Chapter 8:

Global Media
Cultures
• Learning Outcomes
• Define Global Media Cultures
• Identify the relationship of globalization and media
• Identify the evolution of media and globalization
• Analyze how various media drive various forms of global integration
• Explain the dynamic between Global and Local cultural production
• Global Media Cultures explores the relationship between the media, culture and globalization.
This topic approaches part and current challenges concerning international communication and
explores and problematizes the power of media representation. Globalization and media have
created the conditions through which many people can now imagine themselves as part of one
world.
• It is made easier for advocates of globalization to reach larger audience through media such as:
• Television programs
• Social media groups
• Books
• Movies
• Magazines
The Evolution of Media and Globalization
1. Oral Communication
• It allowed sharing of information.Language allowed human to communicate and cooperate.
2. Script
• Script allowed human to communicate over a larger space and much longer times.
3. Printing press
• This is where information revolution started,It transformed social institutions such as schools,
churches, governments and more.
4. Electronic Media
• Radio and Television are part of these media. Radio quickly became a global medium, reaching
distant regions.
• Television is considered as the most powerful and pervasive mass media. It brought together the
visual and audio power of the film with the accessibility of radio.
5. Digital media
• Many of our earlier media such as phones and Televisions are now considered digital media.
• The media have a very important impact on cultural globalization in two mutually
interdependent ways: Firstly, the media provide an extensive transnational transmission of
cultural products and, secondly, they contribute to the formation of communicative networks
and social structures. The rapidly growing supply of media products form an international
media culture presents a challenge to existing local and national cultures. The sheer volume
of the supply, as well as the vast technological infrastructure and financial capital that
pushes this supply forward, have a considerable impact on local patterns of cultural
production. Global media cultures create a continuous cultural exchange, in which crucial
aspects such as identity, nationality, religion, behavioral norms and way of life are
continuously questioned and challenged. These cultural encounters often involve the
meeting of cultures with a different socio-economic base, typically a transnational and
commercial cultural industry on one side and a national, publicly regulated cultural industry
on the other side.
• Due to their very structure, global media promote a restructuring of cultural and social
communities. The media such as the press, and later radio and tv have been very important
institutions for the formation of national communities. Global media support the creation of
new communities. The Internet, for example, not only facilitates communication across the
global, but also supports the formation of new social communities in which members can
interact with each other. And satellite tv and radio allow immigrants to be in close contact
with their homeland’s language and culture while they gradually accommodate to a new
cultural environment. The common point of departure is the assumption that a series of
international media constitutes a global cultural supply in itself and serves as an independent
agency for cultural and social globalization, in which cultural communities are continuously
restructures and redefined. (source: website)
• Various Forms of Global Integration
Global integration is not a new phenomenon in today’s contemporary world. Trade
took place between distant civilizations even in ancient times. This globalization process in the
economic domain has not always proceeded smoothly has it benefited all whom it was offered,
but, despite occasional interruptions, such as the collapse of the Roman Empire or during the
interwar period in this century, the degree of economics integration among different societies
around the world has generally been rising in the past half century, and ever greater than it has
been and is likely to improve.
• There are three (3) factors that have affected the process of economic globalization. These are:
• Improvements in transportation and communication technology have reduced the cost of
transporting goods, services and factors of production and communicating economically useful
knowledge and technology
• Tastes of individuals and, societies have generally but not universally, favored taking advantage of
the opportunities provided by declining costs of transportation and communication through
increasing economic integration.
• The character and pace of economic integration have been significantly influenced by public
policies, although it is not always in the direction of increasing economic integration.
•
• Thus, technology, tastes and public policy have important influence on the pattern and pace of
economies in its various dimensions.
• Dynamics of Local and Global Culture
• Global flows of culture tend to move more easily around the globe than ever before,
especially through non-material digital forms. There are three perspectives on global cultural
flows. These are cultural differentialism, hybridization, and convergence.
• CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM emphasizes the fact that cultures are essentially different
and are only superficially affected by global flows. It also Involves barriers that prevent flows
that serve to make cultures more aline; cultures tend to remain stubbornly different from one
another.

• One good example of cultural differentialism is the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the
subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. To many people, these events are seen as the
product of a clash between Western and Islamic culture and the eternal differences between
them.
• This is significant because the concept of cultural diffferentialism emphasizes lasting differences
among and between cultures largely unaffected by globalization or any trans-cultural flows. As seen
in the example, clashing cultures can have a huge impact on both cultures, countries and the entire
world.
• Cultural Hybridization is a process by which a cultural element blends into another culture by
modifying the element to fit cultural norms. It is actually an integration of local and global cultures.
A key concept is “glocalization” or the interpenetration of the global and local resulting in unique
outcomes in different geographic areas.
• And lastly, cultural convergence approach stresses homogeneity introduced by globalization.
Cultures are deemed to be radically altered by strong flows, while cultural imperialism happens
when one culture imposes itself on and tends to destroy at least parts of another culture. One
important critique of cultural imperialism is John Tomlinson’s idea of “deterritorialization” of
culture. Deterritorialization means that it is much more difficult to tie culture to a specific geographic
point of origin.