Chapter 6: Global Media Cultures

Introduction
This chapter explores the relationship between the media, culture and
globalization. It also focuses on the past and current challenges concerning
international communication and explores and problematizes the power of media
representation.

Learning Objectives:

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At the end of this chapter, learners must be able to:
1. Understand how scholars have approached the relationship between media
and globalization;

development; SS
2. Differentiate the paradigms that developed in international communications

3. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the paradigm which led to its loss of
appeal;
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4. Analyze how various media drive various forms of global integration; and
5. Create a stance about the film industry in the Philippines in contrast to South
Korean film industry.

Discussion:
Mass Media
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Mass Media is a term denoting that section of the media specifically

designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole
population of a nation-state), today including not only radio and television, which
tend to be limited to the local or national level, but also the Internet, which is global.
The mass media audience has been viewed by some as forming a "mass society"
with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which
render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass media techniques of
persuasion such as advertising and propaganda.
Etymology and Usage
Media (the plural of "medium") is a truncation of the term "media of
communication," referring to those organized means of dissemination of fact,
opinion, entertainment, and other information, such as newspapers, magazines,
outdoor advertising, film, radio, television, the World Wide Web, books, CDs, DVDs,
videocassettes, computer games, and other forms of publishing.

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 Advocacy Enrichment
It can be used for both business and It can take the form of education through
literature for example. Entertainment is
social concerns. This can include
traditionally through performances of
advertising, marketing, propaganda,
acting, music, and sports, along with light
public relations, and political reading; since the late 1990s also through
communication. video and computer games.

Purposes of Mass
Media

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Journalism Public service

It involves the spread of news

on a large scale.
SS announcements
Cases of state or non-governmental
agencies reaching out to inform the
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public of a pressing event.

History
The evolution of mass media is an elongated, marked with milestones journey
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that is still being continued. The earliest form of information for the masses was
inscribed on stones, caves and pillars, there always has been necessary to pass
on important information through generations along with spreading it to the masses.
The modern mass communication bloomed with the printing press and it has
not stopped since.

Evolution of Mass Media

Pre-Industrial Age
1041 Movable Clay type printing in China
1440 The First Printing Press in the world by German

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 Goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg
1477 First Printed advertisement in a book by William
Caxton
1918 First colored movie shot Cupid Angling
1920 Invention of TV by John Logie Baird and First
Radio Commercial Broadcast by KDKA radio
station
1923 The first news Magazine was Launched - TIME
1927 First TV transmission by Philo Farnsworth

Evolution of New Media (21st Century)

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The 1990s to 2000s Invention of the Internet, Birth of Social
Networking Sites, and Emergence of Social
Media.
1991

1995
1997
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World Wide Web came into being by Sir
Timothy John-Berners Lee
Microsoft Internet Explorer was launched
DVDs replaced VCR
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2001 Instant Messaging Services
2002 Satellite Radio is launched
2004 Facebook
2005 YouTube
2006 Twitter
2007 Tumblr
2010 Instagram
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FORMS
- Electronic media and print media include a variety of forms:

Audio recording
- using various types of discs or tape.
Originally used for music, video,
and computer uses followed.
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 Broadcasting

- in the narrow sense,

for radio and television.

Film

- most often used for entertainment,

but also for documentaries.

Internet

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- which has many uses and presents
both opportunities and challenges.
Blogs and podcasts, such as

SS news, music, pre-recorded speech, and

video
Publishing
- in the narrow sense, meaning on
paper, mainly via books, magazines,
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and newspapers.

Computer games
- which developed into a mass form of
media with personal devices allowing
people to purchase games to play in
their homes.
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Public Media- It is the sum of the public mass distributors of news and
entertainment and other information:
the newspapers, television and radio broadcasting, book publishers, and so on.

More recently, the Internet, podcasting, blogging, and others have been
added to this list. All of these public media sources have better informed the general
public of what is going on in the world today.

Globalization and Mass Media

HOW DOES MASS MEDIA INFLUENCE GLOBALIZATION?

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 Through its various formats, the mass media can reach most people on
earth. This is an incredible opportunity for communication and education among the
peoples of the planet. As these technologies become cheaper, they are becoming
universal and closing the technological divide that exists between the rich and poor.
As the technology necessary for mass communication becomes cheaper and more
widespread, the planet will indeed become smaller as news travels even faster
among all people of the world.
By this we can now define it as Global Media, “the mass communication
on a global level, allowing people across the world to share and access the same
information.” It is indeed that technologies made people’s lives easier all over the
globe. Today people all over the world have easy access to communicate with each
other and to be aware of the news all over the world. There are many advantages in
global media. Now, people have easier access of television, radio, internet and in
fact, they have access of others countries’ satellite TV channels.

