SYSTEMS PLUS COLLEGE

College of ArtsFOUNDATION
and Social Sciences and Education

THE
Contemporary world

MODULE #7

PREPARED BY: Brian duela

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Introduction
The contemporary world is an ever-changing mix of social and political changes. While religious,
political, and ethnic conflicts continue, we are currently living in one of the most peaceful eras in
the history of the planet. Challenges of the 21st century include emerging technologies, health care,
overpopulation, climate change, poverty, illiteracy, disease, and migration. How we choose to deal
with these emerging frontiers will shape this unit for future generations. 1

Unit 2: A World of Ideas: Cultures of Globalization

This unit focuses on how the globalization structures discussed in Unit 1 affect various form of
cultural life. “Culture” is used here in the broadest possible sense, referring to the daily practices of
people. Thus, if the first unit focused on a “large” form of globalization, this unit will zero in on
everyday globalizations in the realms of religion, culture and city life.

Major learning outcome of this unit:

1. To explain the role of global processes in everyday life.

Lesson 7: Media and Globalization

Learning outcomes:
1. Analyze how various media drive different forms of global integration;
2. Compare the social impacts of different media on the process of globalization;
3. Explain the dynamic between local and global cultural production; and
4. Define responsible media consumption.

Globalization entails the spread of various cultures and involves the spread of ideas. When a film is
made in Hollywood, it is shown not only in the United States, but also in other cities across the
globe.

People who travel the globe teaching and preaching their beliefs in universities, churches, public
forums, classrooms or even as guests of a family play major role in the spread of culture and ideas.
But, today televisions programs, social media groups, books, movies and magazines and the like
have made it easier for advocates to reach larger audiences. Globalization relies on media as it
main conduit for the spread of global culture and ideas.

There is an intimate relationship between globalization and media which must be unraveled to
further understand the contemporary world.

A. Media and Its Functions

Communication channels through which news, entertainment, education, data, or promotional

messages are disseminated. Media includes every broadcasting and narrowcasting medium

1
https://www.freeman-pedia.com/today/
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 such as newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, billboards, direct mail, telephone, fax, and internet. 2

Jack Lule describes media “as a means of conveying something, such as channel of
communication”. Technically speaking a person’s voice is a medium. However, when
commentator refer to media (plural form of medium), they mean the technologies of mass
communication.

Types of Media

1. Print media – Print Media is an important source of information. It includes

Newspapers, Magazines, and books, etc. We can update with the latest news via
that print media platforms.

2. Broadcast Media – The main sources of the broadcast are television and radio.
We can watch all types of events which are happening on earth. Usually, people are
interested to watch the news regarding spiritual, politics, sports and so on.
Radio is also the source of broadcasting we can hear all kinds of news on it and
also enjoy the music on it through changing the channels.

3. Digital Media –Internet and mobile mass communication. Within the category of
internet media, there are the e-mail, internet sites, social media and internet-based
video and audio.

While it is relatively easy to define the term “media”, it is more difficult to determine what
media do and how they affect societies. According to media theorist Marshall Mcluhan – the
“medium is the message”. McLuhan proposes that medium itself, not the content is carries,
should be focus of the study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role
not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristic of the
medium itself. He also did not mean that ideas (“messages”) are useless and do not affect
people. Rather, his statement was an attempt to draw attention to how media, as a form of
technology, reshape society. In short how media reshape the societies. Thus television is not a
simple bearer of messages; it also shapes the social behavior of users and reorients family
behavior. Since it was introduced in the 1960s, television has steered people from the dining
table where they eat and tell stories to each other to the living room where they silently munch
on their food while watching. Television has also drawn people away from meaningful activities
such as playing games or reading books.

Today, smartphone allows users to keep in touch instantly with multiple people at the same
time. Consider the effect of the internet on relationships. Prior to the cellphone, there was no
way for couples to keep constantly in touch, or to be updated on what the others do all the
time. The technology (medium), and not the message, make for this social change possible.

McLuhan added that different media simultaneously extend and amputate human senses. New
media expand the reach of communication, but they also dull the users’ communicative
2
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/media.html
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 capacities. Think about the medium of writing. Before people wroth things down on parchment,
exchanging stories was mainly done orally. To be able pass stories verbally from one person to
another, storytellers had to have retentive memories. However, papyrus started becoming more
common in Egypt after the fourth century BCE, which increasingly meant that more people
could write down their stories. As a result, storytellers no longer had to rely completely on their
memories. This development, according to some philosophers at the time, dulled the people’s
capacity to remember.

Cellphones 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. This is not necessary bad thing;
it is merely change with a trade-off.

