Description
Media culture hegemony is a phenomenon which punctuates our daily living in the world today. Media are powerful vehicles of culture, ideology, information and education. To some extent they define people and their cultures. Globalization universalizes some cultural aspects while annihilating others. This results to cultural homogenization, a state whereby Western culture subdues culture from third world nations by exporting of programs, bias in reporting, focusing on negative news, influence through celebrity culture among other aspects. The media play a great role in cultural transmission and influence in and across nations. The developed world media are powerful and their influences transcend space and time. As a result, the impact of the developed world media on some cultural aspects in the developing world is of significance. Media being some of the most powerful agents of change in society have been great catalysts of cultural influence over the decades since the invention of radio and television. The impetus of the impact of influence has been precipitated by the sharing of information in bulks through the internet. Since colonization; developing countries have been unable to fully disentangle themselves from dependence of the West; economically and to some extent culturally. This kind of existence is vividly portrayed by the constructs generated and unleashed through mass media whereby, the West media channels are trendsetters many issues in society. The paper is anchored on critical theory. This paper acknowledges that the cases of cultural influence are many and thus highlights a few. Main focus is on three areas which include: imperialism and dependency, creation of global culture and influence through international media events. The paper foregrounds and advocates for paradigm shift.
