The Contemporary World

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Global Media Cultures

Global Media Cultures

At the end of this module, you are expected to:

1. Analyze how various media drive various forms of global integration;
2. Explain the dynamic between local and global cultural production;
3. Understand the effects of global media.

WHAT IS MEDIA?
The term media comes from the word medium which is defined as channel,
means, or method (Aboga and Agapay, 2017). Media is a generic term for all
human-invented technology that extends the range, speed, or channels of
communication (Griffin, 2012). According to Marcel Danesi, media can also be
tied to what we call mass media, or the media that reach large audiences (as
cited in Aboga and Agapay, 2017). The different forms of media are:

1. Print Media – media consisting of paper and ink, reproduced in a printing

process that is traditionally mechanical. Examples of print media are:
newspaper, books, magazines, comics, brochures.
2. Broadcast Media – media such as radio and television that reach target
audiences using airwaves as the transmission medium. Examples of
broadcast media are: television, radio, satellites, mobile phones,
movies/films.
3. Digital Media – also known as new media, consisting of contents that are
organized and distributed on digital platforms. Examples of digital media
are internet, social media, computers

According to UNESCO (n.d.), media and other information providers play a

central role in information and communication processes. They are one way
of communicating information, although their role is much broader than that.
Media play several roles. They:

 act as channels of information and knowledge through which citizens

communicate with each other and make informed decisions;
 facilitate informed debates between diverse social actors;
 provide us with much of what we learn about the world beyond our
immediate experience;
 are means by which a society learns about itself and builds a sense of
community;
 function as a watchdog of government in all its forms, promoting
transparency in public life and public scrutiny of those with power
through exposing corruption, maladministration and corporate
wrong-doing;

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  are essential facilitators of democratic processes and one of the
guarantors of free and fair elections;
 are a vehicle for cultural expression and cultural cohesion within and
between nations; and
 function as an advocate and social actor in its own right while
respecting pluralistic values.

MEDIA AND GLOBALIZATION

Rapid expansion of global communications can be traced back to the
mechanical advancements of technologies during the 18th/19th centuries,
which began with the invention of the telegraph in 1837, and included the
growth in postal services, cross-border telephone and radio communications,
and the creation of a modern mass circulation press in Europe. Before the
1990s, most mainstream media were national in scope. Since then, most
communication media have become increasingly global. International flows of
information have been assisted by the development of global capitalism, new
technologies and the increasing commercialization of global television, and
which have occurred as a consequence of the deregulation policies adopted by
various countries in Europe and US, paving the way for the proliferation of
cable and satellite channels (Matos, 2013).

Cross-border communication technologies such as the internet, mobile

phones, and satellites have contributed to the deterritorialization of space
over the last decades, and transnational media networks and news services
such as CNN, BBC World News, FoxNews, and AlJazeera have entered and
transformed the media landscape. In a dialectic fashion, these media are
believed both to constitute and to be constituted by globalization,
transforming understandings of time and space (as cited in Olausson, 2011).

In both scholarly work and public debate on globalization, the influence of

media and particularly electronic media on social change is considered to be
of paramount importance. In sociological and cultural analyses of
globalization, media such as satellite television, the Internet, computers,
mobile phones etc. are often thought to be among the primary forces behind
current restructurations of social and cultural geography. Electronic media
facilitate an increased interconnectedness across vast distances and a
temporal flexibility in social interaction (Kaul, 2011).

The media have an important impact on cultural globalization in two mutually

interdependent ways: Firstly, the media provide an extensive transnational
transmission of cultural products and, secondly, they contribute to the
formation of communicative networks and social structures. The rapidly
growing supply of media products from an international media culture
presents a challenge to existing local and national cultures. The sheer volume
of the supply, as well as the vast technological infrastructure and financial
capital that pushes this supply forward, have a considerable impact on local
patterns of cultural consumption and possibilities for sustaining an
independent cultural production. Global media cultures create a continuous
cultural exchange, in which crucial aspects such as identity, nationality,
religion, behavioral norms and way of life are continuously questioned and
challenged. These cultural encounters often involve the meeting of cultures
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Global Media Cultures

with a different socio-economic base, typically a transnational and commercial

cultural industry on one side and a national, publicly regulated cultural
industry on the other side (Hjarvard, n.d.).

Marshall McLuhan, a media and communication theorist, coined the term

“global village” in 1964 to describe 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 (as cited in Dixon,
2009). McLuhan's belief was that the world was entering a fourth ''age'' he
called the electronic age, where people everywhere would be able to find and
experience the same information through technological tools. His studies on
trends in technology, and how human communication was affected, helped
him develop his hypotheses about the future, and how innovations such as the
coming internet, (he didn't yet know its name, of course), would impact
individuals and culture as a whole (Hendricks n.d.). Due to their very structure,
global media promote a restructuring of cultural and social communities. Just
as media such as the press, and later radio and TV have been very important
institutions for the formation of national communities, global media support
the creation of new communities. The Internet, for example, not only facilitates
communication across the globe, but also supports the formation of new social
communities in which members can interact with each other. And satellite TV
and radio allow immigrants to be in close contact with their homeland’s
language and culture while they gradually accommodate to a new cultural
environment (Hjarvard, n.d.). In the twentieth century, global media simply
means technology/digital media, the internet is known as our global village
where information and communications can reach thousands homes in spite
of geographical and cultural distances. Being 'global' means getting
internationally united and integrated through interchanging of world views.

