Wednesday, 18 September 2013

Reader Response (The Effects of Media Globalisation)


Reader Response

In this article, The Effects of Media Globalisation, written by Mary Hickman talks about the benefits and consequences of the advancement of media towards globalization. New media has allows communications to be brought out in a more efficient and effective manner all over the world. It also has the power to cross culture gaps and bring people closer together. Information is readily available to us, making our lives more convenient. However the case, this does not mean that we are better informed about certain issues. The media is a game for the wealthiest people in the world as they are able to afford the cost of using the media. This will lead to the influence of the wealthiest minority’s culture to the rest of the majority. Many multi-national media corporations are able to maximize their profits by lowering their cost of production and cutting costs. This has led to wealthiest having a higher increase in their income compared to the middle class people. Yet, very often people are blinded by the benefits of media to even care about the consequences. Only the government is able to regulate the contents brought out by wealthiest using media and minimizes the influence of culture to the rest of the world. Moreover, media gains profits through advertising, thus contents showed might only reflect the thoughts of the wealthiest and show some biasness. Media has the power to cause an influence to how people behave and think and will always be so. In this essay, I would like to discuss about how information are readily available yet people could not be better informed.

The new media is a platform for people to exchange and gain ideas easily yet, the information they get could be biased and are not better informed.

It is true that people all over the world are able to obtain information and ideas whenever and wherever they are but the information might not be as accurate and as true. As stated in the article, people who are the wealthiest tend to have the most power to bring in their beliefs to the majority and influence their thoughts. This is usually done through advertising where big companies convey all the positive comments to the public and the negative comments are hid from the consumers. The contents of advertisements often make consumers trust the products using idealized images of handsome man and pretty women or stories of successful person who uses the product. Very often, the most ideal situations are brought out to tell people how successful the products are and the negatives sides are censored. Consumers will be attracted to the good side of the product and neglect the bad side of it. Hence, without the negative comments of the products, consumers are not well informed about it. Producers are not producing products based on the best interest of consumers but themselves. It thus defeats the purpose of serving consumers with the best service.

In conclusion, I believe media could be put to a better use to cover the interest of everyone instead of a certain group of people. This is the ensure fairness and not let any group to be taken advantage of.

No comments:

Post a Comment