READING MATERIAL VIII

Chapter 8

Globalization and Media: Creating the Global Village

The 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 diCicult 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 village in search of food or water or adventure.
According to Yale's Nayan Chanda, globalization has been present since time immemorial
but without having been given a nomenclature.

The historical roots of globalization is highly arguable. Many scholars regard

globalization as having an ancient history, which encompasses all international human
activities. Specifically, the extent of the Silk Road and Spice trade routes as blocked by the
Ottoman Empire in 1453 which spurred exploration. A certain Andre Gunder Frank, an
economist, associated globalization with the dependency theory. He argued that the early
roots of this concept began with the rise of trade links between Sumer and the Indus Valley
civilization in the third 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, inclusive of Alexandria and the other Alexandrine cities. The significance of the trade
links between the Roman Empire, the Parthian Empire, and the Han Dynasty cannot be
underestimated. 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. There were as many as three
hundred Greek ships sailing each year between the Greco- Roman world and India. Their
annual trade volume have reached 300, 000 tons.

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. The crops, sugar, and cotton,
became spread and nourished in the Muslim world. Also, there was a widespread of
knowledge about Arabic and the Hajj, thus creating a cosmopolitan culture. Furthermore,
there were native New World crops, which propagated then in the Portuguese barrack in
Nagasaki during the 17th century, Japanese Nanban art period. These included maize,
tomato, potato, vanilla, rubber, cacao, and tobacco.

Per its definition, 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 not aware that they are globalizing and always been
communicating with media, though they have not used that word.

One consequence of globalization is the establishment of an imagined community.

Hence globalization is not just one process but multiple processes, which comprise the
economic, political, and cultural aspects. And these processes are never new. These are
numerous, uneven, and sometimes overlapping historical processes of human existence.
The fact remains that globalization is for real rather than fiction:

It is undeniable that this globalization is highly contentious since the collapse of

communism. Most discourse on globalization acknowledges that it is an uneven process
whose eCects and consequences are not uniformly experienced everywhere in the world The
power of geometry exists in globalization such that some creatures are more in charge than
the others. Some initiate flows and movements; others do not. Some are more of the
recipients of it than the others. Truly there is going to be an imbalance of power when dealing
with the two nations. Consequently the fast growth of globalization has long been associated
with technological advancement and the international market.

There are two sides of a coin. On the one hand, globalization has the tendency
towards homogeneity, synchronization, integration, unity, and universalism. On the other
side, there is the propensity also for localization, heterogeneity, diCerentiation, diversity, and
particularism, which are obstacles to development. These processes are intimately
connected and represent two faces of the same coin. Conclusively, globalization is not a
promiscuous or uniform process, but rather it involves diCerent paradigms, which manifest
diCerently in various contexts with diCerent eCects for people in diCerent contexts.

This lesson discusses the pairing of globalization and media. And that, they act in
concert and cohort creating the conditions through which many people can now imagine
themselves as part of one world- a global imaginary, which Marshal McLuhan ( 1962) called
the global village.

According to Jack Lule, globalization could not occur without media. Human beings
have used media to explore, settle, and globalize the world since the ancient times. In the
contemporary times, media has transformed the world progressively smaller as nations and
cultures continually come in contact. In the words of Marshall McLuhan, he prophesied that
the media technology would transform the world into a global village. Apparently, this vision
is gradually becoming a reality. However, this global village is not the blissful utopia, which
McLuhan predicted. Neither, in a more current formulation, that the world is flat with playing
fields levelled and opportunities are open for all. Lule argued though that globalization and
media are mixed to create a divided world of gated communities and ghettos, borders, and
boundaries, suCering and surfeit, beauty and decay, surveillance and violence. Here, the
author described the global village of Babel where the biblical town was punished for its
vanity by seeing its citizens scattered, its language confounded, and its destiny shaped by
strife.

