Media and Globalization

Okay, so at the end of this lesson, hopefully, we will be able to analyze how various media drive different forms of what we call global integration, and also compare the social impact of different media on the processes of globalization. Explain the dynamic between local and global cultural productions, and lastly, define responsible media consumption.

Okay, so globalization entails the spread of various cultures. So, when a film is made in Hollywood, it is shown not only in the United States but also in other cities across the globe. South Korean rapper Psy's song entitled "Gangnam Style" was about a wealthy suburb in Seoul, but its listeners included millions who have never been or may never go to Gangnam, and some of them may not even know what Gangnam is.

Globalization also involves the spread of ideas. For example, the notion of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or the LGBT communities, is spreading across the world and becoming more widely accepted. Similarly, the conservative, uh, [Music] Christian church, who opposes these rights, moves from place to place, like South America to Korea and to Burundi in Africa. People who travel the globe teaching and preaching their beliefs in university churches, public forums, classrooms, or even as guests or family play 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.

So, globalization relies on media as it may condone for the spread of global culture and ideas. That's why Jack Lewell was then right to ask, "Could global trade have evolved without a flow of information on markets, prices, commodities, and more? Could empires subsist 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?" So, there is an intimate relationship between globalization and media, which must be enrolled to further understand the contemporary world.

So, let's discuss media and its function. Lull describes media as a means of conveying something, such as a channel of communication. So, technically speaking, a person's voice is a medium. However, when commentators refer to media, this is the plural of medium. Do you mean the technologies of mass communication? Like print media include books, magazines, and newspapers. Broadcast media involve radio, film, and television. And finally, the digital media cover the internet and mobile mass communication. So, within the category of internet media, there are email, internet sites, social media, and internet-based video and audio.

So, while it is relatively easy to define media, or the term media, it is more difficult to determine what media do and how they affect societies. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan once declared that "the medium is the message." It did not mean that ideas or messages are useless and do not affect people. Rather, this statement was an attempt to draw attention to how media, as a form of technology, reshaped societies. So, thus, television is not a simple bearer of messages; it also shapes the social behavior of users and reorients family behavior.

So, so since it was introduced in the 1960s, television has stirred people from the dining table, where they eat and tell stories to each other, to the living room, where they silently monster food while watching prime-time shows. Television has also drawn people away from other meaningful activities, such as playing games or reading books. Today, the smartphone allows playing games or reading books. Okay, no. And smartphone allows users to keep in touch instantly with multiple people at the same time. That's why we are having this Zoom, no, conference now. Consider the effect of the internet on relationships. Prior to the cell phone, there was no way for couples to keep constantly in touch or to be updated on what the other does all the time. I don't know. Videos.

So, the technology, or the medium, and not the message, makes for this social change possible. McLuhan added that different media simultaneously extend and amputate human senses. So, new media may expand the risk of communication, but they also doubt the user's communicative capacities. Okay, think about writing. No. Before people wrote things down on parchments, exchanging stories was mainly done orally. So, to be able to pass stories verbally from one person to another, storytellers had, you know, to have written their memories. Again, storytelling, man, China, it's done orally. So, if you, if you will share a story, you must have a very good memory. So, however, papyrus, or the paper used in Egypt, have started becoming more common in Egypt after the 4th century BC, which increasingly meant that more people could write down their stories. So, as a result, storytellers no longer had to rely completely on their memories. So, this development, according to some philosophers at the time, dulled the people's capacity to remember. One, what we call it, one, one researcher who, what we call that, one did a research on the Agni. I don't know if you are familiar with that story, and I assume no, because it's an epic, and then it was transmitted orally. Okay, and they tried to research if the old people in this province still can remember. Be um, and then what they did is that they recorded, okay, one storyteller, and the following month, they went back and then they asked the same one, and then, Ilangiri recorded and storytelling, and they found out, no, it's very amazing. The first recording is exactly the same with the second recording. So, grabbing a good, a, or memory. Now, something similar can be said about cell phones. On the one hand, 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. Some of you are eating while listening to me, or maybe some of you are already sleeping. Are you sleeping or still awake? Anyway, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It is merely chains with a train of. Now, the question of what new media enhance and what they amputate was not a moral or ethical one. According to McLuhan, new media are neither inherently good nor badass. It's not, it's not either good or nor bad. The famous writer was merely drawing attention to historically and technologically specific attributes of various media.

