The world’s corporate media, like all industrial sectors, have seen a drastic contraction in competitieness over the past few decades. Now a couple of mega-corporations rule the roost, diversified into everything from news to entertainment programs to sensie production – often through subsiduaries to preserve the illusion of competiting concerns but still working to certain common strategies and agendas dictated by the inter-connected shareholdings of the Hub corporations and their satellites.

At the Street’s level, news gathering, analysis and distribution has instead fragmented – shifting to small-scale enterprises and citizen journalists who often flout the law and the corporate narrative to bring the truth as they see it to the world. Often they work cooperatively, utilising a “global commons” of instantly shared knowledge and freely available resources. This includes information retrieval not only from cyberspace but also the real world; embedded in everything from webcams and personal digital devices, to orbiting satellites, robots, vehicles, roads, street lamps, buildings, stadia and other public places. Even people themselves have become a part of this collection process. Those with the right cybernetic implants can often relay data and footage on the spot, in real time.

Traditional Western TV channels air side-by-side with unique “personalised” web channels, covering practically any subject or combination of subjects imaginable. These are filtered and customised to the exact tastes and requirements of the individual and are viewable anywhere, at anytime. They can be highly interactive and are often experienced in virtual reality settings, rather than on a screen. Many entertainment programs now have non-linear plotlines allowing the viewer to influence the outcome themselves, or even to become characters – mixing the realms of movie and vid-game.

Mass advertising, too, has undergone a revolution in Western societies. Some of the oldest outdoor media still exist – such as posters, billboards and leaflets – which continue to survive in holographic and other forms. However, online web and televisual product/service information is now accessed almost entirely from on-demand, advanced customer feedback networks. Together these can provide instant information on a highly personalised level, into which will have been imbedded highly targeted marketing and corporate propaganda.