Definition Of Media

The word media is plural form for medium a means of conveying something, as a
channel of communication. Media only came into general circulation in the 1920s. It became
popular usage because a word was needed to talk about a new social issue, e.g., fears on
young people reading violent comics and etc., they grouped these phenomena together with
debates over the media. Though the word is relatively modern, humans have used media of
communication from their first days of existence (Steger, 2014).

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.

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 diCerent environments.

3. Sharing information about tools and weapons led to the spread of technology.

4. Language helped humans move, but it also helped them settle down. e) Language
stored and transmitted important agricultural information across time as one
generation passed on its knowledge to the next, leading to the creation of villages and
towns.

5. Language also led to markets, the trade of goods and services, and eventually into
cross-continental trade routes. 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,
irrigation, and writing (Steger, 2014).

Script

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

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 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.

Printing Press

The information revolution began with the establishment of printing press. This
transformed markets, businesses, nations, schools, churches, governments, 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 aCordable 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. In 1979,
historian Elizabeth Eisenstein surveyed the influences of the printing press, which findings
range across the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation and the scientific revolution.
These two points were the result of her study: First, it preserved led knowledge, which had
been malleable in oral culture and standardize it when it becomes variable as it spread orally
across regions and lands. Second, it encouraged the challenge of political and religious
authority because of its ability to circulate competing views.

Electronic Media

In the 19th century a new media has 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. The telegraph by Samuel F. B.
Morse began work on a machine in the 1830s that eventually 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. Radio was crucially involved with the upheavals of globalization during this time, from
radio broadcasts that riveted audiences during World War II, to the propaganda services that
did battle world-wide during the Cold War, to the so-called death radio that helped drive the
genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda.

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. By the 1920s directors
such as D.W. GriCith, Sergei Eisenstein, F.W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang were using film to
capture powerful narratives that resonated within and across cultures. The worldwide
success of films such as Avatar and Titanic oCers resounding examples of the confluence of
globalization and media. After World War Il saw the explosion in the production and
penetration of televisions into homes around the world. By the end of the 1960s, half the
countries in the world had television stations.

Television brought together the visual and aural power of film, and this brought people
sat in their living rooms and kitchens 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.

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.

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. Some people in the
past thought themselves as cosmopolitan citizens of the world. Cosmopolitanism is now a
feature of modern life.

Political scientist Benedict Anderson (1991) focuses on the origin of nations and
nationalism. He wondered how a group of people, 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 (1964)
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
Mumford (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.

The Connections Between Media And Globalization

The mass media play an important to enhance globalization, facilitate cultural

exchanges and varied flows of information and image between countries through
international news broadcasts, television programming, new technologies, film, and music.
Most communication media have become increasingly global going beyond the nation-state
scope. 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 cultural dimensions of globalization have a profound influence on the whole
globalization process. As far as the 21st century can be traced, there was a rapid
development of global communications with the introduction of the telegraph in 1837, the
growth in postal services, cross-border telephone, radio communications, and the creation
of the modern mass circulation press in Europe. A very striking progress was the evolution of
technologies capable of transmitting messages through electromagnetic waves. The birth of
international news agencies during the 19th century lighted the path towards the global
system of codification. Until the 1960s, the launch of the first geo-stationary communication
satellites through electromagnetic transmission became completely global in character.
This later paved the way in the globalization of communications as a distinguished
phenomenon in the 20t century.

Mass media is a deceptively simple term encompassing a countless array of

institutions and individuals who diCer in purpose, scope, method, and cultural context. Mass
media include all forms of information communicated to large groups of people, from a
handmade sign to an international news network. There is no standard for how large the
audience needs to be before communication becomes mass communication. There are
also no constraints on the type of information being presented.

Globalization may result to cultural imperialism both within and between countries.
The media in developing countries would import foreign news items, cultural and television
genre formats and such values of capitalist consumerism and individualism. Unfortunately,
this scenario led to a relationship of subordination of the developing states in relation to the
First World countries. The latter had an established relationship with the historical roots in
European colonialism, which culminated in a core periphery relationship. Moreover, the
development of the transnational corporations and the strategic planning of the US
government as external factors further molded the historical evolution of the commercial
broadcasting systems among the Latin American countries.

