Week 3

In chapter seven of ‘Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context’ (Long and Wall, 2012), I believe the key points to be the discussion of global media and its production and distribution, exploring its influence/effects.

   March 2010 saw an attack on Google by Xinhua, a Chinese news agency. It believed that laws had been broken in regards to censorship on things such as YouTube and search results. The company’s dealings with China created many problems, as in a contemporary globalised world, companies like Google appear greatly powerful. However, this encounter jeopardised their reputation. This example demonstrates issues for the contemporary world. 

   The term ‘global media’ for many springs to mind large companies such as Disney, or furthermore larger media conglomerates like Google. Google is the largest company in terms of both use and revenue. Furthermore, social media companies such as Facebook may spring to mind, or even larger the Internet as a whole. The Internet is argued to be the most recognisable, yet it was news production that takes the crown as the very first global media enterprise. Several million web pages are added to the Internet daily, showing its forever expanding popularity and use, but the question lies as to whether such a large company can be regulated. Our points of accessing the Internet become the key regulation.

   My extended research text ‘Net condition: Art and Global Media (Electronic Culture: History, Theory and Practice)’ (Weibel, 2001) discusses the movement of photography over the years, and its expansion to video and online art. This shows how the production and distribution of photography has influenced people to expand its creative uses. The text also expands on how the world distributes these media texts.

   Television is also said to have gained the largest global reach, with almost everyone in both developed and developing countries having a television of some sort by the end of the twentieth century. Commercial satellite broadcasting in the 1980’s provided legal regulations, and this mean that even the strictest of countries moved towards entertainment based programming.

   Both readings have made me think differently about the spread of different forms of media, and what influence they have on people. Also, to see how photography has expanded into global media over time as this is my area of interest, and it was interesting to see how photography has developed and change over time to keep up with distribution.

   One option for undertaking academic research is to create a focus group outlining the influence global media has had on them or what they think about the spread.

Bibliography:

1.     Long, P; Wall, T (2012) ‘Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context’ pg. 234-270

2.     Weibel, P (2001) ‘Net_condition: Art and Global Media (Electronic Culture: History, Theory and Practice)’