Unit 6 :

GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA

Jennifer A. Balanquit
Bocobo
• As what we have been saying in the past lesson, the world gets to be connected because of globalization. People are
connected with one another whether as a small or as a large country, and nowadays, it is all a big thank to the digital
technology, the internet, and the media. The information and socialization make the emergence of media as the binding
force among people, things, and places around the globe. We will be tackling on how significant the Media Age through the
years and how it developed and contributed to the globalization. The content is not the only thing that we should be
responsible in handling right now; the medium, the way we transmit the certain content or message, is just as important.

Learning Outcomes:
• At the end of this module, the students should be able to:
• 1. define globalization and media from their etymological and historical development;
• 2. explain the relation of globalization and media in the development in the modern world; and,
• 3. elaborate the contributions and theories of the various scholars in relation to globalization and the modern world
• 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 rapture 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. One
consequence of globalization is the establishment of an imagined community. Hence globalization is not just one process; it composes
of multiple processes which comprise the economic, political, and cultural aspects. These processes are never new, and it shows how
globalization is shaping as a real thing as years go by. Globalization and media create the conditions in making and shaping people and
being part of one world – a global imaginary, which Marshal McLuhan 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. McLuhan has stated his vision where the world would transform into a global village; while it
was becoming true somehow, but it was not really a blissful utopia as what he had predicted. Lewis Mumford, American historian of
tech and science, sided with McLuhan and found utopian hope in media technology. However, he has watched with dismay as media
was also incredibly used for capitalism, militarism, profit, and power. Lule argued that globalization and media also created a divided
world of gated communities which connected and separated people at the same time
• 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 (printing press), and electronic media. James Lull (2000)
added digital media 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 that we will be showcasing that captured the study of
globalization and media. As highlighted, globalization and media do not proceed to sole progress.
They may have led to great benefits, but they also caused and resulted 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 different environments.
3. Sharing info about tools and weapons led to the spread of technology.
4. Language helped humans move, but it also helped them settle down.
5. Language stored and transmitted important agricultural information across time, leading to the creation of villages and towns.
6. 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. and happened at Sumer in the Middle East, sometimes called the cradle of civilization.
• Script Language

Is dependent on human memory, which is however limited in capacity and imperfect. With the advent of
scripts, 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., 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 led to the creation of alphabets. While writing
surfaces were done at first as carving into wood, clay, stones, etc., the ancient Egypt created it from a plant
found along the Nile river known as papyrus. It 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.
• 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, and more efficient, metal type by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany.
The contributions of the printing press in the globalization process are the following: Early Printing Press
a.) It made the production and copying of documents much faster at a cheaper cost. This made books and other printed materials more affordable 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 as well.
d.) The explosive flow of economic, cultural, and political ideas around the world connected and changed people and cultures in ways never possible
before.
• Elizabeth Eisenstein
Also studied the influences of the printing press. She stated that the device preserved
knowledge, which had been malleable in oral culture and standardization of spreading the
reading materials across regions and lands. It also encouraged the challenge of political and
religious authority because of its ability to circulate competing views. This study of hers
was based on the findings during the Age of Enlightenment, particularly during the
Protestant Reformation and the scientific revolution.
• 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
1830s that eventually could send coded messages – dots and dashes over electrical lines. By 1866, a
transatlantic cable was laid between the U.S. and Europe and the telegraph became a 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. Radio was crucially involved with the upheavals of globalization during
this time from radio broadcasts that riveted audiences during the World War II, to the
propaganda services that did battle worldwide during the Cold War, to the so-called ‘death
radio’ that helped drive the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda, a country in Africa.
• 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. The worldwide success
of films such as Avatar, Titanic, and, quite recently, the whole Avengers movie franchise
offers resounding examples of the confluence of globalization and media. By the end of
1960s, half the countries in the world had television stations (well, they’re mostly owned by
the wealthy persons that time, though).
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.
• 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.
• THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN MEDIA AND GLOBALIZATION
The mass media play an important role 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. During the 1990s, the mainstream media then were relatively only national or local in
perspective. The development of capitalism, new technologies, and the increasing commercialization of global
television have a huge impact in the international flows of information.
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 notable progress was the evolution of technologies capable of
transmitting messages through electromagnetic waves. The birth of international news agencies (like Reuters and
Associated Press [AP]) during the 19th century lighted the path towards the global system of codification.
• Mass media is a deceptively simple term encompassing a countless array of institutions and individuals
who differ 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. 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.
• Olivia 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 is its tendency to
inculcate the model of American values into the Third World countries. The theory, however, 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.

• Thompson (1995, 169) stressed on how symbolic power overlaps with the economic and 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. The cultural domination remained America in forma and content while the economic
basis had become globalized. Tomlinson (1999) highlighted the reasons in favor of the cultural imperialism stating the huge contribution of
capitalism.
• Over the years though, the mere cultural diffusion of the American values became less emphasized as content
creators and also the audiences have come to recognize and demand for blending of local cultures and global
foreign influences to global culture which would be the ground of hybridization. Nederveen Pieterse (2004)
considered the hybridity as being part of a certain postmodern sensibility.

