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MEDIA AND GLOBALISATION

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 MEDIA AND GLOBALISATION
Javad Yazdanpanah

INTRODUCTION
The rapid growth of technology, especially in ICT during the two last decades, has changed lots

of previous concepts and intellectual frameworks. These progressions give the humankind more

opportunities and incredible abilities to explore and expert the world. If we want to be optimist,

we should say the humankind who is empowered with new technologies is freer and more

powerful than a human in 50 years ago, and thanks to these technologies have could eliminate

lots of obstacles in his/her progression way. The internet and the new generation of media,

based on the internet are one of the prominent examples of technology which make people

closer to each other and more accessible than what was in the past, and It is like a situation

which everyone lives in a global village.

Nowadays globalisation is not a new issue, and everybody can find much information in this

area in academic papers or public spheres like newspapers and media. Indeed, the growth and

pervasiveness of the media prepare the countries and local nations to receive global contents

and information and accelerate the globalization process.

This essay tries to explore the relations between media and globalization and answer this

question of how globalization occurs from the media perspective?

What is globalisation?
The term ‘globalisation’ came into prominence among academics in the 1980s (Marks, et al.,

2006), but according to Scholte (Scholte, 2005) Global connections are not a new phenomenon

and go back to the ancient period, but these kinds of human relations became pervasive since

the sixties.

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Globalisation is a situation which every aspect of any social, cultural and economic

phenomenon finds a global aspect and local issues spread through the world. However, it is the

first definition which comes to mind and globalisation is a more complicated concept, which

understands like “A rubric for a varied phenomenon” (Mittelman, 1996). As Anthony Giddens

(1996) explained “Globalisation is not a single set of processes and does not lead in a single

direction. It produces solidarities in some places and destroys them in others. It has quite

different consequences on one side of the world from the other. In other words, it is a wholly

contradictory process”.

Steger (2017) suggest that for understanding globalisation, we should adopt three different but

related terms. First ‘globality’ by which signifies a social condition characterised by tight global

economic, political, cultural, and environmental interconnections and flows. Second, ‘global

imaginary’ which back to people’s awareness of thickening globality and third, globalisation as a

set of social processes that are thought to transform our present social condition into globality.

Finding a complete definition for globalisation is completely difficult, and the term in every area

of knowledge is defined based on the specific paradigm of that major. However, most of the

definitions are unanimous that globalisation is “processional” and “multi-dimensional”

phenomenon which includes different aspects of human life from transborder capital and

management, to news and data flows. The main engines of globalisation are the transnational

corporations 1 , transnational media organisations 2 , intergovernmental organisations 3 , non-

governmental organisations4, and alternative government organisations5 (Tehranian, 1998).

1
TNCs
2
TMCs
3
IGOs
4
NGOs
5
AGOs

2
In some definitions, the media play a central role in the globalisation process. As Rantanen

(2005) defined: ‘Globalisation is a process in which worldwide economic, political, cultural and

social relations have become increasingly mediated across time and space.’

Media, as one of the main engines of the globalisation process, has played an essential role in

the expansion process of globalisation. This role has become increasingly crucial by

revolutionary developments in technology and changes in the forms of the media which

evolutionary growth either the media and globalization process.

From early newspapers to social media

Thanks to the invention of the printing press, the media of that period gained the power of mass

distribution. These innovations lead to the infrastructure of the daily newspaper, which plays an

essential role in uniting the industrialised and urbanised societies in Europe and the united

states. In the early decades (1920) of the 20th century, radio provided a mass audience for

advertisers and played a vital role for propaganda during the world war I. In the1950s television

thrived in the United States, and thanks to visual charm spread rapidly around the world. The

emergence and expansion of television accelerate the globalisation, but a few decades later

internet and internet-based technologies boosted engines of the process. On the other hand,

however, the media play a role as one of the propellants of globalization, growth and expansion

of the media is a result of globalisation. For instance, as in the below timeline is shown, from

inventing the printing press as an essential communication event to the next important event -

printed newspaper- takes more than two hundred years. Gradually from the first newspaper in

1665 to the intention of the telegraph in 1837 is about 100 years. However, by the emergence of

the new mass media in the 1900s the process of innovation of new communicational means

accelerate, and the time interval between the emergence of one new form media to another got

shorter which can be found as a consequence of the globalisation process and show a mutual

relationship between globalisation and media:

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 • 1445: the ‘printing press’ invented by Gutenberg

• 1665: The first English newspaper is printed

• 1837: The telegraph is invented.

