GLOBAL MEDIA CULTURE

• Developments in technology, communication, and transportation have contributed to the growth of international travel; easier and more accessible transactions regardless of location; and access to Western culture, beliefs, music, arts, film, etc.
• Overall, it has contributed to the tendency towards cultural homogenization and to global integration
• Media


  A means of conveying something, such as a channel of communication
• Media can build connections and influence societies and it can contribute to the strengthening of globalization
• Lule (2014) Claimed that Globalization could not occur without media
• Developments in media technology are crucial to globalization
• Global village


  People can now imagine to be a part of one world
• Five Periods in the Development of Media that Contributed to Globalization

  • Oral Communication
  • Script
  • Printing Press
  • Electronic Media
  • Digital Media
• Oral Communication


  • Speech has been with us for at least 200,000 years
  • Speech had set humans apart from every other species and allowed them to conquer the world
  • Language contributed to globalization since it enabled humans to cooperate with one another
• Script


  • Script allowed humans to communicate and share knowledge and ideas over much larger spaces and across much longer times
  • Early writing systems began to appear after 3000 BCE
  • Script allowed for the written and permanent codification of economic, cultural, religious, and political practice
• Printing Press


  • The printing press started the information revolution and transformed markets, businesses, nations, schools, churches, governments, armies, and more
  • The printing press changed the nature of knowledge by preserving and standardizing it (Eisenstein)
  • The printing press encouraged the literacy of the public and the growth of schools (1979 Eisenstein)
• Electronic Media


  • The telegraph was a sensation with significant consequences, allowing for more efficient rail travel, exchange of information between corporations and businesses, and instant news reporting
  • The telephone and radio also contributed to connecting the world
  • The creation of the cellular phone in 1973 was especially crucial in the context of globalization and media
• Digital Media


  • Computers have revolutionized work in every industry and trade
  • Some of the largest companies in the world, such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and more, arose in the digital era and have been instrumental to globalization
• People were able to know more about the world, and people have needed to be able to truly imagine the world-and imagine themselves acting in the world for globalization to proceed
• Cosmopolitanism is now a feature of modern life, with people imagining themselves as part of the world
• Media and Economic Globalization


  Media has contributed to the growth of economic globalization by helping create the conditions for global capitalism and the world's market economy
• Some media companies themselves were able to transform into huge transnational corporations
• One implication of the relationship between media and globalization is the emergence of global media oligopoly that focuses not on spreading cultural values but on gaining profit
• Some claim that media can sometimes distract the public from critical thinking, sapping time and energy from social and political action
• Transnational conglomerates have little incentive to invest in local talk shows, news channels, documentaries, or other social and political content
• The global oligopoly of media thus helps create a passive apolitical populace that rises from the couch primarily for consumption
• The impact is that, around the world, news has become softer, lighter, and less challenging, with space and time given over to weather, sports, celebrities, sensation, recipes, and other less weighty fare
• Media and Political Globalization


  Globalization has transformed world politics in profound ways, leading to the formation and overthrow of kingdoms and empires, and the creation of the nation-state
• Media corporations have become powerful political actors, with journalists often targeted and killed for their work
• Governments shape and manipulate the news to build support for their domestic and foreign policies
• Media and Cultural Globalization


  Media can be primary carriers of culture, and media generate numerous and ongoing interactions among cultures
• Three outcomes with which to consider the influence of globalization on culture

  • Cultural Differentialism
  • Cultural Convergence
  • Cultural Hybridity
• Glocalization


  The global takes local form, as local culture is created and produced daily, drawing from, adopting, adapting, and succumbing to, satirizing, rejecting, or otherwise negotiating with the facts, global and local, of the day
• Electronic media


  Uses electromagnetic energy (electricity), includes telegraph, telephone, radio, film, and television
• Electronic media has contributed much to the spread of principles of globalization and aided globalization itself due to its accessibility
• Telegraph


  Samuel F. B. Morse began work on a machine in the 1830s that could send coded messages (dots and dashes) over electrical lines
• Telegraph


  Allowed for more efficient and safe rail travel, corporations and businesses to exchange information about markets and prices, and newspapers to report information instantaneously
• By 1866, a transatlantic cable was laid between the United States and Europe, and the telegraph became a truly global medium
• Telephone


  Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone in 1876, it quickly became a globally adopted medium
• By 1927, the first transatlantic call was made via radio
• Radio


  Developed alongside the telegraph and telephone in the late 1890s, first conceived as a wireless telegraph, by the early 1900s speech was being transmitted without wires
• Cellular phone


  Created in 1973, relatively cheap to produce and buy, and easy to learn and transport, cellular phones have quickly become the world's most dominant communication device and penetrated even the world's most remote regions and villages today
• Digital media


  Most often electronic media that rely on digital codes, the long arcane combinations of Os and is that represent information
• Computers have revolutionized work in every industry and trade
• Some of the largest companies in the world, such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and more, arose in the digital era and have been instrumental to globalization