However, Oliver Boyd- Barrett (1977, 1998) modified the concept on media
imperialism by showing its relevance to media globalization. He contended that the merit of
the cultural imperialism theory is based on the fact that it was more concerned with
inequalities between nations and how these reflected a wider political and economic
conflicts of dependency. One limitation of the cultural imperialism theory is its tendency to
result in a hypodermic needle, which is a model of American values being inculcated into
the Third World countries. But, the theory did not recognize fully the intra-national media
relations through which the media. contributed to oppression patterned on class, gender,
and race. The Western dominance of news broadcasting has reproduced the prejudices of
colonialism. Specifically, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization or UNESCO conducted a debate about international communications. Hence
the news agencies came under attack by the developing countries during the New World
Information and Communication Order or NWICO

The cultural imperialism thesis declined with the rise of post- modernism theories.
Here, there was the embrace of neo-liberal discourse by the US and UK governments from
the 1980s onwards. This was later followed by the decline of the grand narratives, which is
regarded as part of the modernist discourse in the 1970s. The criticism of this approach is
based on its focus on the exclusive American cultural dominance and a historical context
mainly attached to the Cold War paradigm. Hence the theory is no longer considered as
appropriate to properly discuss the shifting economic and media environment and the
growth of the Asian tigers. The restructuring of the European powers and the multiplication
of media corporations are no longer regarded as exclusively American at the end.

Thompson (1995,169) stressed on how symbolic 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
to 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 commercialization. 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
consequences of de-politicization as a result of a media entertainment-led diet. It is a
misnomer 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 diCerent states. Tomlinson (1999) highlighted reasons in favour of the
cultural imperialism approach, stating the real nature of global culture and the growing
paradigm of capitalism.

Neverdeen Pieterse (2004) discussed the concept of hybridization as more

appropriate to understand the complexity of flows and the cultural mixing of current
globalization processes. Some critics defend that a global media system is not really
replacing the national communication media. There are indeed distinctive diCerences
between political systems and cultural particularities, which prevent complete
homogenization. There is a need to recognize the blending of local cultures with global
foreign influences switching then to global culture as a ground of hybridization, and not
homogenization or just a mere cultural diCusion of the American values.

Thus Nederveen Pieterse (2004) considered hybridity as being part of a certain

postmodern sensibility. This is a liberation from the West's historical legacy of Eurocentric
thinking and colonialism. According to the hybridization view, the impact of global culture
does not necessarily lead to the extinction of the local Hence the hybrid styles are in the
essence the consequence of the combination of modern styles with national and political
traditions or regional identities.

Curran (2002) mentioned one criticism to hybridity reflecting on the reluctance in

looking at economic power and the impact of giant media corporations in influencing the
cultural preferences. Moreover, the eCect of the blending of global with national influence
does not in the end comprise 'authentic' cultural practice, but rather the commodification
and appropriation of the 'exotic' by the capitalist media corporations. The latter can sell
these multicultural products in a global market. These can include world music to Bollywood
films and tourism paraphernalia. Consequently, these diCerence and diversity are exploited
by the global market to earn profits. Such a genuine recognition of the other non-Western or
Third World cultures became too ideal.

The Western self- identities have become more in contact with the post-colonial'
other' as a result of the increasing media globalization and the growing multiculturalism in
the West. This situation challenges the rigid cultural assumptions about the West's cultural
superiority in relation to the rest of the World. But given the decline of Western imperialism
and the intricacies of the flows between people, trade, and culture across the world, this has
made the image of globalization as one of a decentered network of unstable and shifting
patterns of power distribution. Both have undermined the core-periphery model.

