MEDIA AND

GEC 106
GLOBALIZATION
Jack Lule, the author of Globalization and Media
asks:

Could global trade have evolved without the flow of

information on markets, prices, commodities and more?

Could empires have stretch 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 cultures?
MEDIA and GLOBALIZATION
• The two concepts have been partners throughout the
whole of human history.

• “Globalization and media have created the conditions

through which many people can now imagine
themselves as part of one world.”
Media and its Functions
• Lule describes media as “a means of conveying
something” such as a channel of communication.

• Technically speaking, a person’s voice is a medium but

when referred to “media”, it means technologies of
mass communiation.

• Print Media – books, magazines and newspapers

• Broadcast Media – radio, film and television

• Digital Media – internet and mobile mass

communication
Evolution of Media and
Globalization
1. Oral Communication

• Language allowed human to cooperate.

• It allowed sharing of information.
• Language became the most important tool as human
being explored the world and experience different
cultures.
• It helped them move and settle down.
• It led to markets, trade and cross-continental trade.
2. Script

• Language was important but imperfect, distance

became a strain for oral communication.
• Script allowed human to communicate over a larger
space and much longer times.
• It allowed for the written and permanent codification of
economic, cultural, religious, and political practice.
3. The Printing Press

• It started the “information revolution”.

• It transformed social institutions such as schools,
churches, governments and more.
• Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) surveyed the influences of
the printing press.
1. It changed the nature of knowledge. It
preserved and standardized knowledge.
2. It encouraged the challenge of political and
religious authority because of its ability to
circulate competing views.
4. Electronic Media

• The vast reach of these media continues to open up

new vistas in the economic, political, and cultural
processes of globalization.
• Radio- quickly became a global medium, reaching
distant regions.
• Television- considered as the most powerful and
pervasive mass medium. It brought together the visual
and aural power of the film with the accessibility of
radio.
• The electronic media and communication sector,
which ranges from telecommunication networks and
the Internet, through to radio, television and film, is
itself among the most active in the current drive for
the globalization of production, markets and trade
5. Digital Media

• Digital Media are often electronic media that rely on

digital code.
• Many of our earlier media such as phones and tv’s are
now considered digital media.
• In the realm of computer it allowed citizens to access
information from around the world.
What Media Do and How They Affect
Societies
• Most people accept the idea that the media can
influence people. But the degree of that influence, as
well as who is most-impacted, when, how and why,
have been the subjects of great debate among
communication scholars for nearly a century.

• Media effects refers to the many ways individuals and

society may be influenced by both news and
entertainment mass media, including film, television,
radio, newspapers, books, magazines, websites, video
games, and music.
• Marshall McLuhan, in full Herbert Marshall
McLuhan, (born July 21, 1911, Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada—died Dec. 31, 1980, Toronto), Canadian
communications theorist and educator,
whose aphorism “the medium is the message”
summarized his view of the potent influence of
television, computers, and other electronic
disseminators of information in shaping styles of
thinking and thought, whether in sociology, art, science,
or religion. He regarded the printed book as an
institution fated to disappear.
• McLuhan taught that societies have always been
shaped more by the nature of the media with which
individuals communicate than by the apparent content
of the communication. His phrase, "the medium is the
message" came to embody the historic view that the
means by which human beings communicate have
always structured their actions.
• He also introduced the idea that the mass media of the
times were turning the world into a "global village,"
shrinking the world with respect to share experience
and passage of news.

Global Village - coined in 1964 to describe the

phenomenon of the world’s culture
shrinking and expanding at the same time
due to pervasive technological advances
that allow for instantaneous sharing of
culture
• McLuhan's mantra, "the medium is the message,"
summarized his view of the influence of television,
computers, and other electronic information sources in
shaping society and modern life. By 1960, he had
delineated his concept of the "global village," and by
1970, the public had embraced the term and
recognized the idea as both exhilarating and
frightening. As a 1970 Saturday Review article noted,
"There are no boundaries in a global village. All
problems will become so intimate as to be one's
own...."
Specific Media Effects
retrieved from

http://siteresources.worldbank.o
rg/EXTGOVACC/Resources/Me
diaEffectsweb.pdf
• Media Effects and Our View of the World While
discussion of media effects often centers on dramatic
issues such as violence or propaganda, scholars have
identified a number of more subtle potential effects: •
• Priming – Media messages may stimulate recall of
stored ideas, knowledge, opinions, or experience
associated in some way with the message content.

• For example, a news story about the French

presidential election might trigger thoughts about the
French economy, memories of a trip to Paris during
college, or remind a person to put brie on their grocery
list (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
• Agenda-Setting – The media may not affect what
people think, but may affect what they think about,
through the choice of which topics to cover and what to
emphasize. (Cohen, 1963; Lippmann, 1922).
• Framing – Frames are the particular treatment or “spin”
an individual or organization gives to a message (Gitlin,
1980). While agenda-setting is choosing which stories
to tell, framing is choosing how to tell them. Frames
may “promote a particular problem definition, causal
interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment
recommendation” (Entman, 1993, p. 54).
• Cultivation – Over time, heavy viewers of television
may come to believe that the real world is similar to the
television world – heavy exposure to the media
cultivates this belief (Gerbner, Gross, Signorielli, &
Morgan, 1980).

