Monopoly is more than just a game..

I had never truly sat down and thought about who owns the majority of the media industries, but after reading The New Media Monopoly it shocked me to find out that it's made up of five people. In 1983, fifty corporations controlled our medias and in just twenty years it was downsized to five men. This shocked me because FIVE people have so much power in such a thriving industry. Just one of those men have more money than most people can even fathom. Having control of various medias works to their advantage, which makes them so powerful and rich. The article says they have political power because of the influence media has over people. Politicians spend billions each year just to be featured in mass media, like newspapers, magazines, and TV productions. We as the consumers spend billions just to buy and indulge in these products. Just as these five large corporations, or the “Big Five” have monopolized conventional media, in relation, social media is in danger of being monopolized by several big names, for example, Facebook. Even if you are using other apps like Twitter, or news apps, like TIMES and many others, you have the option to share what you are viewing or posting to Facebook, bringing them more publicity and therefore market cover. Facebook has bought out other Internet sites such as Instagram, a public sharing photos app, and WhatsApp, a free Wi-Fi-based texting app, which has further aided the popularity of Facebook. In the future, I see smaller, independently owned Internet sites being bought out by Facebook. In conclusion, just as the old media has eventually been monopolized by the “Big Five”, a few large Internet corporations are beginning to monopolize social media.