This week's topic was presented by my group, and it discusses the dangers of globalisation and how it affects the journalism industry negatively. Globalisation in itself is a good thing - it advances many aspects of the world for the better in terms of economy, technology, culture and communication. Globalisation generally means the process of interconnecting different parts of the world and as Wallerstein (1974, 1979, 1980) stated, "the process of making world economy dominated by capitalist models". But is that a good thing really, especially the rather alarming term "dominated by capitalist models"?
We know that there are a handful of transnational corporations (TNCs) having a hold of smaller companies, like for example within the journalism context, Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network holds a terrifying amount of power over several broadcasting stations and newspapers. This basically results in a convergence and standardisation of news as all content that are being disseminated have to go through the approval of Rupert Murdoch's ideal and agenda, and content are recycled between sister companies. This also creates credibility issues and lack of diverse opinions.
So to combat this standardisation of news, consumers then turn to alternative media, namely going online for their source of information.But with TNCs getting more powerful as theyform mergers and alliances with smaller companies, it's only a matter of time before they get a hand on an online content provider and there goes your "alternative" media.
Solutions for this problem hasn't been all too forthcoming, but our given reading materials state that the best anyone can do is for individual countries and states to enforce a law that will allow broadcasting stations a level of autonomy for example. But again, responses for this solution has been rather underwhelming. If no one wants to take the initiative to enforce local laws against letting TNCs complete control, then globalisation will eventually be seen as an act of evil instead of progress.
We know that there are a handful of transnational corporations (TNCs) having a hold of smaller companies, like for example within the journalism context, Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network holds a terrifying amount of power over several broadcasting stations and newspapers. This basically results in a convergence and standardisation of news as all content that are being disseminated have to go through the approval of Rupert Murdoch's ideal and agenda, and content are recycled between sister companies. This also creates credibility issues and lack of diverse opinions.
So to combat this standardisation of news, consumers then turn to alternative media, namely going online for their source of information.But with TNCs getting more powerful as theyform mergers and alliances with smaller companies, it's only a matter of time before they get a hand on an online content provider and there goes your "alternative" media.
Solutions for this problem hasn't been all too forthcoming, but our given reading materials state that the best anyone can do is for individual countries and states to enforce a law that will allow broadcasting stations a level of autonomy for example. But again, responses for this solution has been rather underwhelming. If no one wants to take the initiative to enforce local laws against letting TNCs complete control, then globalisation will eventually be seen as an act of evil instead of progress.