• For example, based on the proportion among television

characters, a heavy user of television might estimate
that more than one in ten males hold jobs in law
enforcement, when in reality only 1 in 100 do
(Dominick, 2005, p. 471).
• Mean World Syndrome – Media consumers may
become so overwhelmed by negative portrayals of
crime and violence that they may begin—either
cynically or despondently—to believe the real world is a
mean and harsh place (Gerbner, Gross, Jackson-
Beeck, Jeffries-Fox, & Signorielli, 1978; Wilkinson &
Fletcher, 1995).
Global Village and Cultural
Imperialism
• Cultural Imperialism - the fact of the culture of
a large and powerful country, organization, etc. having
a great influence on another less powerful country

• Cultural imperialism occurs when one community

imposes or exports various aspects of its own way of
life onto another community.
• The cultural part of the term refers to local customs,
traditions, religion, language, social and moral norms,
and so on—features of a way of life that are distinct
from, though often closely related to, the economic and
political systems that shape a community.
• The imperialism part of the term indicates that the
imposing community forcefully extends the authority of
its way of life over another population by either
transforming or replacing aspects of the target
population's culture.
• Today, cultural imperialism tends to describe the United
States’ role as a cultural superpower throughout the
world.
• American movie studios are generally much more
successful than their foreign counterparts not only
because of their business models but also because the
concept of Hollywood has become one of the modern
worldwide movie business’s defining traits.
• Multinational, nongovernmental corporations can now
drive global culture.
Cultural Hegemony

• Antonio Gramsci (Italian journalist and activist)

originated the idea of cultural hegemony to
describe the power of one group over another.
• He argued that culture and the media exert such a
powerful influence on society that they can actually
influence workers to buy into a system that is not
economically advantageous to them.
• This argument that media can influence culture and
politics is typified in the notion of the American Dream.
McDonaldization – a cultural
hegemony
• Unsurprisingly, McDonald’s is the prime example of this
concept. Although the fast-food restaurant is somewhat
different in every country—for example, Indian
restaurants offer a pork-free, beef-free menu to
accommodate regional religious practices—the same
fundamental principles apply in a culturally specific
way. The branding of the company is the same
wherever it is; the “I’m lovin’ it” slogan is inescapable,
and the Golden Arches are, according to Eric Schlosser
in Fast Food Nation, “more widely recognized than the
Christian cross.”
Social Media and the
Creation of Cyber Ghettoes
• Social Media have both beneficial and negative effects.

• These form of communication has democratized

access, anyone with internet connection can use
Facebook or Twitter for free.

The so-called Million People March at Luneta was the

first of a series of protests in the Philippines calling for
the total abolition of the Pork Barrel fund, triggered by
public anger over the Priority Development Assistance
Fund scam. Initial calls circulated through social media
(mainly on Facebook and Twitter) to convene a protest
on August 26, 2013 at Luneta Park in Manila as well as
other cities nationwide and overseas. Some media
commentators consider this as the first ever massive
rally in the Philippines called and organised mostly
through social media channels.
• Beginning in December 2010, anti-government protests
rocked Tunisia. By early 2011 they had spread into
what became known as the Arab Spring—a wave of
protests, uprisings, and unrest that spread across
Arabic-speaking countries in North Africa and the
Middle East. Pro-democratic protests, which spread
rapidly due to social media, ended up toppling the
governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen.

• The protests in Tunisia—documented and shared by

mobile devices—spread to neighboring countries.
• "Our rants, our opinions, including our stupidity,
ignorance and shallowness, it gets amplified by
social media because we get to have a louder
voice. In social media, we are not alone,"
- Peachy Rallonza-Bretana
Cyber Ghetto
• The equivalent of a ghetto (a crowded poor part of a
city lived in by a specific ethnic group) in cyberspace; a
place on the Internet etc. where a social group
is marginalized.
• A segmentation in social media.
• people's tend to give more conscious reactions to
social and political incidents on social media when
these do not challenge their viewpoints, thus making
them more partisan and close minded.
• Splinternet or Cyberbalkanization
• Splinternet - fragmented and divided internet
• Cyberbalkanization - is the segregation of the Internet
into smaller groups with similar interests, to a degree
that they show a narrow-minded approach to outsiders
or those with contradictory views. While the Internet
has largely been credited for broadening discussion, it
also can serve as a means of bringing together fringe
groups with intolerant viewpoints. So, while the Internet
has contributed to globalization and information
exchange, it also may be used to foster discrimination.

The cyberbalkanization term combines the term "cyber"

with Balkans, a political region in southeastern Europe
with a history of partitioned cultures, languages and
religion.
• In what ways does the United States act as a cultural
hegemon?
• How do local cultures respond to the influence of
foreign culture? What are some examples of local
cultures resisting the influence of foreign culture? What
are some examples where local cultures have
embraced foreign culture?
.