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Article Contents

Media flows and technological/industrial change, netflix library composition: a study of 17 countries, data access, acknowledgments.

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Netflix, library analysis, and globalization: rethinking mass media flows

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Amanda D Lotz, Oliver Eklund, Stuart Soroka, Netflix, library analysis, and globalization: rethinking mass media flows, Journal of Communication , Volume 72, Issue 4, August 2022, Pages 511–521, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac020

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The advent of subscriber-funded, direct-to-consumer, streaming video services has important implications for video distribution around the globe. Conversations about transnational media flows and power—a core concern of critical communication studies—have only just begun to explore these changes. This article investigates how global streamers challenge existing communication and media theory about transnational video and its cultural power and considers the theory rebuilding necessitated by streamers’ discrepant features. It takes particular focus on Netflix and uses the library data available from Ampere Analysis to empirically explore and compare 17 national libraries. Analyses suggest considerable variation in the contents of Netflix libraries cross-nationally, in contrast with other U.S.-based services, as well as Netflix libraries offering content produced in a greater range of countries. These and other results illustrate, albeit indirectly, the operations and strategies of global streamers, which then inform theory building regarding their cultural role.

As is often the case in technological innovation, thinking about streaming services has been structured by the capabilities and protocols of similar technologies that came before. A century ago AT&T imagined radio through the lens of the telephone, though failed to make radio a point-to-point technology, while television largely adopted regulatory norms and scheduling features from radio. Industry, policymakers, and scholars now attempt to slot streaming video services into our conceptual understandings of previous video providers that used broadcast signal, cable, or satellite to distribute content to the home.

However, Internet-distributed video both is and isn’t comparable to these previous technologies. Indeed, even Internet-distributed video may be too varied a category to make substantive claims—TikTok and YouTube operate under very different industrial conditions than Netflix and Disney+, though all offer Internet-distributed video. The latter services, also identified as subscription, video-on-demand services (hereafter, “streamers”), provide the focus here. As video services, streamers do important cultural work in society by producing and circulating stories that, like other audiovisual services, mostly reinforce, but sometimes contradict hegemonic ideas and contribute to culture shared by many ( Fiske, 1987 ; Gitlin, 1979 ; Newcomb & Hirsch, 1983 ). But they are also different from previous distribution technologies upon which foundational theories were built, and these differences require revising or reframing theory. Moreover, the industrial context of the 21st century, which is characterized by much greater choice in services (channels and streamers) and substantial audience fragmentation across these choices, also necessitates adjustment of theories that were developed for norms of limited choice and mass audiences. In terms of critical communication/media studies scholarship, the three most important differences are: Streamers’ reliance on subscriber support, their ability to deliver bespoke content on demand, and their ability to be offered at a near-global scale. These features allow different business strategies that yield different content priorities and different cultures of consumption than characteristic of previous distribution technologies that provide the foundation of the field’s thinking.

Subscriber funding alters the core business of streamers from the commercial norms of advertiser funding in profound ways ( Lotz, 2007 , 2017 ). The need to compel viewers to pay and the ability to offer a range of titles simultaneously—rather than a single title most likely to attract the most viewers—enables, even requires, different content strategies than have been used by video services that seek to attract the most attention to particular titles at a specified time. Streamers have accelerated the transition from mass to niche video industry logics that had been developing since the widespread adoption of cable and satellite in the 1990s. The ubiquitous accessibility of broadcasting that was core to theories about the cultural power of in-home video also diminishes as a consequence of these different affordances ( Lotz, 2021b ).

The global reach of several of the most widely subscribed streamers integrates them in conversations about transnational media flows and power that have been a core concern of critical communication studies. Video media businesses have been transnational since technology made video trade feasible ( Steemers, 2004 ; Havens, 2006 ), yet the last quarter of a century has accelerated and reconfigured the internationalization of video businesses and video consumption ( Lobato, 2019 ; Steemers, 2016 ). The rapid expansion of global streaming services has hastened the erosion of once-nationally organized video sectors and substantially altered legacy businesses of transnational television trade, their industrial priorities, and the accessibility of video produced outside the long-dominant Hollywood system.

This article investigates how global streamers challenge existing communication and media theory about transnational video and its cultural power. It considers how streamers’ discrepant features combine with coterminous, but unrelated disruption from previous industrial norms and conditions to necessitate theory rebuilding. These adjustments have implications for key theories and assumptions about the dynamics of power involved in media trade, including those about corporate ownership ( de Sola Pool, 1979 ; Schiller, 1969 ; Tunstall, 1977 ), proximity ( Straubhaar, 1991 ; 2007 ), asymmetrical interdependence ( Straubhaar, 1991 ; Straubhaar et al., 2021 ), cultural discount ( Hoskins and Mirus, 1988 ), contra-flow ( Thussu, 2006 ), and the roles of geography, language, and culture in explaining patterns of video flow ( Sinclair et al., 1996 ).

This article takes particular focus on Netflix as a streaming service utilizing the most distinctive strategy, such that Lotz (2021a) has described it as a “zebra among horses” in a multifaceted analysis of its “global” strategy. Relying on datasets obtained through subscription to Ampere Analysis, 1 the article uses Netflix’s library composition in different countries to investigate what the titles in these libraries suggest about streamers’ contribution to the transnational flow of video content. It also juxtaposes evidence derived from comparing Netflix’s library strategy with other major, transnational services to illustrate its distinction. The article queries the extent to which streamers with global reach do and do not replicate the industrial practices of linear video services (broadcast, cable, satellite) and consequently how our theories about transnational cultural influence may require nuance.

The investigation is limited by the inaccessibility of the most useful data for answering these questions: data regarding audience use. There is nevertheless much to learn from a focus on library composition. Indeed, title-level data including country of origin facilitates analyses that provide sophisticated understandings of what these services are and what they offer viewers and is useful for assessing the complementarity of these services along with their widely assumed competition. Is Netflix a global behemoth capable of exerting enormous cultural and market influence in the manner its occasional inclusion among abusive “tech giants” suggests and thus in need of policy intervention? If so, is it cultural or competition policy that is warranted? Does its strong market capitalization and scale eliminate the viability of domestic services in the many markets it services? Or does its scale enable it to function as a complement to domestic services with different priorities (e.g., public service or nation-specific commercial broadcasters) and its library strategy suggest it offers viewers an experience not otherwise available?

This article examines evidence relevant to established theories and persistent presumptions in the field regarding the implications of nationality of ownership of conglomerates, the cultural specificity indicated by titles’ country of production, and preferences for local content. It follows critiques that dominant theories have overstated physical proximity and the relevance of the nation as the primary site of cultural connection in a way that has exaggerated the frame of the nation in the questions we prioritize ( Morley & Robbins, 1995 ; Esser, 2016 ), although country of origin provides a useful categorization for preliminary assessment of streamers’ libraries. Such theories derive from the stronger national organization of predigital distribution technologies and have informed policy and come to be “industry lore” ( Havens, 2014 ) but do not adequately account for the complexity of viewing practices now common, especially with regard to such expanded choice. The inquiry here does not aim to assert flaws with the previous emphasis on proximity and national specificity. Rather, it explores how the industrial context in which these theories were developed was circumscribed by mechanisms and practices that substantively narrowed available content in a manner never accounted for because those mechanisms appeared so natural they obscured counter explanations.

The broader significance of this inquiry relates to how new distribution technologies—and the different business models they enable—challenge existing theoretical frameworks. Within critical cultural studies, decades of norms developed for linear, mostly ad-supported channels produced particular hegemonies of industry operation and hegemonies of scholarly thinking about them. The differences in business model and the lack of publicly accessible viewership data have made it difficult to assess how subscriber-funded video services may deviate from conditions previously theorized. This analysis informs that conversation by exploring streamers’ national libraries to begin to reveal the differences among global streamers and enable assessment of their cultural role.

The ideas that American movies and series dominate the globe and that viewers prefer “proximate” content are among the least contested ideas in critical media studies—despite their apparent contradiction. The assertion that U.S. media enacts cultural imperialism ( Schiller, 1969 ) has been difficult to dislodge, although it has been extensively critiqued ( Tomlinson, 1991 ; Golding & Harris, 1997 ). While there was and remains imbalance in flows, the implications of that imbalance on culture have not been empirically shown.

Rather than being driven by political power and ideological aims, economic logics—with their own ideological concerns—better explain decades of U.S. dominance in audiovisual production and trade. As Hoskins and Mirus (1988) explain, the scale and wealth of the U.S. market created incredible advantages in exporting movies and series. They argue U.S. titles derived less of a “cultural discount” because so many markets had been “acclimatized to Hollywood product,” despite a preference for what Straubhaar (1991) terms “proximate” content. In practice, the need to create titles for an expansive and heterogeneous American mass market led to productions that planed off a lot of cultural specificity, and many of the most popular titles emphasized universal themes such as family dynamics or narrative pleasures such as mystery resolution. Indeed, the “style, values, beliefs, institutions, and behavioral patterns” ( Hoskins & Mirus, 1988 , p. 500) found in U.S. titles were often as foreign to many Americans as to those who viewed them from around the globe. This is not to say that such titles are not imbued with belief structures pervasive in American culture—for example surrounding individualism—but to note we lack detailed scholarship grounded in textual analysis of what characteristics make titles specifically and exclusively “American.” Instead, country of production has been assumed indicative of cultural features.

Cultural and economic concerns have become complicatedly intertwined over time, both in national policy and scholarship regarding audiovisual industries. In many countries, cultural policies such as local content quotas, as well as supports and subsidies for domestic productions or national/public broadcasters, aimed to prevent imported content from dominating or inhibiting local production. Many of these policies were effective through the twentieth century, as countries found a balance that enabled coexistence of domestic and foreign content.

Substantial changes in industrial dynamics that increased the pressure to achieve transnational audience scale have steadily eroded this balance. Satellite channels and their appetite for programming encouraged greater internationalization ( Chalaby, 2005 ) that has since been expanded by multi-territory streaming services. Appeals to governments to increase supports of “cultural industries” on economic grounds have led economic metrics and sector growth to sublimate what were initially cultural policies and led some to prioritize national production output as a metric that has become conflated with delivering effective cultural policy—though such sector supports offer little to ensure productions take on attributes sought by cultural policy such as local identity, character, and cultural diversity ( Lotz & Potter, 2022 ). Sector advocates assume a title produced in Australia—even if an American “runaway” production—inherently delivers Australian cultural value as well as economic value; however, broader industrial changes have disrupted market forces that compelled domestic content as a key strategy of domestic channels to attract the attention of domestic audiences. The weakening of domestic channels (in the face of new advertising tools such as search and social media that have drawn advertiser spending) has resulted in the imagined audience for series and movies to be decreasingly presumed as domestic in the first instance.

The national dynamics of production and circulation ecosystems are also now far more complicated than when most media studies theory was written. Subscribers in countries around the world choose to pay monthly for access to services featuring minimal local content and, as the analysis below indicates, Netflix offers libraries made up of mostly foreign—though not American—content in all markets. This is not to suggest that the concerns about power central in earlier scholarship about ownership and country of origin are invalid, rather that the conditions for the operation of that power have changed in ways that require retheorization that accounts for the more multifaceted dynamics of the 21st century.

