Global Media

Cultures
Outcomes
 Analyze how various media drive
various forms of global integration
 Explain the dynamic between local
and global cultural production
Terms
 GlobalMedia - Corporations or entities
globally engaged in media production
and/or distribution.

 Global Village – international community

formed by the constant interaction between
citizens of various countries and bound by
shared cultural experiences, transcending
geographical distance and actual physical
contact.
 Imagined Community – a community
formed by like-minded individuals
bound by common interests, shared
aspirations, collective identity and
the like.
 Digital Divide – gap in technological
skills between those who have ready
access to computers and other
digital devices, and the internet, and
those who do not.
 Contemporary developments in
technology and transportation seem to
have bridged many worlds together into
one earth.
 The internet has facilitated the growth and
tendency toward cultural homogenization
of a “global village” (Mc Luhan) where
increasing interconnections and
strengthening linkages lead to the
formation of communities that have shared
experiences, despite geographical
distance nd lack of physical interaction.
 Phenomenal “Despacito” has
conqured the world in a matter of
eight months - the most viewed
video with 3.3 billion hits
 Game of Thrones Season 7 – an
episode watched by fans before its
release date
 Pres. Duterte – featured in a number
of l ate night shows and editorial
cartoons in many parts of the world
 Shared cultural experiences are
made possible for many people
because of the internet and
improvements in the transportation
system.
 Innovations in technology and
transportation globalized almost
everything from languages to
cultures, films to religion, food to
politics.
Global Media and Global
Integration
 “The media foster the conditions for global
capitalism. They fill our days with
invitations and exhortations for
consumption, from ceaseless commercials
on radio and television, to product
placement in films, to digital billboards, to
pop-up ads, to broadsheets in bathroom
stalls. The media pack these channels with
exhortations of consumers, products and
markets.
 allthese and more make capitalism
seem not only natural but necessary
to modern life(Lule).
 Advertisements
 cover magazine stories that fawn
over CEOs
 minute by minute reporting of stock
market
 films that revel over spectacular
consumption and high-end products
 endless newspaper ratings of top
products and services –
 There can be no globalization without
media (Jack Lule)
 Around the world, once small, local, and
regional media companies – not only
newspapers, magazines, and radio stations,
but television and cable channels, book
publishers, music producers, movie studios,
internet sites, etc. – are being brought up by
a handful of huge global conglomorates
and corporations, who themselves were
once small and local. It has happened fast
in the last 25 years. The result goes by
various names: media oligopoly,
consolidation, concentration, and
convergence.
 Nearly 75% of the global media are
owned/controlled by six companies:
Disney
Time Warner
News Corporation
Viacom
Vivendi
Bertelsmann
 Media firms contribute to global
integration through building connections
between the First and Third worlds,
between the Global North and the
Global South.
 At the same time, this promotes the
West’s version of capitalist
globalization, exhorting the
developing countries to aspire for
Western lifestyles and cultures.
 Mainstream media channels from the
Western world such as CNN, Fox News,
BBC, TV5Monde, Deutsche Welle,
along with their local subsidiaries
and/or branches in major cities
around the world, are at the forefront
of covertly promoting the dominant
discourses on globalization.
 Western media’s ideological adherence to
capitalist globalization are linked to these
firms’ revenues from advertising that
promotes consumerism in all continents.
 “the best way to understand how
closely the commercial media system
is linked to the neoliberal global
capitalist economy is to consider the
role of advertising. Advertising is a
business expense incurred by the
largest firms in the economy”
(McChesney).
 These media firms are in fact
“manufacturing consent” and
“manufacturing content” in favor of
globalization. They manufacture “consent”
by supporting the global status quo
dominated by the US, Europe and their
allies. Their outfits churn out “content” that
favors globalization through mainstream TV
shows peopled with mainstream pro-
globalization analysts.
 The BBC has been accused by 70 members of
Parliament of heavily opposing Brexit – UK’s
exit from the European Union.
 Despite the “excellent reporting” that
explained the details of the 2008 crisis as
it happened, forecasts were largely
lacking. Mainstream media seemed to
have failed to foresee that the 2008 crisis
was coming despite the loud contrarian
voices.
 In major international upheavals like the
US war on Iraq, many mainstream
channels in the US and Europe shared the
same admiration for the status quo.
 Commentators on the major networks
shared pro-war views.
 It’s
not surprising that the press
would downplay the lack of
evidence of links between Iraq and
al-Qaeda, the fact the fact that
weapons of mass destruction were
not being found, and that public
opinion was critical of the war.
 Few American media outfits
reported about UN’s description of
the war – that it was illegal.
 The biggest media firm in UK, BBC, also
had a pro-war slant.
 Virtually all major Western media
channels portray North Korea as a
“hermit kingdom”, where there is no
democracy and everyday is famine,
contrary to Atom Araullo’s report on his
visit to Pyongyang.
 Majority of these mainstream pro-
globalization channels are broadcast
in English- the language of the US,
globalization’s most powerful player at
this point, or European language such
as German or French.
 The elite circles of the Third World (e.g.
Philippines) are influenced by this. Only
them can subscribe to cable television,
and therefore they are more attuned to
First World media channels, hence,
Western ideas.
 The enduring Western-centeredness is not
only manifested in the use of the English
language but beyond language choice
and permeate’s people’s mindset and
ideological orientation. Such reality is
rooted from the country’s colonial
domination.
 The local elite is part of the “global
elites”…characterized by a
common education, lifestyle and
habitus. They share a common
language, culture and world view,
and adherence to capitalist
globalizion.”
 The world’s elite think and act in the
same way.
 The world’s elite participate in the same
economic and political conferences
covered by mainstream media
channels. “the global elite circles tend
