Influence of Media and Power of Blogs

Robert W. McChesney says that the American media system is “spinning out of control,” and by this he means in part that only a few corporations control almost all media. From books to internet content to newspapers to TV and radio, corporations like Time-Warner control a lot of what we see, read, and thus, think. Even reading or viewing material that is meant to be entertaining, such as movies or popular novels, can in my opinion be skewed by the company producing it. These companies, such as Viacomm and Fox, show us what they think is important: we view the entertainment and read the news that they pick and thus end up thinking about the issues they want. The freepress.net chart lends credence to this theory by pointing out just how much certain companies control our media access and what we see and thus, think.

I believe that while it is certainly true that the media is being taken over by a small number of companies, this is not as unremittingly bad as McChesney seems to think. In the age on the internet, especially Web 2.0 (the social media model of web networking and internet presence) , the user or consumer does have some control over what people consume. For example, if my blog becomes popular enough that many read it, it might get picked up by a feed aggregator or a larger blog read by even more people. If that happens, I might manage to cultivate a following who are interested in what I have to say. At that point, simply by writing, I have the ability to influence what people think and in fact to be the media they see and read. Thus, it may be true that several companies control too much media, but they certainly do not control nearly all of it, as I can demonstrate by having my own blog. If people choose to read it, that cannot be controlled by a large corporation--there are simply too many people like me and too many outlets for our expression for that to happen.

Video blogs can add up to the minute content as well as working to promote viewer interest in themselves or other content. As this political blog example shows (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Cn7Et3Suo)

, video blogs, even on possibly divisive topics, have a place on the internet even in this day of media controlled by only a few corporations. As long as that remains the case, I feel McChesney is overreacting. It is actually easier to start a blog than ever before. Early on, when the internet first became popular, AOL (which later merged with Time-Warner) controlled the internet market because it was easy to use, making the vast internet easy to understand for the average consumer, who was brand new to this new and daunting technology. AOL slowly but surely--and then, increasingly quickly--lost its market share as people began to become more conversant with the internet and how it works. Now, more and more people understand the internet and using it to express oneself is easier than ever before. Services like Tumblr and Blogger will give you a blog for free, and professional-quality software is easily and readily available to edit and format it. With such powerful tools available even to elementary schoolers, a whole new generation is growing up entirely able to use the internet. The important thing about this is that they can and will use it for their own ends.

Works Cited

McChesney, Robert W. "Making Media Democratic." Boston Review (Summer, 1998).

"The Big Six." Free Press. Online. Accessed 13 July, 2009 athttp://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main.