Proximity, the idea that “Most audiences seem to prefer television programs that are as close to them as possible in language, ethnic appearance, dress, style, humor, historical reference, and shared topical knowledge” ( Straubhaar, 2007 , p. 26) developed from empirical evidence, but evidence collected at a time when far less channel/program choice existed. With his decades-long trajectory of research, Straubhaar (1991) provided one of the first empirical interventions into ideas about cultural imperialism that assumed country of origin functioned as a strong indicator of cultural effects and dominated early understandings of the implications of the spread of American media content around the world. Straubhaar’s theory of “asymmetrical interdependence” addressed how early importation levels were tied to a first stage of national broadcasting development. By investigating when imported content was scheduled (often outside prime viewing hours), Straubhaar (2007) developed a more nuanced picture than provided by macro level data of raw imports used to argue U.S. hegemony.

Research developed since the height of belief in cultural imperialism identified significant sub-flows of content that could be explained by geo-cultural or cultural-linguistic proximity ( Sinclair et al., 1996 ). The priority of proximity transcended scholarship and even became common in industry discourse. This encouraged a surge in the development of “reality” program formats that could be sold across markets and remade with market specificity in the early 2000s as titles such as Big Brother , Pop Idol , and Weakest Link blanketed the globe ( Waisbord, 2004 ). These formats avoided the level of concern that exports of Dragnet , Dallas , and Baywatch inspired earlier because they enabled “customization,” a deliberate distinction drawn by Moran (against localization) because the shows still aim at national audiences and lack specification to local communities ( Moran, 2009 , p. 157). 2

Like cultural imperialism, the idea that viewers would prefer proximate content is a theory that makes sense on its face. In later work, Straubhaar and La Pastina (2007) extended the concept to include other forms of proximity, such as genres, themes, and values, though these ideas were difficult to test without extensive audience research and pushed more into the psychology of individual preference. In recent work that accounts for streamers—but does not include updated audience research— Straubhaar et al. (2021) back away from proximity and instead suggest evidence of new permutations of asymmetrical interdependence. The scale at which households have adopted—and willingly pay for—streamers services that offer no or negligible domestic content suggests the limits of proximity, or at least that there are other motivations driving viewers. In the pre-multichannel industrial context of limited choice and prioritization on constructing mass audiences, these other motivations would have been difficult to recognize; it would have required audiences to identify a preference for something absent from the market. However, the adoption of streaming services with library strategies quite different from past scheduling norms begins to suggest the existence of these alternative motivations.

Though Straubhaar et al. (2021) engage in speculation about motives based on theories of cosmopolitanism, what is most required to answer these questions is audience research with the qualitative sophistication offered by those who have contributed foundational insights about cultural practices of viewing (e.g., Gray, 1992; Morley, 1986 ; Wood, 2009 ) to assess the complicated cultural roles and ideological processes of the fictional storytelling pervasive among streaming services. In the absence of audience data, this study compares Netflix’s offerings across 17 different national markets to introduce deeper understanding of its library composition and to illustrate how simple categorization of it as “American” and similar to other streaming services offered by American companies leads to facile understanding. Qualitative interviews and complex multi-method approaches are needed to theorize the behavior of viewers who choose streaming services, work that remains rare given its costs and challenges. Until such studies emerge, however, we can develop more comprehensive accounts of the differences between the current industrial context and the context in place when foundational theory was established. Inspired by the insights produced by Straubhaar’s examination of scheduling, we conduct systematic analysis of Netflix libraries.

Twentieth-century television and distribution technologies—the context in which most communication and media studies theories about the operation of “mass storytelling” in culture were built—offered viewers the metaphorical tip of the iceberg in terms of the range of stories perceived as commercially viable. Most programs were designed to attract the most attention—foremost in their nation of production—but by the 1990s, the need for U.S. content to be accessible and desired by viewers around the globe also provided a guiding industrial logic for what was made for U.S. audiences. Viewer choice was constrained, though not strongly perceived as such because the condition of channels selecting programs and making them available at particular times was simply “normal.” Though cable and satellite introduced more choice through more channels, most programming on those channels was merely a reairing of series made for ad-supported linear channels or movies made for theatrical release.

Twenty-first-century video distribution technologies have revealed much more of the storytelling iceberg. Internet distribution has enabled direct-to-consumer, subscriber-funded, on-demand video services that access different commercial strategies and utilize different metrics of success ( Lotz, 2022 ). As a result, they have expanded the content fields available to the consumers who choose and can afford to access them.

In order to investigate the similarity and difference across Netflix libraries, this study uses title-level library data captured by Ampere Analysis, the leading commercial data analytics company in the transnational streaming sector. Knowing what people watch would be especially valuable, but library data allows us to appreciate what these services offer, how the offerings of the services differ, and how those offerings compare with linear, ad-supported services. Moreover, Netflix uses vast amounts of behavioral data in its selection of titles for both commissioning and licensing. 3 Thus, at this established stage of Netflix’s global distribution, it is reasonable to expect that Netflix curates its libraries in response to insight about what is watched. To be clear, this analysis does not argue library composition provides accurate information about viewing differences across nations, but it is the case that the service has proprietary access to substantially more detailed information about viewer behavior than has ever been the case. As Cunningham and Craig (2019) identify, the company developed from a “tech” mindset that foregrounds data-based decision making over the “instinct” long claimed central to television and film making in contexts where individual-specific behavior data has never been available.

Analyzing Netflix libraries can add to our understanding of how transnational streamers blend local and global features in new and old ways. Netflix reaches subscribers in more than 190 countries and thus is generally regarded as “globally” available, although its rates of household penetration vary significantly by nation. It has only released data about subscribers at a “regional” level: At year end 2021, Netflix recorded 75.2 million paying subscribers in UCAN (United States and Canada), 74 million in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), 39.9 million in LATAM (Latin America), and 32.6 million in APAC (Asia Pacific) ( Netflix Annual Report 2021 , pp. 21–22). Subscription estimates from data analytics companies indicate Netflix is a niche service (subscribed to by fewer than a quarter of households) in most countries. But it is arguably a mass market product in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada where roughly half of homes subscribe. 4

On the one hand, Netflix is a single entity. Much about it is consistent across its transnational reach. On the other hand, Netflix is varied in ways that many do not realize. For example, Wayne (2020) identifies localization of the user interface in Israel with both Hebrew language and right to left orientation of the interface—a localization strategy common in many markets, and Netflix has offered a lower priced mobile-only subscription in some markets, particularly in India to addresses two characteristics of that context: (a) that Netflix’s standard price is high relative to market norms and (b) that video consumption in India predominantly occurs on mobile devices ( Ramachandran, 2019 ). But another significant way it varies is by offering different libraries of content in different countries.

The analysis here focuses on 17 different Netflix national libraries. These 17 include many of the countries estimated to have the most subscribers and account for the experience of roughly 80% of Netflix subscribers globally. The focus was also demarcated based on a limited piece of viewing data in which Netflix released lists of the 10 most-viewed titles during 2019 in these 17 different countries. 5 The library data was collected in February 2021 unless otherwise noted. 6

Figure 1 shows the total number of titles in each of the 17 libraries in 2021 as well as the 2016 title count for the 13 libraries that existed at that time. By 2021, the 17 libraries are relatively similar in size, though there were larger differences five years earlier. 7 Note also that despite the similarity in library size, there are differences in the composition of libraries—a topic we consider in more detail below.

Number of titles in Netflix libraries over time: 2016 and 2021.

Country of origin

Given the dominant role of Hollywood in producing video content found throughout the world, we examined the proportion of U.S.-produced content in the different libraries. Figure 2 illustrates that U.S. produced content does not account for the majority of titles in any of the libraries, including the United States’ library, and ranges from 36% to 44% of titles in each library. This is a notable finding. Our analysis of other global streamers’ libraries shows a much greater emphasis on U.S. content: Amazon Prime Video 48%, HBOMax 74%, AppleTV+ 91%, and Disney+ 92%. 8 Not only does Netflix operate with a strategy that is not dominated by U.S. productions across its many libraries, it also offers a smaller proportion of U.S. content than other global U.S.-based streamers.

Percentage of national library produced in United States.

Netflix libraries are not overwhelming composed of American titles, but they are also not particularly local. Rather, individual libraries contain an average of 7.7% domestic titles across the 17 libraries (and this falls to 3.8% if the three outlier libraries discussed below are excluded). The Netflix United States and Netflix Japan libraries have uncommonly high levels of domestically produced titles—39% and 24%, respectively—followed by South Korea (14%), India (13%), and the UK (8%). But domestic content accounts for just a small percentage of titles in Taiwan, Italy, and Colombia, which is more typical of the service. 9 (Looking outside our sample, is it also the case in most countries.) Percentage of domestic titles is a somewhat difficult indicator to make sense of because streamers’ offering of a library is so different than the schedules linear services have offered; and there is not consistent and comprehensive data about this aspect of linear services. We can nevertheless put these results into what may be a more meaningful context. On average, 3.8% of a library amounts to roughly 200 titles. This is not an insignificant number, though it likely is more meaningful when compared to other streamers in a specific market (see Lobato and Scarlata, 2019 ). To be certain, sorting productions by country of origin is a limited point of analysis. It does not tell us if a title is at all culturally ‘of’ the place it is produced. In other analyses we have found some Netflix commissions to be significantly grounded with cultural specificity (place-based), yet more often they rely only on banal signifiers that locate the setting without cultural detail (placed), and in other cases produce stories devoid of cultural or geographic indicators (placeless) ( Lotz and Potter, 2022 ; see chapters in Lotz and Lobato, 2023 ). Systematic textual analysis is needed to investigate the extent to which domestic titles indicate cultural specificity but cannot be validly performed with a corpus of titles as expansive as a national library.

Another way to assess national origin of the libraries is to evaluate the countries that are the source of the titles in the 17 countries’ libraries. Table 1 presents the top ten countries that source the 17 libraries and the average percentage of titles they account for. Only eight of the 17 countries that are part of the library analysis rank among top ten sources; titles from China, a country in which Netflix does not offer service, account for just over 2% of titles, while Egypt is just under 2%. Both China and Egypt produce content for substantial audiences, China in terms of population and Egypt as a major production hub in its region. Note also that the countries that provide the most titles in Table 1 are not those generally perceived as dominant in past trade. 10 Steemers (2004) cites data produced in 2001 indicating the United States accounted for 75% of the value produced by exporting television, the UK 10%, and Australia and France 1.2% each, leaving 12% accrued by the rest of the world. This is not a perfect comparison to the library titles, but it is indicative of the dynamics of the linear era and how strongly the U.S. dominated trade.

Source country of titles in Netflix library, based on average composition of 17 national Netflix libraries

In sum, Netflix libraries aren’t overwhelmingly composed of only U.S.-produced titles. The U.S. accounts for more content than other countries—typically around 40% of titles—but the remaining 60% is sourced from 80 different countries; this is very different from other U.S.-based services (Disney+; Apple TV+). Even so, Netflix offers significant domestic content in only a few countries (United States, Japan, South Korea, India, and UK).

Library composition

To investigate more deeply the extent to which there is cross-national variation in the titles included in Netflix libraries we queried the percentage of titles held in common in the 16 non-U.S. libraries relative to those in the U.S. library. As Figure 3 indicates, there is significant commonality. Roughly 60–80% of the titles in non-U.S. libraries also appear in the U.S. library. But what about the 20–40% not common across the libraries?