• 1876: the telephone is invented by Alexander Graham Bell

• 1901: the first radio message is sent

• 1925: Television is invented

• The 1940s: The world’s first “supercomputers” are built

• 1961: The Internet is invented

• 1973: the first handheld cell phone is invented

• 1979: First Walkman produced

• 1989: television broadcasting using satellite started

• 1991: The world wide web is unleashed upon an unsuspecting public

• 2000-Now: New Media Revolution Era

• 2001: First Made iPod

• 2004: Facebook is launched

• 2005: YouTube is launched, and during the next five years social media became popular

• 2012: smartphones got more popular(Lambert, 2015)

On the other hand, new media firstly are easy to access and affordable, secondly thanks to

technological progress as small as to fit into homes or even pockets, so every single person is

empowered with these media, and now they are connected and online all the time. Besides,

developments in the cell-phone industry and subsequent rise of social media dramatically

reduced media contents production and publishing costs, and change the concept of the

audience, so every person Simultaneously is an audience and a content producer. Also, the

new media framework is not limited to the geographic border, and every single person can

publish the information in the circle of their audience from different countries, so the media

4
world, seems transformed into ‘global village’ as McLuhan (1962) described early. Mainly the

transnational news services with a global or regional reach, such as CNN, BBC World,

Euronews, Sky News, and Star News, have come to be regarded as the town criers of the

global village (Kaul, 2001).

However, up to two decades ago, the mass media were the pioneer in the global media world,

and specifically, television and newspapers were the most popular media in the world;

nowadays, the social media are the primary sources of information to the public. So as a

consequence, the globalization which was taking place in community level, become more

individual, and ‘social media influencers’ or micro-narratives from ordinary people affects

ordinary people in a nation, a region or global scale. Globalization at the individual level has a

more profound and more permanent impact on local communities or societies. In a different

circumstance, in the age of mass media, some governments, especially in the East, were trying

to control the global media contents using censorship and disrupting access to mass media in

order to shut west culture out of the country. From this point of view every media message

transfer cultural codes and the major part of globalised media content published from the West,

particularly from the United States (McFadden, 2016), therefore, the globalisation of media,

disseminate American culture around the world and as a consequence create demand for U.S.

products and services. Some believe that this situation will cause to a one-way transmission of

ideas and values that result in the displacement of indigenous cultures (Santos, 2001). Today,

as a result of progression in technology, media are more individual and blocking, or censorship

way is more arduous than in previous decades.

Besides, the process of globalization in the cultural aspect is different from the economic one

because media or in general cultural products are language-based and rather than cultural

concepts are different from one country to another.

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Globalised media, globalised culture
Globalization in Cultural aspect refers to the transmission of symbols, ideas, meaning and

values in a global scale, which causes changes in meaning systems on a global scale in order

to make a similar cultural system. The interaction between culture and globalization remains

under-researched (Prasad & Prasad, 2007). Although this process is Characterized by the

frequent consumption of cultures that popular culture, media, the Internet, and international

travel are some crucial elements which diffuse cultural concepts amongst all of the civilizations

of the world (Steger & James, 2010). Also, this process, in the long run, makes all of the human

experience and customs the same because all cultures are coming together into one and this

transformation Occurs in a macro scale including everyday life, international trade, through

wireless communication, popular culture. Finally, during the cultural globalization, Western

lifestyle is promoted, and since many cultural products are from united states, this process

possibly leads to Americanization of the world. Media or on a larger scale new communication

technologies, work as contributing factors which help to integrate different cultures into each

other. Diffusion of American fast-food chains like McDonald's and Starbucks are good examples

of cultural globalization with over 38,000 (Statista, 2020) and 30,000 (Knoema, 2020) locations

operating worldwide, respectively as of 2020.

Cultural globalization is a historical and long-term process which tries interrelating different

cultures. Pieterse (2003) suggested that cultural globalization involves social integration and

hybridization. Cultural hybridization is a situation which different forms of cultures, including

European, American, African, Asian, cultures mix to each other and making a global melange.

For instance, McDonald’s due to religious restriction in Islamic countries on eating pork,

prepare ‘Halal’ burgers, or in turkey offers the Turkish drink instead of Coca-Cola or

combination of hamburger variants with Turkish bread.

6
Another perspective on cultural globalization accentuates the transformation of global diversity

into westernization or especially Americanization. This process understood as cultural

imperialism and referred most broadly to the exercise of domination in cultural relationships in

which the values, practices, and meanings of an influential foreign culture are imposed upon

one or more native cultures (Tomlinson, 2012).

Conclusion
Globalisation is a common subject in academic researches and public opinion. Although finding

a complete definition for this concept is under discussion and in every disciplinary defines the

concept from its point of view; however, globalisation is not a new phenomenon and has some

roots in human history. Through the end decades of the 20 century and thanks to revolutionary

innovations and technologies, the globalisation process has been accelerated, and Media as

one of these new technologies has played an important role. In the media history, there are

several milestones which have accelerated the globalization process; firstly, the innovation of

the printing press prepared the situation for mass publishing and speeded up the circulation of

information at that era. Secondly, mass media also brought humankind into a new age and

extended their abilities. Thirdly, the innovation of the internet looks like a communication

explosion rapidly changed lots of previous concepts and facilities and brought an incredible

communication power for human. Media work as a kind of communication Bridge between

nations and societies and transfer and Disseminated cultural symbols around the world. This

process from one point of view makes a global mélange and mix different cultures in the global

scale, and from another perspective cause to the dominance of one culture over others; the

situation which is known as cultural imperialism. Also, globalisation through social media takes

place on an individual level, which has more profound and more permanent impacts on

communities and society.

7
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