Today, the Media has transformed into a business that is dominated by mass-
media corporations promoting their own interests at the level of individual
administrations. In both scholarly work and public debate on globalization, the
influence of media and particularly electronic media on social change is
considered to be of paramount importance. In sociological and cultural
analyses of globalization [1,2], media such as satellite television, the Internet,
computers, mobile phones etc. are often thought to be among the primary
forces behind current restructurations of social and cultural geography.
Electronic media facilitate an increased interconnectedness across vast
distances and a temporal flexibility in social interaction. Furthermore, a
handful of media enterprises and media moguls such as Time-Warner-AOL,
Disney, Rupert Murdoch, and Bill Gates have become icons of globalization.
These media companies and actors both have ambitions of global market
domination and serve as the messengers of a new global era. Particularly the
transnational news services with a global or regional reach, such as CNN, BBC
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World, Euronews, Sky News, and Star News, have come to be regarded as the
town criers of the global village. Their continuous, on-line, and live
distribution of news to all corners of the world has become emblematic of a
world in which place and time mean less and less (Kaul, 2011).

MEDIA CULTURE
In cultural studies, media culture refers to the current Western capitalist
society that emerged and developed from the 20th century, under the
influence of mass media. The term alludes to the overall impact and
intellectual guidance exerted by the media (primarily TV, but also the press,
radio and cinema), not only on public opinion but also on tastes and values
(Audiopedia, 2017). According to Douglas Kellner, media culture is industrial
culture, organized on the model of mass production and is produced for a mass
audience according to types (genres), following conventional formulas, codes,
and rules. Bignell defines media culture as terrain on which communication
between people in a concrete historic-economic situation takes place. On the
other hand, various authors like Schmidt, Faulstich, Hickethier, and Lundby
define media culture as a culture in which the mass media are the main
resources of meaning production (as cited in Hepp, 2009).

CRITIQUES ON GLOBAL MEDIA CULTURE

The skepticism surrounding global media is far from new. The well-
established field of international communication, based on the political
economy tradition, has a long history of persistently arguing that global media
are in fact best described as Western (or American) media, at most of global
scope (as cited in Olausson, 2011).

Global media systems have been considered a form of cultural imperialism.

Cultural imperialism takes place when a country dominates others through its
media exports, including advertising messages, films, and television and radio
programming (Kaul, 2011). In international communication theory and
research, cultural imperialism theory argued that audiences across the globe
are heavily affected by media messages emanating from the Western
industrialized countries. Although there are minor differences between
"media imperialism" and "cultural imperialism," most of the literature in
international communication treats the former as a category of the latter.
Grounded in an understanding of media as cultural industries, cultural
imperialism is firmly rooted in a political-economy perspective on
international communication. As a school of thought, political economy
focuses on material issues such as capital, infrastructure, and political control
as key determinants of international communication processes and effects. In
the early stage of cultural imperialism, researchers focused their efforts
mostly on nation-states as primary actors in international relations. They
imputed rich, industrialized, and Western nation-states with intentions and
actions by which they export their cultural products and impose their
sociocultural values on poorer and weaker nations in the developing world.
This argument was supported by a number of studies demonstrating that the
flow of news and entertainment was biased in favor of industrialized
countries. This bias was clear both in terms of quantity, because most media
flows were exported by Western countries and imported by developing
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nations, and in terms of quality, because developing nations received scant

and prejudicial coverage in Western media (Kraidy, 2002).

There are two main camps regarding the question of a unified global culture:
one is the cultural homogenization and the other is cultural hybridization. The
former equates globalization with the homogenizing of culture, the dismissal
of local cultures, and the Westernization of the globe (as cited in Matos, 2013).
Cultural globalization theorists highlight the need to recognize the blending of
local cultures with global foreign influences, seeing global culture as being
grounded in a process of hybridization, not simply as the cultural diffusion of
American values or homogenization (Matos, 2013).

References
Aboga Jr., F. and Agapay, R.C. (2017). Media and Information Literacy, Transforming Society
through Student Empowerment (1st ed.). Quezon City: TechFactors, Inc.
Audiopedia, The (2017, January 25). What is Media Culture? What does Media Culture Mean?
Media Culture Meaning, Definition, and Explanation [Video File]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com
Dixon, V.K. (2009). Understanding the Implications of a Global Village. Retrieved from
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com
Griffin, E. (2012). A First Look at Communication Theory (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Hendricks, B. (n.d.) Marshall McLuhan and the Global Village Concept. Retrieved from
https://study.com
Hepp, A. (2009). Transculturality as a Perspective: Researching Media Cultures Comparatively.
Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net
Hjarvard, S. (n.d.). Global Media Cultures: A Research Programme on the Role of Media in Cultural
Globalization. Retrieved from http://www.nordicom.gu.se
Kaul, V. (2011). Globalisation and Media. J Mass Communicat Journalism 1:105.
DOI:10.4172/2165-7912.1000105. Retrieved from https://www.omicsonline.org
Kraidy, M. (2002). Globalization of Culture through the Media. In J. R. Schement (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of Communication and Information (Vol. 2, pp. 359-363). New York, NY:
Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu
Matos, C. (2013, March 22). Media and Globalization [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net
Olausson, U. (2011, August 01). Explaining Global Media: A Discourse Approach, The Systemic
Dimension of Globalization Piotr Pachura, IntechOpen, DOI: 10.5772/17557. Retrieved from
https://www.intechopen.com
UNESCO (n.d.). Media and Information Literacy for Teachers. Understanding Media and
Information Literacy – An Orientation. Retrieved from http://unesco.mil-for-
teachers.unaoc.org

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