Percentage of common titles in each library and US library.

To investigate the similarities across libraries in a more detailed way, we compared titles in each of the 17 libraries with the others to identify the proportion of titles held in common. Results are illustrated in Figure 4 , in which darker shades reflect higher levels of overlap. 11 The country-by-country comparison illustrates how higher levels of library commonality can be identified among three clusters: Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico); Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden); and the Anglosphere (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States) + India . The Asian countries do not form a comparable cluster. This results from the fact that the Asian libraries used in this study, particularly India, Japan, and South Korea, include an uncommonly high number of domestic titles specific to their libraries.

Library commonality matrix.

To better understand the dynamics of Asian libraries, we compared the libraries of all nine Asian countries included in Ampere’s dataset (India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and five others outside our 17-country sample: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand). This additional analysis, illustrated in Figure 5 , reveals that Japan and South Korea feature uncommonly unique libraries, as well as the distinction of the Taiwanese and Indian libraries from what appears to be the “core” Asian cluster. Also notable, in terms of comparing this extended Asian sample with the 17-country matrix in Figure 4 , is the distinction of the core Asian cluster from the Indian library, which shows higher levels of commonality with libraries in the Anglosphere.

Asian library commonality matrix.

A contrast among these three uncommon libraries is that Japanese domestic content is largely exclusive to that country, as is South Korea’s, while the Indian content is more regularly included in other countries’ libraries. Indeed, India ranks second as the source country of most countries’ libraries (as explored in Table 1 ). This explains the greater commonality between the Indian library and other countries’ libraries observed in Figure 4 . It also raises another notable phenomenon, that of the variable extent to which Netflix commissions titles in different countries.

Commissioned titles

Another point of library comparison that shows strong commonality is the balance of “commissioned” versus licensed content. Commissioned titles are those where Netflix funds production costs, which earns it input on development; whereas licensed content is commissioned by other providers, typically television channels, or created for theatrical release. Across the 17 libraries, commissioned titles account for 28% on average. Netflix generally makes its commissioned titles available across all libraries, so variation owes primarily to differences in library size. Commissioned content ranged from 1,404 titles in the Japanese library to 1,520 titles in the Spanish library, with an average of 1,464 titles across the 17 libraries. Commissioned titles are important to analyzing the service’s role in culture because they enable the service to deploy a bespoke content strategy. Commissions are also important to a subscriber-funded service because they are typically exclusive to the service. Netflix commissions substantively more content than other “global” streaming services. (This is discussed further below; see Figure 7 .)

Figure 6 shows the number of domestic commissioned titles in each national library, titles that are commissioned by Netflix and produced in the country of that library. The number of domestic commissioned titles for the United States is far larger than elsewhere, so we use a truncated x -axis to show differences across the remaining countries. The UK, and to a lesser extent Japan, Mexico, and India have more domestic commissioned content than other countries. Commissioned, domestic titles account for 16% of the U.S. library with 911 titles; the UK ranks second at 1.4% with 86 titles. Netflix’s origin as a U.S.-only service contributes some to this imbalance; the percentage of U.S.-sourced titles has decreased as U.S. subscribers have diminished relative to the subscriber base ( Lotz, 2022 ). In February 2021, 61% of all Netflix commissions were produced in the United States (which includes earlier years when the service was more resolutely North American), yet among the commissions that debuted in 2020, only 50% were produced in the United States, illustrating the decline in U.S. production as the balance of subscribers shifted outside UCAN. Still, many of the 17 major Netflix markets have 20–40 domestic commissions, which amounts to less than 1% of their library titles.

Domestic commissioned titles in 17 Netflix libraries, February 2021.

It is important to remember that these 17 libraries are not representative of other Netflix libraries in terms of domestic commissioning: 95% of Netflix commissions are accounted for in these 17 libraries, so other libraries will include very little locally commissioned content. Although Netflix is commissioning a significant number of titles outside the United States, this number is more impressive when aggregated cross-nationally than it is at the national level.

Yet, Netflix clearly differs from other global streamers in the extent of its commissioning of titles outside the United States. Figure 7 shows the number of hours commissioned by different global streaming services. 12 It should be noted that several of the other services launched since 2019 while Netflix’s first commissioned series debuted in 2013. Commissioned content produced in the U.S. accounts for 58% of Amazon commissions, 61% of Netflix commissions, 88% of HBO Max commissions, and 96% of Disney+ commissions. 13 The scale of Netflix’s commissioning—as opposed to those offering a service based on owned intellectual property—is relevant for understanding the variation in country of origin of its library. Services such as Disney+, Paramount+, and HBO Max rely on titles produced in the United States for decades before streaming.

Comparison of total hours commissioned by major streaming services, February 2021.

A key factor in Netflix’s differentiation from other streamers, then, is the extent to which it commissions content in many countries and that it then circulates those titles across its libraries. Netflix’s commissioned titles account for roughly half of the 60% of titles common across the libraries. Netflix’s transnational “circulation” of content is uneven, but arguably more distributed than the case of broadcast or satellite channels. It is unclear whether this strategy will remain specific to Netflix or be adopted by other streaming services as their new title development expands.

The capabilities of multi-territory streaming services have reanimated legacy concerns about cultural imperialism and balance and flow in audiovisual trade. The willingness of a significant number of subscribers to pay to access Netflix—a service with predominantly foreign content and not guided by the aim of building a national audience—challenges the presumed priority on proximity that developed to explain past transnational media flow dynamics. The implications of the evidence derived from Netflix library analysis are complicated and suggest the need for new lines of research about the cultural role of video in the 21st century.

Its clearest contribution is in dismantling false presumptions of uniformity across U.S.-based, multi-territory streaming services and of Netflix as providing chiefly U.S.-produced content. Netflix may be a U.S.-based company, but at this point, its strategy in sourcing and circulating content differs significantly from services with which it is often compared such as Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and HBO Max. Library analysis reveals the scale of its consistency in offering a multi-nationally sourced video service and yet caution is warranted in presuming too much commonality across its national libraries. Claims about “Netflix” must also account for the particularity evident in its operation in Japan, South Korea, and India and in terms of geographic and linguistic clusters, for instance.

There is thus a need for caution in assuming that theory developed for linear, ad-supported services is a reliable starting point for investigating streamers and that the stories the streamers offer have a consistent cultural role across the nations in which they are available. Part of developing the necessarily nuanced understanding of Netflix and its cultural role is recognizing the limits of talking about it as serving 190 countries when it is a most-niche service in most of them. This is important for scholarship that seeks to make claims of its reach, consistency, and influence.

One of the most difficult aspects of theorizing the role of video in culture in the 21st century is the degree to which a multiplicity of niche tastes guides commercial strategies and the extent to which theories built for explaining services driven to create mass audience norms have not engaged with implications of niche video conditions. The ability to build a service by attracting even some subscribers across a base of 190 countries is an endeavor very different from seeking a mass audience within a nation. We mustn’t assume these services aim to be mass services (available in the majority of homes) in every country, as this allows us to be alert to new flows and strategies that emerge and then consider their implications relative to the operation of culture and power. The infrastructure of these services enables greater flexibility than earlier distribution technologies; that flexibility will affect adoption patterns, cultural functions, and likely introduce unexpected “patterns of video flow”. Library analysis can offer us a starting point for understanding, but most theory building requires a broader array of contextualized evidence.

Relatedly, the understanding we develop of the cultural role of these services needs to begin from a specific context. For individuals, “Netflix” only derives its meaning and value relative to other options in their market such as the features of legacy services and the extent to which domestic and other streamers are available. For instance, in order to explain the presence of a library cluster of the “Anglosphere and India” we must begin by appreciating the specificity of India’s context. The cluster may seem surprising, aside from roots in British colonialism, but this is likely a function of Netflix targeting a particular sector of the Indian population and the fact the country has more English speakers than any country but the United States. Even though it offers a discounted, mobile-only pricing plan in India, its library strategy suggests a priority on a cosmopolitan niche that complements the dominant Indian-based streaming services in the market such as ALTBalaji and Eros Now that have libraries of mostly Indian productions.

To consider context in another case, the high take up of Netflix in Australia should not be casually explained by cultural and linguistic proximity alone. Rather, it likely owes as much to Australia’s lack of a competitively priced cable or satellite service. The Australian company Foxtel has held a monopoly on multichannel service and achieved a household penetration rate of only around 25% of Australian households as of 2019, compared to 51% pay-TV-household penetration in the UK ( Ofcom, 2019 , 5), 65% in the United States (down from 90%, Spangler, 2020 ), or 70% in Canada ( CRTC, 2020 ). 14 Streaming was aggressively adopted in Australia because the market lacked the quality of options in comparable countries. Macro-level analysis, as offered in the library analyses above, can establish parameters and trends, but it is necessary to also investigate specific places and account for their particular contextual dynamics as we begin to theorize the cultural implications of streaming services. Theories may need to be tuned to particular configurations of linguistic, economic, technological, and regulatory dimensions rather than be aimed at explaining the cultural role of streaming globally.

Similarly, rather than use the library evidence to presume greater preference for cultural proximity among the Japanese or South Korean markets, we must investigate underlying contextual dynamics. Pertierra and Turner (2012) note that historically 90% of Japanese television content was produced in Japan—a much higher domestic level than typical in much of the world outside of major exporters such as the United States and UK. Netflix's comparatively bespoke approach to the Netflix Japan library may reflect awareness of this.

It is notable that the comparison of libraries illustrated in Figure 6 corresponds to Lotz’s (2021a) hypothesis regarding Netflix operating “consistently” across North and South America, Europe, and Australia and in contrast to the “variable” markets of India, Japan, and South Korea. That analysis was based on very limited viewing data released by Netflix: the ten most-watched titles across the 17 countries assessed here for all of 2019; it identified that India, Japan, and South Korea ranked the lowest in viewing of U.S. produced titles and had the highest level of domestic titles in the most viewed content after the United States. If there is causation in this relationship, it is impossible to know the underlying cause. Netflix may have identified different viewing patterns in these countries and developed library strategies accordingly, or the difference in viewing may be “caused” by the emphasis on domestic content in these libraries. The 2019 viewing data is a very small bit of insight, but given the paucity of available viewing data, it is worth noting that patterns in viewing data are consistent with the more extensive and systematic library analysis developed here.

This article provides an evidence-based frame for building theories about how global streaming services both perpetuate and contrast from expectations of global video services developed for previous technologies and to illustrate the atypicality of Netflix. Constructing such a broad view prevents the article from the specific investigations needed that will cumulatively bring into relief both nationally particular and transnational dimensions of these services. The detailed insight only possible through examination of specific national contexts is crucial to theorizing the cultural implications of these services, implications likely to vary considerably on the basis of pre-existing services, the extent to which global services take bespoke approaches, and the extent of local services and non-U.S., multi-territory services that emerge. Although subscriber-funded, Internet-distributed video services have reconfigured storytelling norms in some ways, they also expand the tyranny of the pursuit of economies of scale that drives media industries and leads to inequitable circulation and commissioning. Implications of the distinctive transnational strategy of a service like Netflix will thus differ among large and small countries, however, we should remain open to considering how the affordances of on-demand libraries and recommendation may make content developed in small nations more accessible and discoverable than under analog norms.

