THEORIES OF MEDIA GLOBALIZAITON

LECTURE DELIVERED TO II MA MASS COMMUNICATION STUDENTS ON 28 09 2015 BASED ON A CHAPTER ON MEDIA GLOBALIZATION BY S ARULSELVAN

GIDDEN’S DEFINITION One of the most ‘neutral’ definitions is by Giddens, who as early as 1990 defined globalization as  

the intensification of world-wide social relations, which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa. (1990: 64)

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM (DEFINITION) The sum of processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating center of the system (Schiller (1976:9) Communication and Cultural Domination)

THREE BROAD SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT AMONG GLOBALIZATION THEORISTS Held et al. (1999: 2–10) have distinguished three broad schools of thought among globalization theorists: the hyperglobalizers, the sceptics and the transformalists. The hyperglobalizers consist of theorists such as Ohmae (1995) who predict the end of traditional nation-states. The sceptics such as Hirst and Thompson (1996) claim that globalization is a myth, and that it is only about a heightened level of national economies.

ARGUMENT OF TRANSFORMATION THEORISTS The transformation theorists such as Giddens (1990) and Castells (1996) argue that globalization is ‘a central driving force behind the rapid social, political and economic changes that are reshaping modern societies and world order’ Held et al. (1999: 7). Think about this : The global telecommunications companies use an AAA paradigm: `Anything, Any time, Anywhere' (see Negroponte, 1995: 174).

HOMOGENEITY VS DIVERSITY Does globalization lead to increased cultural homogeneity, does it engender new forms of diversity - or does it do both?

What globalization is and when it began? Is it a distinct feature of modernity, or even of postmodernity? Or has it existed for as long as there have been trade routes, cultural exchanges, empires and major religions that stretched across the known worlds of the time?

AMERICAN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM The term imperialism suggests an empire which conquers territories by force and then pacifies them. In a literal sense this did not happen in the case of American cultural imperialism, or at least, the force that was used was economic force, the power to set prices and quotas, and the power of superior technologies, superior budgets and superior technical skills.

AMERICAN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM Yet as Schiller has pointed out, there is a close connection between America's military-industrial complex and its commercialized culture, and America used quite aggressive tactics in building its cultural empire, for instance in forcing commercial broadcasting on countries that wanted to keep it out.

The American communications system, Schiller has said, utilizes the communication media for its defense and entrenchment wherever it exists already and for expansion to locales where it hopes to become active.

TWO ASPECTS OF AMERICAN GLOBAL MEDIA PRACTICES In the second half of the 20th century American media did indeed conquer many parts of the world, not only by exporting their own media products but also by infiltrating themselves into local media everywhere, changing them from the inside out.

Two aspects of American global media practices have often been singled out, particularly in critiques which, implicitly or explicitly, defended European national media and high culture: standardization and simplification

STANDARDIZATION AND SIMPLIFICATION Standardization has indeed been a key feature of America's industrialization of creative production.

"Influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them despite the objections of the intellectuals (Goebbels, 1948: 22) Simplification is also an important aspect of Dorfman and Mattelart's critique of Disney and Reader's Digest. American media, Dorfman wrote, 'Infantilise the reader':

STAGES OF GLOBALIZATION Six stages of globalization   1400 to 1750s Germinal 1750s to 1870s Incipient (mainly in Europe) 1875 to mid-1920s Take-off Early 1920s to mid-1960s Struggle for hegemony 1969 to early 1990s Uncertainty Late 1990s Antagonism

Disney, the superheroes and the Digest all propose to their readers, in one way or another, a rejuvenation of the tired adult world, the possibility of conserving some form of innocence as one grows up.

Not only the characters, but those who absorb them are offered a fountain of eternal youth.... The adult - as-spoiled -child of Donald Duck, or the innocent in the body of the infinite adult in Superman, or the reader a Adam with all the knowledge of Faut in the Digest - all complement and answer the needs of a subservient and passive consumer.... and all are products of the United States of America whose global preeminence... has coincided with this century's technological leap in mass communication and left the US in a very special position to use its media art to engender its most lasting and popular symbols.

