Transnational media corporations play a key role in the globalization process by producing and distributing media content worldwide. They are large, concentrated organizations that are increasingly expanding into new markets to seek profits. This has economic and cultural impacts as local media industries struggle to compete and foreign content influences local cultures. It can also foster interdependence among social groups in different countries who consume similar global media.

1. For many individuals today, life is more interconnected, with greater interdependence on others who are outside of the local vicinity of their town, city or even country. This interdependence is part of ‘globalisation’, a process of increasing global spread of the influence of transportation, of communication and media, of technology and business practices, and of language and culture on daily life. This means individuals can no longer live isolated in their villages, cities and countries cut off from the rest off the world, but rather they are faced with a multitude of connections to the outside world brought about through the above mentioned process (Hesmondhalgh 2007: 215; Croteau & Hoynes 2003: 339). Marshall McLuhan an early writer on globalisation, who theorised that this interconnectedness and interdependence meant that the village or borough was being replaced with a ‘global village’, which would then allow all individuals to have a voice and express them selves. This in turn would encourage participation in society, where by individuals would become “irrevocably involved with, and responsible for each other” (McLuhan cited in Croteau et al 2003: 337). This he believed, was being fuelled by both the change in technology that allowed for rapid transportation that changed the role that physical distance played, and the near instantaneous electronic communication across the world. This change in communication has allowed the values, “images and sounds” of different societies to be seen on mass on the mediums of television, radio and lately on the internet and on portable music and video players (McChesney 2002: 24; Croteau et al 2003: 338). This begs the question, what role has the content producer of these mediums, the media played in the globalisation process? This will be answered by examining the media’s relation to global economics and culture. <br />The content producers of media such as television, radio and so forth, are considerably, and increasingly now transnational organisations, who are attempting to expand into all markets across the globe that are profitable. The media market is dominated by a small group of media companies, who are moving their content production in rapid movements across the globe. This is caused by economic constrains that force media corporations to “expand or die”, which forces these large media to try and capitalize on the potentially untapped markets of foreign countries (McChesney 2002: 23; Zake 2002: 78) . These economic constrains are created by the competition of rival media corporations, and the over developed home market that only allows “incremental expansion” to create profit. A demonstration of the importance of expansion can be seen with in the former CEO of Viacom, Sumner Redstone, when he stated that these corporations are focusing on profitable markets, “which means overseas”. Likewise former chairman of Universal Studios proclaimed that “99 per cent of the success” of media corporations will have been “successful execution offshore” (McChesney 2002: 23-4). The untapped markets often have problems in creating high-quality media content, which is caused by the lack of resources that are needed to support the infrastructure necessary to develop such content ( Croteau et al 2003: 347) . The development of these markets by media corporations means that the market and the corporations are interdependent of one another.<br />During this process, the transnational corporation is becoming more concentrated, which is caused by both mergers between media corporations, and between media corporation and semi-related industries. While the corporations’ distribution networks get wider, they are engaging in conglomeration, where by they merger and cluster different companies of different industries to create mega-corporations of diverse interests (Maksimovic & Phillips 2002: 722; croteau et al 2003: 247). This behaviour from the transnational media corporations has created a centralised and concentrated media market, where the same mega-corporation can own different sub-companies, which produces and distributes their media content for the parent company. Such behaviour is hidden from consumers through the use of brands to create ‘choice‘; where by their local brand may rather be planned and produced in a distant countries (Croteau et al 2003: 347). An example of such mergers, is how there are only 5 major music corporations (Warner, Bertelmann, EMI, Universal and Sony) , who in 2002 distributed 95% of all CDs in music stores in the United Sates. However these music corporations in turn were simply just arms of even larger media mega-corporations (Croteau et al 2003: 344); which has lead to the claims that the global entertainment industry are colluding together as a cartel or oligopoly, much the same as in the oil and automotive industries (McChesney 2002: 23) In such a case of corporate collusion, this would mean there was a interdependence between these corporations.<br />Conglomeration has been only allowed in less restrictive economic markets, which media corporations have played a key role in the creation of such markets. Media corporations, which are not only some of the most prominent transnational mega-corporations, but were the early leaders in creating such large transnational corporations, who also then had to develop and experiment with business practices to fit a global prospective (Baran & Davis 2003: 363). In order to operate, these corporations require unrestrictive access to the global free trade market, and the unrestrained transnational movement of resources and information (Baran et al 2003: 362). This access as been created by the state through the pressure from transnational corporations to engage in the deregulation of their markets, removing the trade barriers that had formerly excluded transnational corporations (McChesney2002: 24; Zanke 2002: 81). For example in New Zealand the government removed the media regulations in a global shift to neo-liberalism of the mid 80s, which meant local producers and media were then unprotected and exposed to influxes of foreign content and media (Zanke 2002: 80). Transnational media corporations as prominent players in the free market system, have advocated neo-liberalism, which opens up countries to interdependence with others.