The

Contemporar
y World
Global Media Cultures
 References
• Globalization and Media, Creating the Global Village
(Jack Lule)
• Popular Music and Globalization (Yara El-Ghadban)
 Review
• Globalization as a process, and globalization as an
outcome
• Epochs and Cycles (History of Globalization)
• Globalization is not a single process, but multiple
processes involving economics, politics, and culture.
 Media
• “a means of conveying something, a channel for
communication”
• Media is crucial to these multiple processes in
globalization
 Evolution of Media and Globalization
• Lule utilized five time periods
• “the history of media and globalization is the history of
humanity itself”
1. Oral
2. Script
3. Print
4. Electronic
5. Digital
 Oral Communication
• Oldest and most enduring of all media
• Speech has been with us for at least 200,000 years, script less than
7,000 years, print less than 600 years, and digital less than 50 years.
• Language as an important tool for survival, civilization, cultural
continuity and preservation, human progress, and integration.
• Sumer Civilization – First civilization formed in the Middle East around
4,000 BCE. Thought to be the birthplace of plow, wheel, irrigation,
and writing. THE POWER OF LANGUAGE.
• Language and Identity
 Script
• Distance and time is a barrier to oral communication
• Language relies on memory
• Script allowed humans to communicate over a larger scope of time and space
• Writing evolved from cave paintings, petroglyphs, and hieroglyphs
• Around 3,000 BCE, writing carved in clay tablets keep accounts on trade
• Cuneiform and primitive materials
• Script allowed the permanent codification of economic, cultural, political, and
religious practices
• Great human civilizations from Greece to Rome to China were made possible
by writing.
• Writing catapulted globalization.
 Printing Press
• Started the Information Revolution
• Prior to this, reading and writing is a privilege to the elite. Writing is
expensive and hassle.
• Knowledge is Power. Information is Power.
• Movable wooden blocks in China and movable metal type by Johannes
Gutenberg in Germany marked the advent of this period.
• Revolutionized different aspects of life. Mass literacy.
• Influenced the Enlightenment, Protestant Revolution, Scientific Revolution,
and more (Eisenstein, 1979).
• Changed the nature of knowledge through PRESERVATION AND
STANDARDIZATION.
• Encouraged the challenge on the authority of the political and religious elite.
• Helped foster and spread the knowledge of globalization.
 Electronic Media
• Beginning in the 19th century. Called “electronic media” because it requires
electromagnetic energy.
• Telegraph, telephone, radio, film, and television are the usual media falling in
this category.
• Its vast reach furthered globalization
• Samuel Morse (Morse Code), Alexander Graham Bell (Telegraph). In 1927,
first Trans-Atlantic call was made via radio (wireless tech), introduction of
cellphones in 1973
• The introduction of film medium (Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, etc.)
• Television – the most pervasive and powerful mass medium yet created.
• For some, the introduction of the TV was a defining moment of globalization.
Marshall McLuhan proclaimed the world a “global village” primarily because of
television.
 Digital Media
• Most often electronic media that rely on digital
codes represented by the binary (analog and
digital).
• Computer as the recent and arguably most
significant medium to influence globalization.
• Digital media and social media
Global Imaginary and Global
Media
• Media has not linked the world physically but
also mentally.
• The Global Imaginary. World as an imagined
community.
• Cosmopolitanism
• Nation and State
• Global Village?
 Media and Economic
Globalization
• Fostered conditions for Global Capitalism
• Media as the new missionaries of global capitalism (Hernan & McChesney,
1997)
• Media oligopoly
• Disney, Time Warner, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, and Bertelsmann
own or control close to 75% of worlds media.
• Media oligopoly is not interested in the ideology of global village but of
PROFIT.
• A culture industry that produced mindless entertainment, distracting people
from critical thinking thus promoting passive people
• “Mass Production of Ignorance”
 Media and Political
Globalization
• Media as an important agent in politics
• Mexico, Russia, and Philippines – Top places where
journalists were killed with impunity.
• Media affecting government (CNN Effect) or government
affecting media?
• Brown Envelope Journalism
• Government and the silencing of media
• Arab Spring
 Media and Cultural
Globalization
• Media as an important carrier of culture
• Cultural Differentialism, Cultural Convergence,
Cultural Hybridization
• Meeting of global and local cultures
Music and Globalization
 Key Takeaways
• No globalization without media
• Global village – a global consciousness
• Media bridged humanity’s gap in time and space
• Media as a medium of global exploitation sowing
inequality, economic injustice, political
repression, and cultural conflict
• A tool for profit and power