Republic of the Philippines

CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE

Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

CHAPTER 4
A WORLD OF IDEAS: GLOBALIZATION OF CULTURES

Introduction
This unit focuses on how the globalization structures discussed in Unit 1 affect
various forms of cultural life. “Culture” is used here in the broadest possible sense,
referring to the daily practices of people. Thus, if the first unit focused on a “large” form
of globalization, this unit will zero in an everyday globalizations in the realms of religion,
culture, and city life.
The major learning outcome of this unit is to explain the role of global processes
in everyday life.

WEEK 9-10: Global Media Cultures

Globalization entails the spread of various cultures. When a film is made in
Hollywood, it is shown not only in the United States, but also in other cities across the
globe. South Korean rapper Psy's song "Gangnam Style" may have been about a
wealthy suburb in Seoul, but its listeners included millions who have never been or
may never go to Gangnam. Some of them may not even know what Gangnam is.
Globalization also involves the spread of ideas. For example, the notion of the rights
of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities is spreading across
the world and becoming more widely accepted. Similarly, the conservative Christian
Church that opposes these rights moves from places like South America to Korea and
to Burundi in Africa.
 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

People who travel the globe teaching and preaching their beliefs in universities,
churches, public forums, classrooms, or even as guests of a family play a major role
in the spread of culture and ideas. But today, television programs, social media
groups, books, movies, magazines, and the like have made it easier for advocates to
reach larger audiences. Globalization relies on media as its main conduct for the
spread of global culture and ideas. Jack Lule was then
right to ask, "Could global trade have evolved without a
flow of information on markets, prices, commodities,
and more? Could empires have stretched across the
world without communication throughout their borders?
Could religion, music, poetry, film, fiction, cuisine, and
fashion develop as they have without the intermingling
of media and cultures?
There is an intimate relationship between globalization and media which must
be unraveled to further understand the contemporary world.

Media and Its Functions

Lule describes media as "a means of conveying something, such as a channel
of communication”. Technically speaking, person’s voice is a medium. However, when
commentators refer to "media" (the plural of medium), they mean the technologies of
mass communication. Print media include books, magazines, and newspapers.
Broadcast media involve radio, film, and television. Finally, digital media cover the
internet and mobile mass communication. Within the category of internet media, there
are the e-mail, internet sites, social media, and internet-based video and audio.
While it is relatively easy to define the term media, it is more difficult to
determine what media do and how they affect societies. Media theorist Marshall
McLuhan once declared that "the medium is the message." He did not mean that ideas
(“messages") are useless and do not affect people. Rather, his statement was an
attempt to draw attention to how media, as a form of technology, reshape societies.
Thus, television is not a simple bearer of messages, it also shapes the social behavior
of users and reorient family behavior. Since it was introduced in the 1960s, television
 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

has steered people from the dining table where they eat and tell stories to each other,
to the living room where they silently munch on their food while watching primetime
shows. Television has also drawn people away from other meaningful activities such
as playing games or reading books. Today, the smart phone allows users to keep in
touch instantly with multiple people at the same time. Consider the effect of the internet
on relationships. Prior to the cellphone, there was no way for couples to keep
constantly in touch, or to be updated on what the other does all the time. The
technology (medium), and not the message, makes for this social change possible.
McLuhan added that different media simultaneously extend and amputate
human senses. New media may expand the reach of communication, but they also
dull the users' communicative capacities. Think about the medium of writing. Before
wrote things down on parchment, exchanging stories was mainly done orally. To be
able pass stories verbally from one person to papyrus started becoming more common
in Egypt after the fourth another, storytellers had to have retentive memories.
However, papyrus started becoming more common in Egypt after the fourth century
BCE, which increasingly meant that more people could write down their stories. As a
result, storytellers no longer had to rely completely on their memories. This
development, according to some philosophers at the time, dulled the people's capacity
to remember.
Something similar can be said about cellphones. On the one hand, they expand
people's senses because they provide the capability to talk to more people
instantaneously and simultaneously. On the other hand, they also limit the senses
because they make users easily distractible and more prone to multitasking. This is
not necessarily a bad thing; it is merely change with a trade-off.
The question of what new media enhance and what they amputate was not a
moral or ethical one, according to McLuhan. New media are neither inherently good
nor bad. The famous writer was merely drawing attention to the historically and
technologically specific attributes of various media.
 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