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Free flow of information: the road to Modernization?

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The post-World War II period would mark the prominence of the models of
development through mass media and free flow of information, particularly under the
leadership of the U.S.
Several scholars term the model of communication and development as the
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Modernization Paradigm which views that the reason for the absence of
modernization in the developing world is not due to the lack of natural resources.
The primary hindrance to a country’s development is the lack of human resources,
and education and mass media would have the fundamental tasks of human capital.
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Proponents of Communication and Development Paradigm

A. Wilbur Schramm (1964)
 One of the pioneering scholars of this paradigm, observed a positive
association between communication
components to that of the social, political and
economic components in national growth.
According to him, “the task of mass media of
information and the “new media” of education
is to speed and ease the long, slow social
transformation required for economic
development and, in particular, to speed and
smooth the task of mobilizing human
resources behind the national effort.”

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B. David Lerner (1958)
 Who proposed that developing societies must follow the Western
concept of modernity in order to achieve development.
 He emphasized the importance of empathy, stating that “as people
are more exposed to media, the greater is their capability to imagine
themselves as strange persons in strange situations, places and time
than did people in any previous historical epoch”
 He posited that mass media has the power to foster the
learning of emphatic skills. The interactive and
integrative capabilities of media that prevent societal
disintegration are critical to the success of efforts to
modernize
 This view resonates with Benedict Anderson, he
emphasized the role of printed communication and
capitalism in instilling nationalism and the sense of

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belongingness among people who don’t know each
other, by creating imagined communities.

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C. Everett Rogers (1965 – 1966), whose ideas
were influenced by Lerner, espoused the same
paradigm but forwards a nuanced relationship by
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treating mass media as a factor that intervenes
between antecedents and consequences of
modernizations.

In his theoretical model, the socioeconomic

antecedents would determine the capacity of
mass media exposure to result to the indicators of
modernization as illustrated below
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 CONSEQUENCE
ANTECEDENTS
PROCESS Empathy
Functional literacy
Education Agricultural and Home
Mass Media
Social Status Exposure innovativeness
Age Political knowledge
Cosmo politeness Achievement motivation
Educational and
occupational aspirations

*NOTE: The terms “antecedents” and “Consequences” are used here in the sense of a

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probable time order, but not necessarily in the sense of cause-result.

Modernization Paradigm

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The presence of mass media in societies have been observed by
modernization scholars as correlated to the social, economic, and political
indices of development. The strength and power of mass media to influence
societies lies in its “one-way, top-down and simultaneous and wide
dissemination” and its capacity to shape social processes, make meanings,
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identifies, and aspirations of a community.
On that tine when world influence was polarized by two superpowers: the
United States and the Soviet Union. Their influence reached every sphere of the
international scenario, including development. In this context, the modernization
paradigm promoted by political scientists and scholars of Western countries became
so strong and so pervasive in every dimension of social life that it became also
known as the "dominant paradigm”.
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By the end of the 1970’s, criticism against the modernization paradigm grew
in the strength and influence questioning the assumptions and conceptualizing of the
paradigm especially in the context of non-Western and developing societies. This
period would mark the shift to the cultural imperialism paradigm.

Demanding for the balanced flow of information: a Fight

against Cultural Imperialism
The cultural imperialism paradigm grew in influence from the 1960s to the
1980s in the context of the Cold War and the period of decolonization and post-
colonialism. Third world countries formed the Non-Aligned Movement with a united
purpose stated in the Non-Aligned Countries Declaration of 1979, also known as
the Havana Declaration:

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 “the common struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism,
expansionism, racism, including Zionism, apartheid, exploitation, power politics and
all forms and manifestation of foreign occupation, domination, and hegemony.”
The movement was also against the uneven flows of information associated
with uneven development through the pretense of the free flow of information and
the freedom of expression. In actuality, it “meant” “free-market” expression, meaning
those who owned the media had the right to decide what was expressed in it.

