Globalization and Media

MEDIA

• Plural for medium – a means of conveying

something, such as channel of
communication.
• The word ‘media’ came into popular usage
because a word was needed to talk about a
new social issue.
EVOLUTION OF MEDIA AND
GLOBALIZATION

1. Oral Communication - has been with us at

least 200,000 years.
2. Script – less than 7,000 years.
3. The Printing Press – less than 600 years.
4. Electronic Media – less than 50 years.
5. Digital Media - less than 50 years.
ORAL COMMUNICATION
• Speech is the most overlooked medium in the
histories of globalization.
• Human speech- “the ability to speak”, oldest
and most enduring of all media.
• Language allowed us to cooperate, coordinate,
and share information and knowledge that
leads to the civilization of the world .
– Stored and transmitted important agricultural
information across time as one generation passed on
its knowledge to the next, leading to the creation of
villages and towns.
– It led to markets, trade of goods, and services.
DISADVANTAGE OF LANGUAGE

• Language was essential but imperfect.

1. Distance - It takes elaborate systems to
communicate with language over great
expanses.

2. Time - Language relies on human memory,

which is limited on capacity and not always
perfect.
SCRIPT
• Allowed humans to communicate and share
knowledge and ideas through writing over much
larger spaces and across much longer times.

Early writing systems – began to appear after 3,000

BCE.
• Cave Paintings, Petroglyphs, Hieroglyphs.
• Symbols were carved into clay tablets to keep
account of trade.
• These symbols eventually led to the creation of
alphabets, the scripted letters that represent the
smallest souns of language.
SCRIPT
• Script allowed for the written and permanent
codification of economic, cultural, religious,
and political practice. These codes spread out
over large distances and handed down through
time.
• Great civilizations from Egypt and Greece to
Rome and China were made possible through
script.
• If globalization is considered the economic,
cultural, and political integration of the world,
then script must be considered as an essential
medium.
Disadvantage of Script

• Production and copying of written

documents was slow, cumbersome,
and expensive.
THE PRINTING PRESS

• IT STARTED THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION.

• It transformed markets, businesses, nations
schools, churches, governments, armies, and more.
• With the advent of the printing press, first made
with movable wooden blocks in China and then
with movable metal type by Johannes Gutenberg in
Germany, reading material(Books, Pamphlets,
flyers, etc.) was cheaply made and easily circulated.
Profound Influences of the Printing Press

1. Printing press changed the very nature of

knowledge.
2. Printing press encouraged the challenge of
political and religious authority because of
its ability to circulate competing views.
• Printing press helped foster globalization –
and knowledge of globalization.
Electronic Media
• Usage of telegraph, telephone, radio, film
and television are the usual media collected
under electronic media.
1. Telegraph – machine that can send coded codes
over electrical lines.
- invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in the 1830’s.
• Travel was more efficient and safe since
information about arrivals or delays could be
passed down the line ahead of the rains.
• Corporations and businesses were able to
exchange information about markets and prices.
• Newspapers could report information
instantaneously.
Electronic Media
2. Telephone – has the ability to transmit speech over
distance. It quickly became a globally adopted medium.
- invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.
3. Radio – first conceives a ‘wireless telegraph’ in the late
1890’s.
• By the 1920’s, broadcast stations were ‘on the air’
transmitting music and news.
• Radio quickly became a global medium, reaching distant
regions without the construction of wires or roads.
• World War II, Propaganda services that did battle
worldwide during Cold War, to the so-called ‘death radio’
that helped drive the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda.
• The ability of radio to broadcast over the Internet has
only expanded its global reach.
Electronic Media
4. Film – Silent motion pictures were shown as early as the
1870’s. But as a mass medium, film developed in the
1890’s.
• Films were used to capture powerful narratives that
resonated within and across cultures around the world.
- Avatar, Titanic
5. Television – considered as the most powerful and
pervasive mass medium yet created.
• Television brought together the visual and aural power of
film with the accessibility of radio.
• Marshall McLuhan proclaimed the world a ‘global village’
largely because of television.
Digital Media
• Digital media are most often electronic media that rely
on digital codes.
- Smartphone, Tablet, Computer, etc.
Computer – most significant medium to influence
globalization.
- allows citizens access to any kind of information from
around the world.
- access to information around the globe allows people
to adopt and adapt new practices in music, sports,
education, religion, fashion, cuisine, the arts, and other
areas of culture.
• Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Skype, Google Chat,
etc.
• Blogs, Social media, Twitter, text messaging, and more
allow citizens to communicate among themselves.
 Global Imaginary and Global Village