Investigating questions about viewing behavior to refine notions such as proximity requires audience research that is also crucial to advancing thinking in the field. Despite the scale of data associated with digital communication technologies, it is human-level data that is most required to understand emerging cultural dynamics. As others have argued ( Turner, 2019 ), qualitative audience research is desperately needed to begin to build theory suited for the contemporary audiovisual ecosystem.

Data used in this article are proprietary but can be obtained from Ampere Analysis. Scripts used to run the analyses shown are available from the author.

Authors bio

Amanda D. Lotz is Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology where she leads the Transforming Media Industries research program. Her research explores how digital distribution has changed media industries, the content they make, and the implications for culture.

Oliver Eklund is a PhD candidate in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. His research focuses on media industry and policy transformations.

Stuart Soroka is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on political communication, political psychology, and mass media.

Our thanks to research team members Ramon Lobato, Stuart Cunningham, and Alexa Scarlata, members of the Global Internet Television Consortium, and Anna Potter for support and feedback on the development of this article, as well as the blind reviewers and editorial team at the Journal of Communication .

This research relies on funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP190100978).

Ampere Analysis is a data and analytics firm specializing in the SVOD sector. Access to its database of SVOD libraries is available for an annual subscription fee; we generated reports for the services under consideration using parameters facilitated by Ampere. Ampere is used globally by regulators, industry, and researchers.

Within critical media studies, attention increasingly turned to closer examinations of specific national contexts in the late 1990s and early 2000s that uncovered particular industrial, historical, and contextual features that further explained the role of television in culture, especially as satellite television significantly challenged the national boundaries of these industries. These accounts identified storytelling ecosystems that blend domestic and imported content and provided context-based explanations for those practices, although audience research did not figure significantly in these projects (e.g., Kumar, 2010 ; Tinic, 2005 ).

Commissions (so-called Netflix “originals”) are titles that Netflix pays production costs and then functionally owns, while licensed titles, the majority of the current Netflix content, are created by production companies for theatrical distribution or for television channels. Netflix effectively “rents” these titles for a limited period, either for particular national libraries or the service in its entirety.

Analysis based multiplying subscriber estimates by 2.5 (per household composition norms of these countries) and dividing by population figures.

This is not a lot of data to work from, but the consistency of source and time make it the richest information our research team has identified to consider audience viewing relative to the library data. Netflix began releasing daily ten most-watched lists in each market in March 2020; however, these lists cannot be aggregated in any way to make the data meaningful beyond the day. Netflix has subsequently made weekly lists available, but again, only offer rank indication.

When exploring Ampere datasets for this article, we focused the main analysis on the month of February 2021 using Ampere’s ability to filter data by month and year. We filtered to explore titles as “TV Shows” and “Movies.” As such, we did not count each TV Season as a separate title, which is how the data is organized. The coding of country of origin and “commissioned” status is done by Ampere. In a small number of cases, Ampere had not yet coded the primary production country. There was no assigned production country for a few titles. The research team manually added this field for those titles.

We also looked at the data in terms of hours rather than titles. The trends were not different (a heavier or uneven use of series versus movies would cause this) and we decided titles was the most legible way to present the data.

The libraries of these services also vary by country, but much less so, excepting Amazon. Not all services are available in the same countries preventing a precise comparison. Every effort was made to achieve a representative result although our analysis of these other services is provided for context and is not as systematic as the investigation of Netflix. The Amazon Prime Video figure averages Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, South Korea, and the United States—three countries with a major Amazon retail presence and three without—because there are significant differences in the library size of countries that have a strong retail presence. Only U.S. library data was available for HBO Max. The Apple TV+ figure uses Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, and the United States. The Disney+ figure uses Australia, Brazil, Germany, and the United States.

Those familiar with European regulation of content quotas may find this surprising. It should be noted that the AVMSD was in various stages of implementation and enforcement across the EU at the time the data was collected. Many member states’ national versions of the AVMSD catalogue quotas affecting on-demand services allow for the majority of the requirement to be satisfied through ‘European works’. As such, individual European countries can still record low amounts of domestic content. AVMSD definitions count a title as European if it is produced in signatory countries to the  European Convention on Transfrontier Television . Signatories to that convention include the UK, allowing UK content to count as European post-Brexit.

No comprehensive data of global television trade exists publicly, so this assertion is based on discourse rather than empirical data.

The commonality matrix shown in Figure 4 is like a correlation matrix, but the raw material is slightly different. For any given dyad, we take the average of (a) the proportion of titles in library x that also appear in library y , and (b) the proportion of titles in library y that also appear in library x . The resulting value captures the proportion of the two libraries that is shared; and those proportions are illustrated in Figure 4 such that darker shades reflect higher levels of overlap. (See the legend to the right of the graphic.) Countries are then arranged in Figure 4 based on their commonality scores.

Data in Figure 7 also come from Ampere and are based on the hours of commissioned movies and series seasons found in the U.S. library of these services. Except for Paramount+, the measurement is for Feb. 2021. Paramount+ is for the month of March 2021 due to data availability.

Titles only counted once complete and available.

Australia data is based on calculations from Foxtel subscriber data and ABS household data for 2019. The UK figure is Ofcom’s number of pay-TV households in 2019, then divided by total UK households (14.3 million/27.8 million). Pay-TV household penetration in 2019 in Canada is CRTC (2020) information in their supplemental excel files they offer from the Communications Monitoring Report. U.S. figure of 65% is derived from Spangler (2020 ).

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Globalization, Development and the Mass Media

• Colin Sparks - Hong Kong Baptist University, HK
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It examines two main currents of thought. The first: the ways in which the media can be used to effect change and development. It traces the evolution of thinking from attempts to spread 'modernity' by way of using the media through to alternative perspectives based on encouraging participation in development communication.

The second: the elaboration of the theory of media imperialism, the criticisms that it provoked and its replacement as the dominant theory of international communication by globalization.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section History of Global Media

Introduction, navigating the field: resources and journals.

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History of Global Media by Sönke Kunkel LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0243

Inspired by the “global turn” in the humanities and social sciences, the history of global media has developed into a burgeoning interdisciplinary field in recent years and now integrates a wide spectrum of diverse approaches and disciplines, ranging from media and communication studies over political science to history. This article reviews particularly the newer historical scholarship which has seen a major rise of output in recent years and has added much new empirical insight to the field. The focus is especially on works covering the 19th and 20th centuries and it concentrates first on newer works on global telegraphy and news agencies as well as on broader overviews. The second part of this article then maps works on the classic mass media in Africa, Asia, and Latin America: print, radio, and television, with a few glimpses toward cinema. It concludes with a section on the Cold War. Global media history means three things in the context of this article: (1) the history of media as global connectors and forces of globalization that enabled and promoted transnational flows of news, texts, pictures, information, ideas, and lifestyles; (2) the history of mass media in regions beyond the United States and Europe; and (3) the history of the ways in which governments and other historical actors used media to promote cross-national and international connections, messages, and interactions. The underlying understanding here, then, is that writing global media history involves as much a specific perspective on entanglements and interconnections as it is a programmatic effort to decenter existing European and US-centered national historiographies and enrich those with Latin American, African, and Asian experiences. The first studies on global media already appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. Mostly written by social scientists and communication scholars under contract by governments or UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), those works mapped the contemporary media environments of African, Asian, and Latin American countries, but usually also touched on historical developments. Common themes of those works were the media policies of the postcolonial state and the charge of cultural imperialism. Genuinely historical works on global mass media only began appearing from the mid-1980s on and initially focused on the interrelationships between diplomacy and global communications. Since the 2000s the historical study of global media has gradually broadened, and now overlaps considerably with other fields such as imperial history, business history, the history of public diplomacy and propaganda, and even ocean studies, making it a highly dynamic and fast-growing field.

Global media history has many outlets these days, and much recent work is published in journals that do not necessarily specialize in media history, including the Journal of Global History , History and Technology , or journals with a more regional focus. Readers looking for newer works that go beyond the scope of this bibliography may therefore find it most productive to go through academic databases first, many of which have indexed and made searchable journal articles across the disciplines of history and communication studies. There are also a number of specialized journals for media historians, however, and those increasingly treat global perspectives. Among those, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television is one of the oldest, followed by Media History which has been published since the 1990s. Journalism Studies , too, often includes historical pieces. Many media historians are organized in the International Association for Media and History whose blog often features book reviews and news about recent developments in the field, and thus is another useful resource for a first contact with global media history.

The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television . 1980–.

The leading journal on the international and global history of media. Published four times a year, the journal features research articles and a very extensive book review section. Though an emphasis is often on transatlantic media, journal issues usually also feature items of interest for global media historians. Most recommended as a resource.

History and Technology . 1983–.

The focus of this journal is the history of technology, defined in a broad sense. Issues often cover essays on media technologies and mass communications, ranging from the telegraph to the telephone. There is a certain predominance of research articles on technologies in the Western world, but the non-Western world gets a fair share of treatment as well.

International Association for Media and History

The most important professional association for media historians, bringing them together with practitioners under one roof. The Association organizes an international conference every two years, runs a blog, and offers masterclasses for postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students on a regular basis.

Journalism Studies . 2000–.

Featuring up to twelve or more issues a year, this journal is devoted to the study of journalism in all of its aspects and dimensions. Focus is mostly on current issues, but the journal also often features historical pieces. Includes only research articles, no book reviews.

Journal of Global History . 2006–.

The flagship journal for global historians. Publishes research on global history, though media history has not yet drawn much attention within its pages. Still, every now and then issues do include contributions on media history, making the journal a useful starting point for scholars interested in global media history.

Media History . 1993–.

Formerly known as Studies in Newspaper and Periodical History , this interdisciplinary journal covers the broad sweep of media history from the 1500s to today, though the focus is mostly on the 19th and 20th centuries. Often publishes special issues on topics of interest. Also includes a short book review section. One of the leading journals in the field.

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Globalization and the mass media

Matos, C. (2012). Globalization and the mass media. In: Encyclopedia of Globalization. . Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog369

The mass media are today seen as playing a key role in enhancing globalization, and facilitating cultural exchange and multiple flows of information and images between countries through international news broadcasts, television programming, new technologies, film, and music. If before the 1990s mainstream media systems in most countries of the world were relatively national in scope, since then most communications media have become increasingly global, extending their reach beyond the nation-state to conquer audiences worldwide. International flows of information have been assisted by the development of global capitalism, new technologies, and the increasing commercialization of global television, which has occurred as a consequence of the deregulation policies adopted by various countries in Europe and the United States in order to permit the proliferation of cable and satellite channels.

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Globalization in Media: Pros and Cons

Globalization has a great impact on the world transforming social, political, cultural, and economic spheres of life. Innovations in transportation have been complemented by the swift development of communication technologies. The 20th-century arrival of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, film, and television further enhanced a growing consciousness of a rapidly shrinking world. Globalization transforms the economic system of the world bringing new opportunities to less developed countries; it changes cultural and political spheres popularizing democratic values and principles and promulgating the western style of life. Globalization in the media sphere is influenced by changes in political and cultural spheres bringing new economic opportunities and financial capitals to media giants. These needs lead to digitalization, consolidation, and deregulation of the media environment around the globe.

