Being able to control information is a luxury that many countries cannot afford, but the United States managed to do it so seamlessly that no one seems to notice that the monopoly on telecommunications is borderline authoritarian. Since it's masked under capitalist structures, no one realized that they are being monitored by what seems to be four companies who then dictate the adds you see, those random junk emails you get and ultimately decide what channels are available for certain prices.
An article in The Week, Why is American Internet so slow? introduces the idea that telecommunications in the U.S. are a monopoly that are stifling technological advances specifically in the speed of the internet, but what it forgets to mention is that whoever controls the infrastructure controls the system, in this case, the system is content. If we really think about it, only a handful of companies control internet access, and most of these companies sell packages in which you can get cable and the internet all on one bill. Most people in the U.S., if they are not millennials, still watch an instrumental amount of television, and if only a few companies are providing access to T.V. channels, then only a few channels will actually be offered, which means only certain things will be viewed by everyone on television. For example, everyone has access to reality T.V. and mainstream media news. Reality T.V. has shown to distort the way teens view their own reality and want to act like the dramatized reality T.V. stars in real life. And as I have discussed many times before, mainstream media also distorts reality by advocating "non-baised" half truths. But, if you pay a little extra, then you'll have access to channels such as Comedy Central and HBO where people can watch Trevor Noah or Jhon Oliver deconstruct the news. Some might have access to more documentaries and information about structural deficiencies and not about what salad the Kardashians had that day. The monopoly of infrastructure has created a monopoly on content as well as created a classist system of distributing information.
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AuthorHi! I'm Isabella Grullon. I am a junior journalism major at Ithaca College from the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
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