Globalisation and media Cultures

Globalisation and Media Cultures

Introduction

According to Mc Chesney “the global media are integrating and their ownership is concentrating in fewer hands. This process threatens to undermine democracy”. This paper examines to what extent the above statement is justified.

The question of how the media affect politics is complicated, but in its most basic formulation, the correct answer to it is this: It depends. Although early conventional wisdom held that the media had strong, direct, so-called hypodermic effects, more recent research provides convincing evidence that individual-level and contextual factors significantly influence the extent to which media affect people's political behavior and beliefs and, eventually, public policy. The intent of this chapter is to serve as an introduction to some of the basic theories, insights, and debates about media and politics. In doing so, it touches on issues of media ownership, media bias, politicians' use of media, scholarly models of media effects, and new media.

Discussion

Mc Chesney View on concentration of Media

Mass media in the U.S. and other Western countries is known as the legislative, executive and judicial power; "the fourth power", the news reporter is more known as the "uncrowned king". However, is U.S. and Western media aware of the actual situation today? Media on the evolution of centuries has shown what kind of trends and how does it impact the evolution of democracy and civil rights? These issues are addressed in "rich media, poor democracy", in a sense that we can provide some clues to answer these questions and background, and cause us to think deeply.

"Rich media poor democracy" is a critical book, from the title we can know a little of its subject: the media in the accumulation of wealth is weakening foundation of democracy, which is an American problem, but also the world's problems. McChesney study is unique in the issue of democracy; his critique "target" is media. With a large number of first-hand information and documentation, he penetrated in the description of how the media companies and government plans conspiracy to destroy democracy. He explains that how democracy is deviated from the orthodox sense of the "principle of majority rule." In his view, the United States (including the world's other countries) has become a paradox between the media and democracy - as a public institution of mass media, because the government encourage and co-concentrated, resulting in the media market owned by a few Several large companies who dominated the situation. The first media law is pursuit of profit. They produce programs that cater to the audience and most of these programs tend to be vulgar and lack of public nature. In this way, citizens will be soaked in the entertainment world, so that citizens not only will lose interest in the issue of public concern, but also lose the ability to judge right and wrong.

By McChesney's point of view of pushing the media into "anti-democratic" forces, there are two reasons: First, the civil rights should not be affected by the non-political factors such as media ...