• Curran (2002) mentioned however that the neglect in looking at economic power and impact of giant media
corporations in influencing cultural preferences should also be looked. The blending of global with national
influence usually didn’t turn out to show an ‘authentic’ cultural practice, but rather the appropriation of the ‘exotic’
by the capitalist media corporations. The representation cannot be seen, but it only showed the exploitation by the
global market to only earn profits. Such a genuine recognition of the other non-Western or Third World cultures
became too ideal.
• The relationship between localities and the social circumstances became changed with the
global communication systems. The image brought about by the media of past events,
like the exploitation of the culture and insensitive cultural appropriation, and on how
people from the different parts of the world live resulted in the celebration of difference.
While the representation and the showcase of culture and identity may not be seen from
time to time, the cultural influences move in many different directions through the years
and we see the global media improving to show the global culture step by step.
GLOBALIZATION OF MEDIA
• 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. As what we
have said in the previous paragraph though, the globalizing forces are now made possible with the aid of mass media at both the
domestic and global level. With the help of the modern communications and information technologies (and the masses, of course), large
firms and businesses maximize profits by associating themselves in global foreign markets.
• 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 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 Icelandic Björk, Spanish singer Rosalía, and,
most recently, Korean pop acts like BlackPink, LOONA, Monsta X, and, especially, BTS have to release certain tracks in English to
engage into the US market. This is obviously shown with the recent songs from BTS like ‘Dynamite’ and ‘Butter’ topping the US charts,
all sung in English. Nowadays though, albeit there are songs that are released in a certain language to appeal certain fans, more and more
audiences are now becoming open-minded and they listen and appreciate songs in other languages despite not understanding them right
away. The artists mentioned have many songs that are loved by many audiences regardless of what language they are singing
• 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 markets are based on common
languages and common cultures that span borders. This is happening in America as it grows beyond their original local markets to serve
this cultural-linguistic world. Latin-American nations like Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela are some of the examples.
• This is also evident in Hong Kong, which originally dominated much of the Asian market when it comes to the martial arts and gangster
films. Japan and their anime and pop culture are also very popular now. Korean dramas and varieties have been one of the most-watched
shows in the past five years. 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 effects of
national development.
• Cultural imperialism
In the recent years, with the popularity of foreign pop culture getting more and more recognized, language seemed to be not
the biggest issue right now. With the emergence of streaming services like Netflix, Spotify, etc., people all around the world
get to discover the wonders of art in different forms all around the world with easier access. Korean entertainment is
undeniably one of the most popular right now, and one of the examples is the critically-acclaimed Parasite that won major
awards from Western movie award shows like the Golden Globes and the Oscars. “Once you overcome the one-inch tall
barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” said Bong Joon-ho, the director of Parasite,
during the Golden Globes. Parasite, 2019 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.
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’ perspective. Likewise, there certainly are number of Americans who are not charmed with
the popularity of foreign pop culture entering the US market which would somehow show their xenophobic tendencies
• 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.
One of the problems that can be found on a certain modern media would be lack of interest and
consideration in evangelizing cultural values and showcasing the ideology of the global village.
McChesney contends that many media oligopoly are only interested in one thing: profit.
• EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON MASS MEDIA The media has much impact in a
world of increasing globalization the information has now 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 ideas and
cultures of more dominant interest.
• 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.
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.
• Globalization develops ideas and it enhances communication inequality within and between
countries with the media. 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.
• Globalization helps to develop media and communication affecting the traditional patterns of
social interactions. This helps to build up a good social relationship and strengthens democracy.
• Globalization is inseparable in the outbursts of such values as the rights of women and minority.
These can aid human causes and agitate customary roles. 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 (Tambini1999:306).
• REMEMBER!
• The content we share is not the only thing that we should be responsible in handling right now; the medium,
the way we transmit the certain content or message, is just as important. The concept of globalization is
always controversial. In the late 1900s, the advances in media, transportation technology, and migration have
genuinely globalized the world.
• As highlighted, globalization and media do not proceed to sole progress. They may have led to great benefits,
but they also caused and resulted even greater danger. There occurred five periods: Oral Communication,
Script, Printing Press, Electronic Media, and Digital Media.
• The mass media play an important role 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.
• The image brought about by the media of past events, like the exploitation of the culture and insensitive cultural
appropriation, and on how people from the different parts of the world live resulted in the celebration of difference.
While the representation and the showcase of culture and identity may not be seen from time to time, the cultural
influences move in many different directions through the years and we see the global media improving to show the
global culture step by step.
• 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.
• The media has much impact in a world of increasing globalization. The past made it difficult to get diverse views but
with the aid of globalization, the information has now 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 ideas and cultures of more dominant interest. 4. Social media has empowered people to express their
beliefs. But sometimes, those beliefs are intolerant and dangerous. Should social media platforms respect free speech
or regulate what people post? (question taken from Miss Universe 2019.
• Globalization develops ideas and it enhances communication inequality within and
between countries with the media. Globalization helps to develop media and
communication affecting the traditional patterns of social interactions.

• Globalization is inseparable in the outbursts of such values as the rights of women and
minority. These can aid human causes and agitate customary roles. To make people aware
about any events immediately, convergence becomes the new dimension of media.
• References: Aldama, Prince Kennex. (2018). The Contemporary World. Sampaloc,
Manila: Rex Book Srore, Inc. Fernandez, G. Jr., Purog, R., Betarmos, V. Jr., Dihaycu-
Garciano, M., Garciano, J., Obberes, D., Ocana, E.L. Jr. (2019). The Contemporary
World. 2nd Edition. Potrero, Malavon City: Mutya Publishing House.