3.1

Introduction

The word globalization seems to mean many things which make this word difficult to define. It could be associated to concepts such as global economy, international trade, international travel and communication, immigration, migration etc. We learned from the past lessons that to study globalization means that we look at it with an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the phenomenon. Thus, scholars study globalization by pairing it with other concepts such as globalization and identity, globalization and human rights, globalization and culture, or globalization and terrorism.

In this lesson however, we will pair the concept of globalization to media. The core of this lesson springs from the argument that there is no globalization without media. We will examine how they act in concert and in cohort, which creates the conditions through which many people can imagine themselves as part of one world—a global imaginary which Marshal McLuhan (1962) later called the 'global village'.

HISTORIES OF GLOBALIZATION

 No right answer exists, of course, as to when globalization began. Some scholars feel that globalization is a decidedly modern phenomenon. It began a few decades ago in the late 1900s when advances in media and transportation technology truly globalized the world. Arjun Appadurai (1996), a cultural anthropologist, feels there was a 'rupture' within social life in the late twentieth century. He says that advances in media, such as television, computers, and cell phones, combined with changes in migration patterns, such as people more easily flowing back and forth worldwide. Those two 'diacritics' –media and migration- fundamentally changed human life and gave rise to this new entity—now called globalization.

 Some scholars say globalization began a few hundred years ago. They pair globalization with the rise of modernity in the Enlightenment or with the age of European exploration – Columbus' arrival in America is often used as a marker for globalization. Globalization for others had been going on since the beginning of humanity – the first Homo sapiens departed from other Homo sapiens in an African village when they set out searching for food or water or adventure. The travelers in the world put globalization into motion. Yale's Nayan Chanda (2007) says globalization is a process that has worked silently for millennia without having been given a name. Since the beginning of history, it has been with us, and a 'multitude of threads' connects us to faraway places from ancient times.

GLOBALIZATION: A 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 communicate through media, though they have not used that word.

Globalization is thus defined as a set of multiple, uneven, and sometimes overlapping historical processes, including economics, politics, and culture that have combined with the evolution of media technology to create the conditions under which the globe itself can now be understood as 'imagined community'.

As discussed in the previous modules, globalization, is not one process but multiple processes- that include economics, politics, and culture, and these processes are not new.

MEDIA: A DEFINITION

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, ex. 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.

EVOLUTION OF MEDIA AND GLOBALIZATION

 Scholars have organized the historical study of media by time periods or stages and the dominant medium that characterized by it. Harold Innis (1950), Marshall McLuhan's teacher, writing in the 1940s and 1950s, divided media into three periods: oral, print and electronics. James Lull (2000), writing at the close of the twentieth century added digital to three. Terhi Rantanem (2005) places script before the printing press and breaks down the electronic period into wired and wireless, for six periods. However, it was only the five time periods usefully capture the study of globalization and media. It is important to stress that globalization and media do not proceed along an inevitable, inexorable path of progress. Its development caused also great benefits and sometimes greater harm.

ORAL COMMUNICATION

Oral medium (human speech) is the oldest and most enduring of all media. It has been with us for at least 200,000 years despite numerous changes undergone by humans and their societies. 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:

a) Language allowed humans to cooperate.

b) Sharing information about land, water, climate, and weather aided humans' ability to travel and adapt to different environments.

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

d) 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.

f) 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 BCE 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.

SCRIPT

Language relies on human memory, which is limited in capacity and not always perfect. Script – the very first writing allowed humans to communicate and share knowledge and ideas over much larger spaces and across much longer times.

Writing has its own evolution and developed from cave paintings, petroglyphs, and hieroglyphs. Early writing systems began to appear after 3000 BCE, with symbols carved into clay tablet to keep account of trade. These 'cuneiform' marks later developed into symbols that represented the syllables of languages and eventually led to the creation of alphabets, the scripted letters that represent the smallest sounds of a language.

Writing surfaces even have their own evolution. It was done at first as carving into wood, clay, bronze, bones, stone, and even tortoise shells. Ancient Egypt created it from a plant found along the Nile River- papyrus (from which the English word paper derived. With script on sheets of papyrus and parchment, humans had a medium that catapulted globalization. Through script the great civilizations were made possible from Egypt and Greece to Rome and China.

