(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Agricultural sector was hit. Small and marginal farmers simply disappeared [As on 2003,
irrigated land in India is about 558,080 sq km]. SEZ swallowed agricultural lands by way
of concretization, site purchases, real estates and urbanization. Multinational agricompanies,
seeds companies rushed in, purchased 1000s acres of land. The land ceiling act
ate mud, thanks to GATT. A family started disintegrating. Exodus from villages to cities
became rampant. Gap between rich and the poor increased. Prostitution will increase
soon. The labour of a marble worker from Rajasthan is purchased by the organizations
killing their aesthetic abilities.
People with skilled artistry are committing suicides as their products do not fetch them a
market. Stainless steel, paper & plastic replaced earthen pots, handicrafts and jute bags.
Forest and wild life protection Act prohibited bear, snakes, ox or camels from being used
for begging. Governments failed to find alternatives before the Act was passed.
Agenda setting of the trans-national media
Australian Fox Media is wooed by the USA to stand by its politico-economic policies;
Most advanced news agencies dictating or at least strongly influencing the news policies
of less developed nations for more than five decades of later part of 20 th century is a
classic instance.
Due to the domination of global media in LDCs, the local advertisers for want of enhanced
profits are rushing towards global media set-ups thus sweeping the advertisement revenue
from the domestic media towards the global partners. This is happening in the form of
repeatedly screening the old, cast-away footages of the productions packaged in
stereotypic and formula based, animation webbed technology, without considering the
necessity or relevance to the local society. Fascinated by these productions, the
cosmopolitan and urban audiences of the LDCs are repeatedly watching such programmes
thereby forcing the sophisticated product companies like confectionaries to advertise for
these programmes. 8 Hence, the economic support for local channels and cable media is
dwindling, weakening the domestic media as well as economic activities. On the other
hand, the global media players are rigid with respect to the host nations threatening their
very sovereignty and bothered only to safeguard the interests of their origin countries.
The Media influences
Benign influences: Today there is emphasis on international Human Rights laws. In India,
in a Malayalam language serial a wife is beaten by her husband and the viewership sores
high to yield top ratings for the channel. Viewers’ attitude could be changed by awareness
of human rights. In another instance, actually a girl committing suicide is doubted
[irrational] by the media without proper investigation, as if it could be a murder and thus
give leads to viewers. Media education of global standards is the need here. It would
support to enhance the benign influences of internationalized media practices in a large
democracy like India. However, the contradiction is that global competition to sustain
media profits also makes media to look towards rising TRPs / circulation which most
stakeholders accept with a pinch of salt as pseudo figures.
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