GLOBAL

MEDIA
CULTURES
WEEK 10
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

•Globalization- a set of multiple, uneven and

sometimes overlapping historical processes, including
economics, politics, and culture, that have combined with
the evolution of media technology to create the
conditions under which the globe itself can now be
understood as “an imagined community”.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

Media
Communication channels through which we
disseminate news, music, movies, education,
promotional messages and other data

Includes physical and online newspapers, magazines,

television, radio, billboards, telephone, internet, billboards.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

Media Culture
Culture created under the influence of mass media.
Impact on society’s information consumption and
intellectual guidance
Major factor in the formation of mainstream culture
• The two concepts have been partners throughout
the whole of human history.
• “Globalization and media have created the
conditions through which many people can now
imagine themselves as part of one world.”
EVOLUTION OF MEDIA AND
GLOBALIZATION
• To understand further the study of globalization and
media, it is important to appreciate five periods of the
evolution of media and globalization.
1. ORAL
COMMUNICATION
• Human speech is the oldest and most enduring.
• Language allowed human to cooperate.
(7117 languages spoken today)
• It allowed sharing of information across culture –
the lifeline of globalization
• Language became the most important tool as
humans explore the world and experience
different cultures.
• It led to markets, trade and cross-continental
trade.
2. SCRIPT

• Writing is humankind’s principal technology for collecting,

manipulating, storing, retrieving, communication, and disseminating
information.
• Language was important but imperfect, distance became a strain for
oral communication.
• Script allowed human to communicate over a larger space and much
longer times.
• It allowed for the written and permanent codification of economic,
cultural, religious, and political practice.
2. SCRIPT
3. THE PRINTING PRESS

• A device that allows for the mas production of uniform printed matter
• It started the “information revolution”.
• It transformed social institutions such as schools, churches, governments and
more.
• Print encouraged the challenge of political and religious authorities because of its
ability to circulate competing views.
• Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) surveyed the influences of the printing press.
1. It changed the nature of knowledge. It preserved and standardized
knowledge.
2. It encouraged the challenge of political and religious authority because of
its ability to circulate competing views.
4. ELECTRONIC MEDIA

• The vast reach of these media continues to open up new vistas in the
economic, political, and cultural processes of globalization.
• Radio- quickly became a global medium, reaching distant regions.
• Television- considered as the most powerful and pervasive mass
medium. It brought together the visual and aural power of the film
with the accesibility of radion.
4. ELECTRONIC MEDIA
5. DIGITAL MEDIA

• Digital Media are often electronic media that rely on digital code.
• Many of our earlier media such as phones and TVs are now considered
digital media.
• In the realm of politic computer allowed citizens to access information
from around the world.
• People are able to adopt and adapt new practices like fashion, sports,
music, food and many others through access of information provided by
computers.
• They also exchange ideas, establish relations and linkages through the
use of Skype, Google, Chat, Zoom and other platforms.
5. DIGITAL MEDIA
“Is it possible for
globalization to
occur without
media?”
GLOBAL IMAGINARY AND
GLOBAL VILLAGE
• Media have linked the globe with stories, images, myths and
metaphors.
• Global Imaginary- the globe itself as imagined community.
• Global Village
 Marshall McLuhan
 Media have connected the world in ways that create a global village.
 As McLuhan predicted media and globalization have connected the
world. However, the “global village have brought no collective harmony
or peace. Why do think so?
MEDIA AND
ECONOMIC
GLOBALIZATION

• Media fosters the

conditions for global
capitalism.
• “Economic and cultural
globalization arguably
would be impossible
without a global commercial
media system to promote
global markets and to
encourage consumer
values” – Robert Mc
Chesney
MEDIA AND POLITICAL
GLOBALIZATION
• Though media corporations are
themselves powerful political actors,
individual journalists are subject to
intimidations as more actors contend
for power.
• In the age of political globalization:
government shape and manipulate the
news. Is this also true for Philippines?
• Media complicate politics…how?
MEDIA AND CULTURAL
GLOBALIZATION
• Media on one level are the
carriers of culture.
• It generates numerous and on-
going interactions
• Globalization will bring about and
increasing blending or mixture of
cultures.

What is the role of media in the

blending or mixture of culture?
 POPULAR MUSIC
AND GLOBALIZATION
• Technologies of transport, of
information and mediation,
including social media platforms,
have made possible the circulation
of cultural commodities such as
music.
• Circulation of cultural commodities
are consumed to gain cultural
capital and social status.
• Goods and commodities became a
catalyst that set globalization.
C U LT U R A L
IMPERIALISM
AND THE
GLOBAL MEDIA
D E B AT E
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND
THE GLOBAL MEDIA DEBATE

Cultural Imperialism

The exercise of domination in cultural relationships in which

the values, practices, and meanings of a powerful
foreign culture are imposed upon one or more
native cultures
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND
THE GLOBAL MEDIA DEBATE
• 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.
• 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.
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND
THE GLOBAL MEDIA DEBATE
• 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 nations, and in terms of quality, because developing
nations received scant and prejudicial coverage in Western media.
MEDIA, GLOBALIZATION, AND
HYBRIDIZATION
• The analytical shift from cultural imperialism to globalization.
• First, the end of the Cold War as a global framework for ideological,
geopolitical, and economic competition calls for a rethinking of the
analytical categories and paradigms of thought.
• In this complex era, the nation-state is no longer the sale or dominant
player, since transnational transactions occur on sub national, national,
and supranational levels.
• Conceptually, globalization appears to capture this complexity better than
cultural imperialism.
MEDIA, GLOBALIZATION, AND
HYBRIDIZATION
• In fact, the globalization of culture has become a conceptual magnet
attracting research and theorizing efforts from a variety of disciplines
and interdisciplinary formations such as anthropology, comparative
literature, cultural studies, communication and media studies,
geography, and sociology.
• Media and information technologies play an important role in the
process of globalization.
MEDIA, GLOBALIZATION, AND
HYBRIDIZATION
• Although the media are undeniably one of the engines of cultural
globalization, the size and intensity of the effect of the media on the
globalization of culture is a contested issue revolving around the
following question:

Did the mass media trigger and create the globalization of culture?

Or is the globalization of culture an old phenomenon that has only been

intensified and made more obvious with the advent of transnational media
technologies?