GLOBALIZATION

and the MEDIA

Creating
JACK LULE
a Global Village
GLOBALIZATION

• Global Economy • Migration

• International Trade • More foreign films and foods
• Growing prosperity in China
• McDonald’s in Paris
and India
• International travel
and communication
• Immigration
GLOBALIZATION
AND MEDIA

• Globalization and media act in concert and have

partnered throughout the whole of human history.

• From cave paintings, to papyrus, to printing presses

to television to Facebook.
Media is essential in every phase in
arenas of economics, politics, and
culture.

Global trade needed a flow of information,

empires needed communication across their
borders, religion, poetry, music, film, fiction,
cuisine; all these needed the intermingling of
media and cultures to develop.
CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Life in the emerging

global village and break
down “GLOBALIZATION” in
three primary ways;
economics, politics, and
culture.
 ETYMOLOGIES

globalisation quan qiu hua

QUEEN’S ENGLISH CHINESE

la mondialisation utandawazi
FRENCH KISWAHILI

No language seem to be comfortable with the word.

• Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary dates ‘globalize’ to 1944.
Theodore Levit is widely credited with popularizing the term.
(‘The Globalization of Markets’)
• The word resides in a specialized linguistic family: -ization
words, nouns formed by a combination of –ize verbs and –
ation.
• -Ization is a suffix that creates nouns indicating the process or
outcome of doing something. –Ization words are incloclusive
because they can be process or outcome.
• Globalization is not an outcome but a process.
HISTORIES OF GLOBALIZATION
Scholars say that globalization:
• began a few decades ago in the late 1900s when
advances in media and transportation technology truly
globalized the world. Cultural Anthropologist Arjun
Appadurai states that media and migration gave rise to
globalization.
• began a few hundred years ago, through the rise of
modernity in Enlightenment or with the age of European
exploration.
• has been going on since the beginning of humanity,
when the first homo sapiens departed from other homo
sapiens.
MEDIA
• Plural for medium
• A means of conveying something; a channel of
communication
• ‘Media’ came into general circulation in the
1920s because a word was needed to talk about
a new social issue.
• In 1920s, people talk about their fears of the
harmful influence of books, radio, and film.
• They grouped this phenomena into “mass
media”.
• Globalization is 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’.
• It is not one process but multiple processes – economics, politics,
and culture, and they overlap and influence one another through
time and developments in media technology are crucial to
globalization.
EVOLUTION OF MEDIA AND
GLOBALIZATION
 ORAL COMMUNICATION
For as long as humans have roamed the planet, we’ve invented forms of
communication that have constantly developed the ways in which we interact. Today,
in a world that is riddled with Iphones and Social Media, it is hard to see how people
communicate before.
Based on Osteler (2005) speech has been with us for at least 200, 000 years.
Despite numerous changes that undergone by humans and its society, the very first
and last human will share at least one thing and that is the ability to speak.
When speech is developed into language, Homo sapiens had developed an edge from
other species that allow them to cover and conquer the world.
 HOW DID THE MEDIUM OF LANGUAGE AID GLOBALIZATION?

• Language allowed human to understand one another better rather than making hand signals. With these
humans are easier to cooperate. There are also other advantages such as humans are able to share
information about land, water, climate and weather aided human’s ability to travel and adapt to different
environment. Through speech the spreading of information about tools and weapon became a way to
spread technology. Humans eventually moved every corner of the world bringing their most important tool
– the language.
• Language help people build their life in a settled area. It also stored and transmitted important information
across time that has been passed from generation to generation, leading to creation of villages and towns,
markets, the trades good and services and even cross continental trade routes. These things give rise to
the cities.
• Through the power of language, sometime in 4000 BCE, human’s first civilization was created in Sumer in
the middle East. It is also called the cradle of civilization. Sumer is thought to be the birthplace of the
wheel, plow, irrigation and writing which is all created by language.
 SCRIPT
This is the transition period between the oral culture and the culture of
the printing press. Language is essential and has a lot of advantages but still it
is imperfect. Distance and time causes trouble for oral communication. As we
all know, language relies on human memory and human memory is limited in
capacity and is not perfect.
Script, the very first writing, allowed humans to communicate over much
larger spaces and across much longer times.
Writing developed from cave paintings, petroglyphs, and hieroglyphs. Early
writing systems began to appear after 3000 BCE, with symbols carved into clay
table to keep account of trade. These cuneiform developed into symbols that
represented the syllables of languages and led the creation of alphabets.
 SCRIPT
• But writing surfaces of script also have their own evolution. Writing was
done at first as carving into wood, clay, bronze, bones, stone and even
tortoise shells. Ancient Egypt created Papyrus which is one of the most
popular writing surface. It is found along the Nile River and where the
English word paper derived from. With script on sheets of papyrus and
parchment, humans had medium to launch globalization. Script allowed for
written and codification of economic, cultural, religious and political practice.