Far-reaching changes are occurring in the social, economic, and political environments, affecting the strategies, structure, and management of media business. The notion of strategic alliances in media incorporates the need for considering the current economic context affecting the firm. Media companies use strategic alliances as one of the main tactics to compete in the global media market. Need to collaborate caused by changes occurring in the social, economic, and political environments. Strategic alliances allow media companies like AOL to meet new economic and legal challenges (MacGillivray 43). Increased use of public transportation systems may reduce the audiences of in-car radio and outdoor advertising. Media companies are interested in reaching the large percentage of the population that is English and Spanish speaking will need to develop new strategies (Emling 1). This factor could be interpreted as a strength but the globalization process and changing international relations show that cultural and social values become opportunities rather than strategies for global steel companies. A solid understanding of cultural preferences is important for any company that markets such products internationally. Media companies leverage superior cultural understanding to compete effectively with large foreign firms. It is possible to say that it has an advantage drawing from tradition. In recent years many people are concern about their health and the quality of water they use. The industry structure and market position of media companies suggest that the threat of entry is low (Osterhammel and Petersson 65).

Consolidation in the media industry is a direct result of new economic and cultural relations. The economic environment in America and Europe is very favorable creating enormous opportunities to increase sales and profitability. National and regional economic health and growth have become increasingly dependent upon export sales as an engine of growth and as a source of the foreign exchange necessary for the import of goods and services. In the media sector, collaborations and strategic alliances allow companies to effectively compete in today’s turbulent business environment. The future of Time Warner Inc lies in its ability to stand fast against foreign competition and to develop the goods and services that will be in demand in the twenty-first century (Osterhammel and Petersson 65). Emerging from great difficulties and embarking on an ambitious program to create products that will revolutionize entire industries, Time Warner Inc wastes no time in taking the steps necessary to seize its future. The strategy at Time Warner Inc was to develop known technologies into viable commercial products that could deliver value to customers. Thus Time Warner Inc was prepared to commence work on a project that would enhance its competitive advantage by establishing it as an industry leader in an emerging field. To be successful given this new set of ground rules, a new way of thinking must be instilled among all levels of management (Time Warner Inc Home Page 2007). This is no longer a luxury, but a necessity born out of a historically dismal track record. With each failure, the UK media sector becomes increasingly indebted and unable to compete against foreign companies. The executive must be able to create a dynamic management structure with an equal distribution of authority capable of responding to the unique requirements of combined business cultures. A shift from short- to long-term thinking when developing and implementing acquisition strategies is necessary to ensure that strategies are properly implemented before they are abandoned. This requires calculated risk-taking and, most importantly, streamlined channels of communication. The underlying argument presented is that there are significant opportunity costs associated with restructuring (Picard, 61).

Digitalization of media is caused by new technology and the availability of technological innovations in all countries. The attractiveness or the presumed merits of digitalization activity is the assumption that a given technology will enhance the growth potential of the company. Preferably, the goal is to acquire digital technology a complementary business unit with related lines of markets and products that would fit nicely into the firm’s long-term strategic direction, improving the acquiring firm’s overall growth potential and marketability (Osterhammel and Petersson 60). The selection of which company would fit best in the current corporate culture is based on many factors, and it varies from firm to firm. In fact, even firms competing within the same industry segment might have very different acquisition strategies. Media gains sustainable competitive advantage by conceiving new ways of conducting activities, employing new procedures, technologies, inputs, or channels of distribution. Managing the organization is therefore not just about managing functions, but managing linkages between those functions (Picard, 74; Time Warner Inc Home Page 2007).

Deregulation in the media industry is a result of global economic and political changes and weaknesses of international laws. For a modern state, it is difficult to control multinational media corporations and their financial flows. In order to compete in the global market and remain competitive, a media firm may choose to sell off a business unit in order to purge those divisions that exhibit either low growth potential or low relative market shares. As with the case of an acquisition, the desire is to improve the growth potential of a firm and thus its survival in the marketplace. A business unit exhibiting modest or negative cash flow and low growth potential should definitely be a candidate for divestiture. An appropriate strategy may also be to sell off businesses with high relative shares in high-growth markets to provide the necessary funding for investment in existing business units that the firm would rather concentrate its energies on. Of course, one reason for divestiture may simply be that the business unit is too expensive for the firm to fund, requiring too much cash to sustain its rate of growth (Picard 33). This type of business would also be a more attractive acquisition target. The point remains that a major motivating factor for strategic alliance activity is the potential for improved growth. The task, then, is to determine how well corporate acquirers have fared with their acquisition activities, and whether these firms have been better off from these activities (Picard, 83). In other words, how a target firm will perform in the long term and how well its corporate strategy coincides with the strategy of the acquiring company are more important than the acquired firm’s current financial performance. This is not to say that one must only locate an acquisition or alliance target that is on solid footing. Rather, it is more important to internally evaluate a firm’s internal needs and purpose before embarking on a strategy of acquisition. If the acquisition is the vehicle, it must be a structural component of the acquiring firm’s strategy. A business always has the option of expanding either internally through R&D efforts or externally through strategic alliances. If one firm acquires another and the combined entity’s returns cannot be significantly greater than the two separate companies would have been independently, then the acquisition was not based on a sound strategy.

In sum, the information mentioned above shows that globalization processes in the media industry are crucial for success and a strong market position of the media companies. Globalization involves the transfer of resources from the colonized global South in exchange for European manufactures. Developed nations spread their political system and cultural values across the globe. Like all social processes, globalization contains dimensions filled with a range of norms, claims, beliefs, and narratives about the phenomenon itself. However, it is not just rational economics that drives this selection: it helps that media organization tend to be staffed by highly trained people with an interest in new technologies, people who have been selected to embrace and develop new ideas. Of all the functions in a media organization, this is the one that should show the most natural inclination to embrace the new ideas of working within the media alliances can all be effective ways to improve the competitive position of an overall firm. However, any one of these processes must be an integral part of an ongoing corporate strategic plan. In addition, the evaluation process must shift its emphasis away from traditional financial performance criteria toward overall competitive dynamics.

Emling, S. May 4. AOL’s push to rev up Net service faces hurdles. Atlanta Journal- Constitution , 1F, 2002.

MacGillivray, A. Globalization . Carroll & Graf, 2005.

Osterhammel, Jurrgen, and Nieles P. Petersson. Globalization: A Short History . New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Picard, R. The Economics of Financing of Media Companies (Business,  Economics & Legal Studies). Fordham University Press; 1 edition, 2002.

Time Warner Inc Home Page 2007. Web.

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Communication and Glocalization: Media, Culture, and Society in the 21st Century

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The advent of the 21st century ICT revolution has been felt in numerous arenas of social life. One of the main issues in the social sciences concerns the relationship between media-driven globalization and culture or cultures across the world. In cross-cultural communication, sociology, anthropology, and ...

Keywords : culture, glocalization, globalization, digital, media

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8.4: Global Implications of Media and Technology

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Explain the advantages and concerns of media globalization
• Explain the globalization of technology

Technology, and increasingly media, has always driven globalization. In a landmark book, Thomas Friedman (2005), identified several ways in which technology “flattened” the globe and contributed to our global economy. The first edition of The World Is Flat , written in 2005, posits that core economic concepts were changed by personal computing and high-speed Internet. Access to these two technological shifts has allowed core-nation corporations to recruit workers in call centers located in China or India. Using examples like a Midwestern U.S. woman who runs a business from her home via the call centers of Bangalore, India, Friedman warns that this new world order will exist whether core-nation businesses are ready or not, and that in order to keep its key economic role in the world, the United States will need to pay attention to how it prepares workers of the twenty-first century for this dynamic.

Of course not everyone agrees with Friedman’s theory. Many economists pointed out that in reality innovation, economic activity, and population still gather in geographically attractive areas, and they continue to create economic peaks and valleys, which are by no means flattened out to mean equality for all. China’s hugely innovative and powerful cities of Shanghai and Beijing are worlds away from the rural squalor of the country’s poorest denizens.

It is worth noting that Friedman is an economist, not a sociologist. His work focuses on the economic gains and risks this new world order entails. In this section, we will look more closely at how media globalization and technological globalization play out in a sociological perspective. As the names suggest, media globalization is the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas, while technological globalization refers to the cross-cultural development and exchange of technology.

Media Globalization

Lyons (2005) suggests that multinational corporations are the primary vehicle of media globalization, and these corporations control global mass-media content and distribution (Compaine 2005). It is true, when looking at who controls which media outlets, that there are fewer independent news sources as larger and larger conglomerates develop. In the early 2000s, the United States offered about 1,500 newspapers, 2,800 book publishers, plus 6,000 magazines and a whopping 10,000 radio outlets (Bagdikian 2004). By 2019, some of those numbers had changed: There were only 1,000 newspapers, but over 7,000 magazines (note that both newspapers and magazines count as such even if they publish largely online) (BBC 2019). The number of book publishers and radio outlets has generally remained static, which may seem surprising.

On the surface, there is endless opportunity to find diverse media outlets. But the numbers are misleading. Media consolidation is a process in which fewer and fewer owners control the majority of media outlets. This creates an oligopoly in which a few firms dominate the media marketplace. In 1983, a mere 50 corporations owned the bulk of mass-media outlets. Today in the United States just five companies control 90 percent of media outlets (McChesney 1999). Ranked by 2014 company revenue, Comcast is the biggest, followed by the Disney Corporation, Time Warner, CBS, and Viacom (Time.com 2014). What impact does this consolidation have on the type of information to which the U.S. public is exposed? Does media consolidation deprive the public of multiple viewpoints and limit its discourse to the information and opinions shared by a few sources? Why does it matter?

Monopolies matter because less competition typically means consumers are less well served since dissenting opinions or diverse viewpoints are less likely to be found. Media consolidation results in the following dysfunctions. First, consolidated media owes more to its stockholders than to the public. Publicly traded Fortune 500 companies must pay more attention to their profitability and to government regulators than to the public's right to know. The few companies that control most of the media, because they are owned by the power elite, represent the political and social interests of only a small minority. In an oligopoly there are fewer incentives to innovate, improve services, or decrease prices.

While some social scientists predicted that the increase in media forms would create a global village (McLuhan 1964), current research suggests that the public sphere accessing the global village will tend to be rich, Caucasoid, and English-speaking (Jan 2009). As shown by the spring 2011 uprisings throughout the Arab world, technology really does offer a window into the news of the world. For example, here in the United States we saw internet updates of Egyptian events in real time, with people tweeting, posting, and blogging on the ground in Tahrir Square.

Still, there is no question that the exchange of technology from core nations to peripheral and semi-peripheral ones leads to a number of complex issues. For instance, someone using a conflict theorist approach might focus on how much political ideology and cultural colonialism occurs with technological growth. In theory at least, technological innovations are ideology-free; a fiber optic cable is the same in a Muslim country as a secular one, a communist country or a capitalist one. But those who bring technology to less-developed nations—whether they are nongovernment organizations, businesses, or governments—usually have an agenda. A functionalist, in contrast, might focus on the ways technology creates new means to share information about successful crop-growing programs, or on the economic benefits of opening a new market for cell phone use. Either way, cultural and societal assumptions and norms are being delivered along with those high-speed wires.

Cultural and ideological bias are not the only risks of media globalization. In addition to the risk of cultural imperialism and the loss of local culture, other problems come with the benefits of a more interconnected globe. One risk is the potential for censoring by national governments that let in only the information and media they feel serve their message, as is occurring in China. In addition, core nations such as the United States risk the use of international media by criminals to circumvent local laws against socially deviant and dangerous behaviors such as gambling, child pornography, and the sex trade. Offshore or international web sites allow U.S. citizens (and others) to seek out whatever illegal or illicit information they want, from twenty-four hour online gambling sites that do not require proof of age, to sites that sell child pornography. These examples illustrate the societal risks of unfettered information flow.

Big Picture

Authority and the internet: an uncomfortable friendship.

In the United States, the Internet is used to access illegal gambling and pornography sites, as well as to research stocks, crowd-source what car to buy, or keep in touch with childhood friends. Can we allow one or more of those activities, while restricting the rest? And who decides what needs restricting? In a country with democratic principles and an underlying belief in free-market capitalism, the answer is decided in the court system. But globally, the questions––and the governments' responses––are very different.

Other countries take a far more restrictive and directive approach to Internet regulation. China, which is a country with a tight rein on the dissemination of information, has long worked to suppress what it calls “harmful information,” including dissent concerning government politics, dialogue about China’s relationship with Hong Kong, or criticism of the government’s handling of events.

With sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube blocked in China, the nation’s Internet users turn to local media companies for their needs. Even so, the country exerts strong control by identifying and prosecuting some violators of the bans, and undertaking more far-reaching tactics.

The nation blocks the use of certain terms, such as “human rights,” and passes new laws that require people to register with their real names and make it more dangerous to criticize government actions.

In early 2021, Myanmar's military launched a coup against its government. Elected leader Ang San Suu Kyi was arrested, and other top officials were detained or pushed from power. (Suu Kyi had previously spent years under house arrest.) Immediately, citizens launched widespread and persistent protests against the coup. Myanmar's military took immediate steps to quell the protests, including firing at and killing dozens of protesters and storming colleges and hospitals. But first, the government banned Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp in an effort to reduce coordination among protesters and restrain news about the crackdown. The government also arrested reporters, including foreign nationals, who were accused of violating a public order law. Social media companies replied in what ways they could, such as deactivating the accounts of Myanmar's military so that they couldn't share their own messages.

Technological Globalization

Technological globalization is speeded in large part by technological diffusion , the spread of technology across borders. In the last two decades, there has been rapid improvement in the spread of technology to peripheral and semi-peripheral nations, and a 2008 World Bank report discusses both the benefits and ongoing challenges of this diffusion. In general, the report found that technological progress and economic growth rates were linked, and that the rise in technological progress has helped improve the situations of many living in absolute poverty (World Bank 2008). The report recognizes that rural and low-tech products such as corn can benefit from new technological innovations, and that, conversely, technologies like mobile banking can aid those whose rural existence consists of low-tech market vending. In addition, technological advances in areas like mobile phones can lead to competition, lowered prices, and concurrent improvements in related areas such as mobile banking and information sharing.

However, the same patterns of social inequality that create a digital divide in the United States also create digital divides within peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. While the growth of technology use among countries has increased dramatically over the past several decades, the spread of technology within countries is significantly slower among peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. In these countries, far fewer people have the training and skills to take advantage of new technology, let alone access it. Technological access tends to be clustered around urban areas and leaves out vast swaths of peripheral-nation citizens. While the diffusion of information technologies has the potential to resolve many global social problems, it is often the population most in need that is most affected by the digital divide. For example, technology to purify water could save many lives, but the villages in peripheral nations most in need of water purification don’t have access to the technology, the funds to purchase it, or the technological comfort level to introduce it as a solution.

Sociology in the Real World

The mighty cell phone: how mobile phones are impacting sub-saharan africa.

Many of Africa’s poorest countries suffer from a marked lack of infrastructure including poor roads, limited electricity, and minimal access to education and telephones. But while landline use has not changed appreciably during the past ten years, there’s been a fivefold increase in mobile phone access; more than a third of people in Sub-Saharan Africa have the ability to access a mobile phone (Katine 2010). Even more can use a “village phone”—through a shared-phone program created by the Grameen Foundation. With access to mobile phone technology, a host of benefits become available that have the potential to change the dynamics in these poorest nations. Sometimes that change is as simple as being able to make a phone call to neighboring market towns. By finding out which markets have vendors interested in their goods, fishers and farmers can ensure they travel to the market that will serve them best and avoid a wasted trip. Others can use mobile phones and some of the emerging money-sending systems to securely send money to a family member or business partner elsewhere (Katine 2010).

These shared-phone programs are often funded by businesses like Germany’s Vodafone or Britain’s Masbabi, which hope to gain market share in the region. Phone giant Nokia points out that there are 4 billion mobile phone users worldwide—that’s more than twice as many people as have bank accounts—meaning there is ripe opportunity to connect banking companies with people who need their services (ITU Telecom 2009). Not all access is corporate-based, however. Other programs are funded by business organizations that seek to help peripheral nations with tools for innovation and entrepreneurship.

But this wave of innovation and potential business comes with costs. There is, certainly, the risk of cultural imperialism, and the assumption that core nations (and core-nation multinationals) know what is best for those struggling in the world’s poorest communities. Whether well intentioned or not, the vision of a continent of Africans successfully chatting on their iPhone may not be ideal. Like all aspects of global inequity, access to technology in Africa requires more than just foreign investment. There must be a concerted effort to ensure the benefits of technology get to where they are needed most.

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How Globalization and the mass media facilitate culture exchange

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Globalization process has an important place in our lives with its political, economic and cultural consequences. Especially the effects of globalization process on the media are felt more closely both individually and socially. For example, global culture is ac- cused of condemning our world to a single culture through mass media. Those who make this accusation; They draw attention to the fact that English is gradually becoming the language of the world’s communication network, the mother tongue of 320 mil- lion people and the official language of more than 30 states. With the increase in the impact of globalization on media and culture, advertising, consumption patterns, publication contents and in- formation standards are increasingly converging in the world. Cultural globalization is experienced through images and sym- bols. Developments in technology and economic development accelerate the globalization of culture.

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11.4 The Effects of the Internet and Globalization on Popular Culture and Interpersonal Communication

Learning objectives.

• Describe the effects of globalization on culture.
• Identify the possible effects of news migrating to the Internet.
• Define the Internet paradox.

It’s in the name: World Wide Web . The Internet has broken down communication barriers between cultures in a way that could only be dreamed of in earlier generations. Now, almost any news service across the globe can be accessed on the Internet and, with the various translation services available (like Babelfish and Google Translate), be relatively understandable. In addition to the spread of American culture throughout the world, smaller countries are now able to cheaply export culture, news, entertainment, and even propaganda.

The Internet has been a key factor in driving globalization in recent years. Many jobs can now be outsourced entirely via the Internet. Teams of software programmers in India can have a website up and running in very little time, for far less money than it would take to hire American counterparts. Communicating with these teams is now as simple as sending e-mails and instant messages back and forth, and often the most difficult aspect of setting up an international video conference online is figuring out the time difference. Especially for electronic services such as software, outsourcing over the Internet has greatly reduced the cost to develop a professionally coded site.

Electronic Media and the Globalization of Culture

The increase of globalization has been an economic force throughout the last century, but economic interdependency is not its only by-product. At its core, globalization is the lowering of economic and cultural impediments to communication between countries all over the globe. Globalization in the sphere of culture and communication can take the form of access to foreign newspapers (without the difficulty of procuring a printed copy) or, conversely, the ability of people living in previously closed countries to communicate experiences to the outside world relatively cheaply.

TV, especially satellite TV, has been one of the primary ways for American entertainment to reach foreign shores. This trend has been going on for some time now, for example, with the launch of MTV Arabia (Arango, 2008). American popular culture is, and has been, a crucial export.

At the Eisenhower Fellowship Conference in Singapore in 2005, U.S. ambassador Frank Lavin gave a defense of American culture that differed somewhat from previous arguments. It would not be all Starbucks, MTV, or Baywatch , he said, because American culture is more diverse than that. Instead, he said that “America is a nation of immigrants,” and asked, “When Mel Gibson or Jackie Chan come to the United States to produce a movie, whose culture is being exported (Lavin, 2005)?” This idea of a truly globalized culture—one in which content can be distributed as easily as it can be received—now has the potential to be realized through the Internet. While some political and social barriers still remain, from a technological standpoint there is nothing to stop the two-way flow of information and culture across the globe.

China, Globalization, and the Internet

The scarcity of artistic resources, the time lag of transmission to a foreign country, and censorship by the host government are a few of the possible impediments to transmission of entertainment and culture. China provides a valuable example of the ways the Internet has helped to overcome (or highlight) all three of these hurdles.

China, as the world’s most populous country and one of its leading economic powers, has considerable clout when it comes to the Internet. In addition, the country is ruled by a single political party that uses censorship extensively in an effort to maintain control. Because the Internet is an open resource by nature, and because China is an extremely well-connected country—with 22.5 percent (roughly 300 million people, or the population of the entire United States) of the country online as of 2008 (Google, 2010)—China has been a case study in how the Internet makes resistance to globalization increasingly difficult.

Figure 11.7

China has more Internet users than any other country.

On January 21, 2010, Hillary Clinton gave a speech in front of the Newseum in Washington, DC, where she said, “We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas (Ryan & Halper, 2010).” That same month, Google decided it would stop censoring search results on Google.cn, its Chinese-language search engine, as a result of a serious cyber-attack on the company originating in China. In addition, Google stated that if an agreement with the Chinese government could not be reached over the censorship of search results, Google would pull out of China completely. Because Google has complied (albeit uneasily) with the Chinese government in the past, this change in policy was a major reversal.

Withdrawing from one of the largest expanding markets in the world is shocking coming from a company that has been aggressively expanding into foreign markets. This move highlights the fundamental tension between China’s censorship policy and Google’s core values. Google’s company motto, “Don’t be evil,” had long been at odds with its decision to censor search results in China. Google’s compliance with the Chinese government did not help it make inroads into the Chinese Internet search market—although Google held about a quarter of the market in China, most of the search traffic went to the tightly controlled Chinese search engine Baidu. However, Google’s departure from China would be a blow to antigovernment forces in the country. Since Baidu has a closer relationship with the Chinese government, political dissidents tend to use Google’s Gmail, which uses encrypted servers based in the United States. Google’s threat to withdraw from China raises the possibility that globalization could indeed hit roadblocks due to the ways that foreign governments may choose to censor the Internet.

New Media: Internet Convergence and American Society

One only needs to go to CNN’s official Twitter feed and begin to click random faces in the “Following” column to see the effect of media convergence through the Internet. Hundreds of different options abound, many of them individual journalists’ Twitter feeds, and many of those following other journalists. Considering CNN’s motto, “The most trusted name in network news,” its presence on Twitter might seem at odds with providing in-depth, reliable coverage. After all, how in-depth can 140 characters get?

The truth is that many of these traditional media outlets use Twitter not as a communication tool in itself, but as a way to allow viewers to aggregate a large amount of information they may have missed. Instead of visiting multiple home pages to see the day’s top stories from multiple viewpoints, Twitter users only have to check their own Twitter pages to get updates from all the organizations they “follow.” Media conglomerates then use Twitter as part of an overall integration of media outlets; the Twitter feed is there to support the news content, not to report the content itself.

Internet-Only Sources

The threshold was crossed in 2008: The Internet overtook print media as a primary source of information for national and international news in the U.S. Television is still far in the lead, but especially among younger demographics, the Internet is quickly catching up as a way to learn about the day’s news. With 40 percent of the public receiving their news from the Internet (see Figure 11.8 ) (Pew Research Center for the People, 2008), media outlets have been scrambling to set up large presences on the web. Yet one of the most remarkable shifts has been in the establishment of online-only news sources.

