LESSON 7: Media and Globalization
village”.
Globalization – Entails the spread of various cultures and ideas.
- It relies on media as its main conduit for the spread of global culture
and ideas.
MEDIA AND ITS FUNCTIONS:
 Lule describes media as “a means of conveying something, such
as a channel of communication.”
 When commentators refer to “media”, they mean the technologies
of mass communication.
Examples of the types of media:
PRINT MEDIA – Books, magazines, and newspapers.
BROADCAST MEDIA – Radio, film, and television.
DIGITAL MEDIA – Internet and mobile mass communication.
INTERNET MEDIA – E-mail, internet sites, social media, and internet
based video and audio.
 Marshall McLuhan once declared that “the medium is the
message.” And different media simultaneously extend and
amputate human senses.
 Television is not a simple bearer of messages, it also shapes the
social behavior of users and reorient family behavior.
 New Media may expand the reach of communication, but they also
dull the users’ communicative capacities.
 New Media are neither inherently good nor bad.
THE GLOBAL VILLAGE AND CULTURAL IMPERIALISM:
MARSHALL MCLUHAN – A media and communication theorist, coined
the term “global village” 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.
- He also declared that television was turning the world into a “global
Early thinkers assumed that global media had a tendency to homogenize
culture. As global media spread, people from all over the world would share
the same things. Cultural Imperialism whereby American values and
culture would overwhelm all others.
HERBERT SCHILLER – media critic who argued that not only the world
being Americanized, but that this process also led to the spread of
“American” capitalist values like consumerism.
JOHN TOMLINSON – cultural globalization is simply a euphemism for
“Western Cultural Imperialism” since it promotes “homogenized,
Westernized, consumer culture.”
CRITICS OF CULTURAL EMPERIALISM:
 Proponents of the idea of cultural imperialism ignored the fact that
media messages are not just made by producers, they are also
consumed by audiences.
1980 – Media scholars began to pay attention to the ways in which
audiences understood and interpreted media messages.
1985 – Indonesian culture critic Len Ang studied the ways in which
different viewers in the Netherlands experienced watching the American
soap opera Dallas.
- 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.
1990 – Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes decided to push Ang’s analysis
further by examining how viewers from distinct cultural communities
interpreted Dallas.
- People from diverse cultural backgrounds had their own ways of
understanding the show.
 - The cultural imperialism thesis has been belied by the renew
strength of regional trends in the globalization process.
It is no longer tenable to insist that globalization is a unidirectional process
of foreign cultures overwhelming local ones.
It also leaves a room for dynamism and cultural change.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE CREATION OF THE CYBER GHETTOS:
- Few media scholars argue that the world is becoming culturally
homogenous.
- The internet and social media are also providing ways for the
globalization of culture and ideas to move in different directions.
- Western corporations, the internet particularly and social media, are
challenging previous ideas about media globalization.
-
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA:
- The democratic potential of social media was most evident in 2011
during the wave of uprisings known as the Arab Spring. The
massive protests of Arabs were largely enabled by social media.
- Without access to traditional broadcast media like TV, activists
opposing the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya
used Twitter to organize and to disseminate information.
- The Women’s March against newly appointed US President
Donald Trump began with a tweet from Hawai’I lawyer and it
became a global movement.
- In the US, voters for the Democratic Party largely read the
conservatives’ websites. This segmentation has been exacerbated
by the nature of social media feeds, which lead users to read
articles, view memes and videos shared by like-minded friends.
SLINTERNET (CYBERBALKANIZATION) – refer to the various
bubbles people place themselves in when they are online.
- Characterization of the internet as splintering and dividing due to
various factors such as technology commerce, politics, nationalism,
religion, and interests.
- Could resemble living in an echo chamber, which reinforces one’s
existing beliefs and opinions.
ECHO CHAMBER – precludes users from listening to or reading opinions
and info that challenge their view points, thus making them more partisan
and close minded.
- This segmentation has been used by people in power who are
aware that the social media m=bubbles can produce a herd
mentality.
HERD MENTALITY – making decisions based upon the actions of others.
- Can also be a cheap tool by politicians in government propaganda
by manipulating public opinion through intimidation and the
spreading of fake news.
- The dark side of social media shows that even a seemingly open
and democratic media may be co-opted towards undemocratic
means.
- Global Online Propaganda will be the biggest threat we will face
as the globalization of media deepens.
TIPS IN DETERMINING A FAKE NEWS:
 Find out about the source.
 Look at the author.
 Check the references and links to other articles.
 Do a Google Reverse search image/
 See if the story you are reading about is being shared on any other
mainstream news outlets.
GLOBAL CITY - Also called a power city, world city, alpha city or world
center, is a city which is a primary node in the global economic network.
GENTRIFICATION - The process of renovating and improving a house or
district so that it conforms to middle-class taste.
BANLIEUE - An outlying housing development in a French city.
DEMOGRAPHY - The study of statistics such as births, deaths, income, or
the incidence of disease, which illustrate the changing structure of human
populations.
OVERPOPULATION - Refers to a population which exceeds its
sustainable size within a particular environment or habitat.
SASKIA SASSEN - popularized the term “global city” in the 1990s.
Centers of Higher Learning and Culture. A city’s intellectual influence is
Three global cities: New York, Tokyo, and London.
seen through the influence of its publishing industry.
- Hubs of global fiancé and capitalism, and the homes of the world’s
top stock exchanges where investors buy and sell shares in major
corporations.
- New York has the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), London
has the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE), and Tokyo has
the Nikkei.
- Movie-making mecca Los Angeles can now rival the Big Apple’s
cultural influence.
- San Francisco is the home of the most powerful internet