Now, the global village and cultural imperialism. McLuhan uses analysis of technology to examine the impact of electronic media. So, since he was writing around the 1960s, he mainly analyzed the social changes brought about by television. McLuhan declared that television was turning the world into a, what we call, 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. No. So, if tribal villages once stopped in front of fires to listen to collective stories of the members, the new Louisville village would sit in front of bright boxes in their living rooms.

So, in the years after McLuhan, media scholars further grappled with the challenges of a global media culture. So, 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, and to read the same things. So, this thinking arose at a time when America's power had turned it into the world's cultural heavyweight. Commentators, therefore, believe that media globalization, coupled with American hegemony, would create a form of cultural imperialism, whereby American values and culture would overwhelm all others. That's why, if you can remember, there are times now, you know, because there are times the idea of beauty is related with being white or being a foreigner. No. Okay. That's why, no, this is one of the unknown. In 1976, media critic Herbert Schiller argued that not only was the world being Americanized, but this process also led to the spread of American capitalist values like consumerism. So, similarly, for John Tomlinson, cultural globalization is simply a euphemism, euphemism for Western cultural imperialism. So, since it promotes homogenized, Westernized consumer culture. So, these scholars who describe cultural imperialism, however, have a top-down view of the media, since they are more concerned with the broad structures that determine media content. Moreover, their focus on America has led them to neglect other global flows of information that the media can enable. So, this media cultural imperiality century has therefore been subject to significant critique.

Okay, so what are the critiques of cultural imperialism? So, 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. Again, media messages are not just made by producers; they are also consumed by audiences. So, the field of audience studies emphasizes that media consumers are active participants in the mid-meaning-making process. To view media texts, you see, if media takes the immediate studies, attack simply refers to the content of any medium. Okay. So, the, again, the field of audience studies emphasizes that media consumers are active participants in the meaning-making process. To view media texts through their own cultural lenses. In 1985, Indonesian cultural critique Ayan Ann started the ways in which different viewers in the Netherlands experienced watching a soap opera entitled Dallas. So, 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 experience pleasure based on how the program resonated with them. In 1990, Elijah Katz and Tamar Liebes decided to push Ann's analysis further by examining how viewers from distinct cultural communities interpreted Dallas. They argued that texts are received differently by varied interpretative communities because they derive different meanings and pleasure from this text. Thus, people from diverse cultural backgrounds had their own ways of understanding the show. So, Russians were so suspicious of the show's content, believing not only that it was primarily about America, but it contained American propaganda. If American viewers demand, American viewers believe that the show, though set in America, was primarily about the lives of the rich. Okay.

So, apart from the challenge of audience studies, the cultural imperialism thesis has been belied by the renewed strength of regional trends in the globalization process. Asian culture, for example, has flow-ferated worldwide through the globalization of media. For example, Japanese brands from Illokity to the Mario Brothers, okay, including, uh, Pokémon, are now an indelible part of global popular culture. Okay. The same can be said for Korean pop, or K-pop, and Korean telenovelas, which are widely successful regionally and globally. The observation even applies to culinary fads. The most obvious case of globalization, Asian cuisine is coming, sushi. And while it is true that no McDonald's has continued to spread across Asia, it is also the case that Asian brands have provided stiff competition. So, the Philippines' Jollibee claims to be the number one choice for fast food in Brunei. Brunei. So, given this pattern, it is no longer tenable to insist that globalization is an unidirectional process, sorry, unidirectional process of foreign cultures overwhelming local ones. So, globalization will remain an uneven process, and it will produce inequalities. Nevertheless, it leaves room for the dynamism and cultural change. So, this is not a contradiction; it is merely a testament to the phenomenon's complexity.

