Arowwai Industries

GLOBALIZATION
AND MEDIA:
CREATING THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

R E P O R T E D B Y J O S E P H C O R R E A

GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
NATURE OF GLOBALIZATION
The concept of globalization is always controversial. In the
late 1900s, the advances in media, transportation
technology, and migration have genuinely globalized the
world.
According to Arjun Appadurai, a cultural anthropologist,
there was a rupture within social life in the late twentieth
century. The same is true with the migration patterns of
people moving more easily back and forth worldwide.
Hence both media and migration basically have
transformed the human lives and gave way to what we call
now as globalization.
It is particularly difficult to study globalization in isolation.
This term must be paired with another concept like
globalization and human rights, globalization and national
identity, globalization and culture, or globalization and
terrorism.
When did globalization begin?
The phenomenon has been existing decades ago. Some
scholars attributed its existence in the age of Enlightenment
or with the age of Exploration, which includes Columbus'
arrival in America as the trademark for globalization.
Other Social scientists contended that it started since the
beginning of humanity when the first Homo sapiens
departed from the African villuge in search of food or water
or adventure
Many scholars regard globalization as having an ancient
history. which encompasses all international human
activities. Specifically, the extent of the Siik Road and Spice
trade routes as blocked by the Ottoman Empire in 1453
which spurred exploration.
Andre Gunder Frank argued that the early roots of this
concept began with the rise of trade links between Sumer
and the Indus Valley civilization in the thid millennium B.C.
Historically, the archaic globalization prevailed during the
Hellenistic Age when the commercialized urban centers
developed the axis of Greek culture reaching from India to
Spain, and the other Alexandrine cities. The signiicance of
the trade links between the Roman Empire, the Parthian
Empire, and the Han Dynasty. There are increasing
commercial links between these powers, which took place in
the Silk Road. This event started in western China which
culminated the boundaries of the Parthian Empire, and
eventually continued to Rome.
 GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
NATURE OF GLOBALIZATION
When did globalization begin?
The Islamic Golden Age displayed another stage of
globalization. This is when the Jewish and Muslim
traders and explorers connected the trade routes,
resulting in the globalization of agriculture, trade,
knowledge, and technology
GLOBALIZATION
Is the conglomeration of historical, political.
cultural, and economic forces that have worked in
concert with media from the dawn of time to our
present day humans are rot aware that they are
globalizing and always been communicating with
media though they have not used that word.
One consequences of globalization is the
establishment of an imagined community. It is not
one process but multiple processes comprise of
economic, cultural and political aspects.
Marshal McLuhan (1962)
Globalization and Media act in concert and cohort
creating the conditions through which many people
can imagine themselves as part of one world, a global
imaginary called the GLOBAL VILLAGE.
He prophesied that the media technology would
transform the world into a global village which
apparently becoming a reality but not as blissful
utopia as he predicted.
Jack Lule
Globalization could not occur without media.
Human beings used media to explore, settle, and
globalize the world since the ancient times.
He argued that globalization and media are mixed
to create a divided world of gated communities and
ghettos, boarders and bounderies suffering and
surfeit, beauty and decay, surveillance and violence.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA DEFINITION OF MEDIA
it is a plural form of medium
a means of conveying something
channel of communication
it came into circulation in 1920s
Although the word is modern but human already uses it
since the first day of existence.
EVOLUTION OF MEDIA
Steger( 2014) organized the historical study of media by time
periods or stages and the dominant medium that
characterized by it. A certain Harold Innis (1950), Mcluhan's
teacher, divided media into three periods- oral, print, and
electronics. James Lull ( 2000) added digital to three during the
twentieth century. Terhi Rantanem (2005) considered script
before the printing press and divided the electronic period into
wired and wireless for six eras. However, it was only the five
time periods functionally capture the study of globalization
and media. As highlighted, globalization and media do not
proceed along an inevitable, inexorable path of progress. Its
progress also led to great benefits and sometimes even
greater danger.
 GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

ORAL COMMUNICATION
Oral medium or human speech has been with us for the past 200, 000 years ago as the oldest and most enduring of all
media. The truth is, the very first and last humans will share at least one thing- the ability to speak. When speech
developed into language, Homo sapiens had developed a medium that would set them apart from every other species
and allow them to cover and conquer the world. The medium of language was able to aid the globalization in the
following ways:

1. Language allowed humans to
cooperate.
2. Sharing information about land,
water, climate and weather aided
humans ability to travel and adapt
to different environments.
5. Language also led to markets, the trade
of goods and services, and eventually into
cross-continental trade routes.
3. Sharing about tools and weapons led to the
spread of technology.
4. Language helped humans move, but it also
helped them settle down. Language stored
and transmitted important agricultural
information accross time from one to another
leading to the creation of towns and villages.
The first human civilization created by
language was around 4000 B.C.E. and
happened at Sumer in the Middle East
sometimes called the cradle of civilization.
Sumer is thought to be the birthplace of the
wheel, plow ion, and writing (Steger, 2014)
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

Language is dependent on human memory, which is however limited in capacity and

SCRIPT imperfect. With the advent of script, humans began to communicate and share
knowledge and ideas over much larger spaces and across much longer times, The
evolution of writing: started from the cave paintings, petroglyphs, and hieroglyphs.
After around 3000 B.C.E., the earliest writing systems with symbols were carved into
clay tablets to keep account of trade. These cuneiform marks subsequently
developed into symbols that symbolized the syllables of languages and eventually led
to the creation of alphabets, the scripted letters that represent the smallest sounds
of a language.

Writing surfaces also were done at first as carving into wood, clay, bronze, bones,
stone, and even tortoise shells. The ancient Egypt created it from a plant found along
the Nile River known as papyrus. The latter is the origin of the English word. paper.
Human beings had a medium that catapulted globalization through the script on
sheets of papyrus and parchment. The great civilizations became plausible from
Egypt and Greece to Rome and China through the invention and development of
script.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
The information revolution began with the establishment of printing press. This
transformed markets, businesses, nations, schools, churches, governments,
PRINTING PRESS armies, and a lot more. The consequential role of the printing press in the
history of media and globalization is undisputed. The first printing press was
made in China with movable wooden blocks, and then with movable metal type
by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany. The contributions of the printing press in
the globalization process are the following:

a) It made the production and copying of documents faster at a cheaper cost.

This made books and other printed materials more affordable to the common
people. Consequently, this improved literacy.

b) Information was not already controlled by the rich and the powerful.

c) The activities of reading and writing were not only for the ruling and religious
elite hence, the spread of civilization was not only coming from the powerful
but even from the common people.

d) The explosive flow of economic, cultural, and political ideas around the world
connected and changed people and cultures in ways never before possible.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA In the 19th century a new media bar come and scholars called these as electronic media
because they require electromagnetic energy - electricity-to use. The telegraph, telephone,
radio, film and television are example to these.

ELECTRONIC The telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse began work on a machine in the 1830s that eventually
MEDIA could send coded messages--dots and dashes over electrical lines. With this, all information
was almost in a real time like, arrival and departure on travel, market prices and newspaper
reports were instantaneous. By 1866, a transatlantic cable was laid between the United
States and Europe and the telegraph became a truly global medium. In 1876, Alexander
Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone, which transmit speech over distance.
By 1927, the first transatlantic call was made via radio. The creation of cell phone in 1973
was especially crucial in the context of globalization and media.

Radio first conceived as a 'wireless telegraph', developed alongside the telegraph and
telephone in the late 1890s. By the early 1900s, speech indeed was being transmitted
without wires, and in 1920s broadcast stations were 'on the air transmitting music and
news. Film arose as another potent medium and Silent motion pictures were shown as
early as the 1870s. Films developed in the 1890s, The Great Train Robbery made in 1903 is
often credited as the first narrative film. ten minutes long with 14 scenes. The worldwide
success of Titanic and Avatar offers resounding examples of the confluence of globalization
and media.

