Lecture 12 - Globalisation and the media

The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.

•Capitalist

The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result

‘American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term “McDonaldization” to describe the wide- ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world’ 

Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A very Short Introduction, page 71

Marshall McLuhan  ‘Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned’ (1964: p.3) 

Rapidity of Communication echoes the senses

We can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale

Cultural Imperialism

•If the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.
•Key thinkers-
–Schiller
–Chomsky

•Local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shaped, mirroring old school colonialism.
•Schiller- dominance of US driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that can ill afford it!

Sustainable

•‘sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’

Brundtland Commission, (1987) ‘Our Common Future’