PRINTING PRESS

It started the 'information revolution' and transformed markets, businesses, nations, schools, churches, governments, armies, and more. All histories of media and globalization acknowledge the consequential role of the printing press. 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 fast the production and copying of the documents in a cheaper cost hence it became affordable to the common people as it provides literacy to them. 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 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. Griffith, 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 offers resounding examples of the confluence of globalization and media. After World War II 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.

NO GLOBALIZATION WITHOUT MEDIA

At this point, it is clear for us that the partnership of globalization and media is essential as they proceeded together through history in the different eras –oral, script, print, electronics and digital. It is difficult to imagine globalization occurring without the media that are so crucial to human life.

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. 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 spread across vast expanses of land and came to conceive of themselves as a 'nation'. He said that nations are the result of 'imagined communities'. A concrete example of how media had shaped the concept of the nation in the Philippines was when Dr. Jose Rizal spread the concept of being a Filipino through his writings Noli Me Tanghere and El Filibusterismo. These novels sparked an "imagine community" of common origin who need to experience reform from the Spanish government. Rizal's writings played a crucial role in the Filipino's concept of the nation. This affirms Arjun Appadurai (1996) argument that imagination is not a trifling fantasy but a 'social fact' and a 'staging ground for action'. Marshall McLuhan (1060s) anticipated this phenomenon with his argument that media have connected the world in ways that create a 'global village'. He said that media is the one responsible for transforming the world into a global village with high hopes that the global village evokes community, kinship, cooperation, and fraternity. Lewis Mumford (1970) 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.

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), they call global media 'the new missionaries of global capitalism'.

Meanwhile, 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 she 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.

No News Today

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 affairs reporting'. Rather than producing homegrown programming on public affairs 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 affairs 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.

MEDIA AND POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION

Globalization has transformed world politics in profound ways. Here are the key features of modern life when we add media to the admixture of globalization and politics: a) Individual journalists are subject to brutal and intense intimidation as more actors contend for power. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) estimates that on average close to 100 journalists and media workers are killed in the of duty each year. b) The journalists die without justice. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) estimates that fewer than 15 percent of the murders of journalists are solved or prosecuted. c) Globalization has made the world a harrowing place for journalists.

MEDIA AND CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION

Media are much more than technology and mechanical conveyor of culture, editorial and advertisement. The media are people. These people are active economic agents and aggressive political lobbyist on matters of culture.

Many scholars have considered the varied outcomes from the commingling of media, culture, and globalization. Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2004), in his book 'Globalization and Culture: Global Melange', argues that there are three outcomes with which to consider the influence of globalization on culture:

Cultural Differentialism suggests that cultures are different, strong, and resilient. It can suggest that cultures are destined to clash as globalization continually brings them together. In the contested work of US political scientist Samuel Hungtington's, (1996), 'The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Orders', argues for example that the West and Islam will be locked in conflict.

Cultural Convergence suggests that globalization will bring about a growing sameness of cultures. But some fear about global culture will overtake many local cultures. For some, this outcome can suggest 'cultural imperialism'. The result, under this outcome, will be a worldwide, homogenized, Westernized culture.

Cultural Hybridity suggests that globalization will bring about an increasing blending or mixture of cultures. This melange lead to the creation of new and surprising cultural forms, from music to food to fashion.

The three outcomes do a splendid job of organizing what could be thousands of distinct examples of the meeting of global and local culture. The disappearance of hundreds of languages, as a few languages become dominant.

As globalization has increased the frequency of contact among cultures, the world has been given another awkward term—glocalization.

DARK CONTOURS OF THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

Globalization and media have done wondrous deeds. They have given us the ability to truly imagine the world as global village. As McLuhan conceived the term, he has highest hopes that global village still evokes community, kinship, cooperation, and fraternity. But Lewis Mumford was not fooled. His cold, clear vision of human weakness saw emerging the dark contours of the global village. He saw media technology used not to better the world but to exploit the world in pursuit of property, profit, and power.

Conclusion

This lesson discussed that the media have diverse effects on the globalization process and undeniably play an important role to intensify globalization, linked the globe, promote cultural exchanges, and diverse flows of information between countries. The people of the world came to know about the world because of media. Media did not only make the globalization process possible, but as well as made economic globalization possible by creating the conditions of global capitalism, and transformed world politics in profound ways. However, media remains to be a double-edged sword that affects people differently. It can make the lives of people better. Yet, it also puts people in a disadvantaged position. It has pros and cons, and as citizens of this globalized society, we only have to decide what is best for us in this ever complex and changing world.