Media and

Globalization
CONTEMPORARY WORLD

August 20
2020
Globalization
relies on media as its main conduit for the
spread of global culture and ideas.
 “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?” (Jack Lule)
 There is an intimate relationship between
globalization and media which must be
unraveled to further understand the
contemporary world.
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Media and Its Functions

 Jack Lule describes media as “a

means conveying something, such as
a channel of communication.” (Print
media, Broadcast media, digital
media and internet media)
 “the medium is the message”
(Marshall McLuhan)
 In other words, media, as a
technology, reshape societies. Thus,
television is not a simple bearer of
messages, it also shapes the social
behavior of users and reorient family
behavior.
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McLuhan added . .
• different media simultaneously extend and amputate
human senses. New media may expand the reach of
communication, but they also dull the user’s
communicative capacities.
 Example (medium of writing)
• - before people wrote things down on parchment,
exchanging stories was mainly done orally. To be able
to pass stories verbally from one person to another,
storytellers had to have retentive memories. However,
papyrus started becoming more common in Egypt
after the 4th 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.

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Similarly . .
• the same sense can be applied to cellphones.
On the one hand, they expand people’s senses
because they provide the capability to talk to
more people simultaneously and
instantaneously. However, 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.

• New media are neither inherently good nor

bad. McLuhan was simply drawing attention
to the historical and technological attributes of
various media.
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 The Global
Village and
Cultural
Imperialism
 GLOBAL VILLAGE is the idea that people
are connected by easy travel, mass media and
electronic communications, and have become
a single community.
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM refers most
broadly to 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.
The Global Village and Cultural
Imperialsim
 McLuhan used his analysis of technology to
examine the impact of electronic media. He
declared that television was turning the
world into a “global village”.
 Hence, as more and more people sat down in
front of their television sets and listened to
the same stories, their perception of the
world would contract. If tribal villages once
sat in front of fires to listen to collective
stories, the members of the new global
village would sit in front of bright boxes in
their living rooms.

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Media scholars. .
• further grappled with the challenges of a global media
culture. A lot of these early thinkers assumed that
global media had a tendency to homogenize culture.
They argued that as global media spread, people from
all over the world begin to watch, listen to, and read
the same things.
 Media globalization coupled with politico-cultural
hegemony would create cultural imperialism.
 For John Tomlinson, cultural globalization is simply
a euphemism for “Western cultural imperialism”
since it promotes “homogenized, Westernized,
consumer culture.”

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Social Media and the
Creation of Cyber
Ghettoes
Social media are websites and
applications that enable users to create
and share content or to participate in
social networking.
The equivalent of
a ghetto in cyberspace; a place on
the Internet etc. where a social group
is marginalized
Social Media and the Creation of
Cyber Ghettoes
• As with all new media, social media have both
beneficial and negative effects. On the one hand,
these forms of communication have
democratized access.
• The democratic potential of social media was
most evident in 2011 during the wave of uprising
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 soon toppled their respective
governments.
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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.
 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. 11
This segmentation 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
Trump win the presidency. 12
 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 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.

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 Conclusion
 This lesson showed that different media have diverse effects
on globalization processes. At one point, it seemed that
global television was creating a global monoculture. Now, it
seems more likely that social media will splinter cultures
and ideas into bubbles of people who do not interact.
Societies can never be completely prepared for the rapid
changes in the systems of communication.
 Every technological change, after all, creates multiple
unintended consequences. Consumers and users of media
will have a hard time turning back the clock. Though people
may individually try to keep out of Facebook or Twitter, for
example, these media will continue to engender social
changes.
 Instead of fearing these changes or entering a state of moral
panic, everyone must collectively discover ways of dealing
with them responsibly and ethically.
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 THANK
YOU!
Contemporary
World (HUM104C)
Lecturer
Ronnel John Romagos
Email
ronneljohn.romagos@foundationu.com