The Impact Of Global Media Flows

Global media flows have changed our past understandings of culture in other countries. As global media flows come in many forms including; news, blogs and social media, it is easy for an individual to form a perception of how a country is and how it should be. However, global media flows allow journalists, bloggers or any individual with internet access the resources to project their own individual opinions and consequently even start a social movement. This is useful as we, the audience rarely have the chance to actually see the countries and their cultures for what they are, “instead what we see is filtered through our own previous experiences, assumptions, beliefs and cultural biases” (Lipson Lawrence and Cranton, 2009, p. 329) and everything

This is seen within Tsikata’s (2014) journal as global media flows have enticed Africa to be a negative place. It is these media exemplifications that “overlook the diverse political, economic, social and cultural experiences of individual African countries” (Tsikata, 2014, p.34). This approach to the African continent being captured by global media flows to disregard the multiplicity of the distinctive nationalities occupying the continent, has “left an enduring legacy of negative press” (Tsikata, 2014, p.38). Tsikata (2014, p.38) also explains how western media is only absorbed in calamity broadcasting of the African continent and lacks consideration for the destructive aura global media flows are portraying on the news. Thereby, the idea to create a consolidated African persona that situates the many republics and cultures in the continent as the term of ‘African’ in relation to identify, is from the effect of Western global media flows and news. Whilst media infrastructure is abundant in the Western world, constructing the media to be an influential source of communication. Meanwhile, many African countries have a shortage in media infrastructure, and as a result “are unable to frame and represent themselves effectively in global media flows” (Tsikata, 2014, p.46). Thus, Tsikata’s (2014) research validates this collective depiction of the African continent to be an outcome of convenience for “Western and other global media to lump together” (Tsikata, 2014, p.45). Thus, this analysis of global media flows proves how the news is failing to broadcast existing dynamic media frames of countries and continents, as stereotyped cultures leave the western countries a poor perception on the already developed world and marginalizing those developing countries to have abandonment and antagonism in mainstream media. Therefore,