Media

and
Globalization
Charmaine Nidua - BSEE 1C
Globalization entails the
spread of various cultures
Examples:
• Films made in Hollywood are being shown not
only in US but also in other cities across the globe.
• “Gangnam Style” of South Korean rapper Psy
(song about Gangnam) having millions of listeners
who have never been or may never go to Gangnam
and some may not know what Gangnam is.
Globalization involves the
spread of ideas
Examples:
• Notion of the rights of LGBT communities being
spread across the world and becoming more widely
accepted.
• Similarly, the conservative Christian Church that
opposes these rights moves from places like South
America to Korea and to Burundi in Africa.
Media and globalization

People who travel the globe teaching and preaching

their beliefs in universities, churches, public forums,
classrooms, or even as guests of a family plays a major
role in the spread of culture and ideas.

BUT TODAY! Television programs, social media groups,

books, movies, magazines and the like HAVE MADE IT
EASIER FOR ADVOCATES TO REACH LARGER AUDIENCES.
Media and globalization

Globalization relies on media as its main conduit

(channel) for the spread of global culture and
ideas.
Jack Lule: “Could global trade have evolved without a flow of information on
markets, prices, commodities and more? Could empires have stretched 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 and cultures?”
MEDIA AND ITS FUNCTIONS
Media

- Lule: “a means of conveying something, such as

channel of communication”.
Technically, a person’s voice is a medium but for commentators media (plural
form of medium) means the technologies of mass communication.
Categories of Media
1) Print Media
– Books
– Magazines
– Newspapers
2) Broadcast Media
– Radio
– Film
– Television
3) Digital Media
– Internet
 e-mail
 Internet sites
 Social media
 Internet-based video and audio
– Mobile Mass Communication
What does media do and
how they affect societies?
Marshall McLuhan

“The medium is the message”

Marshall McLuhan

He did not mean that ideas (“messages”) are useless or just nothing and do not
affect people. Rather, his statement was an attempt to draw attention to how
media as a form of technology reshape societies.
Television (since 1960s)
Is not just a simple bearer of messages, it also shapes the social behavior of users and reorient
family behaviors

BEFORE AFTER
Family members eating at Family members eating at the
dining table and telling stories living room silently munching
to each other food as they watch TV
Television (since 1960s)
Is not just a simple bearer of messages, it also shapes the social behavior of users and reorient
family behaviors

BEFORE AFTER
People play games or read People spend most of their
books time watching the television
Smart Phones

Through cellphones, couples are keeping constantly in touch or

updated on what each other are doing all the time

Therefore, the technology (medium) and not the message,

makes this social change possible
Media

- Simultaneously extend and amputate human senses

(McLuhan)

REACH OF COMMUNICATION USERS’ COMMUNICATIVE

CAPACITIES
Media
INVENTION OF PAPYRUS (4th century B.C.E)
-medium of writing-

BEFORE AFTER
People wrote things down on Storytellers no longer had to
Dulled
parchment, exchanging stories people’s rely completely on their
was mainly done orally and to capacity memories because everything is
be able to pass stories verbally to
remember being recorded
(from person to person),
storyteller had to have
retentive memories
Smart Phones
GOOD
Expand people’s senses
because they provide the capacity to
talk to more people simultaneously
and instantaneously
BAD
Limit the senses
because they make users’ easily
distractible and more prone to
multitasking (not necessarily a bad
thing but it is merely change with a
trade-off)
Disclamer
Acc. To McLuhan,

New media are neither inherently good nor bad. He’s just
merely drawing attention to the historically and technologically
specific attributes of various media. Therefore, the question of
what new media enhance and what they amputate was not a
moral or ethical one.