The television brought together the visual and aural power of film and this brought people
sat in their living rooms and viewed pictures and stories from across the globe. The world
was brought into home. By which Marshall McLuhan proclaimed the world a global village.
 GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

DIGITAL MEDIA

These are most often electronic media that rely on digital codes. The
computer is the usual representation of digital media, and most
significant medium to influence globalization in the following
realms:

a) In economics, global trading is happening 24 hours a day.

b) In politics, computers allow citizens access to information from

around the world.

c) It transformed cultural life, information around the globe allows

people to adopt and adapt new practices in music, sports, education
etc.
 GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
GLOBAL IMAGINARY AND
GLOBAL VILLAGE
Through media the people of the world came to know of
the world. That is, people have needed to be able to truly
imagine the world, and imagine themselves acting in the
world for globalization to proceed. The media have not
only physically linked the globe with cables, broadband,
and wireless networks, but have also linked the globe with
stories, images, myths, and metaphors. With this, it brings
new imaginary called by Manfred Steger (2008) a rising
global imaginary- the globe itself as imagined community.
Political scientist Benedict Anderson (1991) focuses on the
origin of nations and nationalism. He wondered how a
group of pcople, though spread across vast expanses of
land, came to conceive of themselves as a nation. He said
that nations are the result of 'imagined communities".
Arjun Appadurai (1996) argued that imagination
is not a trifling fantasy but a social fact and a
staging ground for action.
Marshall Mcluhan (1961) anticipated this
phenomenon with his argument that media have
connected the world in ways that create a global
village. The global village would bring about a
utopia.
Lewis Mlumford (1970) American historian of
technology and science, also found utopian hope
in media technology. However, he watched with
dismay as media technology was used instead
for capitalism, militarism, profit, and power.

GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA
During the 1990s, the mainstream media then were
relatively only national or local in perspective. The
deregulation policies of the various states in Europe and
the US have allowed the proliferation of cable and the
satellite channels. The development of capitalism, new
technologies, and the increasing commercialization of
global television have a huge impact in the international
flows of information.
The birth of international news agencies during the 19th
century lighted the path toward the global system of
codification. Until the 1960s, the launch of the first geo-
stationary communication satellites through
electromagnetics transmission became completely global
in character. This Iater paved the way in the globalization
of communication as a distinguished phenomenon in the
20th century.
Thompson (1995,169) stressed on how synbolic power
overlaps with the economic and the political aspects in the
globalization process. This explained how the appropriation
of globalized media products interacts with the localized
practices, which can either serve consolidate relations of
power or create new forms of dependency. Moreover,
Schiller emphasized that the power structures of the 1960s
had changed, but highlighted that Cultural domination
remained American in form and content while the economic
basis had become globalized.
Herman and McChesney (2004) presupposed that the active
audience perspective will be beneficial to the resistance
against media globalization and commércialization. But this
tends to undermine the perspectives concomitant with the
grand narrative using the micro textual analyses. The
audience is always a co-producer and dismissed the
conscquences of de-politicization as a result of a media
entertainment-led diet. It is a nisnomer though that every
American programme or cultural product is necessarily
packaged with the consumerist capitalist values. Such that
there is no diversity and complexity in the form of American
cultural production and the ways in which it is accepted by
audiences in the different states. Tomlinson (1999)
highlighted reasons in favour of the cultural inperialism
approach, stating the real nature of global culture and the
growing paradigm of capitalism.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

GLOBALIZATION
OF MEDIA Sparks (2000) argued that no media is genuinely
Globalization of media is not a term of global character.
global in nature. Hence

To reiterate, globalization is not a new phenomenon as a buzzword in the 1990s. At

the turn of the millennium the characterization of interdependence more than
twenty years ago also now becomes applicable to globalization.

Grieco and Holmes (1999) said that globalization has been driven by the interest
and needs of the rich world. This is related to the fact that global developments are
characterized not by their growth dynamics but by their linkages to globalization
itself.

Wildman and Siwek (1998) Language is regarded as delicate divider of media

markets, which provides strong barrier to media imports.

There are several aspects of culture which are important in defining the kind of
audiences apart from language. These includes joke, slang, historical and political
references, gossip about stars, and remarks on current people and events that are
culture-oriented and even nation-specific.
GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

GLOBALIZATION
There are economic and organizational forces behind cultural
OF MEDIA
globalization. The numerous activities in the advance states on news
and entertainment media is a form of globalization, which are
distributed to countries all over the world.

The globalization of communications media is a challenge due to

several factors like the transborder data flow, cultural imperialism,
media and information flows, the flow of information, media trade
and the effects of national development.

Cultural Imperialism is a big intentional issue on communication due

to the unequal flows of film , television, music, news and information,
According to cultural imperialism theory the global economic system
is dominated by a core of advanced countries while third world
countries remain at the periphery of the system with little control
over their economic and political progress.
GLOBAL ECONOMY

THANK YOU
J O S E P H C O R R E A