Globalized Mass Media

World Wide Radio and Mobile TV

Are you busy and run out of free time? Don't worry, you are living in the age of modern technologies, so you can watch your favorite football team and beautiful actress in the train, on your mobile phone, while you are travelling abroad. At the same time, you are able to listen to any radio station in the world if you just go surfing on the Internet, on your notebook computer, no matter whether you are in the office or in your car


By MARKO ANDREJIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA


We are living in the fast world, eating fast food, driving fast cars, making fast decisions. It looks as if there is no free time in your agenda as you are very busy, regardless of you being young or older, student or manager, man or woman. Therefore, I suppose you have no time to go home, take a rest, sit in the chair, make a coffee and in a relaxed way, wait for your favorite TV show or important football match. Well, maybe you have run out of free time but today we also live in the age of modern technologies, so you can watch your favorite football team and beautiful actress in the train, on your mobile phone, while you are travelling abroad. At the same time, you are able to listen to any radio station in the world if you just go surfing on the Internet, on your notebook computer or cellular, no matter whether you are in the office or in your car. National borders can't prevent newspapers and magazines from travelling to another country (if they are published in some of "global" languages, making people able to read and understand), or radio and TV stations to broadcast across administrative lines. Satellites, Cable TV, Internet, networks all around us offer so many chances and their ever increasing contents for consumers.

At the moment when Europe is quite united and you don't even need a passport anymore to go through the European Union countries (if you are the citizen of EU, of course), possibilities for international cooperation among journalists are growing. Otherwise, the journalists are well-known as very cooperative among each other and ready to share their opinions and databases with colleagues (except something really exclusive and "hot") but with the Internet, new information technologies, smart cards, mobiles, iPods... serious investigative and informative journalism has its new ways to communicate with public.

People first, technology later

People have been always regarded as the first step and the most important wheel in the whole chain of mass media communication. There is no such a gadget to improve the mentality, the way of thinking or open mind if someone doesn't want to hear the voice. However, it seems that new kind of media is really "connecting people", like some Scandinavian companies... It's true that, in some countries, people don't go out anymore because they can get everything on the Internet (can they?) but it is also true that it is much easier to find out information you need or to ask for some files from your nice and kind colleague in a foreign country via e-mail than to go to the airport and so on... It's much easier for editors to get an article through the Internet than to wait for typewriters. The whole process of mass media work is better, faster and easier.

Modern information technologies also bring new chances for mass media firms to reach new publics, more consumers and at the same time be present on different markets, today when everything is commercialized and when companies trying to sell information all the time. You can see Internet (almost) everywhere in the world and even newspapers, radio and TV stations, basically oriented to paper, radio or TV frequencies, start presenting their contents/programmes through the web. Some surveys say that advertising and commercials are going more and more towards web sites and presentations through the Internet - banners in these places are more effective than paper cuts and funny TV stories.

The International Concentration of Mass Media Ownership

According to Hemant Shah, professor at University of Wisconsin, USA, concentration of mass media ownership has had two significant implications for the ways news (and other cultural products) is assembled and disseminated world-wide: "First, concentration of ownership and privatization of mass media has been accompanied by commercialization of news and other cultural products, a trend that is characterized by aesthetic, technical, and professional standardization at the global level. And second, alliances between the international "media moguls" such as Rupert Murdoch and forces of political conservatism has led to increasingly "soft" media content. These phenomena are part of the process of globalization."

The growth of global mass media firms has been fueled by a parallel move toward deregulation and privatization of mass media organizations. This is most clearly evident in the broadcasting sector, which has been maintained as nonprofit, public service, state supported entities in many countries of the world. As the forces of capitalism and entrepeneurship have emerged as the dominant model of economic organization, the state has receded as a regulator of the market place. This development has allowed the global media giants to enter into partnerships with dozens of national mass media firms around the world to produce, provide and/or disseminate news and entertainment to domestic markets. Advances in modern technologies, such as satellite broadcasting, have secured the presence of the giant mass media firms in the cultural and information market place of every region of the world.

Some of well-known giants in international mass communication are News Corp., Disney/Cap Cities, Time Warner, Viacom, and TCI. Also General Electric and Westinghouse. All of these mega-corporations but one are based in the United States; News Corp. is based in Australia. Talking about European broadcasting companies, well known British BBC has its world service in numerous countries and there are more and more globalization and "merging countries" present in ex-Yugoslav or USSR countries (Balkanmedia, Balkanika TV. MTV Adria...).

European integrations bring more ideas and chances for international (European) mass media firms. European Union supports this kind of cooperation, specially among young people, although most of the things are regulated only by markets.

Young European Media

Talking about our young colleagues, Europocket.tv is broadcasting a daily news show in English, French and Spanish. The new young European TV briefly informs on the EU and its institutions in a dynamic and upbeat manner. Oriented towards young people, it aims to interact with young people all over the block to ensure that voice is heard within the walls of the European institutions. You can find them on the web, too.

Eur@dio Nantes will start their programme in the night between May 12 and 13, on 101.3 FM, but will also be broadcast live on the Internet. They are a new kind of radio, linking different European corners and exposing the many faces of the European conscience. It is a daring project, setting out to create a "local international" media that deals with local news with a European impact. Its goals are also to turn on the spotlight on the European information, to bring out other such binding initiatives in Europe, and to sustain and develop the European values.

The article you are just reading is published in International Youth Web Magazine - you know its name - one more project in a row trying to gather together people from all over the world and make an international mass media communicating with different countries and cultures. The idea was born in Serbian youth organization from Belgrade but editorial team already consists of more than 30 journalists, ranging from Norway to Macedonia and from the Netherlands to Ukraine. Every month, since November 2006 onwards, a new issue is launched and the whole project is developing, slowly but surely.

And the last but not the least, we can proudly announce that our friends from Germany, a group of young journalists that also gathered together a big international team with the aim to create European print magazine, magazine for the young European lifestyle. Its name is "Indigo" and the first issue is going to be published in seven different languages, at the end of March, on the 50th Anniversary of the Rome treaties. Eventually, all the roads are going to Rome...