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 bad. He merely draws
attention to the historically and technologically specific attributes of various media.

B. The Global Village and Cultural Imperialism

Global village viewed the world as a community in which distance and isolation have been
dramatically reduced by electronic media (such as television and the Internet). 3

The term global village  is closely associated with Herbert Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian
communications theorist and literature professor hailed by many as a prophet for the 20th
century. McLuhan's mantra, "the medium is the message," summarized his view of the
influence of television, computers, and other electronic information sources in shaping
society and modern life. By 1960, he had delineated his concept of the "global village," and
by 1970, the public had embraced the term and recognized the idea as both exhilarating and
frightening. 4

Years after McLuhan, media scholars further grappled with the challenges of global media
culture. A lot of them assumed that global media had a tendency to homogenize the culture.
They argued that as global media spread, people from all over the world would begin to
watch, listen to and read the same things. This thinking arose at a time when America’s
power had turned into the world’s cultural heavy weight. Commentator, therefore, believe
that media globalization couple with American hegemony would create a form of cultural
imperialism whereby American values and culture would overwhelm all others.

Cultural Imperialism comprises the cultural aspect of imperialism. Imperialism refers to the
creation and maintenance of unequal relationship between civilizations favoring the more
powerful civilization. Thus, cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting and imposing a
culture, usually that of politically powerful nation over a less powerful nation.
Cultural imperialism, in anthropology, sociology, and ethics, the imposition by one usually
politically or economically dominant community of various aspects of its own culture onto
3
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/global%20village
4
Ibid
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 another non-dominant community. It is cultural in that the customs,
traditions, religion, language, social and moral norms, and other aspects of the imposing
community are distinct from, though often closely related to, the  economic and political
systems that shape the other community. It is a form of imperialism in that the imposing
community forcefully extends the authority of its way of life over the other population by
either transforming or replacing aspects of the non-dominant community’s culture.

In 1976 media critic Herbert Schiller argued that not only was the world being Americanized
but that this process also led to the spread of American capitalist values consumerism.

Consumerism the theory that an increasing consumption of

goods is economically desirable. 5

Similarly, John Tomlinson states that cultural globalization is simply euphemism for “Western
cultural imperialism” since it promotes “homogenized, Westernized, consumer culture.

These scholars who decry 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 had led them to neglect other global flows of information
that the media can enable. This media/cultural imperialism theory has, therefore, been
subject to significant critique.

C. Critiques of Cultural Imperialism

Proponents of the idea of cultural imperialism ignored the fact that media messages are not
just made by producers, they are consumed by audience.in the 1980s, Media scholars began to
pay attention to the ways in which audience understood and interpreted media message. A
study was conducted emphasizes that media consumers are active participants in the meaning-
making process, who view media “texts” (in media studies, a “text” simply refers to the content
of any medium) through their cultural lenses.

Ian Ang studied the ways in which different viewers in Netherlands experiences watching the
American soap opera “Dallas”. She presented a detailed analysis of audience-viewing
experience. Her observation was “rather than receiving American culture in a passive and
resigned way, the viewers’ put a lot of emotional energy into the process and they experience
pleasure based on how the program resonated with them.

A further study was conducted by Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes regarding Ang’s analysis. They
argued that texts are received differently by varied interpretative communities because they
derived different meanings and pleasure from these texts. Thus, people from diverse cultural
backgrounds have their own ways of understanding the show. Russian was suspicious of the
show’s content, believing not only that it was primarily about America, but that it contained

5
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consumerism
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 American propaganda. American viewers believed that the show, though set in America, was
primarily about the lives of the rich.

Apart from the challenge from the audience studies, the cultural imperialism thesis can be
belied by the renewed strength if regional trends in the globalization process. Asian culture, for
example, has proliferated worldwide through the globalization of media. Japan brands –from
Hello Kitty to the Mario Brothers to Pokémon – are now an indelible part of global popular
culture. The same can be applied for Korean pop (K-pop) and Korean Drama (K-drama), which
are widely successful regionally and globally. The observation even applies to culinary tastes.
The most obvious case of globalized Asian cuisine is sushi. And while it is true that McDonald’s
has continued to spread across the Asia, it is also the case that Asian brands have provided stiff
competition. The Philippines’ Jollibee claims to be the number one choice for fast food in
Brunei.

Globalization will remain an uneven process, and it will produce inequalities. Nevertheless, it
leaves room for dynamism and cultural change. This is not contradiction; it is merely a
testament to the phenomenon’s complexity.