The relationship between localities and the social circumstances became changed
with the global communication systems. Held (1999) noted how the global communication
media facilitated the birth of cultural cosmopolitanism, or a cosmopolitan sensibility
caused by the increasing speed and intensity of its functioning. Thus the image brought
about by the media of distant events and on how people from the diCerent parts of the world
live resulted in the celebration of diCerence. But this further stimulated a cosmopolitan
orientation in the public sectors, the creation of a global civil society, global public sphere or
international community. It is worth knowing though that global media and the increasing
global flow of people and goods across borders have not completely destroyed the local ties.
Globalization as an aggregation of cultural flows or networks is a less coherent and unitary
process than cultural imperialism and one in which cultural influences move in many
diCerent directions.
 Analysis of both media power and media markets draws attention to the nature of
media institutions, or what occurs within the institutions that solicit, produce, manage and
distribute media content. It also points to the importance of media policy as a system of
institutionalized governance mechanisms over the structure, conduct and performance of
media organizations by, for the most part, national governments. Large-scale corporate
organizations came to dominate the media and related industries in the 20th century, as they
did in most sectors of the economy, as there was both greater concentration of media
ownership and the absorption of small-scale commercial media producers and distributors
by larger corporate conglomerates.

Globalization Of Media

Sparks (2000) argued that no media is genuinely global in nature. Hence globalization
of media is not a term of global character. The concept of global media's audience is broad
to be understood as too small, too rich, and too English-speaking to be inclusive. The
existence of a global public sphere is largely state-oriented. However there is no dispute that
all these globalizing forces are made possible with the aid of mass media at both the
domestic and global level. Globalization is looked at as a positive force unifying widely
diCerent societies and integrating them into a global village. The said concept is described
as an inevitable product of human evolution and progress; as if it were an organic
developmental process ruled by the natural laws. But it must be noted that globalization is
not necessarily a natural progression coming out from the regular communication and
interaction of people and cultures worldwide. But rather it should be treated as a result of
intentional human decision by the influential group of nations, transnational corporations,
and international organizations. With the help of the modern communications and
information technologies, these large firms and businesses maximize profits by associating
themselves in the global foreign markets.

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. The same widespread feeling that the
very nature of politics keeps on changing. It is meant to cover diCerent phenomena with
globalization and interdependence encompassing various meanings.

Grieco and Holmes (1999) said that globalization has been driven by the interests 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 linkagos to globulization itself. Hence it cannot be
avoided to tackle the huge aspects of global economy as units of analysis (Woods, 1988,
Tussie, 1994, Corry, 1994, Krugman and Venablos 1995, Tobin and Betabrooks, 1995,
Bierstoker; 1998, De Vet, 1998, Kahler, 1993, Dunning, 1998, Obadina, 1998, Madungu 1999,
Colle, 2000, Ohuabunwa, 1999, and Otokhine, 2000).

Based on the ideas of Wildman and Siwek (1998), language is regarded as the delicate
divider of media markets, which provides a strong barrier to media imports. The trade
relations on television among countries become highly influenced by language. In the case
of the United States, most of what little imported television and film Americans watch
derives from the Great Britain, New Zealand, or Australia. The same is true with the British
pop music, which is widely accepted; other musicians like the Icelander Björk have to sing
in English to engage into the US market.

There are several aspects of culture which are important in defining the kind of
audiences, apart from language. These include jokes, slang, historical and political
references, gossip about stars, and remarks on current people and events that are culture-
oriented and even nation-specific. These are shared across borders but are helpful in
building cross-national markets. These cultural-linguistic markets emerge at a smaller level
than global but definitely larger than national. These markets are based on common
languages and common cultures that span borders. This is happening in America as it grows
beyond its own market to export in the global field. A number of companies have grown
beyond their original local markets to serve this cultural-linguistic world. Examples include
Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela, which dominate more of the intra-Latin American trade in
music, film, and television. This is also evident in Hong Kong, which originally dominated
much of the Asian market when it comes to the material arts and gangster films and pop
music.

There are economic and organizational forces behind cultural globalization. Hence
the latter requires an organizational infrastructure. The numerous activities in the advanced
states on news and entertainment media is a form of globalization, which are distributed to
countries all over the world. Hence it can be gleaned that the dominance of a specific
country in the global media marketplace is more of an economic function rather than
cultural. In reality though, a small number of media conglomerates dominate the production
and global distribution of film, television, music, and even book publications.

