As globalization faces a retreating trend in the current international context due to geopolitical and economic changes worldwide, discussions are intensifying regarding the sustainability or transformation of Western cultural dominance over global media content production. This dominance has taken on an imperial character over the past three decades, establishing cohesive alliances between Western governmental policies, media, and transnational capitalism. These alliances are inseparable from their encroachments into other domains such as military, environmental, social, and digital spheres.
Within this framework, the book “Global Media Dialogues: Industry, Politics, and Culture,” edited and introduced by researcher Lee Artz, gains significance. It includes studies by various experts discussing the impact of Western capitalist hegemony on global media production that transcends national identities and cultures. The book raises questions about the potential decline of this Western dominance amidst globalization’s fractures and calls for global pluralism, challenging the concentration of media content in the hands of a small elite.
Globalization Under Minority Control:
The concept of globalization has taken precedence over many older frameworks that describe international relations, including perceptions of the relationship between the center and the periphery, which emphasizes power disparities while maintaining an overarching loyalty to national sovereignty and identity. Globalization theories tend to downplay the importance of nation-states; however, there are notable indicators revealing the disintegration of globalization and the failure to apply its principles and foundations, leading to its concentration in the hands of a small group.
One significant indicator is the resurgence of nationalism in the West’s conflict with Russia and China, illustrating the lack of application of globalization principles based on “neoliberalism.” This framework advocates for the proactive reduction of political constraints on global economic activities in finance and trade. The conflict between Western powers (the U.S. and Europe) and Russia over Ukraine exemplifies this: the West’s defense of Ukraine is framed as protecting its national sovereignty, while Russia justified its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as a safeguard for its national security interests.
Additionally, Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president in 2016 and subsequent reciprocal trade protectionism between the U.S. and China caused significant disruptions, heralding a decline in economic globalization. This was exacerbated by Western powers’ efforts to impose scrutiny over China and its ally Russia across various domains, renewing the divide in international relations between the “West” and the “East.”
The concentration of global economic activity also supports the assertion that nation-states have diminished importance. A handful of countries controls this activity, with a minority of transnational corporations holding the reins within those countries. This is underscored by a relatively small group of wealthy individuals who possess an disproportionately large share of global wealth. In 2017, approximately 2,000 multinational companies controlled 65% of the global market value, with North America (the U.S. and Canada) representing 44% and Europe 22%. Multinational corporations in the energy/raw materials and automotive sectors were the most numerous, but finance and electronics firms dominated profitability.
In 2011, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology analyzed 43,060 multinational companies and their equity ownership, revealing a dominant core of 147 companies, mainly banks headquartered in North America, Western Europe, China, and Japan, which together account for 20% of total global operating revenues. These companies possess interlinked stakes and collectively control 40% of global wealth, highlighting the growing influence of investors over ownership.
Media Hegemony:
The ownership and management of media worldwide vary between private capital, which seeks profit, and governments aiming for public non-profit media service. These media serve the interests of their owners in capital accumulation or specific governmental policies, providing information, education, entertainment services, or print and broadcasting sales. National media have played a pivotal role in shaping the identity of the modern nation-state.
As globalization has progressed, media, information, and communication industries have intertwined, especially with the establishment of the physical infrastructure for global communications, such as terrestrial and underwater cables, satellites, satellite delivery systems, wireless networks, and telecommunications stations, including the internet and telephone. This context, coupled with the dominance of transnational corporations over the global economy, has transformed media into one of the avenues for global capital accumulation, leading to the emergence of large, transnational multimedia conglomerates. Through their content representations of lifestyles, they generate a “spillover” effect that fosters continuous demand for goods and services, thereby impacting the growth of consumerism that supports global capitalism.
Furthermore, media bolster ideological foundations by promoting content that increasingly serves the interests of global capitalism. This is achieved by supporting the gradual elimination of national trade barriers on goods and services, enhancing marketing and individualism, and marginalizing or excluding content that does not do so. Media also provide crucial support for the development of a “surveillance society,” offering immediate access to a central body of detailed intelligence information. In this light, media operate as agents of imperialism or dominant capitalist economic classes at both local and international levels.
Global media have also played roles in supporting and globalizing Western liberal policies, including the war on terrorism and proxy wars between Western powers (the U.S., NATO, and the European Union) and Russia and China. Here, the book notes that media supported the American-European alliance in the international system throughout the 20th century. For instance, U.S. military interventions during the Cold War were justified as saving the “free world” from Chinese and Soviet communism at the time.
Integrated Capitalism:
With the confluence of Western neoliberal policies and global media content, global capitalism has become a cohesive and integrated global system, leading to the flow of money, ideas, images, and culture across borders via the electronic media and information technology pathways. These changes occurred under the control and direction of transnational capitalist classes, based on their ownership of key means of production, finance, technology, and media.
In this context, a convergence appeared between global capitalism’s political need for social control and its economic necessity for resource control to accumulate wealth amidst stagnation. This convergence enables it to create political and social stability for global capitalism. To reinforce the influence of capitalism, a global organization known as the International Democratic Union was established, comprising 72 right-wing parties from around the world, 20 of which are in power. Simultaneously, global capitalism has expanded into various sectors worldwide to achieve integration and control, notably in the following ways:
- Military Capitalism: Military accumulation serves as a means to entrench global dominance, intertwining military history with ideological, cultural, and capitalist dimensions. In this context, major financial institutions worldwide have invested billions in the top three American military contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman) amounting to approximately $120 billion, in addition to the $700 billion in annual expenditures from the U.S. government to the military-industrial complex.
- Climate Capitalism: Major renewable and clean energy companies have been established in the United States with the aim of creating new bases for global capital accumulation within a broad neoliberal framework. The declared long-term goal of climate capitalism is to redirect financial flows from the oil and coal sectors to support the environmental modernization of the capitalist production process.
- Digital Capitalism: The media hegemony backed by global capitalism has extended into communication technologies and the digital economy. The U.S. has sought to dominate this sphere to bolster its global power. In this regard, the book highlights what it terms “Platform Imperialism,” referring to a new form of imperialism based on the emergence of digital platforms and their authority in creating, controlling, and distributing media content worldwide. This is exemplified by the rise of internet giants like Meta, Amazon, Google, and Apple, which have created a new form of dominance or a new dynamic of global capitalism. These American digital platforms have become prominent players in this field, operating not only as distributors but also as producers, thereby fundamentally affecting the transformation of the concept of cultural imperialism into platform imperialism.
In conclusion, the book emphasizes that global media content is primarily employed to achieve the interests of the capitalist system and Western neoliberalism across various political, economic, military, environmental, and climate-related domains. The media hegemony that serves the capitalist class emerges from the control of global media tools and channels by a very small elite. This reality calls for more efforts from thinkers and theorists to establish a more democratic system for news and entertainment media accessible to all, especially in light of current changes in the international system and the aspirations of emerging non-Western powers toward cultural, political, and media pluralism in the world.
Source:
Lee Artz, Global Media Dialogues: Industry, Politics, and Culture, 1st Edition, Routledge, 2024.
