Reading The Media: The Sociology Of Mass Communications
A Global Mass Media.
An International perspective on Mass Media & Mass Communications
Mass Media- Global Culture.
The mass-media industries, print, radio film and television have in the modern world assumed an extraordinary significance. For the majority of the populations of the advanced industrial nations the mass media, in particular the visual media, film and most importantly television, in many ways appear to be attitudinally determinant. The images drawn from the screen have become part of our everyday experience and contribute in a very direct way to the view we have of the outside world, both nationally and globally.
The power of the mass communications industries in shaping the consciousness of populations has long been recognised, in the English speaking world at least, press censorship and control has existed for as long as the print industry had a literate audience to reach. The governments of the Third world were also quick to realise that the mass media had power to influence and affect the attitudes and behaviour of their own populations, but for a variety of historical reasons related to the imperial past have found that economic control rests outside the boundaries of the Nation State.
In the field of news gathering and dissemination four agencies dominate the globe in a way unique to mass media. UPI(United Press International USA), AP(Associated Press USA), Reuters (UK) and AFP(Agence France Presse) have a long and complex interacting history which also saw the emergence and eventual expiry of serious rivals but in the post war period at least these four institutions provide agency run information to every major news organisation in the world. Between them they are the main source of information about the world for the Third world and the main sources about the Third world for the Industrialised Nations.
All the international News agencies, while the differ in character (Reuters, because of its historical dominance of the sector specialises in financial information) are consortia owned by cooperatives of Newspaper groups for their mutual benefit- and consequently are, or at least were, in themselves non-profit making.
In the entertainment sectors of the mass media industries, the technology, an industrial product, has determined that the main centres of production have been and continue to be in the Industrialised world. Entertainment for mass consumption evolved first in the USA, at least in the forms we are familiar with. Indigenous versions of mass popular entertainment around the world during this century has paid homage to, and sometimes been overwhelmed by the film and television production centre of Hollywood. From the glamour and glitz of Indian Cinema musicals to the stylised comic book violence of Kung Fu and Manga Films of the Far east the influence of an English speaking, American run Film Industry is ubiquitous and profound.
Even before the advent of sound America in particular Hollywood had established itself as the dominant producer of film entertainment to the point that a few white Anglo Saxon faces were known throughout the world. In 1928 the Hollywood film industry earned $70 million outside the USA with the some nations industries so dominated that up to 95% of all feature films shown were of Californian origin.
Surprisingly with the advent of sound little of this dominance was lost- while many countries set up indigenous cinema production companies they had by that time to compete with the lavish production budgets that only Hollywood could provide and accommodate a public taste largely expecting American fare.
This dominance was world-wide - every major industrialised nation more or less failed, and still more or less fails, to compete with the Hollywood product, indeed French objections to the contents of the GATT trade agreement were only overcome after concessions were made relating to the importation of US made film.
The development of radio follows a slightly different technological pattern but again the transmitter and associated receivers are a product of the advanced industrial economies and again in entertainment the influence of Hollywood is pervasive.
Television has been so dominated by the place of it's commercial development that even what we understand as the medium is governed by western needs. There is no reason why for example the paradigm of the domestic receiver should be accepted as universally applicable or appropriate. In many areas of the world the concept of entertainment or information being in place in an isolated single family domestic unit is beyond comprehension. That being said many counties of the South have deliberately sought to develop mass communications networks of all kinds within the resources available to them.
India has a long established newspaper industry with considerable market penetration even into rural areas, which in a country with such diverse ethnicity and language usage is remarkable in it self. The fact but for a short period in the 1970 the industry has operated largely without direct government censorship is almost unique in the Third world.
Curiously, as recent changes in the ownership of the major film production companies show, even foreign control is not sufficient to break the cultural dominance of the US.
Five years after paying Coca-Cola $3.4 billion and assuming $1.5 billion in debt for Columbia Pictures, the Japanese giant has yet to reap any profits from its investment. Sony's sobering experience with Hollywood is a far cry from initial American fears that the Japanese were about to seize the levers of American culture as Matsushita followed Sony to Hollywood in buying MCA's Universal Studios.
In reality, the American tail has ended up wagging the Japanese dog. Mindful of accusations of reverse cultural imperialism and uncertain of the ways of Hollywood, the Japanese conglomerates gave their film studios enormous latitude.
In contrast to usual Japanese practice, Sony and Matsushita allowed Americans to run some of their most important units. As a result, the Japanese have got the worst of both worlds: they have opened their wallets without gaining much control. Indeed, Sony might be better off now if it had applied its parsimonious approach to Hollywood from the very start to keep its Hollywood moguls in check.(MARK TRAN "Sony Pictures sees cash vanish in an epic manner" The Guardian 10 October 1994 )
Increasingly in the contemporary world the boundaries between technologies themselves are becoming blurred. The advent of public text services, of Direct broadcasting by satellite, of cable and of electronic information interchange has meant that the next (if not current) generation of domestic television receivers will effectively become integrated entertainment and information receivers and processors. The current developments in technology which appear to be leading to this end will be looked at in the Level 3 Module "Cyberculture". For the moment however it should be noted that the global village created by electronic data interchange is to a great extent not truly global. In the case of Internet for example over 95% of registered users are located in the advanced industrial countries.