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 eCects of national development. Hence the media
imperialism during the 1980s and 1990s became attacked. The global flows are considered
multi-directional. This is contradictory to the idea of one-way flow of communication and
influence from the West. The increasingly hybridized western and eastern cultures can
complicate the Western image of domination. Giddens (1999) pointed to the reverse
colonization like the case of the export of Brazilian television programs to Portugal and the
Hispanization of South California. For the global media enterprise to sustain their expansion,
it must adapt to the local cultures and link up with local partners.

Cultural imperialism is a big intentional issue in communication due to the unequal

flows of film, television, music, news, and information. This situation appears alarming to
many nations. First, this scenario is regarded as one cause of cultural erosion and change.
Some fear the American ideas, images, and values as replacement to the traditionalists'
perspectives. But some French authorities kept American words such as "drugstore' and
weekend' from creeping into common use by the French people. Wood (1998); Straubhaar &
LaRose (2004) disclosed the serious consequence of this media flow.

According to the 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. The key
actors of this system include the multinational or transnational corporations, which produce
goods, control markets, and disseminate products by using similar techniques and
strategies. Hence this cultural imperialism is the kind of cultural domination by the powerful
nations over weaker nations. It is regarded as purposeful and deliberate as it corresponds to
the political interests of the United States and the other powerful capitalist societies. The
eCects of this paradigm are viewed as extremely pervasive and leading to the
homogenization of the global culture.

Media And Economic Globalization

The media have made economic globalization possible by creating the conditions for
global capitalism and by promoting the conceptual foundation of the world's market
economy. Media make capitalism seem not only natural but necessary to modern life. Media
scholar Robert McChesney (2001) reminds us, Economic and cultural globalization arguably
would be impossible without a global commercial media system to promote global markets
and to encourage consumer values. Together with Edward Herman (1997) call global media
the new missionaries of global capitalism'.

Media now are huge transnational global corporations that embody globalization
even as they celebrate globalization. Modern media are the epitome of economic
globalization. McChesney in his study contends that the media oligopoly is not interested in
the ideology of the global village or the evangelizing of cultural values. It is only interested in
one thing profit.
 Katharine Sarikakis (2008) in her study of the European Union says, 'the normative
framework, necessary for the legitimization of policies that transformed the media across
Europe, redefined the public in its relation to the media, as consumers of media services and
accumulators of cultural goods, rather than as members of an informed and active citizenry.

Adorno and Horkeimer (2002) a critical theorist, argued that a culture industry, which
produced mindless entertainment, had great social, political, and economic importance.
Such entertainment, can distract audiences from critical thinking, sapping time and energy
from social and political action. Transnational conglomerates encouraged people to think of
products not politics. They are consumers not citizens. The global oligopoly of media thus
helps create a passive apolitical populace that rises from the couch primarily for
consumption.

The oligopoly's single-minded interest in profits results in mass content rather than
local content. Media and economic globalization has disastrous influence on news and what
used to be called public aCairs reporting. Rather than producing homegrown programming
on public aCairs and issues, local media outlets carry the mass-produced content of their
conglomerates owners. With this, one scholar calls the result the 'mass production of
ignorance.

Daya Kishan Thussu decries the 'poverty of news' and says that the "issues
concerning the world's poor are being increasingly marginalized as a softer lifestyle variety
of reporting appears to dominate global television news agendas."

Shahira Fahmy (2010) studied foreign aCairs reporting after 9/11. She suggested that
events surrounding the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, and the subsequent
wars in Afganistan and Iraq, would combine with the explosion of new media to produce a
wealth of coverage. "How Could So Much Produce So Little", is the title of her essay.

EGects Of Globalization On Mass Media

Mass media is defined as collectively all the media technologies that are intended to
reach a large audience through mass communication. Broadcast media is also known as
electronic media, which transmit the information electronically and comprise of television,
film, and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs, and some other gadgets such as cameras or video
consoles. While print media utilizes a physical object as a means to send information,
inclusive of a newspaper, magazines, brochures, newsletters, books, leaflets, and
pamphlets.nPhotography is also communicated via visual representations (International
Journal of Asian Social Science 2(10):1672-1693). The New-age Media include the mobile
phones, computers, and Internet. The term print media composes such organizations,
which control technologies like the television stations or publishing companies.

