Explain the connections between the media economy and globalisation.
In your own opinion do these connections have a negative or positive effect on global media? .
Globalisation generally refers to " the process where by capitalism is increasingly constituted on a transnational basis, not only in trade of goods and services, but even more important in the flow of capital and the trade in currencies and financial systems" (Robert W.McChesney). In this essay I will explain how the media economy has direct connections with this process of "Globalisation". Due to such technological developments, as digital and satellite television and the fact that commercial media, advertising and telecommunication markets themselves are rapidly becoming globalized, global media and communications are in some respects the advancing armies of global capitalism as they "march to the beat of commercialism, autocracy and low grade sensuality." (Ralph Nader 1995).
There is considerable debate across the political spectrum about just how advanced this Globalisation process is, or is likely to become, as well as its political implications. Some, even go as far as to say that information has replaced manufacturing as the foundation of the economy evaluating the changing natures of both communication and capital and the nature of their relationship.
Since the early 1980's there has been a dramatic reconstruction of national media influences, along with the emergence of a genuinely global commercial media market. Capitalist media systems have lead to increased concentration of corporate media ownership, a small number of firms dominate each of the major media sectors. This has based a threat on the "free" market place of ideas, because this "free" market was based on low barriers to entry, making it easier to start up new media channels. However over past years there has been a marked increase in the tendency of large firms in every nation to conglomerate creating Trans-national corporations (TNC'S) meaning they have the upper hand in several different media sectors, such as movies television and newspapers.