D. Social Media and the Creation of Cyber Ghettoes

Social media refers to websites and applications that are designed to allow people to share
content quickly, efficiently, and in real-time. While many people access social media through
smartphone apps, this communication tool started with computers, and social media can refer
to any internet communication tool that allows users to broadly share content and engage with
the public.6

Cyber ghetto the equivalent of a ghetto in cyberspace; a

place on the internet etc. where a social group
is marginalized.7

The world is becoming culturally homogenous because of media. As with that entire with new
media, social media, have both beneficial and negative effects. Also, enables the user to be a
consumer and producers of information simultaneously. 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. While Western
culture remains powerful and media production is still controlled by handful of powerful
Western corporations, the internet particularly the social media, challenging previous ideas
about media and globalization.

6
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301
7
https://www.yourdictionary.com/cyberghetto
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 On the other hand, these forms of communication have democratized access. Anyone with an
internet connection or a smart phone can use Facebook and Twitter. These media have
enabled users to be consumers and producers of information simultaneously.

The democratic potential of social media was most evident in 2011 during the wave of uprising
known as the Arab Spring. Without access to traditional broadcast media like TV, activist
opposing authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya used Twitter to organize and to
disseminate information. Their efforts toppled their respective government. More recently the
“women march” against newly installed US President Donald Trump began with a tweet from a
Hawaii lawyer and became a national, even global, movement.

Social media also have their dark side. In 2000’s commentators began referring the emergence
of “splinternet”. Splinternet – also referred to as cyberbalkanisation or Internet balkanisation –
is a characterization of the Internet as splintering and dividing due to various factors, such as
technology, commerce, politics, nationalism, religion and divergent national interests. 8

In the United States, voters of Democratic Party read liberal websites, and voters of Republican
Party read conservative website. This segmentation, notes in the journal, Science, has been
exacerbated by the nature of social media feeds which leads users to read article, memes and
videos shared by like-minded friends.

Facebook can be resembles living in an echo chamber, which reinforces one’s existing beliefs
and opinion. This echo chamber precludes users from listening to or reading opinions and
information that challenge their view points, thus making them more partisan and closed-
minded.

The segmentation has been used by people in power who are aware that social media bubbles
can produce herd mentality. It can be exploited by politicians with less than democratic
intentions and demagogues wanting to whip up popular anger. The same inexpensiveness that
allows social media to be a democratic force likewise makes it a cheap tool of government
propaganda. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has hired armies of social media “troll” (paid users
who harass political opponents) to manipulate public opinion through intimidation and the
spreading of fake news. Most recently, American intelligence agencies established the Putin
used trolls and online misinformation to help Donald Trump win the presidency – a tactic the
Russian autocrat is likely to repeat in European elections he seeks to influence.

In across the world, Putin imitators replicate his strategy of online trolling and disinformation to
clamp down on dissent and delegitimized critical media. Critics of the increasingly dictatorial
regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are threatened by online mobs of pro-
government trolls, who hack accounts and threaten violence. Some of their responses have
included threats of sexual violence against women.

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 threat to
face as the globalization of media deepens. Internet media have made the world so
8
https://www.itweb.co.za/content/KBpdgvpzprbMLEew
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 interconnected that a Russian dictator can, for example, influence American elections on the
cheap.

Summary

This lesson showed that different media have diverse effects on globalization process. Global
television was creating a global monoculture. 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
hard time turning back the clock. Through people may individually try to keep out of Facebook
and Twitter, for example, these media will continue to engender social changes. Instead of
fearing this changes or entering a state of moral panic, everyone must collectively discover
ways of dealing with them responsibly and ethically.

GUIDE QUESTIONS
1. Compare and contrast the social impacts of television and social media.
2. Do you think globalization leads to cultural imperialism?
3. What strategies can you use to distinguish between fake news and factual
information on the internet?

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 Learning Activity 7.1
Guide Questions

1. Compare and contrast the social impacts of television and social media.

2. Do you think globalization leads to cultural imperialism?

3. What strategies can you use to distinguish between fake news and factual information on the
internet?

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 Learning Activity 7.2
International Music and Globalization

Pick an international musical artist or group that became internationally famous and answer the
questions:
1. Where did the musical artist originate?
2. In which countries did the artist become famous?
3. How did the artist become famous?
4. Why do you think the artist became famous?

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 REFERENCES

Claudio, Lisandro and Abinales, Patricio.2018.The Contemporary World. C&E Publishing, Inc.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/media.html

https://www.itweb.co.za/content/KBpdgvpzprbMLEew

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/global%20village

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consumerism

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301

https://www.yourdictionary.com/cyberghetto

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