More than meets the eye (Media Hegemonies/Mapping Who Owns What)

It is important to understand the role media has in our society to be able to analyze the information we are flooded with by the media itself.

To explain the above, the more media literate we are as a society the more power we have to understand media hegemonies and the impact they have on our culture.

Corporations that have cross media ownership have the power to influence the people en masse. In many cases, there is one larger corporate conglomerate that owns different sub-companies underneath its umbrella. A perfect example of such a company is “News Corporation”

News Corporation’s portfolio contains so many different entities, it is simpler to just let them speak for themselves:

“News Corporation is the globe’s leading publisher of English-language newspapers,with operations in the U.K., the United States, Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and across Europe and Asia. The Newspaper and Information Services segment includes News International, which publishes four national newspapers in the U.K.; News Limited, which publishes more than 110 national, capital city and suburban newspapers in Australia; the New York Post in the U.S.; The Wall Street Journal in the U.S., Europe and Asia; and Dow Jones. News Corp. also publishes several special interest magazines in Australia.”

And that is simply the companies News Corporation owns under the “Newspapers and Information Services” heading! They also own the whole FOX family of television channels, filmed entertainment companies such as Twentieth Century Fox and major websites such as www.myspace.com and www.ign.com!

What I find more shocking than finding out that one shell company owns a multitude of media outlets, is the fact that there are very, very few people who own that particular shell. For the purposes of this study, I’m speaking of one, Mr. Rupert Murdoch, their company Chairman and CEO.

Rupert Murdoch is a media powerhouse and is often questioned about whether or not he uses the scope of his conglomerate to influence the way people think and what people think about. In discussing Bush’s agenda in Iraq, Mr. Murdoch addresses his company’s role in influencing Americans to be in support of Bush’s agenda here:



Being conscious of the fact that media hegemonies exist is crucial because we should take in the millions of messages we are fed everyday with a grain of salt, so to speak. There may not be a need to instantly transform into a conspiracy theorist but knowledge is power; being critical, expressing our opinions, and looking at the world through out own lens (not merely a lens we are provided with) is necessary to ensure that the will and thoughts of one do not trickle down into the will and thoughts of ourselves.


LINKS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K2pLo8JV5Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZinUQHAN74