Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Media Hegemonies

      Who remembers turning on the television after school to watch Pokemon on YTV? Do your younger siblings tune in on Treehouse? Is 102.1 The Edge on your car radio? How many of your childhood books are published by Kids Can Press?

I bet you’re wondering what all these have in common, as they all seem different in their content. YTV, Treehouse, 102.1 The Edge, Kids Can Press, and a list of 69 other popular brands of media service providers are all owned by media giant Corus Entertainment. 

This conglomerate of many media organizations is one of the few that run much of Canada’s media sector. This type of ownership is called cross media ownership, where a company of a particular medium owns another similar company of a different type of communication (Fiji). With the money and ability to buy up smaller media firms, the larger firms reduce competition and increase revenue, which repeats the cycle of buy and dominate. In the past several decades, the world is seeing more such merges, where larger firms eat up smaller ones, resulting in a smaller number of much larger firms dominating the media industry (McChesney, p. 2). Now, these media giants are going international to further increase their property. 

Sounds kind of scary, doesn’t it: only ten or less companies feeding you and your entire country of billions of people what they want.

Much controversy has occurred over this topic, such as the reduction of diversity within viewpoints. The Federal Communications Commission, in a research, deemed in a cross media ownership as “unrealistic to expect true diversity from a commonly-owned ... combination” (Pritchard, p. 2). The commission also feared that the owner of such cross media ownership would manipulate news and content broadcasted by its media properties to negatively influence public opinion (Pritchard, p. 2).

It seems logical: each person has their own opinion and view that might be similar to a few others. Companies - media related or not - are still run by groups of individuals, and being individuals, they will have an opinion that will inevitably leak through the channels to thousands of people. With less companies portraying different outlooks, we will be forced to take what they feed us. Watching, reading or listening to the same opinions and views everyday are bound influence the masses. If everyone has similar tastes, then making entertainment that majority will like will definitely be easier and more profitable - killing two birds with one stone, or twice as many people with one movie. So watch out, the media giants might be out to homogenize us (McChesney, p. 3)!

The research by the FCC, mentioned above, was performed during the 2000 United States Presidential election as a chance to see how these merged companies would influence the public. The goal was to see if all the newspaper and television service owned by a single company would endorse or influence voters towards or against a certain candidate. However, the results of the research has deemed that despite having the same owner. Each organization had different endorsements without [possibly] influence from ownership(Pritchard, p.12). 

Concluding from the FCC’s research, the media conglomerates aren’t out to brainwash us. Don’t breathe a sigh of relieve though! The FCC paper did state possibilities of influence that they were unable to determine solidly. Even so, presidential elections do not earn the media giants as much money as your newspaper and television subscriptions and movie tickets. All these companies (non-media related companies too) have one goal: and no, not to provide you with great entertainment, but providing a great entertainment so you will spend - and therefore give them... MONEY! If getting everyone to watch one movie or television show was possible... Heck! Imagine how much money they would save on production costs by creating one instead of twenty movies to satisfy all of us! It sounds like a great money mountain of a plan to me... if I was a media firm’s (slightly evil?) CEO. 
BUT.. being the nice person I am, I'll just remove all the bloody gore in the media in an attempt to make the world a nicer place(Rehumanize...).  Use what power you have and do good stuff with it!  =)

Works Cited

Corus Entertainment Inc. About Corus. Corus Entertainment. 2009. <http://www.corusent.com/home/Corporate/AboutCorus/tabid/1668/Default.aspx> 8, October 2009.

Fiji Government. “Government Policy on Cross-Media Ownership.” Fiji Government Online Portal. 14, September 2005. <http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_5408.shtml> 8, October 2009.

McChesney, Robert. “The New Global Media.” The Nation. 11, November 1999.<http://www.thenation.com/doc/19991129/mcchesney/2> 8, October 2009.

Pritchard, David. Viewpoint Diversity in Cross-Ownership Newspapers and Television Stations: A Study of News Coverage of the 2000 Presidential Campaign. Federal Communications Commission. September 2002. <http://www.fcc.gov/ownership/materials/already-released/viewpoint090002.pdf> 8, October 2009. PDF file. 

Everyone Just Wants Someone to Listen

Media Ecology


The twenty-first century is an era where everything can be in your hands in an instant, anytime, anywhere. How? The advancement of the mobile phones. It has made our lives easier and has become a necessity. It’s portable and accessible almost everywhere so you can connect to friends and family wherever they may be. The phone has become a tiny, all-in-one functional packet. In Asia, you can even pay with your phone. How convenient. Like Neil Postman though, I too wonder whether the mobile phone is really all that great for us.

Innis was afraid a culture would be obsessed with conquest if a medium overemphasized time and space (Postman, 2000). Maybe this medium - the mobile phone - is overemphasizing instantaneous connectivity with everything and everyone. Many may agree cell phones bring the world together immediately and effortlessly. Ironically at the same time, it is disconnecting all of us. Phone calls are so convenient that people no longer feel the need to make physical efforts (travelling) to see each other. Also everyone is so absorbed in texting and calling those who aren’t with them that they ignore the people that are physically right there beside them. 

“...Today is a gift and that is why we call it the present.” 

Think about it - have you really focused on the people around you while having your phone out? Have you made the effort to see your family and friends or did a phone call replace that need? Are we taking this gift for granted and missing out on the moments that make life worth living?

After this post, I hope you’ll put the phone down more often. 

Go outside. Smile, play, and smell the roses.

Listen to the entire world, not just part of it.

Works Cited

Postman, Neil. "The Humanism of Media Ecology." Media Ecology Association. 2000. Media Ecology Association, Web. 20 Sep 2009.

Intro to My Mind

Academic Blogging

Blogs are about personal thoughts, views and opinions - self expression, really. The great thing about them is that that they are not like letters: you don’t have to wait a week or a month to get a reply from a loved one overseas, or worse, three years for the government (a true story from yours truly). You can read what others have to say and their response on your thoughts faster than you can grab a snack from the kitchen, and all in the comfort of your own home (or where ever you happen to be). Most people have personal blogs detailing their adventures in life. I thought blogging was so cool, I decided to make my own in junior high. It was great getting a piece of others’ thoughts on things that, if it weren’t for blogging, would never come up. Unfortunately, being a slow writer (and slow in everything else) I found no time to keep it up.

This time, however, I have to keep going at it. Until, at least, first-year is over. Rehumanizing the World, as you see it, is my academic blog being marked for university. I don’t know how well it will turn out, as I’m not too good at writing (anyone willing to point out grammar mistakes, please do!), nor am I good at putting my thoughts down in a straight line.

I chose this title, Rehumanzing the World, because to me, the more I watch movies, television, and hear the people around me, I feel like the world is becoming increasingly desensitized and cold-hearted. Some of my friends watch so many horror movies that they get used to them and don’t even get scared or grossed out.

To make this entry more like the popular ‘personal’ blog, here is my story of this one incident that made me finally snap, and feel so strongly about the desensitizing effect of media and the need to 'rehumanize':

I watched the movie Gamer two months ago. What made me snap was the serious overdo of unnecessary killing and "inappropriate flaunting" (I'm trying to be nice and toning it down extremely) of bodies. I was so livid with anger I refused to watch most of the movie, ranting the entire way through, and continued to rant long after the movie ended. It didn't help knowing that the rating for Gamer was only 14A. I’m pretty sure most fourteen year olds won't really understand or remember the brief moral at the end (That moral is the only good credit I'm giving it). Of course, not all fourteen year olds will be ignorant like that. Maybe I’m just still bitter from the time my father forbade me from watching The Matrix sequels, simply because the radio announced that some kid shot someone after watching it. The child was expecting the poor guy to jump right back up again like Agent Smith. Sadly, after that I don’t really expect anyone under fifteen to understand much more than the surface.

Medium is the message, right (Playboy)? Well, content plays a role too, and we get influenced by what we choose to watch, read, listen, or do (refer to the idiot killing someone after watching the Matrix). We're using media as the vehicle to communicate violence, hostility and indifference to the masses.  With all the killing, hurting and lack of compassion, I think we need to REHUMANIZE THE WORLD. Yes, by now you’ve probably realized that I made that word up and you won’t find it in the dictionary. However, I think it sums up the idea very well.

Humanize: to (make something) more humane and civilized. (New Oxford American Dictionary)

REHUMANIZING: returning human and civilized characteristics to a society and culture that has lost it.

Whoever agrees that the world needs 'rehumanizing' say, "Aye!"

Whoever doesn't agree, tell me why!  =]


Works Cited

Playboy. “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan.” Playboy Magazine. March 1969. 

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York. HarperCollins. 1994