Introduction to Sociology

Media Globalization

Have you ever traveled to another country and been surprised to see American advertisements or watched American television or movies abroad? How have companies like Disney successfully marketed their products around the world? Lyons (2005) suggests that multinational corporations are the primary vehicle of media globalization, and these corporations control global mass media content and distribution (Compaine 2005). It is true, when looking at who controls which media outlets, that there are fewer independent news sources as larger and larger conglomerates develop. The United States offers about 1,500 newspapers, 2,600 book publishers, and an equal number of television stations, plus 6,000 magazines and a whopping 10,000 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. In 1983, a mere 50 corporations owned the bulk of mass-media outlets. Today in the United States (which has no government-owned media) just five companies control 90 percent of media outlets (McChesney 1999). Ranked by 2014 company revenue, Comcast is the biggest, followed by the Disney Corporation, Time Warner, CBS, and Viacom (Time.com 2014).
Media consolidation results in the following dysfunctions:

1. 
   consolidated media owes more to its stockholders than to the public and represent the political and social interests of only a small minority
   
2. 
   there are fewer incentives to innovate, improve services, or decrease prices
   
3. 
   cultural and ideological bias can be widespread and based on the interests of who owns the purveyors of media
   

Although we have cases where social media was used to document the Arab Spring uprisings in real time in 2011, current research suggests that the public sphere accessing the global village will tend to be rich, Caucasoid, and English-speaking (Jan 2009) and not the predicted “global village” (McLuhan 1964). 
Cultural and ideological bias are not the only risks of media globalization. In addition to the risk of cultural imperialism and the loss of local culture, other problems come with the benefits of a more interconnected globe. One risk is the potential for censoring by national governments that let in only the information and media they feel serve their message, as is occurring in China. Criminals can circumvent local laws against socially deviant and dangerous behaviors such as gambling, child pornography, and the sex trade. Offshore or international web sites allow U.S. citizens (and others) to seek out whatever illegal or illicit information they want, from twenty-four 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.