• Global imaginary refers to the consciousness of

belonging to a global community.
- a consciousness that has emerged in recent
decades with the rapid rise of communication
technologies and the decline of nation-based
political ideologies.
- Coined by Manfred Steger.
 Global Imaginary and Global Village
• Global Village – it is the phenomenon of the
world’s culture shrinking and expanding at the
same time due to pervasive technological advances
that allow for instantaneous sharing of culture.
– coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1964.
• Lewis Mumford – one of Mcluhan’s most
ferocious critic.
• He too hoped for a village-like world of community and
grace.
• However, Mumford watched with dismay as media
technology was used instead for capitalism, militarism,
profit, and power.
 Global Imaginary and Global Village

• As Mcluhan predicted, media and globalization

have connected the world and its people from end
to end so that we can indeed imagine the world as a
village.
• However, the connection, closeness, and
interdependence of the global village have
brought no collective or peace. Instead,
globalization and media are combining to create
the dark, dystopian world that Mumford dreaded.
• Economic, political, and cultural.
 Media and Cultural Globalization
• The media are the primary carriers of culture.
– Newspapers, magazines, movies, advertisements,
television, radio, Internet, etc.
– They produce and display cultural products from pop
songs to top films.
• The media are people.
• These people are active economic agents and aggressive
political lobbyist on matters of culture.
• They market brands aggressively.
• They seek out new markets worldwide for their cultural
products.
• They actively bring about interactions of culture for
beauty, power, and profit.
 Three Outcomes of Cultural Globalization

1. Cultural Differentialism
• Suggests that cultures are different, strong,
and resilient.
• Distinctive cultures will endure, this
outcome suggests, despite globalization and
the global reach of American or Western
cultural forms.
• It can suggest that cultures are destined to
clash as globalization continually brings
them together.
 Three Outcomes of Cultural Globalization

2. Cultural Convergence
• Suggests that globalization will bring about a
growing sameness of cultures.
• A global culture, likely American culture, some
fear, will overtake many local cultures, which will
lose their distinctive characteristics.
• This outcome can suggest ‘cultural imperialism’, in
which the cultures of more developed nations
‘invade’ and take over the cultures of less
developed nations.
• The result, under this outcome, will be a worldwide,
homogenized, Westernized culture.
 Three Outcomes of Cultural Globalization

3. Cultural Hybridity
• Suggests that globalization will bring about
an increasing blending or mixture of cultures.
• Will lead to the creation of new and
surprising cultural forms, from music to food
to fashion.
• This outcome is common, desirable and will
occur so in an era of globalization.
 Media and Cultural Globalization
Glocalization – refers to the increase of frequency of
contact among cultures due to globalization.
- media and globalization are facts of life in local
cultures.
Local Culture – is created and produced daily, drawing
from, adapting, succumbing to, satirizing, rejecting, or
negotiating with the facts, global and local, of the day.
• American Idol – British television show, Pop Idol, which
inspired other Idol shows worldwide.
• Cuban youths listened to black popular music from
Miami radio and television shows during the 1970’s,
later learned of the emerging US rap and hip hop scene,
and eventually developed their own style of Cuban hip
hop.
 Media and Cultural Globalization

• The daily ‘negotiation’ between local culture

and other cultures is key to understanding
globalization, media and culture.
• Globalization allows the intersections of
cultures in ways and amounts unknown to
other eras.
OWARI