GLOCALISATION The term "glocalisation" entered the vocabulary of theorists only in the 1990s, but it was originally 1980s business jargon for the global distribution of products to increasingly differentiated local markets.

Robertson (1990) describes globalisaiton as a long term process that started in the fifteenth century and went through a number of phases. In the early 15th century, nation states began to establish themselves in Europe, while at the same time the world was opened up through exploration and trade.

This Robertson calls the 'germinal stage' of globalisation (early 15th to mid 18th century).

'INCIPIENT' STAGE OF GLOBALISATION The 'incipient' stage of globalisation (mid 18th century to 1870s) saw the consolidation of homogenous, unitary nation states, yet also the beginnings of international agreements and international legislation.

In the 'take-off' stage (1870s to mid 1920s), nation states intensified the process of regulating their single national languages and repressing minority languages, and of inventing national traditions and histories, to ensure that nationality would become a core aspect of people's identities. And yet it was also a period of increasing global communication - through new, faster forms of transport and communication, the establishment of a common calendar and common system of time zones, and through international exhibitions, sports events and prizes such as the Nobel Prize.

'RADICAL ISLAM’ - ALTERNATIVE GLOBALIZATION the next stage Robertson characterizes as a 'struggle for hegemony' (mid 1920s to the late 1960s). The independence of nations was still a key theme, and newly independent, decolonized nations everywhere began to develop their own national institutions, yet the relations between all these independent nations became closer, first through the League of Nations, then through the UN.

The most recent stage Robertson calls an 'uncertain phase'. On the one had the intensity of global trade and global communication increases and many new global institutions are created. On the other hand the oldest and richest nations become more pre occupied with maintaining their national homogeneity in a time of increasing immigration, and in the face of alternative globalisations such as 'radical islam'.

Other commentators on globalisation bring the beginnings of globalisation even closer to the present time. For Giddens (1990) globalisation is one of the consequences of modernity and he dates it from the 1800s, while

Tomlinson (1991) sees globalisation as "what comes after imperialism", situating its beginnings in the 1960s as do

Jameson (1984), who links globalisation with late capitalism, and

Harvey (1989), who links it with post modern condition of time - space compression and flexible accumulation.

A SERIES OF FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES IN STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY

– Based on the premise that society has changed to such an extent that one can talk of a new society fundamentally different.

Castells offers articulated argument backed by empirical evidence of new kind of society.

– Recognizes the importance of both mass media and information technology in the process of transformation.

– Emergence of new economy characterized by three conditions: informational, global, and structural change

 

INFORMATIONALISM   Incorporation of information in all in economic production and in society at large - knowledge-based productivity.

Information network economy saturates all forms of production - production of raw materials,

manufacturing, service sector. – simultaneous process of knowledge intensification of production in all forms.

Production in network society follows principle of flexible accumulation. – break with “Fordism” - – small units linked together in multiple networks spread globally – Products tailored for different markets – Expansion and reduction of scale - individual units of production smaller and at the same time conglomerates.

MEDIA IMPERIALISM Media Imperialism - developed within broader analysis of cultural imperialism and dependency theories. Oliver Boyd-Barret defined it as “the process whereby the ownership, structure, distribution of content of the media in any one country are singly or together subject to substantial external pressures from the media interests of any other country or countries without proportionate reciprocation of influence by the country so affected” (1977: 117).

FURTHER READINGRead Dorfman's essay on Readers Digest (Dorfman, 1983: 135-73). What are his principal points of critique?John Tomlinson, `A phenomenology of globalization? Giddens on global modernity', European Journal of Communication 9 (1994): 149-72.Marwan M. Kraidy `The global, the local, and the hybrid: a native ethnography of glocalization', Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16 (1999): 456-76.Read Dorfman's essay on Readers Digest (Dorfman, 1983: 135-73). What are his principal points of critique?How to read Donald Duck?