Global Media Culture

Learning Objectives
At the end of this chapter, learners should be able to:
1. analyze how various media drive various forms of
Global integration; and
2. explain the dynamics between local and global culture
productions.
GLOBALIZATION

MEDIA
• Globalization could not occur without media;
• Globalization and media act in concert and cohort
• Globalization and media have partnered
throughout the whole human history.
 Media have made
globalization possible.

Does this suggest that the media have always been

positive and progressive in their influence?
Globalization and Media have created the
conditions through which many people
can now imagine themselves as part of
one world.

Global village
 Origin of ‘Globalization’
The use of the term ‘globalize’ dates back in 1944.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Theodore Levitt, a former professor at the Harvard

Business School used the term ‘globalization’ in 1983.
Etymology of Globalization

GLOB•AL•I•ZA•TION
-ization is a ‘suffix that creates nouns
indicating the process or outcome of
doing something.
 Definition

GLOB•AL•I•ZA•TION
is not an outcome but a process—
indeed a host of processes, including
economic, political, and cultural—that
may be as old as humankind and is
ongoing today.
 History of Globalization
There are three claims as to when globalization
started:
It began in the late 1900s

1 when advances in media and

transportation technology truly
globalized the world.

Arjun Apparudai
 History of Globalization

Globalization began a few years ago with the rise

2 of modernity in the Enlightenment or the age of

European exploration.
 History of Globalization
It began when the first Homo sapiens departed from

3
other Homo sapiens in an African village and set out
in search of food/water/adventure.
 History of Globalization
“It is a process that has

3
worked silently for millennia
without having been given a
name…and has been with us
since the beginning of
history.”

Nayan Chanda
 Definition

ME•DIA
the plural word for medium—a means
of conveying something, such as a
channel of communication.
 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 ‘imaginary
community’
FIVE TIME PERIODS OF MEDIA
1. ORAL
2. SCRIPT
3. PRINT
4. ELECTRONIC
5. DIGITAL
 ORAL COMMUNICATION
Language allowed humans
to cooperate.
Sharing of information was
made possible through
speech.
 ORAL COMMUNICATION

DISADVANTAGES/LIMITATIONS:
Language was essential but imperfect
Distance causes trouble for oral communication
Difficulty in time
Language relies on human memory, which is limited
 SCRIPT
The transition from oral
communication to printing
press
This allowed humans to
communicate and share
knowledge and ideas over
much larger spaces and
much larger times.
 PRINTING PRESS
 started the ‘information
revolution’ which transformed
markets, businesses,
nations, schools, churches,
gov’ts, armies and more.
 PRINTING PRESS
Two consequences of printing press:
1. It changed the very nature of knowledge.
2. It encouraged the challenge of political and religious
authority because of its ability to circulate competing views.
Advantages:
1. The printing press encouraged the literacy of the public and
the growth of schools.
2. The inexpensive, easily obtained magazines brought news
around the world.
Conclusion: The printing press helped foster globalization—
and knowledge of globalization.
 ELECTRONIC MEDIA
Categorized into two (2):
1. Wired
2. Wireless
 ELECTRONIC MEDIA
Telephone in 1876
Radio and telegraph in the late 1890s
Transatlantic call in 1927
Cell phone in 1973

MASS MEDIA
Silent motion pictures in 1870s
First film developed in 1890s
 DIGITAL MEDIA
• most often electronic media that rely on digital codes
• the computer as the usual representation
• Have revulotunized daily life
• Computers - allow instantaneous global trading
- allow citizens access to information from around
the world
- have transformed cultural life
 Media and Economic Globalization

The media have made economic globalization

possible by creating the conditions for global
capitalism and by promoting the conceptual
foundation of the world’s economy
 Media and Political Globalization
• Globalization has transformed world politics in profound ways

•It led to the formation and then the overthrow of kingdoms and
empires

•It led to the creation of nation states

•Media corporations are themselves powerful political actors (

individual journalists are subject to brutal and intense
intimidation)
 Media and Cultural Globalization
Cultural differentialism

Cultural Convergence

Cultural hybridity
Dark Contours of the Global Village