SSC 6

The Contemporary World

Module 7

Unit II: A World of Ideas: Cultures of

Globalization
Topics: Media and Globalization

Learning Objectives:
What Should You Learn?

At the end of the topic, you are able to:

A. Compare the social impact of different media on the process of globalization
B. Explain the dynamic between local and global cultural production.
C. Define responsible media consumption

Pre – Assessment
Challenge Yourself!

1. Discuss why globalization involves the spread of ideas give an example.

2. What is the intimate relationship between globalization and media.
3. Explain why new media are neither inherently good nor bad.

Lesson Opening:
Let’s Start!

This topic entails how globalization relies on media as its main conduit for the spread of global culture and
ideas

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 Guiding Questions:
Questions To Ponder

1. What is the biggest threat to face as a globalization of media depends?

2. Cite another example or cause of the dark side of social media.
3. If cultural globalization merely entails the spread of the western monoculture, what explains the
prevalence of regional cultural trends?

Discussion/Lesson Proper:
Read Up, Absorb and Discover

Globalization entails the spread of various cultures. When a film is made in Hollywood, it is shown not
only in the United States, but also in other cities across the globe. Globalization also involves the
dissemination of conception or thoughts. For example, the notion of the rights of lesbian, gay: bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) communities is spreading across the world and becoming more widely accepted.

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. However, when commentators refer to “media” (the plural of
medium), they mean the technologies of mass communication.

Print media include books, magazines, and newspapers.

Broadcast media involve radio, film, and television.

Digital media cover the internet and mobile mass communication. Within the category of internet media,
there are the e-mail, internet sites, social media, and internet-based video and audio.

Media theorist Marshall McLuhan once declared that “the medium is the message.” He did not mean that
ideas (“messages”) are useless and do not affect people. Rather, his statement was an attempt to draw
attention to how media, as a form of technology, reshape societies. Thus, television is not a simple bearer of
messages, it also shapes the social behavior of users and reorient family behavior. Since it was introduced in
the 1960s, television has steered people from the dining table where they eat and tell stories to each other,
to the living room where they silently munch on their food while watching primetime shows. Television has
also drawn people away from other meaningful activities such as playing games or reading books.

McLuhan added that different media simultaneously extend and amputate human senses. New media may
expand the reach of communication, but they also dull the users’ communicative capacities.

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Similar can be said about cellphones. They expand people’s senses because they provide the capability to
talk to more people instantaneously and simultaneously. On the other hand, they also limit the senses
because they make users easily distractible and more prone to multitasking.

The Global Village and Cultural Imperialism

McLuhan declared that television was turning the world into a “global village.” By this, he meant that, 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.

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 would begin to watch, listen to, and read the same things. This thinking arose
at a time when America’s power had turned it into the world’s cultural heavyweight. Commentators,
therefore, believed that media globalization coupled with American hegemony would create a form of
cultural imperialism whereby American values and culture would overwhelm all others.

For John Tomlinson, cultural globalization is simply a euphemism for “Western cultural imperialism” since it
promotes “homogenized, Westernized, consumer culture.

Critiques of Cultural Imperialism

In 1985, Indonesian cultural critic Len Ang studied the ways in which different viewers in the Netherlands
experienced watching the American soap opera Dallas. Through letters from 42 viewers, she presented a
detailed analysis of audience-viewing experiences. Rather than simply receiving American culture in a
“passive and resigned way,” she noted that viewers put “a lot of emotional energy” into the process and
they experienced pleasure based on how the program resonated with them.

In 1990, Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes decided to push Ang’s analysis further by examining how viewers from
distinct cultural communities interpreted Dallas. They argued that texts are received differently by varied
interpretive communities because they derived different meanings and pleasures from these texts.” Thus,
people from diverse cultural backgrounds had their own ways of understanding the show. Russians were
suspicious of the show’s content, believing not only that it was primarily about America, but that it
contained American propaganda. American viewers believed that the show, though set in America, was
primarily about the lives of the rich.

The cultural imperialism thesis has been belied by the renewed strength of regional trends in the
globalization process.

Asian culture, for example, has proliferated worldwide through the globalization of media.

Japanese brands-from Hello Kitty to the Mario Brothers to Pokémon-are now an indelible part of global
popular culture.

The same can be said for Korean pop (K-pop) and Korean telenovelas, which are widely successful regionally
and globally.

The observation even applies to culinary tastes. The most obvious case of globalized Asian cuisine is sushi.
And while it is true that McDonald’s has continued to spread across Asia, it is also the case that Asian brands

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have provided stiff competition. The Philippines’ Jollibee claims to be the number one choice for fast food in
Brunei.

Hello Kitty remains proof of Japan's continued influence over global culture.

Given these patterns, it is no longer tenable to insist that globalization is a unidirectional process of foreign
cultures overwhelming local ones. Globalization, as noted in Lesson 1, will remain an uneven process, and it
will produce inequalities. Nevertheless, it leaves room for dynamism and cultural change.

Social Media and the Creation of Cyber Ghettoes

Cyber Ghettoes – race, class, gender

- Social group is marginalized

- A net trend that created which became a real fashion

- Individual that shared similar values. Ex. Social ghetto and liberal ghetto

Social media have both beneficial and negative effects.

1. Beneficial effect - These media nave enabled users to be consumers and producers of information
simultaneously. The democratic potential of social media was most evident in 2011 during the wave of
uprisings 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 toppled their respective governments. More recently, the “women’s march”
against newly installed US President Donald Trump began with a tweet from a Hawaii lawyer and
became a national, even global, movement.

2. The Negative of the dark side of social media - In the early 2000s, commentators began referring to the
emergence of a “splinternet”- is a characterization of internet as splintering or dividing due to various
factors such as technology, commerce, politics, nationalism, religion and divergent national interest.

The splinternet also referred to “cyberbalkanization” to refer to the various bubbles people place
themselves in when they are online or smaller groups with similar interest to degree that they show a
narrow minded approach to outsiders or those with contradictory views. Example, in the United States,
voters of the Democratic Party largely lead liberal websites, and voters of the Republican Party largely
tread conservative websites. This segmentation, notes an article in the journal Science, has been
exacerbated by the nature of social media feeds, which leads users to read articles, memes, and videos
Shared by like-minded friends.” 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 closedminded.

It 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.

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 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.

Cases show, fake information can spread easily on social media since they have few content filters.
Unlike newspapers, Facebook does not have a team of editors who are trained to sift through and filter
information.

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”.

Post – Assessment
It’s Your Time to Shine

ESSAY
1. Compare and contrast the social impact of television and social media.
2. Do you think globalization leads to cultural imperialism?
3. What strategies can you use to distinguish between fake and factual information on the internet?

Generalization/Summary:
KNOW What You Learned!

Different media have diverse effect on globalization processes. Social media will splinter cultures and
ideas into bubbles of people who do not interact.

Generate your own generalization at least two.

1.
2.

Feedback:
What’s on your Mind?

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Congratulations for finishing this module! You can share your thoughts and insights
about the Media and Globalization by leaving a message below.
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See you on your next adventure!

References:
Textbook: The Contemporary World
By: Lisandro E. Claudio
Patricio N. Abinales