• If globalization is considered the economic, cultural and political integration

of the world then surely script the written word must be considered as an
essential medium.
 PRINTING PRESS
• The papyrus, parchment, and paper that spread civilization were the
province of a select, powerful few. Reading and writing were practices of the
ruling and religious elite. The rich and powerful controlled the information.

• With the advent of printing press, first made with moveable wooden blocks in
China and then with moveable metal type by Johannes Gutenberg in
Germany, reading material became cheaply made, easily circulated and
became more accessible.

• Literacy followed and the literacy of common people was to revolutionize

every aspect of life. Through this the economic, cultural and political ideas
around the world connected and changed people and cultures in a ways
never before possible.
 PRINTING PRESS
• Historian, Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) made a masterful 750 page treatise
and surveyed the many profound influences of the printing press. Her
findings range across the Enlightenment, the protestant reformation, the
scientific revolution and more. Based on her work there are two overarching
consequences.

• First, the printing press change the nature of knowledge.

• Second, print encourage the challenge of political and religious authority

because of its ability to circulate information that contains competing views.
 PRINTING PRESS
For centuries in Europe, the monks and pries of the catholic church
were among few with the education, time and resources for reading and writing
books. The church thus has a kind of monopoly over knowledge. Church
officials could decide what the illiterate public should know.

The printing press, however, encouraged the literacy of the public and
the growth of the schools. Too, the rise of inexpensive, easily obtain magazines
and newspapers brought the news from around the world to people. People
increasingly learned of lands and cultures far from where they could travel.
They learned about the world. Truly, the printing press helped foster
globalization and knowledge of globalization.
 ELECTRONIC MEDIA
Radio quickly became a global medium, reaching distant
regions without the construction of wires or roads. In the 20th
century it was the only mass medium that is available in many
remote villages. Radio was crucially involved with the disturbance
of globalization during this time. From radio broadcasts that riveted
audiences during World War II, to the propaganda services that did
battle worldwide during the Cold War, to the so called ‘death radio’
that helped drive the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda.
 ELECTRONIC MEDIA

Film arose as another potent medium. Silent motion pictures

was shown as early as the 1870’s but as mass medium, film
developed in 1890’s. The 1st narrative film that is often credited is
“The Great Train Robbery”. By the 1920’s, film soon developed into
an artistic medium of great cultural expression using film to capture
powerful narratives that resonated within and cross cultures.
 ELECTRONIC MEDIA

For many people, Television is the most powerful and

pervasive mass medium yet created. It brought together the visual
and aural power of film with accessibility of radio. For some
scholars, the introduction of television was a defining moment in
globalization. Marshall McLuhan proclaimed the world a “global
village” largely because of television.
 DIGITAL MEDIA

• Digital media are any media that are encoded in machine-readable formats.
It can be created, viewed, distributed, modified and preserved on digital
electronics devices. Such as phones, televisions and etc. can now be
considered digital media.
• Even the computer, computer is the usual representation of digital media. It
comes as the latest and some would argue the most significant medium to
influence globalization.
• In the realm of economics, computers allows instantaneous, global trading
24 hours a day and also have revolutionized the work in every trade and
industry
 DIGITAL MEDIA

• In the realm of politics, it allows citizens access to information from around.

The media are helping to bring about a fundamentally new imaginary, what
scholar Manfred Steger (2008) has called a rising global imaginary. In the
past, only a few privileged people thought of themselves as “cosmopolitan”.

• According to a political scientist, Benedict Anderson it was the origin of

nations and nationalism.

• And Arjuan Appadurai has argued, global imaginary is not a trifling fantasy
but a ‘social fact’ and a ‘staging ground for action’.
 NO GLOBALIZATION
WITHOUT MEDIA
The purpose of this section has been to track the
development of communication media over time and
show how those media are essential to the ongoing
processes of globalization.
GLOBAL IMAGINARY
AND GLOBAL VILLAGE
Cosmopolitanism. Only few, privileged people
thought of the world. Now, cosmopolitanism is a
feature of modern life as people imagine
themselves as part of the world.
 Benedict Anderson
POLITICAL SCIENTIST

• He said that in understanding global

imaginary, we should focus on the origin
of nations and nationalism. He wondered
how people, from a large expanses of
land, came to conceive themselves as a
‘nation’. His answer was through
imagination
• People will never meet face to face all or
even most of the other members of their
nation but they can imagine themselves
as one.
 MARSHALL MCLUHAN
MEDIA SCHOLAR

• In 1960’s, he anticipated that media have

connected the world in ways that create a
‘global village’
• This global village would bring utopia.
Drawn closely together by media, people
would be like neighbors, living in a
Pentecostal condition of universal
understanding and unity.
 LEWIS MUMFORD
HISTORIAN OF TECHNOLOGY and SCIENCE

• No. 1 critic of McLuhan.

