, CBS, and Viacom (Time.com 2014). What impact does this consolidation accept on the type of data to which the U.Due south. public is exposed? Does media consolidation deprive the public of multiple viewpoints and limit its discourse to the information and opinions shared by a few sources? Why does it thing?

Monopolies thing because less competition typically ways consumers are less well served since dissenting opinions or various viewpoints are less likely to be establish. Media consolidation results in the post-obit dysfunctions. First, consolidated media owes more to its stockholders than to the public. Publicly traded Fortune 500 companies must pay more attention to their profitability and to authorities regulators than to the public's right to know. The few companies that control most of the media, considering they are endemic past the power aristocracy, represent the political and social interests of just a small minority. In an oligopoly there are fewer incentives to innovate, amend services, or decrease prices.

While some social scientists predicted that the increment in media forms would create a global village (McLuhan 1964), electric current inquiry suggests that the public sphere accessing the global hamlet will tend to be rich, Caucasoid, and English-speaking (Jan 2009). As shown by the leap 2011 uprisings throughout the Arab world, technology really does offering a window into the news of the world. For case, here in the United States we saw internet updates of Egyptian events in real time, with people tweeting, posting, and blogging on the basis in Tahrir Square.

Still, there is no question that the exchange of technology from core nations to peripheral and semi-peripheral ones leads to a number of complex bug. For case, someone using a conflict theorist approach might focus on how much political ideology and cultural colonialism occurs with technological growth. In theory at least, technological innovations are credo-free; a cobweb optic cable is the aforementioned in a Muslim land as a secular i, a communist land or a capitalist one. Merely those who bring technology to less-developed nations—whether they are nongovernment organizations, businesses, or governments—usually have an agenda. A functionalist, in contrast, might focus on the means technology creates new means to share information about successful ingather-growing programs, or on the economic benefits of opening a new market for prison cell phone use. Either way, cultural and societal assumptions and norms are being delivered along with those loftier-speed wires.

Cultural and ideological bias are not the only risks of media globalization. In addition to the run a risk of cultural imperialism and the loss of local civilization, other problems come with the benefits of a more than interconnected globe. One risk is the potential for censoring by national governments that let in just the data and media they feel serve their message, as is occurring in Prc. In add-on, core nations such every bit the United States adventure the use of international media by criminals to circumvent local laws confronting socially deviant and dangerous behaviors such as gambling, child pornography, and the sex merchandise. Offshore or international web sites let U.Due south. citizens (and others) to seek out any illegal or illicit information they want, from 20-4 hour online gambling sites that do not require proof of age, to sites that sell child pornography. These examples illustrate the societal risks of unfettered information flow.

People's republic of china and the Cyberspace: An Uncomfortable Friendship

What information is accessible to these patrons of an internet café in People's republic of china? What is censored from their view? (Photo Courtesy of Kai Hendry/flickr)

In the United States, the Internet is used to access illegal gambling and pornography sites, as well as to research stocks, crowd-source what car to buy, or continue in touch with babyhood friends. Tin we allow one or more of those activities, while restricting the rest? And who decides what needs restricting? In a country with democratic principles and an underlying belief in costless-market place commercialism, the answer is decided in the court arrangement. But globally, the questions––and the government'due south responses––are very different.

China is in many ways the global affiche child for the uncomfortable human relationship betwixt Internet liberty and regime control. China, which is a country with a tight rein on the dissemination of information, has long worked to suppress what information technology calls "harmful information," including dissent apropos government politics, dialogue virtually China'southward office in Tibet, or criticism of the authorities's handling of events.

With sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube blocked in Mainland china, the nation's Cyberspace users––some 500 one thousand thousand strong in 2011––turn to local media companies for their needs. Renren.com is China'south answer to Facebook. Perhaps more importantly from a social-change perspective, Sina Weibo is People's republic of china'south version of Twitter. Microblogging, or Weibo, acts like Twitter in that users can post short messages that can be read by their subscribers. And because these services motility and so apace and with such wide scope, it is hard for regime overseers to go along upward. This tool was used to criticize authorities response to a deadly rail crash and to protest a chemical plant. It was too credited with the authorities's decision to report more accurately on the air pollution in Beijing, which occurred later on a high-contour campaign by a well-known property developer (Pierson 2012).

There is no question of Prc's disciplinarian government ruling over this new class of Net communication. The nation blocks the use of certain terms, such as man rights, and passes new laws that require people to register with their existent names and brand it more than dangerous to criticize regime actions. Indeed, l-half dozen-year-one-time microblogger Wang Lihong was recently sentenced to nine months in prison for "stirring up trouble," every bit her regime described her work helping people with government grievances (Bristow 2011). But the government cannot shut down this menses of information completely. Strange companies, seeking to engage with the increasingly important Chinese consumer market, accept their own accounts: the NBA has more than five 1000000 followers, and Tom Cruise'due south Weibo account boasts almost 3 million followers (Zhang 2011). The authorities, likewise, uses Weibo to get its own message beyond. As the millennium progresses, China's approach to social media and the freedoms it offers will be watched anxiously––on Sina Weibo and across––by the residue of the world.

Recollect It Over

1. Where practise you get your news? Is information technology owned by a large conglomerate (you lot tin practice a spider web search and find out!)? Does information technology matter to y'all who owns your local news outlets? Why, or why not?
2. Who do you think is nearly probable to bring innovation and engineering science (like cell telephone businesses) to Sub-Saharan Africa: nonprofit organizations, governments, or businesses? Why?

Practice

1. In the mid-90s, the U.S. government grew concerned that Microsoft was a _______________, exercising asymmetric control over the bachelor choices and prices of computers.

1. monopoly
2. conglomerate
3. oligopoly
4. technological globalization

2. The moving-picture show Boom-boom featured an international cast and was filmed on location in diverse nations. When information technology screened in theaters worldwide, it introduced a number of ideas and philosophies about cross-cultural connections. This might be an example of:

1. engineering
2. conglomerating
3. symbolic interaction
4. media globalization

3. Which of the following is non a risk of media globalization?

1. The creation of cultural and ideological biases
2. The creation of local monopolies
3. The risk of cultural imperialism
4. The loss of local culture

4. The regime of __________ blocks citizens' access to pop new media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

1. China
2. Republic of india
3. Afghanistan
4. Commonwealth of australia

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo-sociology/chapter/reading-global-implications-of-media-and-technology/

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