Figure 11.8

Americans now receive more national and international news from the Internet than they do from newspapers.

The conventional argument claims that the anonymity and the echo chamber of the Internet undermine worthwhile news reporting, especially for topics that are expensive to report on. The ability of large news organizations to put reporters in the field is one of their most important contributions and (because of its cost) is often one of the first things to be cut back during times of budget problems. However, as the Internet has become a primary news source for more and more people, new media outlets—publications existing entirely online—have begun to appear.

In 2006, two reporters for the Washington Post , John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, left the newspaper to start a politically centered website called Politico. Rather than simply repeating the day’s news in a blog, they were determined to start a journalistically viable news organization on the web. Four years later, the site has over 6,000,000 unique monthly visitors and about a hundred staff members, and there is now a Politico reporter on almost every White House trip (Wolff, 2009).

Far from being a collection of amateurs trying to make it big on the Internet, Politico’s senior White House correspondent is Mike Allen, who previously wrote for The New York Times , Washington Post , and Time . His daily Playbook column appears at around 7 a.m. each morning and is read by much of the politically centered media. The different ways that Politico reaches out to its supporters—blogs, Twitter feeds, regular news articles, and now even a print edition—show how media convergence has even occurred within the Internet itself. The interactive nature of its services and the active comment boards on the site also show how the media have become a two-way street: more of a public forum than a straight news service.

“Live” From New York …

Top-notch political content is not the only medium moving to the Internet, however. Saturday Night Live ( SNL ) has built an entire entertainment model around its broadcast time slot. Every weekend, around 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, someone interrupts a skit, turns toward the camera, shouts “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” and the band starts playing. Yet the show’s sketch comedy style also seems to lend itself to the watch-anytime convenience of the Internet. In fact, the online TV service Hulu carries a full eight episodes of SNL at any given time, with regular 3.5-minute commercial breaks replaced by Hulu-specific minute-long advertisements. The time listed for an SNL episode on Hulu is just over an hour—a full half-hour less than the time it takes to watch it live on Saturday night.

Hulu calls its product “online premium video,” primarily because of its desire to attract not the YouTube amateur, but rather a partnership of large media organizations. Although many networks, like NBC and Comedy Central, stream video on their websites, Hulu builds its business by offering a legal way to see all these shows on the same site; a user can switch from South Park to SNL with a single click, rather than having to move to a different website.

Premium Online Video Content

Hulu’s success points to a high demand among Internet users for a wide variety of content collected and packaged in one easy-to-use interface. Hulu was rated the Website of the Year by the Associated Press (Coyle, 2008) and even received an Emmy nomination for a commercial featuring Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey, the stars of the NBC comedy 30 Rock (Neil, 2009). Hulu’s success has not been the product of the usual dot-com underdog startup, however. Its two parent companies, News Corporation and NBC Universal, are two of the world’s media giants. In many ways, this was a logical step for these companies to take after fighting online video for so long. In December 2005, the video “Lazy Sunday,” an SNL digital short featuring Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell, went viral with over 5,000,000 views on YouTube before February 2006, when NBC demanded that YouTube take down the video (Biggs, 2006). NBC later posted the video on Hulu, where it could sell advertising for it.

Hulu allows users to break out of programming models controlled by broadcast and cable TV providers and choose freely what shows to watch and when to watch them. This seems to work especially well for cult programs that are no longer available on TV. In 2008, the show Arrested Development , which was canceled in 2006 after repeated time slot shifts, was Hulu’s second-most-popular program.

Hulu certainly seems to have leveled the playing field for some shows that have had difficulty finding an audience through traditional means. 30 Rock , much like Arrested Development , suffered from a lack of viewers in its early years. In 2008, New York Magazine described the show as a “fragile suckling that critics coddle but that America never quite warms up to (Sternbergh, 2008).” However, even as 30 Rock shifted time slots mid-season, its viewer base continued to grow through the NBC partner of Hulu. The nontraditional media approach of NBC’s programming culminated in October 2008, when NBC decided to launch the new season of 30 Rock on Hulu a full week before it was broadcast over the airwaves (Wortham, 2008). Hulu’s strategy of providing premium online content seems to have paid off: As of March 2011, Hulu provided 143,673,000 viewing sessions to more than 27 million unique visitors, according to Nielsen (ComScore, 2011).

Unlike other “premium” services, Hulu does not charge for its content; rather, the word premium in its slogan seems to imply that it could charge for content if it wanted to. Other platforms, like Sony’s PlayStation 3, block Hulu for this very reason—Sony’s online store sells the products that Hulu gives away for free. However, Hulu has been considering moving to a paid subscription model that would allow users to access its entire back catalog of shows. Like many other fledgling web enterprises, Hulu seeks to create reliable revenue streams to avoid the fate of many of the companies that folded during the dot-com crash (Sandoval, 2009).

Like Politico, Hulu has packaged professionally produced content into an on-demand web service that can be used without the normal constraints of traditional media. Just as users can comment on Politico articles (and now, on most newspapers’ articles), they can rate Hulu videos, and Hulu will take this into account. Even when users do not produce the content themselves, they still want this same “two-way street” service.

Table 11.2 Top 10 U.S. Online Video Brands, Home and Work

The Role of the Internet in Social Alienation

In the early years, the Internet was stigmatized as a tool for introverts to avoid “real” social interactions, thereby increasing their alienation from society. Yet the Internet was also seen as the potentially great connecting force between cultures all over the world. The idea that something that allowed communication across the globe could breed social alienation seemed counterintuitive. The American Psychological Association (APA) coined this concept the “ Internet paradox .”

Studies like the APA’s “Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being (Kraut, et. al., 1998)?” which came out in 1998, suggested that teens who spent lots of time on the Internet showed much greater rates of self-reported loneliness and other signs of psychological distress. Even though the Internet had been around for a while by 1998, the increasing concern among parents was that teenagers were spending all their time in chat rooms and online. The fact was that teenagers spent much more time on the Internet than adults, due to their increased free time, curiosity, and familiarity with technology.

However, this did not necessarily mean that “kids these days” were antisocial or that the Internet caused depression and loneliness. In his critical analysis “Deconstructing the Internet Paradox,” computer scientist, writer, and PhD recipient from Carnegie Mellon University Joseph M. Newcomer points out that the APA study did not include a control group to adjust for what may be normal “lonely” feelings in teenagers. Again, he suggests that “involvement in any new, self-absorbing activity which has opportunity for failure can increase depression,” seeing Internet use as just another time-consuming hobby, much like learning a musical instrument or playing chess (Newcomer, 2000).

The general concept that teenagers were spending all their time in chat rooms and online forums instead of hanging out with flesh-and-blood friends was not especially new; the same thing had generally been thought of the computer hobbyists who pioneered the esoteric Usenet. However, the concerns were amplified when a wider range of young people began using the Internet, and the trend was especially strong in the younger demographics.

The “Internet Paradox” and Facebook

As they developed, it became quickly apparent that the Internet generation did not suffer from perpetual loneliness as a rule. After all, the generation that was raised on instant messaging invented Facebook and still makes up most of Facebook’s audience. As detailed earlier in the chapter, Facebook began as a service limited to college students—a requirement that practically excluded older participants. As a social tool and as a reflection of the way younger people now connect with each other over the Internet, Facebook has provided a comprehensive model for the Internet’s effect on social skills and especially on education.

A study by the Michigan State University Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media has shown that college-age Facebook users connect with offline friends twice as often as they connect with purely online “friends (Ellison, et. al., 2007).” In fact, 90 percent of the participants in the study reported that high school friends, classmates, and other friends were the top three groups that their Facebook profiles were directed toward.

In 2007, when this study took place, one of Facebook’s most remarkable tools for studying the ways that young people connect was its “networks” feature. Originally, a Facebook user’s network consisted of all the people at his or her college e-mail domain: the “mycollege” portion of “[email protected].” The MSU study, performed in April 2006, just 6 months after Facebook opened its doors to high school students, found that first-year students met new people on Facebook 36 percent more often than seniors did. These freshmen, in April 2006, were not as active on Facebook as high schoolers (Facebook began allowing high schoolers on its site during these students’ first semester in school) (Rosen, 2005). The study concluded that they could “definitively state that there is a positive relationship between certain kinds of Facebook use and the maintenance and creation of social capital (Ellison, et. al., 2007).” In other words, even though the study cannot show whether Facebook use causes or results from social connections, it can say that Facebook plays both an important and a nondestructive role in the forming of social bonds.

Although this study provides a complete and balanced picture of the role that Facebook played for college students in early 2006, there have been many changes in Facebook’s design and in its popularity. In 2006, many of a user’s “friends” were from the same college, and the whole college network might be mapped as a “friend-of-a-friend” web. If users allowed all people within a single network access to their profiles, it would create a voluntary school-wide directory of students. Since a university e-mail address was required for signup, there was a certain level of trust. The results of this Facebook study, still relatively current in terms of showing the Internet’s effects on social capital, show that not only do social networking tools not lead to more isolation, but that they actually have become integral to some types of networking.

However, as Facebook began to grow and as high school and regional networks (such as “New York City” or “Ireland”) were incorporated, users’ networks of friends grew exponentially, and the networking feature became increasingly unwieldy for privacy purposes. In 2009, Facebook discontinued regional networks over concerns that networks consisting of millions of people were “no longer the best way for you to control your privacy (Zuckerberg, 2009).” Where privacy controls once consisted of allowing everyone at one’s college access to specific information, Facebook now allows only three levels: friends, friends of friends, and everyone.

Meetup.com : Meeting Up “IRL”

Of course, not everyone on teenagers’ online friends lists are actually their friends outside of the virtual world. In the parlance of the early days of the Internet, meeting up “IRL” (shorthand for “in real life”) was one of the main reasons that many people got online. This practice was often looked at with suspicion by those not familiar with it, especially because of the anonymity of the Internet. The fear among many was that children would go into chat rooms and agree to meet up in person with a total stranger, and that stranger would turn out to have less-than-friendly motives. This fear led to law enforcement officers posing as underage girls in chat rooms, agreeing to meet for sex with older men (after the men brought up the topic—the other way around could be considered entrapment), and then arresting the men at the agreed-upon meeting spot.

In recent years, however, the Internet has become a hub of activity for all sorts of people. In 2002, Scott Heiferman started Meetup.com based on the “simple idea of using the Internet to get people off the Internet (Heiferman, 2009).” The entire purpose of Meetup.com is not to foster global interaction and collaboration (as is the purpose of something like Usenet,) but rather to allow people to organize locally. There are Meetups for politics (popular during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign), for New Yorkers who own Boston terriers (Fairbanks, 2008), for vegan cooking, for board games, and for practically everything else. Essentially, the service (which charges a small fee to Meetup organizers) separates itself from other social networking sites by encouraging real-life interaction. Whereas a member of a Facebook group may never see or interact with fellow members, Meetup.com actually keeps track of the (self-reported) real-life activity of its groups—ideally, groups with more activity are more desirable to join. However much time these groups spend together on or off the Internet, one group of people undoubtedly has the upper hand when it comes to online interaction: World of Warcraft players.