companies-Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
- The growth of the Chinese economy has turned cities like
Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou into centers of trade and
finance.
- The Chinese government reopened the Shanghai Stock Exchange
in the late 1990 and it has grown to become the fifth largest stock
market in the world.
Indicators for Globality
Economic Power largely determines which cities are global.
 China has become the manufacturing center of the world.
 Economic opportunities in a global city make it attractive to
talents from across the world.
Center of Authorities. Washington D.C. may not be as wealthy as New
York, but it is the seat of American state power.
 The cities that house major international organization also be
considered centers of political influence.
 The headquarters of the United Nation is in New York, end that of
the European Union is in Brussels.
 Jakarta is the location of the main headquarters of the Association
of Southeast Asians Nations (ASEAN).
 Powerful political hubs exert influence on their own countries as
well as on international affairs; European Central Bank.
 The New York Times carries the name of New York City, but it is
far from being a local newspaper
 One of the reasons for the many tourist visiting Boston is because
they want to see Harvard University-the world’s top university.
The Measure of Economic Competitiveness of a city
 The Economist Intelligence Unit has added other criteria like market
size, purchasing power of citizens, size of the middle class, and
potential for growth.
 “Tiny” Singapore is considered Asia’s most competitive city
because of its strong market, efficient and incorruptible government,
and livability.
CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL CITIES
 Can be sites of great inequality and poverty as well as tremendous
violence.
 Cities only cover 2 percent of the world’s landmass, but they
consume 78 percent of global energy.
 Cities with global influence are obvious targets for terrorist due to
their high populations and their role as symbols of globalization that
many terrorist despise.
 As a city attracts more capital and richer residents, real estate
prices go up and poor residents are forced to relocate to far away
but cheaper areas.
GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY
Poorer districts of urban centers also tend to have families with more
children because the success of their "small family business" depends on
how many of their members can be hawking their wares on the streets.
- The more children, the better it will be for the farm or the small by-
the-street corner enterprises.
Urbanized, educated, and professional families with two incomes desire
just one or two progenies.
- These families also have their sights on long-term saving plans.
They set aside significant parts of their incomes for their retirement,
health care, and the future education of their child/children.
Rural families view multiple children and large kinship networks as critical
investments.
- Children can take over the agricultural work.
- Countries is the "less developed regions of the world" that rely on
agriculture tend to maintain high levels of population growth.
 Countries welcome immigrants as they offset the debilitating effects
of an aging population, but they are also perceived as threats to the
job market because they compete against citizens for jobs and
often have the edge because they are open to receiving lower
wages
 Development planners see urbanization and industrialization as
indicators of a developing society, but disagree on the role of
population growth or decline in modernization.
By limiting the population, vital resources could be used for economic
progress and not be "diverted" and "wasted" to feeding more mouths.
- The American policy journal, Foreign Affairs, had already advocated
"contraception and sterilization" as the practical solutions to global
economic, social, and political problems.
BETSY HARTMAN disagree with the advocates of neo-Malthusian theory
and accused governments of using population control as a “substitute for
social justice and much-needed reforms-such land distribution,
employment creation, provision of mass education and health care, and
emancipation.
POPULATION GROWTH has spurred “technological and institutional
innovation” and increased “the supply of human ingenuity.
GREEN REVOLUTION created high-yielding varieties of rice and other
cereals and along, with the development of new methods of cultivation,
increased yields globally.
WOMEN’S MOVEMENT of the 1960s in the US was responsible for the
passage and judicial endorsement of a pro-choice law, but conservatives
controlling state legislatures have also slowly undermined this law by
imposing a restriction on women's access to abortion.
THE FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE
- They are against any form of population control because they are
compulsory by nature, resorting to a carrot-and-stick approach
(punitive mechanisms co-exist alongside benefits) that actually
does not empower women.
- Feminists also point out that there is very little evidence that point to
overpopulation as the culprit behind poverty and ecological
devastation.
Women's and feminist arguments on reproductive rights and
overpopulation are acknowledged, but the struggle to turn them into policy
is still fought at the national level. It is the dilemma that women and feminist
movements face today.
POPULATION GROWTH AND FOOD SECURITY
Today's global population has reached 7.4 billion, and it is estimated to
increase to 9.5 billion in 2050, then 11.2 billion by 2100.
- The median age of this population is 30.1 with the male median age
at 29.4 years and female, 30.9 years.
 - Demographers predict that the world population will stabilize by
2050 to 9 billion, although they warn that feeding this population will
be an immense challenge.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that in order for
countries to mitigate the impact of population growth, food production must:

- Increase by 70 percent
- Annual cereal production must rise to 3 billion tons from the current
2.1 billion
- Yearly meat production must go up to 200 million tons to reach 470
million.

The FAO recommends that countries increase their investments in

agriculture, craft long-term policies aimed at fighting poverty, and invest in
research and development.

- The UN body also suggests that countries develop a

comprehensive social service program that includes food
assistance, consistent delivery of health services, and education
especially for the poor.
- If domestic production is not enough, it becomes essential for
nations to import.

FAO enjoins governments to keep their markets open, and to eventually

"move towards a global trading system that is fair and competitive, and that
contributes to a dependable market for food.