Global Media Giants takes an in-depth look at how media corporate power works globally, regionally, and nationally, investigating the ways in which the largest and most powerful media corporations in the world wield power. Case studies examine not only some of the largest media corporations (News Corp., The Microsoft Corporation) in terms of revenues, but also media corporations that hold considerable power within national, regional, or geolinguistic contexts (Televisa, The Bertelsmann Group, Sony Corporation). Each chapter approaches a different corporation through the lens of economy, politics, and culture, giving students and scholars a thoughtful and data-driven guide with which to interrogate contemporary media industry power.

Describes in detail the most recent rapid growth and cross border activities and linkages of an industry of large global media conglomerates.

The emergence of giant media corporations has created a new era in mass communications. The world of media giants--with a focus on the bottom line--makes awareness of business and financial issues critical for everyone in the industry. This timely new edition of a popular and successful textbook introduces basic business concepts, terminology, history, and management theories in the context of contemporary events. It includes up-to-date information on technology and addresses the major problem facing media companies today: How can the news regain profitability in the digital age? Focusing on newspaper, television, and radio companies, Herrick fills his book with real-life examples, interviews with media managers, and case studies. In a time when all the rules are changing because of digital technology, conglomeration, and shifting consumer habits, this text is a vital tool for students and working journalists.

A look at the top 300 most powerful players in world capitalism, who are at the controls of our economic future. Who holds the purse strings to the majority of the world's wealth? There is a new global elite at the controls of our economic future, and here former Project Censored director and media monitoring sociologist Peter Phillips unveils for the general reader just who these players are. The book includes such power players as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, and Warren Buffett. As the number of men with as much wealth as half the world fell from sixty-two to just eight between January 2016 and January 2017, according to Oxfam International, fewer than 200 super-connected asset managers at only 17 asset management firms—each with well over a trillion dollars in assets under management—now represent the financial core of the world's transnational capitalist class. Members of the global power elite are the management—the facilitators—of world capitalism, the firewall protecting the capital investment, growth, and debt collection that keeps the status quo from changing. Each chapter in Giants identifies by name the members of this international club of multi-millionaires, their 17 global financial companies—and including NGOs such as the Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission—and their transnational military protectors, so the reader, for the first time anywhere, can identify who constitutes this network of influence, where the wealth is concentrated, how it suppresses social movements, and how it can be redistributed for maximum systemic change.

Taking a political economy of media approach, this book examines Amazon as a significant actor in the global media landscape. Amazon is mainly conceived in the popular consciousness and media commentary as a corporate body, selling products and services to individual consumers and organisations, but Brevini and Swiatek show that Amazon has become a communication giant that trades in diversified media (its own and others), and exerts a significant influence on global communication, especially through its online services. Further, the authors provide evidence of Amazon's multiple influences on politics, economics, and culture. With its comprehensive and critical overview, this book is ideal for students, scholars, and researchers of media and communication studies and political economy.

This book examines the political-economic dynamics in the development of a leading global Internet giant: Alibaba. As both a prominent example of, as well as providing the basic infrastructure for, China’s outward expansion, Alibaba demonstrates the complex interplay between different state agencies and units of capital in the context of the rise of global China. Hong Shen investigates the development and expansions of Alibaba and discusses how Alibaba has not only become a leader of China’s increasingly globalizing internet but has also increasingly served as a basic infrastructure model for other Chinese companies to go global. Shen also addresses how this process has been constantly shaped and reshaped by complex state-capital interactions along the way. This book shows how different units of capital, both inside and outside of China, have interacted with Alibaba’s developmental strategies and illustrates how different state agencies, both domestic and international, have enabled or constrained the company’s development, especially its global expansion. This book will appeal to students and scholars of critical political economy of media, global media and digital industries, communication, technology and society, and internet studies. It will also be relevant to policy-makers working in the arena of global internet and trade policies.

Google is synonymous with searching, but in this innovative new research volume, Micky Lee explores how the Alphabet Corporation, now the parent company of Google, is more than just a search engine. Using a political economic approach, Lee draws on the concept of networks to investigate the growth of this key media player. The establishment of the parent company, Alphabet, shows the company is expanding to other industries from equity investment to self-driving cars. This book first examines this history of expansion, before delving into the economic, political, and cultural profiles of the corporation. Lee ultimately finds that what makes Google powerful is not one genius idea, but rather networks of people, places, and capital. Alphabet: The Becoming of Google is a compelling dive into the sometimes inscrutable world of Google, ideal for students, scholars, and researchers interested in the fields of digital media studies, the politics and economies of online media, and the history of the internet.