Media in History by Jukka Kortti

Author:Jukka Kortti [Kortti, Jukka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, World, General, Science, Social History, Social Science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781352005967
Google: iMiSDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Macmillan International Higher Education
Published: 2019-04-17T16:05:32+00:00

MEDIA AND COMMERCE

While the development of media technologies has enabled globalization, the marketization of media has also been the outcome of globalization. The globalizing media economy has given birth to major media conglomerates, groups of companies that own smaller, national media companies. The media economy has been part of a development in which many institutions – previously under the control of nation states, such as national broadcasting companies – have lost their positions due to the influence of supranational corporations, international currency markets and globalizing mass media and telecommunications.48 This has given rise to fears of the homogenization of content, or media content becoming similar all over the world. To some extent, this has undoubtedly happened. For example, while supply has increased exponentially on television due to digitalization, it has not necessarily diversified to the same extent. This has been seen to be the result of the same supranational television formats being used all over the world.

The ideas of modernization and nationalism, as well as increasing globalization, have developed hand in hand with the expansion of markets and the triumph of capitalism. As shown many times in this book, money and commerce have always been a central part of the inventing, functioning and evolution of media. For instance, the invention of Gutenberg’s press would not have been diffused, at least at that speed, without the money and contacts of the ‘businessman’ Johann Fust. The printing press spread expressly to those European cities which had the financing and the commerce precondition that was needed. This meant individual merchants, but also the trade routes, markets and fairs required.49

The printing business was one of the first branches of industry that was ruled by the firms aiming for a capitalist profit and who, in addition, were able to function in a rather lightly regulated operational environment. The printing press furthered the economy also in the sense that the theories of bankers and tradesmen spread effectively through business education literature (mathematics textbooks, accounting manuals, and guides to business practice). Literature was related to city growth of the time.50 Knowledge became big business in the eighteenth century. One of the publishers of the Encyclopédie, Charles-Joseph Pancoucke (1736–1798), considered the publishing of it as ‘a business matter’ (une affaire d’argnet).51

It is important to remember, however, that the eighteenth-century coffee shops, the precondition for the ideal bourgeois public sphere discussed in the previous chapter, were commercial environments. Besides being a place for sublime discussions on multiple issues, the spaces were predominately meant for business: selling coffee-shop products and services. In that sense, they can be compared to the ‘branded’ platforms provided by the internet.52

As mentioned, the telegraph was of major importance for the development of the stock exchange. Once communication across the Atlantic took only a few minutes, instead of a week, investors and merchants could make easy quick-draw prices. Along with the introduction of the telegraph and the gold standard (1878) the economy became global and grew fast. For traders, it was now fairly easy to supervise the large commerce flows across vast distances.

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