Core Post 4: Week 13: TV + The Globe

I am really inspired by Michael Curtain's article Thinking Globally - From Media Imperialism to Media Capital. In this article, he lists the obstacle and problems that have been caused by media imperialism and domination, which are when theoretically the local media is dominant, it becomes difficult to think globally about media industries of what we know is derived from American contents, and also is difficult to think globally because research keeps circling back to national policy and aesthetics. In this concept and phenomenon, it reminds me the problems of media domination of China, compare to capitalism, Chinese media is sometimes controlled by the government, which means people usually get the news which is filtered. In order for the government to balance the right and wrong for the beneficial reason, people get the news that is beneficial to the government.

Thinking globally does not only apply to news, but also should be applied to culture and historical elements. Therefore, Michael Curtain clearly states in his article that people should extend our perspective beyond Anglo-American media and encourage us to consider the world as a whole. And also shift the perspective and take into account both the general and the particular, both the forest and the trees. To think more broadly instead of just considering local and particular stuff. We should see global media as the sum of their parts, as simply a collection of discreet units. On the other hand, from media imperialism to media capital, we will encounter some challenge which will prevent us from taking action. Because media imperialism emphasizes the self-conscious extension of centralized power, diminishes indigenous production capacity and undermines the expressive potential of national cultures, imposing foreign values of contributing to cultural homogenization worldwide. Furthermore, media imperialism has become the world’s most powerful media corporations were having difficult time imposing their agendas in many parts of the world. On the other hand, globalization of media should be understood as it is part of a larger set of processes that operate translocally, interactively, and dynamically at a variety of levels: economic, institutional, technological, and ideological, it also suggests that the world’s increasingly interconnected media environment is the outcome of messy and complicated interactions across space. We need to think about capitalism as a social process that shapes the spatial contours of media, bearing only contingent or “not necessary” relation to the nation-state.