Now, on social media and the creation of cyber guitars. By now, very few media scholars argue that the world is becoming culturally homogenous. Apart from the nature of diverse audiences and regional trends in cultural production, the internet and social media are proving that the globalization of culture and ideas can move in different directions. So, while Western culture remains powerful and media production is still controlled by a handful of powerful Western corporations, the internet, particularly the social media, is challenging previous ideas about media and globalization. Just with all new media, social media have bro, have both beneficial and negative effects. On the one hand, these forms of communication have democratized access. Anyone with an internet connection or smartphone can use Facebook and Twitter for free, even on Instagram. So, this media enabled users to be consumers and producers of information simultaneously. The democratic potential of social media was most evident during the waves of uprising known as the Arab Spring. Okay. So, without access to traditional broadcast media like TV, activists opposing authoritarian regimes in Indonesia, Egypt, and Libya used Twitter to organize and to disseminate information. So, their efforts toppled their respective governments. More recently, the Women's, the Women's March against newly installed, uh, the fabulous, no, President, U.S. President Donald Trump, began with a tweet from a Hawaii lawyer and become a national, even global movement.

However, social media also have their dark side. In the early 2000s, commentators began referring to the emergence of what we call, uh, splinternet, and the phenomenon of cyber colonization, you know, to refer to various bubbles people place themselves to where and when they are online. In the United States, voters of the Democratic Party largely read liberal websites, and voters of the Republican Party largely read conservative websites. So, this segmentation, notes an article in the journal Science, has been exacerbated by the nature of social media feeds, which leads users to reach articles, memes, and videos shared by like-minded friends. As such, being on Facebook can resemble living in an echo chamber, chamber, which reinforces one's existing beliefs and opinions. So, this echo chamber precludes users from listening to or reading opinions and information that challenge their viewpoint, thus making them more partisan and close-minded. That's why young respect my opinion, and that's a very big problem today, officially on social media. So, this segmentation has been used by people in power who are aware that social media bubbles can produce what we call a herd mentality. Now, it can be exploited by politicians with less than democratic intentions and the demagogues wanting to whip up popular anger. So, the same expansiveness that allow social media to be a democratic force, likewise making a cheap tool of government propaganda. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has hired an army of trolls to manipulate public opinion through intimidation and the spreading of fake news. Most recently, American intelligence established that Putin used trolls and online misinformation to help Donald Trump win the presidency. So, a tactic that Russian autocrat is likely to repeat in European elections it seeks to influence. So, in places across the world, teams of imitators replicate this strategy of online trolling and this information to clamp down on dissent and delegitimize critical media. Critics of the increasingly dictatorial regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are treated by online mobs of pro-government trolls who have accounts and threaten violence. So, some of the responses have included threats of sexual violence against women. So, as the preceding key says, how 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 serve true and filter information. If a news article, even a fake one, gets a lot of shares, it will reach many people with Facebook accounts. So, this 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 trap to face as the globalization of media depends. So, as you can see, it's already happening, especially in our country. Elections are coming. So, internet media have the world so interconnected that a Russian dictator can, for example, influence American elections on the cheap. So, as, uh, as consumers of media, users must remain vigilant and learn how to distinguish fat from falsehood, facts from falsehood in a global media landscape that allows politicians to pedal what the former President Trump senior advisor now called "alternative facts." The people must remain critical of mainstream media and traditional journalism that may also operate based on vested interests. We must also insist that some sources are more credible than others. A newspaper story that is written by a professional journalist and visited by a professional editor is still likely to be more credible than a viral video on YouTube or Netflix or Facebook produced by someone in his or her bedroom, even if both will have their biases. People must be able to tell the difference.

So, this lesson showed that different media have diverse effects on globalization processes. By the way, now, before we end, uh, uh, they heard DDS posted one time, no, Senator Pangilinan wants to punish fake news. It's like punishing people for writing fiction. Anyway. So, again, this lesson showed that different media have diverse effects on globalization processes. At one point, it seemed that global television was creating a global monoculture. Now, it seems more likely that social media will splinter cultures and ideas into bubbles of people who do not interact. Societies can never be completely prepared for the rapid changes in the systems of communication. Every technological change, after all, creates multiple unintended consequences. Consumers and users of media will have a hard time turning back the clock. Though people may individually try to keep out of Facebook or Twitter, for example, this media will continue to engender social changes. Instead of fearing these changes or entering a state of moral panic, everyone must collectively discover ways of dealing with them responsibly and ethically. Do you have any questions?