Global Media Empires - Americanisation

Week 3 - 24th July, 2012

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  Indeed, Western cultures have been played a dominant role in the world’s economic and culture for over the past few centuries. Especially, the United State America, the first world’s economic leading nation has the most affection on Western cultures. It seems no doubt for Americanisation when you are going McDonald for a lunch, watching The Dark Knight Rises – typical Hollywood made film, or listening to music that listed on The Billboard.com by using Apple iPod.

  In terms of media industry, most of the production / broadcasting / journalism companies are distribution companies of one Media Empire. For example, the News Corporation, the world second largest media empire, owned by Rupert Murdoch. One of the popular holdings of News Corporation is Fox Filmed Entertainment, a parent company of 20thCentury Fox. From 20t Century Fox, distribution companies included Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox 2000 Pictures, 20^th Century Fox Television. This is monopoly, or you could say oligopoly – a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers (Oxford Dictionary 2012).

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  Media empires such as News Corporation and Walt Disney Corporation can be referred as dominant media. They consist of 3 conditions: “the ability of big media to limit diversity, to control key economic factors and to shape political agendas”, “the media function in ways that are both political as well as economic”, and “not only size alone but international reach and not only news or editorial content but also cultural and political influence” (Steven, 2003, pp.38-41).

  Apart from that 3 conditions to be a dominant media, Niall Ferguson, a historian suggested other reasons why Western cultures rise, at a TED speech in July 2011 - The 6 Killer Apps of Prosperity.

Reference:

Steven, P 2003, ‘Political economy: the howling, brawling, global market place’, The no-nonsense guide to the global media, New Internationalist, Oxford, pp. 37–59.