• He found a utopian hope in media
technology.
• He was disappointed when he knew that
media technology was being used for
capitalism, militarism, profit and power.
MEDIA AND ECONOMIC
GLOBALIZATION
 MEDIA AND ECONOMIC
GLOBALIZATION

The media have made economic globalization

possible by creating the conditions for global
capitalism. According to mcChesney, economic and
cultural globalization arguably would be impossible
without a global commercial media system to promote
global markets and to encourage consumer
valuables.
 OLIGOPOLY
• Modern media are the epitome of economic globalization. This is
where oligopoly enters.
• Oligopoly is a market situation in which each of producers affects but
does not control the market.
• Once a small, local, and regional media companies are being bought
up by a handful of global conglomerates and corporations, who
themselves were once small and local
• The result is media oligopoly, consolidation, concentration, and
convergence.
• Disney, time warner, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, and
Berttelsmann are the 6 companies who own or control close to 75% of
world’s media.
• Oligopoly is not interested in the ideology of the global village but only
one thing: PROFIT
 NO NEWS TODAY

• Transnational conglomerates, in this view, are much less interested

than local media outlets in providing news for citizens.
• Oligopoly of media helps create a passive apolitical populace that
rises from the couch primarily for consumption.
• The disastrous influence on news and what used to be called
public air reporting.
• Daya Keishan Thussu decries the ‘poverty of news’- issues
concerning the world’s poor are being increasingly marginalized as
a softer lifestyle variety of reporting appears to dominate gobal
television news agenda.
MEDIA AND POLITICAL
GLOBALIZATION
AN ESSENTIAL PROCESS OF GLOBALIZATION IS POLITICAL
GLOBALIZATION HAS TRANSFORMED WORLD
POLITICS IN PROFOUND WAYS
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A MORE DANGEROUS TIME TO
WORK IN MEDIA
• Media corporations are themselves powerful political actors, individual
journalists are subjected to brutal and intense intimidation as more
actors contend for power.

• The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) estimates that on

average close to 100 journalists and media workers are killed in line of
duty each year.

• Mexico, Russia, and Philippines topped the list of places where

journalists are being slaughtered with impunity.

• ‘CNN Effect’

• ‘Cash for Coverage: Bribery of Journalists around the World’

EDWARD HERMAN AND NOAM CHOMSKY (1998)

• Charge the news media with being complicit in ‘manufacturing consent’.

• The authors challenge the standard conception of western journalists as

‘watchdogs’ on the powerful.

• Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model shows the routes by which

money and power are able to filter out the news and fit to print, marginalize
dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interest to get their
messages across to the public.
NEW MEDIA DO INDEED COMPLICATE POLITICS
Mobile, interactive, discursive, and
participatory-with dramatic political implications.
MEDIA AND CULTURAL
GLOBALIZATION
The media are the people who market brands
aggressively for their cultural products. They actively bring
about interactions of culture for beauty, power, and profit.
 THREE OUTCOMES IN THE INFLUENCE OF
GLOBALIZATION ON CULTURE
CULTURAL DIFFERENTIALISM CULTURAL CONVERGENCE CULTURAL HYBRIDITY

Cultures are different, strong, Globalization will bring about Globalization will bring about
and resilient. Cultures are a growing sameness of increasing mixture and
destined to clash as cultures. A global culture blending of cultures. This
globalization continually likely American culture, will mélange creates new cultural
brings them together. overtake many local cultures, forms
which lose their distinctive
characteristics. This might
suggest to ‘cultural
imperialism’ in which more
developed countries invade
the less developed ones. The
outcome will be westernized,
homogenized, westernized
culture.
GLOCALIZATION
• Media and globalization are facts of life in local cultures.
• Local culture is negotiating, adapting, or adopting the facts
global and local, of the day.
• The local is built and understood anew each day in
globalized world.
• In and through media, from music to videos to films to
advertising and more, local people adapt global culture to
everyday life.
• Local culture is likely the historical product of countless
previous interactions with other cultures.
• The daily negotiation between local and other cultures is
key to understanding globalization, media and culture.
 REALIZING AND WAKING UP:
DARK CONTOURS OF
THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
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This chapter showed globalization and media too often have fulfilled
Mumford’s worst fears. They have built a village with large tracts of economic
injustice, political repression, and cultural conflict.

They have despoiled the very globe they encircled. We should expect and
do better.
THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS!!!