Week 3 – Building a Global Media Empire

At first thought, building your own global media empire from scratch sounds like a herculean task that would be virtually impossible to do. Surely it would take millions and millions of dollars in start up costs, not to mention at least a decade of dedicated work to even begin to scratch the surface, right? Wrong!

In this day and age it is possible to start and run your own global media empire from your very own living room! All you need is a small amount of money, creative thinking and a huge drive. So read on to find out about what real world equivalents I would emulate if I were looking to build my own personal media empire.

A media empire is an organization that has a wide reaching audience that it can instantly communicate to through various forms of communication e.g tv, radio, newspapers, magazines or the internet.

Examples that immediately come to mind are News Corporation, Disney, Sony, Facebook and MySpace.

However, the two companies I would emulate are TechCrunch and Mashable. While you may not have heard of these American based companies (yet!), they are both great examples of using social media to build a rapid audiences and turning the popularity of their websites into commercial ventures.

Both companies followed the same simple principles for success: find a platform, identify your niche, grow an audience, use rich media, build your network, work hard and think big! (Brown 2011)

References:

Brown, D 2011, How to Build a Media Empire From Your Bedroom With Just a Laptop, Danny Brown, Retrieved 29^th July 2012, <http://dannybrown.me/2011/08/29/how-to-build-a-media-empire-from-your-bedroom-with-just-a-laptop/>

Mashable 2012, About Us, Mashable, Retrieved 29^th July 2012, <http://mashable.com/about/>

TechCrunch 2012, About TechCrunch, TechCrunch, Retrieved 29^th July 2012, <http://techcrunch.com/about/>

Week 2 – Globalisation & The Environment

Rantanen’s definition of Globalisation, “a process in which worldwide economic, political, cultural and social relations have become increasingly mediated across time and space,” fails to capture an important element, the environment.

Just like economic, cultural and social relations, the environment has also become increasingly mediated across time and space.

The environment is a living and breathing organism that enables us to visibly see the effects of globalization. It could even be argued that the environment is actually nature’s way of giving humanity a report card on the health of our activities.

The ever-expanding global community is greatly impacting on the environment and the physical changes in environmental conditions are not just isolated to the activities taking place in the originating region. The affects are felt right across the globe and our actions are affecting people and places we probably don’t even realize exist.

In relative terms, the realization that the environment is greatly encapsulated in, and effected by globalisation, has only been recently realized. The world is now waking up to this fact and there are now movements underway to examine the implications of globalisation on the environment and what we can do to minimize the damage.

Three Earth Summits have been held since 1992 to address the impact of globalisation on the environment and another one is scheduled to be held in 2012. While progress has been slow, these summits are prime examples of the environment being a key element to globalisation and add weight to my claim that it should be included in Rantanen’s definition.

References:

Sacklax40 2008, Human Impact On The Environment, Slideshare, Retrieved 22^nd July 2012, <http://www.slideshare.net/sacklax40/human-impact-on-the-environment-presentation >

Information Unit on Climate Change 1992, Fact Sheet 201 How policy-makers are responding to global climate change, Centre for International Earth Science Information Network, Retrieved 22^nd July 2012, <http://ciesin.columbia.edu/docs/iucc201/fs201.html>

Earth Summit 2012 2012, Earth Summit 2012, Earth Summit 2012, Retrieved 22^nd July 2012, <http://www.earthsummit2012.org/ >

Rantanen, T 2005, The media and globalization, Sage, London

Week 1 - Globalisation

Globalisation. The modern buzz word that is thrown around by the so called experts as the cause for everything that is wrong in the world. Diminishing global boundaries have introduced a new global killer that we should all run for our lives from.

Globalisation is bad, bad, bad.

Sounds scary right? But is it really that bad? At this point we should probably ask ourselves what globalization is and see if it really is so evil after all.

Put simply, globalisation can be defined as the integration of the world’s cultures enabled through advancements in technology, travel and deregulation, which has created a global community. Doesn’t sound that bad right?

That’s because it’s actually not. But like most things, globalisation is both good and bad.

Social media was the catalyst for a political uprising in Egypt which will hopefully transition the country to a better democracy. This is a positive outcome for a country once ruled by a vicious regime and an example of how globalisation is enabling freedom of speech to those who were once voiceless.

But on the flip side, the ever diminishing boundaries between countries can leave the global community vulnerable when things go wrong as we have seen recently with the Greek economy crashing. 

So there is no doubt that globalisation presents many changes. But it is not the evil monster it is being made out to be. There are always two sides to every story.

References:

RussiaToday 2010, Hartmann: Globalization is killing America, YouTube, Retrieved 15^th July 2012, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap_Qu1g5yPc>

Schoen, J 2012, Europe, US and the world brace for messy impact from Greece, NBC News, Retrieved 15^th July 2012, <http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/16/11733028-europe-us-and-the-world-brace-for-messy-impact-from-greece?lite>

Vargas, J 2012, Spring Awakening How an Egyptian Revolution Began on Facebook, The New York Times, Retrieved 15^th July 2012, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap_Qu1g5yPc> 

Weber, S 2006, How Globalization Went Bad, Foreign Policy, Retrieved 15^th July 2012, <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2006/12/27/how_globalization_went_bad>

Images:

http://connectedincairo.com/2011/06/27/stability-the-generation-gap-and-the-egyptian-uprisings/

http://ntopinion.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/greece-collapse-will-trigger-global.html