World of Warcraft : Social Interaction Through Avatars

A writer for Time states the reasons for the massive popularity of online role-playing games quite well: “[My generation’s] assumptions were based on the idea that video games would never grow up. But no genre has worked harder to disprove that maxim than MMORPGs—Massively Multiplayer Online Games (Coates, 2007).” World of Warcraft (WoW , for short) is the most popular MMORPG of all time, with over 11 million subscriptions and counting. The game is inherently social; players must complete “quests” in order to advance in the game, and many of the quests are significantly easier with multiple people. Players often form small, four-to five-person groups in the beginning of the game, but by the end of the game these larger groups (called “raiding parties”) can reach up to 40 players.

In addition, WoW provides a highly developed social networking feature called “guilds.” Players create or join a guild, which they can then use to band with other guilds in order to complete some of the toughest quests. “But once you’ve got a posse, the social dynamic just makes the game more addictive and time-consuming,” writes Clive Thompson for Slate (Thompson, 2005). Although these guilds do occasionally meet up in real life, most of their time together is spent online for hours per day (which amounts to quite a bit of time together), and some of the guild leaders profess to seeing real-life improvements. Joi Ito, an Internet business and investment guru, joined WoW long after he had worked with some of the most successful Internet companies; he says he “definitely (Pinckard, 2006)” learned new lessons about leadership from playing the game. Writer Jane Pinckard, for video game blog 1UP , lists some of Ito’s favorite activities as “looking after newbs [lower-level players] and pleasing the veterans,” which he calls a “delicate balancing act (Pinckard, 2006),” even for an ex-CEO.

Figure 11.9

Guilds often go on “raiding parties”—just one of the many semisocial activities in World of Warcraft .

monsieur paradis – gathering in Kargath before a raid – CC BY-NC 2.0.

With over 12 million subscribers, WoW necessarily breaks the boundaries of previous MMORPGs. The social nature of the game has attracted unprecedented numbers of female players (although men still make up the vast majority of players), and its players cannot easily be pegged as antisocial video game addicts. On the contrary, they may even be called social video game players, judging from the general responses given by players as to why they enjoy the game. This type of play certainly points to a new way of online interaction that may continue to grow in coming years.

Social Interaction on the Internet Among Low-Income Groups

In 2006, the journal Developmental Psychology published a study looking at the educational benefits of the Internet for teenagers in low-income households. It found that “children who used the Internet more had higher grade point averages (GPA) after one year and higher scores after standardized tests of reading achievement after six months than did children who used it less,” and that continuing to use the Internet more as the study went on led to an even greater increase in GPA and standardized test scores in reading (there was no change in mathematics test scores) (Jackson, et. al., 2006).

One of the most interesting aspects of the study’s results is the suggestion that the academic benefits may exclude low-performing children in low-income households. The reason for this, the study suggests, is that children in low-income households likely have a social circle consisting of other children from low-income households who are also unlikely to be connected to the Internet. As a result, after 16 months of Internet usage, only 16 percent of the participants were using e-mail and only 25 percent were using instant messaging services. Another reason researchers suggested was that because “African-American culture is historically an ‘oral culture,’” and 83 percent of the participants were African American, the “impersonal nature of the Internet’s typical communication tools” may have led participants to continue to prefer face-to-face contact. In other words, social interaction on the Internet can only happen if your friends are also on the Internet.

The Way Forward: Communication, Convergence, and Corporations

On February 15, 2010, the firm Compete, which analyzes Internet traffic, reported that Facebook surpassed Google as the No. 1 site to drive traffic toward news and entertainment media on both Yahoo! and MSN (Ingram, 2010). This statistic is a strong indicator that social networks are quickly becoming one of the most effective ways for people to sift through the ever-increasing amount of information on the Internet. It also suggests that people are content to get their news the way they did before the Internet or most other forms of mass media were invented—by word of mouth.

Many companies now use the Internet to leverage word-of-mouth social networking. The expansion of corporations into Facebook has given the service a big publicity boost, which has no doubt contributed to the growth of its user base, which in turn helps the corporations that put marketing efforts into the service. Putting a corporation on Facebook is not without risk; any corporation posting on Facebook runs the risk of being commented on by over 500 million users, and of course there is no way to ensure that those users will say positive things about the corporation. Good or bad, communicating with corporations is now a two-way street.

Key Takeaways

• The Internet has made pop culture transmission a two-way street. The power to influence popular culture no longer lies with the relative few with control over traditional forms of mass media; it is now available to the great mass of people with access to the Internet. As a result, the cross-fertilization of pop culture from around the world has become a commonplace occurrence.
• The Internet’s key difference from traditional media is that it does not operate on a set intervallic time schedule. It is not “periodical” in the sense that it comes out in daily or weekly editions; it is always updated. As a result, many journalists file both “regular” news stories and blog posts that may be updated and that can come at varied intervals as necessary. This allows them to stay up-to-date with breaking news without necessarily sacrificing the next day’s more in-depth story.
• The “Internet paradox” is the hypothesis that although the Internet is a tool for communication, many teenagers who use the Internet lack social interaction and become antisocial and depressed. It has been largely disproved, especially since the Internet has grown so drastically. Many sites, such as Meetup.com or even Facebook, work to allow users to organize for offline events. Other services, like the video game World of Warcraft , serve as an alternate social world.
• Make a list of ways you interact with friends, either in person or on the Internet. Are there particular methods of communication that only exist in person?
• Are there methods that exist on the Internet that would be much more difficult to replicate in person?
• How do these disprove the “Internet paradox” and contribute to the globalization of culture?
• Pick a method of in-person communication and a method of Internet communication, and compare and contrast these using a Venn diagram.

Arango, Tim. “World Falls for American Media, Even as It Sours on America,” New York Times , November 30, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/media/01soft.html .

Biggs, John. “A Video Clip Goes Viral, and a TV Network Wants to Control It,” New York Times , February 20, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/business/media/20youtube.html .

Coates, Ta-Nehisi Paul. “Confessions of a 30-Year-Old Gamer,” Time , January 12, 2007, http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1577502,00.html .

ComScore, “ComScore release March 2011 US Online Video Rankings,” April 12, 2011, http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/4/ comScore_Releases_March_2011_U.S._Online_Video_Rankings .

Coyle, Jake. “On the Net: Hulu Is Web Site of the Year,” Seattle Times , December 19, 2008, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2008539776_aponthenetsiteoftheyear.html .

Ellison, Nicole B. Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14, no. 4 (2007).

Fairbanks, Amanda M. “Funny Thing Happened at the Dog Run,” New York Times , August 23, 2008, cse http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/nyregion/24meetup.html .

Google, “Internet users as percentage of population: China,” February 19, 2010, http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_user_p2&idim=country: CHN&dl=en&hl=en&q=china+internet+users .

Heiferman, Scott. “The Pursuit of Community,” New York Times , September 5, 2009, cse http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/jobs/06boss.html .

Ingram, Mathew. “Facebook Driving More Traffic Than Google,” New York Times , February 15, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2010/02/15/15gigaom-facebook-driving-more-traffic-than-google-42970.html .

Jackson, Linda A. and others, “Does Home Internet Use Influence the Academic Performance of Low-Income Children?” Developmental Psychology 42, no. 3 (2006): 433–434.

Kraut, Robert and others, “Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?” American Psychologist, September 1998, http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1998-10886-001 .

Lavin, Frank. “‘Globalization and Culture’: Remarks by Ambassador Frank Lavin at the Eisenhower Fellowship Conference in Singapore,” U.S. Embassy in Singapore, June 28, 2005, http://singapore.usembassy.gov/062805.html .

Neil, Dan. “‘30 Rock’ Gets a Wink and a Nod From Two Emmy-Nominated Spots,” Los Angeles Times , July 21, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/21/business/fi-ct-neil21 .

Newcomer, Joseph M. “Deconstructing the Internet Paradox,” Ubiquity , Association for Computing Machinery, April 2000, http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=334533 . (Originally published as an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , September 27, 1998.).

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “Internet Overtakes Newspapers as News Outlet,” December 23, 2008, http://people-press.org/report/479/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source .

Pinckard, Jane. “Is World of Warcraft the New Golf?” 1UP.com , February 8, 2006, http://www.1up.com/news/world-warcraft-golf .

Rosen, Ellen. “THE INTERNET; Facebook.com Goes to High School,” New York Times , October 16, 2005, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05EEDA173FF935A25753C1A9639C8B63&scp=5&sq=facebook&st=nyt .

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Thompson, Clive. “An Elf’s Progress: Finally, Online Role-Playing Games That Won’t Destroy Your Life,” Slate , March 7, 2005, http://www.slate.com/id/2114354 .

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Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Essay On Mass Media

500 words essay on mass media.

All kinds of different tools which come in use to help in distributing and circulating information and entertainment to the public come under the term of mass media. In other words, everything including radio, newspapers , cable, television and theatre are parts of mass media. These tools include exchanging opinions and public involvement. Through essay on mass media, we will go through it in detail.

Introduction to Mass Media

In today’s world, mass media embraces internet , cell phones, electronic mail, computers, pagers and satellites. All these new additions function as transmitting information from a single source to multiple receivers.

In other words, they are interactive and work on the person to person formula. Thus, it revolves around the masses i.e. the people. It is true that radio, television, press and cinema are in the spotlight when we talk about mass media.

Nonetheless, the role of pamphlets, books, magazines, posters, billboards, and more also have equal importance if not less. Moreover, the reach of these tools extends to a huge amount of masses living all over the country.

Television, cinema, radio and press are comparatively expensive forms of media which private financial institutions or the Government runs. These tools centre on the idea of mass production and mass distribution.

Therefore, newspapers, television and radio cater to the needs of the mass audience and accommodates their taste. As a result, it will not always be refined or sophisticated. In other words, it displays popular culture.

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The Function of Mass Media

The main function of mass media is to reach out to the masses and provide them with information. In addition to that, it also operates to analyze and observe our surroundings and provide information in the form of news accordingly.

As a result, the masses get constantly updated about not just their own surroundings but also around the world. This way mass media spreads and interprets information. For instance, weather forecasts equip people and farmers to plan ahead.

Similarly, fishermen get updates about the tidal activities from the news. In addition to this, mass media also strives to keep the fabric of our social heritage intact which showcasing our customs, myths and civilization.

Another major product of mass media is advertising. This way people learn about the goods and services in the market. It also spreads social awareness. For instance, anti-smoking campaign, women empowerment, green earth clean earth and more.

Most importantly, with the numerous mediums available in multiple languages, the masses get entertainment in their own language easily. Millions of people get to access a cheap source of relaxation and pass their time. In fact, it also helps to transport momentarily from our ordinary lives to a dream world. Thus, it remains the undisputed leader in reaching out to the masses.

Conclusion of Essay on Mass Media

All in all, while it is an effective tool, we must also keep a check on its consumption. In other words, it has the power to create and destroy. Nonetheless, it is a medium which can bring about a change in the masses. Thus, everyone must utilize and consume it properly.

FAQ on Essay on Mass Media

Question 1: Why is mass media important?

Answer 1: Mass media is essential as it informs, educates and entertains the public. Moreover, it also influences the way we look at the world. In other words, it helps in organizing public opinion.

Question 2: How does mass media affect our lives?

Answer 2: Mass media affects many aspects of human life, which range from the way we vote to our individual views and beliefs. Most importantly, it also helps in debunking false information.

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