<br />The use of foreign content on a countries local media may cause a global identity, which may be negative for the country’s self identity. The world wide resources of transnational media corporations give them an advantage in the production of media content, which lets them sell their content at a much reduced price. In a neo-liberalist system, in which the focus is on profit, it would make more sense to use the cheaper transnational media content (Croteau et al 2003: 356). The mass culture of transnational corporations tends to emphasize local social differences, where someone in the upper class in one country has more similarities to their parallel in another country (Croteau et al 2003: 369). The results of a study on youth and mass media effects in New Zealand has shown that youth find no significance in the foreignness of overseas made content, but rather the global manufactured popular culture seen as ‘normal’ (Zanke 2003: 78). Likewise other studies have shown how youth do not find significance in the contradiction between the locally held values and beliefs and that of popular culture (Lemish 2002: 128-9). Foreign content may create interdependence among individuals in the same social class in different countries, who may not find the same relevance of self identity to their country. <br />Transnational media corporations are based in wealthy, mostly western countries, this can lead to ‘cultural imperialism’. This is where one powerful group uses their political and economic power to extol and spread the morals and principles of their culture on another weaker group at the weaker’s expense (Tomlinson 1991:3), which can destroy or damage the indigenous traditions and values of other countries (Croteau et al 2003: 355). The United States is mostly the target of such allegations of ‘cultural imperialism’, although it can be claimed against other wealthy and powerful countries (Croteau et al 2003: 355; Hesmondhalgh 2007: 212). However companies based in the United States make up half of the Global media mega-corporations and are the main supporter of neo-liberalism economic theory (McChesney et al 2002: 23; Zanke 2002:81); this means they are the most culturally dominate country (Hesmondhalgh 2007: 212). Their global cultural dominance came about through early heavy investment in media content, in which they further invested in, creating a media market far larger and wealthier than all others. This gives media content creators from the United States, further advantage in the production of media content, which lets them sell their content at a much reduced price overseas (Hesmondhalgh 2007: 213). This cultural production shapes the consumption of the consumers, meaning that American culture will be normalised as the global manufactured popular culture (Zanke 2002:77). This is true not only of Western countries, but of Eastern countries as well, where they can be influenced by music and movies even if they can not read Latin characters or are illiterate (Baran et al 2003:362; Croteau et al 2003:341). This can mean countries may become heavily dependant on the media content from another country, which may damage their naïve culture.<br />Transnational media corporations hoever have been careful not to appear ‘culturally imperialistic’, in which they retain some local culture through ‘cultural hybidity’ theory. This hybridisation of culture is where local and global culture are fused into a new synthesised form of culture (Baran et al 2003: 365), where the desistance between them is compressed by mixing parts of one culture with another, with a theme of interconnectedness rather than cultural conflict that comes with ‘cultural imperialism’ (Croteau 2003: 341; Robertson cited in Lemish 2002: 132). Transnational corporations are careful to tailor their product to local markets, at least superficially, in order to combat local companies willing to use hybridisation in their media content (Croteau et al 2003: 366; Baran et al 2003:365). An example of hybridisation can be seen on the New Zealand children’s television show What Now?, which in 2002 had trouble competing with the imported English show Teletubbies. This led it to be successfully re-versioned as the hybrid culture of a New Zealand show warped around popular imported cartoons (Zanke 2002: 84). Media can engage in hybridisation to appease the values of a society, while still creating content of cultural interconnectedness. <br /> Media corporations are now transnational organisations, no longer tied to a single country, but can connect to other countries and their markets. Likewise media are no longer tied to one industry, while also concentrated to the point they may collude as a global cartel. Media corporations are prominent players in the global free market system, who actively support the global implementation of the system’s business practices, which they helped to develop on a global scale. The foreign content that they create, may make an individuals life more relevant to other people in the same social class in different countries, rather than in their own. Media can show how central they are to globalisation, by how they can also damage the naïve culture of a country by installing a dominate global manufactured popular culture as the norm, although it is possible to create a hybrid culture of global and local culture.<br />Bibliography<br />Croteau, D. and Hoynes, W. (2003) Media in a changing global culture. Media society: Industries, images, and audiences. 3rd edn. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 337-372.<br />Baran, Stanley J. and Davis, Dennis K (2003) Theories of Media Culture and Society in Mass communication theory: foundations, ferment and future. 3rd edn. Beijing, china: Tsinghua University Press, 291-382.<br />Hesmondhalgh, David (2007) Internationalisation, globalisation and cultural imperialism. The cultural industries. 2nd edn. london: sage, 212-239.<br />Lemish, Dafna (2002) Between Here and There: Israeli Children Living Cultural Globalization. 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