Social Media and the Creation of Cyber Ghettoes

By now, very few media scholars argue that the world is becoming culturally
homogenous. Apart from the nature of diverse audiences and regional trends in
cultural production, the internet and social media are proving that the globalization of
culture and ideas can move in different directions. While Western Culture remains
powerful and media production is still controlled by a handful of powerful Western
corporations, the internet particularly the social media, is challenging previous ideas
about media and globalization.
As with all new media, social media have both beneficial and negative effects.
On the one hand, these forms of communication have democratized access. Anyone
with an internet connection or a smart phone can use Facebook and Twitter for free.
These media have enabled users to be consumers and producers of information
simultaneously. The democratic potential of social media was most evident in 2011
during the wave of uprisings known as the Arab Spring. Without access to traditional
broadcast media like TV, activists opposing authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt,
and Libya used Twitter to organize and to disseminate information. Their efforts
toppled their respective governments. More recently, the "women's march" against
newly installed US President Donald Trump began with a tweet from a Hawaii lawyer
and became a national, even global, movement.
However, social media also have their dark side. In the early 2000s,
commentators began referring to the emergence of a "splinternet" and the
phenomenon of "cyberbalkanization" to refer to the various bubbles people place
themselves in when they are online. In the United States, voters of the Democratic
Party largely read liberal websites, and voters of the Republican Party largely read
conservative websites. This segmentation, notes an article in the journal Science, has
been exacerbated by the nature of social media feeds, which leads users to read
articles, memes, and videos Snared by like-minded friends." As such, being on
Facebook can resemble living in an echo chamber, which reinforces one's existing
beliefs and opinions. This echo chamber precludes users from listening to or reading
opinions and information that challenge their viewpoints, thus, making them more
partisan and closed minded.
 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

This segmentation has been used by people in power who are aware that the
social media bubbIes can produce a herd mentality. It can be exploited by politicians
with less than democratic intentions and demagogues wanting to whip up popular
anger. The same inexpensiveness that allows social media to be a democratic force
likewise makes it a cheap tool of government propaganda. Russian dictator Vladimir
Putin has hired armies of social media trolls" (paid users who harass political
opponents) to manipulate public opinion through intimidation and the spreading of fake
news." Most recently, American intelligence agencies established that Putin used trolls
and online misinformation to help Donald residency-a tactic the Russian autocrat is
likely Trump win to repeat in European elections he seeks to influence.
In places across the world, Putin imitators replicate his strategy of online trolling
and disinformation to clamp down on dissent and delegitimize critical media. Critics of
the increasingly dictatorial regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are
threatened by online mobs of pro-government trolls, who hack accounts and threaten
violence. Some of their responses have included threats of sexual violence against
women.
As the preceding cases show, fake information can spread easily on social
media since they have few content filters. Unlike newspapers, Facebook does not
have a team of editors who are trained to sift through and filter information. If a news
article, even a fake one, gets a lot of shares, it will reach many people with Facebook
accounts.
This dark side of social media shows that even a seemingly open and
democratic media may be co-opted towards undemocratic means. Global online
propaganda will be the biggest threat to face as the globalization of media deepens,
Internet media have made the world so interconnected that a Russian dictator can, for
example, influence American elections on the cheap.
As consumers of media, users must remain vigilant and learn how to distinguish
fact from falsehood in a global media landscape that allows politicians to peddle what
President Trump's senior advisers now call "alternative facts." Though people must
remain critical of mainstream media and traditional journalism that may also operate
based on vested interest, we must also insist that some sources are more credible
 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

than others. A newspaper story that is written by a professional journalist and vetted
by professional editors is still likely to be more credible than a viral video produced by
someone in his/her bedroom, even if both will have their biases. People must be able
to tell the difference.

Learning Resources
These are the learning resources that you can use for the wider understanding
of this topic:
1. Aldama, Prince Kennex (2018), The Contemporary World. The Rex Book Store
Inc.
2. Claudio, et, al., (2018) The Contemporary World. C & E Publishing, Inc.