to congregate around a number of
global associations and conferences…
i.e. the Paris-based International
Chamber of Commerce, annual and
spring meetings of the IMF and World
Bank, UN summits, and perhaps best
known, the World Economic Forum”
(Scholte).
 Such reality partly explains why
elite schools in the Philippines are
exclusively English-speaking.
 English remains the global working
language even for the elite, and a high
level of English communication skills is a
minimum requirement for inclusion in
global elite circles.
 Hollywood is still doing a good job in
fashioning the world according to the West’s
image and likeness.
 Domination of mainstream American and
European films and TV series
 Hollywood has world dominance in market
share.
 Western cinema outfits adjust some of their
outputs to suit the taste of non-Westerners.
 X-Men, Star Wars, Game of Thrones
 Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer still popular
among kids
 Charlie Puth, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay,
etc.
 Internetaccelerated the spread of Western
cultural production.
 Google, Facebook, YouTube have facilitated
the flowering of creative expression, media
production, and information dissemination.
 The
internet has also empowered some
non-Western cultural production to
successfully penetrate the world market.
 Mexican telenovelas, Koreanovelas (Phils.)
 Filipino teleseryes (Cambodia)
 English music still dominates the airwaves,
but some non-English songs as “Despacito”
and Gangnam Style” broke the barrier,
albeit while conforming to Western styles
and aesthetics.
 All the factors mentioned lead to a
homogenized version of globalization, a
version that favors and seemingly promotes
the mainstream American-European way
of life. They all form the basis for the
creation and expansion of the global
village which McLuhan only imagined in
1960s.
 All media forms – oral, script, print,
electronic, and digital – enabled people
of the world
to know of the world for globalization
to proceed. The media have not only
physically linked the globe with
stories, images, myths and metaphors.
 The media are helping to bring about a
fundamentally new imaginary… a rising
global imaginary – the globe itself as
imagined community.
 Cosmopolitanism is now a feature of
modern life. People imagine
themselves as part of the world unlike
before where only a few privileged
thought of themselves as
cosmopolitan.
 What was imagined as a global
“imagined community” is now a full-
fledged global community of
cosmopolitan citizens who know of the
world and actively participate in
reshaping it, through actual and virtual
experiences.
Challenges to Western
dominance in the global
media
 Outletssuch as Qatar-based Al
Jazeera, Venezuela-based TeleSUR,
and China Central Television (CCTV)
have been providing alternative
international coverage to
mainstream Western media
channels.
 Al Jazeera became known for its
non-mainstream coverage of the
Iraq War
 TeleSUR positions itself as a
progressive voice of the Third World,
of social movements fighting
against neoliberal globalization in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
 Russia Today frequently features
contrarian voices in the West and
elsewhere
 CCTV expands the former
boundaries of China’s global
influence, as the country asserts its
financial power as the world’s
largest economy in terms of GDP.
 The current digital divide in many
Third World countries clearly means
that a number of citizens are at
least not much influenced by the
global media.
 lack of high-speed internet access in
many Third World countries
 high cost of digital gadgets
 lack of electrical power in isolated
regions
 extreme poverty
Dynamics of Local and Global
Cultural Production
 Globalization has allowed local and
global cultural production to intersect.
Local and global entities engaged in
cultural production are both partners and
rivals under globalization. Collaboration is
necessitated by their desire to expand
their reach while being sensitive to local
sensibilities.
 Subsidiaries of Western media partly
echo their mother channel’s
dominance, albeit using local
content.
 Local newspapers also use articles
from foreign news dispatch
agencies such as the Paris-based
Agence France-Presse (AFP) and
London-based Reuters and at times
rewrite foreign reports to suit local
tastes.
 Local newspapers also republish timely
guest articles from foreign writers and/or
newspapers.
 Covers and parodies of pop songs
abound in the Third World, both
complementing the Western originals and
at the same time competing with them for
popularity.
 East-West film collaboration are now very
common. e.g. Great Wall. Local versions
of foreign hits are common: Captain
Barbel, Gagambay, Darna
 Subtitling and dubbing of foreign film – not
foreign anymore.
 Filipino films have been critically
acclaimed abroad.
 International film festivals flourish
 Big Brother and The Voice have local
franchises in many countries; Eat Bulaga
had a franchise abroad; Filipino teleseryes
became a hit in Cambodia and were
aired in Vietnam.
 Globalization has allowed every culture’s
cross-fertilization to some extent, though
most of the time, the most powerful
economies still dominate the global
cultural scene.
Cultural Diversity and
Homogenization through
Globaization
 With the unparalleled acceleration of
labor, capital, and information mobility in
the age of globalization, local cultures,
languages and national identities either
influence or become influenced by other
world views and expressive forms, resulting
in massive cultural homogenization.
 Developing countries that are at the
receiving end yield to cultural erosion.
 The exposure of the youth to the dominant
culture through television and social
media platforms corrode the values that
are highly regarded in their local cultures.
 40% of the world’s 7,000 languages are at
risk of disappearing which Can be linked
to globalization (The Endangered
Languages Project).
 In response to the demands of superior
economies, governments of developing
countries adjust their policies, for their
labor force to qualify in the job market
placement evaluation.
 Although shifting in the English Only Policy
as an effective way to empower the labor
force was a popular belief, still is in many
countries, many experts and researchers
now claim that extinction of languages
entails cultural erosion. When culture
erodes, the ability of people to make
choices on how to participate in
development goes down the drain.
Graded Group Report
 Each group will pick and Asian musical
act. In your written report, answer the
following:
 1. where did the musical act/artist
originate?
 In which countries did the artist/s became
famous?
 How did the artist become famous?
 Why do you think the artist became
famous?