Globalisation; something from which big corporations have benefited from; something from which some people as consumers have also benefited from; something far-right political parties rally against. Globalisation has many pros and cons. In my case, like many others, I have benefited from Globalisation but I will also be affected by it.
Right now, I am an EU student. I have lived all my life in a small town fairly near Barcelona called Torelló and studied there until 2015, when I was able to move to the UK and study. In my case, however, Globalisation, not only benefited my studies, but it also allowed me to have an advantage throughout my childhood and possibly my career life. Despite having been born in Spain (more specifically Catalonia), my mother was born and raised in Croydon (London). Because of that, English was my first language throughout my early life (despite my accent) and, although I had to be the personal Google Translator for many, that gave me a great advantage in school and it will probably help me in the future if I decide to work in Spain.
As a broadcast journalism student, I intend to find a career that involves some level of journalistic practice. Besides the fact that I will be able to work in this field because of Globalisation, it will also affect me if I get in. Globalisation empowers those with more capital. It makes easy for big conglomerates to control small organisations affecting the content consumers receive. In terms of journalism or media this can lead to a narrow variety of opinions. I spoke about media and control in a previous post in which I intended to explain how media is used as a reinforcer (in most cases), but what I’m leading to now are the famous techniques of ‘clickbait’, articles praising some product (essentially long text ads) or extremely pandering products targeting a group to create controversy, which will attract people.
The primary purpose of private media firms is to gain the maximum revenue at minimum cost (Lorimer and Scannell, 1994). Because most companies seek to maximise profits they chose stories with attractive and sometimes misleading titles to lure consumers, attracting more traffic to the platform and increasing advertising revenue. An example of this is the Buzzfeed. While not all content from Buzzfeed is bad, it has tried to pander to different groups of people, using controversial topics. Videos such as ‘36 Questions Women Have for Men’, where Buzzfeed throws in stereotypes, many outdated or non-typical from western countries, attempting to pander to as many women as possible, are fairly common among producers in Buzzfeed. Online posts and YouTube videos such as ‘You won’t believe what happened…’ and ‘Only People with Perfect Colour Vision Can see this’ are extremely popular on the Internet, especially on YouTube, where the ‘YouTuber’ can earn money just for clicking on the video.
To conclude, Globalisation has its upsides and downsides. It gives me (and has given me) the chance of getting ahead of the game in some aspects, but, due to its nature, it promotes large transnationals whose objective is to make as much wealth as they possibly can. In terms of the industry I want to get in, this leads to attractive titles designed to lure people in, even if what follows is just a lazy article.
Blom, J.N. and Hansen, K.R., 2015. Click bait: Forward-reference as lure in online news headlines. Journal of Pragmatics, 76, 87-100.
BuzzFeedYellow (2016) 36 Questions Women Have For Men. [YouTube] available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_J0Ng5cUGg [accessed 15 Mar. 2017]
BuzzFeed. (2017). BuzzFeed. [online] Available at: https://www.buzzfeed.com/?country=en-uk [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017].
Servaes, J. and Lie, R., 2003. Media, globalisation and culture: issues and trends: theory. Communicatio: South African Journal of Communication Theory and Research, 29(1_2), 7-23.
‘23 Pictures That Are Too Real If You’ve Ever Had Sex With A Penis’ (Actual article on Buzzfeed listed number 6 on the ‘Trending’ list) (16/03)
I will admit this isn’t needed but it just comes to prove the point we’ve reached to for attention and serves as an example for my argument earlier, of how people want to be controversial and ‘edgy’ for attention.
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