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people, and

economic activity. This has a strong impact in economics, which includes the global
distribution of the production of goods and services through the reduction of barriers to
international trade like tariCs, export fees, and import quotas. Undeniably globalization
contributed to the economic development for both the developed and developing states.
This is based on the increased specialization and the principle of comparative advantage.
This also includes the transnational circulation of ideas, languages, and popular culture.

Anthony McGrew considered globalization as a multidimensional phenomenon.

There are components attached to this like communication, which regard globalization as
the increasing mutual communication. Such that social, political, and economic activities
influence and are influenced by the trans-national events. Globalization strengthens mutual
interactions thus creating a new global system. The intensity growth and communications
extent would result to the elimination of the distance between domestic and international
issues. The people on their local lives feel the global aspects of their existence when these
communications become strengthened and deepened. Through global cooperation, the
growing communications establish some issues at the transnational level.

The media has much impact in a world of increasing globalization. The past made it
diCicult to get diverse views but with the aid of globalization, the information has spread
possibly to places. This contributes to democratic processes and influences especially on
countries, which are not democratic. But on the negative note, globalization has the ability
to push the ideas and cultures of more dominant interest.

Cultural imperialism becomes a skepticism to many countries since people become afraid
that their culture will be lost or be in a back seat because of the growing demands and
influence of globalization. The people around the world become transformed into model
consumers, which is patterned after the Western standards while their local cultures
become gradually eroded. The query now is on whether or not the local cultures and
traditions will exert eCorts to influence the local forms of globalization. The varied reactions
and responses now become evident worldwide.

In a general sense, globalization provides an adequate timely processing of

information. Almost all people in a news organization are able to get a reach on the
international news. However, this led to the costs of worldwide communication which had
decreased. Nowadays, a broad coverage of international print media output can be
accessed on the domestic or local grounds. What used to be suppressed as news and
features have now become a worldwide knowledge.

Street (2001; 173-74) explained that globalization promotes homogeneity, which

means there are similar thoughts and principles, identical films and songs carried on
worldwide. Everyone must take pleasure in equivalent advantage in a democratic state.
Globalization develops ideas. It is now plausible to communicate ideas and information
from one area to other parts of the world because of the advent of Internet and mobile phone
systems. Herman, et al. 2004: 133) gave Bangladesh as an example where people having an
Internet connection can easily share ideas with the other parts of the world. This enhances
communication inequality within and between countries.

Freedom of the press is significant for the successful operation of democracy. It

becomes a conflict for every government to control media, as a consequence of
globalization and global media. This globalization encourages competition among the
diCerent media sectors, which further facilitate the construction diversities of the neutral
programmers. Particularly in Bangladesh, there are now 19 private TV channels and more
than 10 are pending the government approval. The overall standard of this programme is
growing. One of the important features of democracy is that the diCerent political parties,
ethnic, and religious groups can set up a website and enhance deliberations to raise their
voices over a particular issue. Globalization helps to develop media and communication
aCecting the traditional patterns of social interaction.

This helps to build up a good social relationship and strengthens democracy.

Thompson (1995) enunciated that the development of new media and communications
does not exist simply in the establishment of new networks for the transmission of
information between individuals whose basic social relationship remains untouched. The
growing development of media and communications will create new forms of action and
interaction.

Globalization is inseparable in the outburst of such values as the rights of women and
minority. These can aid human causes and agitate customary roles. Hence the poor women
in the society are also getting mobile phones and are doing their businesses. There has been
changed of role from housewife to income- generating functions. They are now in-charge in
making family decisions. To make people aware about any events immediately, convergence
becomes the new dimension of media. Mass media are now used to encourage active
political citizenship, even in the case of electronic voting (Tambini, 1999:306).