Proponents of Cultural Imperialism Paradigm

A. Herbert Schiller (1976)
The clearest and most influential theorists of the cultural imperialism
tradition. He defines it as:
 “The concept of cultural imperialism today best described the sum of

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the 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,

 SS
or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating center of
the system.”
The theory takes on a macro-perspective of global power dynamics
and struggles among state economic relations, particularly the
concentration of control and resources at the expense of the
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development of the rest of the world.
 Cultural imperialism theory argues that global audiences are exposed
to media messages dominantly deriving from Western industrialized
states.
 The concepts “cultural imperialism” and “media imperialism” have
minor differences but most of the international communication literature
consider the latter as a category of the former.
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B. Boyd Barret (1977)

 He defined Media Imperialism
as the process whereby the
ownership, structure, distribution or
content of the media in any one
country are singly or together are
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.
 Media imperialism model views modern communication media has
having been designed to maintain and expand dependence and
domination over the world.

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  It is stark contradiction to the assumption of the modernization
paradigm that sees communication media as tools for development.
Cultural and media imperialism approaches, together with its variant
concepts of “cultural dependency” and “electronic colonialism”, view
media as an instrument of major powers that serve as an obstacle to
steady progress between developed and developing world.

C. Hesmondhalgh (2005)
 The concept of imperialism means “building of empires” however the
use of the term cultural imperialism implies that with the end of the age
of direct political and economic control by colonial states a new form of
indirect power and concern has emerged.
 Cultural domination over less-developed countries that would foster
desires for western lifestyle and products among post-colonial societies
that would pave the way for the entry of Western-based transnational

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corporations that would then dominate non- Western economies.

D. Zenith Optimedia’s annual global ranking of the largest media companies

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in the world. Television remains to be the most important advertising
medium, but it is now followed by internet which has replaced print media as
the second. Digital advertising has been on the rise, with five digital
companies – Google, Facebook, Baidu, Yahoo, and Microsoft - included in
the top and representing 65% of the entire internet advertising market, and
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accounting for more than a third of the revenues of the largest media owners
listed.
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SS
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), demand change in its communication policies with the goal of balancing
the relationship between developed and developing states.
The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)
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movement was a collective resistance to pressure UNESCO to change the
dynamics of news media that has been dismissive of the interest and needs of the
less affluent world, to change the “one-way flow” of news, media, and cultural
products of between the North and South to a “two-way” flow.
NWICO movement resulted to the report of the MacBride Commission entitled
Many Voices, One World, which forwarded recommendations that aimed to
promote independence, diversity, and pluralism of media and to strengthen the
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national media of the South. The report aimed to address the problems of unequal
access and flow of communication due to media commercialization and
concentration.
The recommendations were fruitless and failures, USA
and UK opposed the request and withdrew from
UNESCO but eventually rejoined.
Despite the arguments against cultural imperialism, the
merits of the approach continue to recognized by
scholars.

Tomlinson (1999)
The paradigm maintains its relevance as it highlights the expansionist nature
of capitalism and its capacity to shape global culture.

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Rantanen (2005)
Sees the strength of the paradigm through its macro-level analysis that is
based on the uneven and asymmetrical political, economic relations of the world
system, and the implications of such in developing societies.
Sparks (2012)
Cultural imperialism framework into the current context of intensifying media
corporations, and widening of gaps between North and South. Also, array of
competing states of varying powers and influence compete and in some instances
coordinate their political and economic power to exert control over less developed
and weaker countries.

Transition from Communication and Development and Cultural

Imperialism to Cultural Pluralism

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Criticisms against the cultural imperialism paradigm would eventually pave the
way for the emergence of a new paradigm termed “cultural pluralism”, other
scholars would also refer to the paradigm as “cultural globalization”.

SS
The paradigm shift was a departure from the “one-way” model of cultural
imperialism towards a more sophisticated analysis of “multidirectional flows” among
country relations.
Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings, and
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values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations.
This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been
diffused by the Internet, popular culture media. The circulation of cultures enables
individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional
borders. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and
cultures.
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Proponents of Cultural Pluralism

A. Rantanen (2005),
- Called the shifts of paradigm as the homogenization-heterogenization
debate.
Homogenization is that mighty culture has invaded local culture as well as it
has become the dominant culture in local area that aims to eliminate the local
culture. Society becomes homogenous. Everyone conforms to western ideal. It also
results that loss of individual culture and religions. There are more market
competition as well.
Cultural heterogenization or multicultural society, means region culture was
widely disseminated and accepted by other societies and cultures and meanwhile
enhance the cultural diversity in local society. It could be resulted that richer

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 countries gives incentive to poorer countries to protect them as well as to adopt more
sustainable practices.
She said that the past two paradigms, the modernization and imperialism
approach as being under the homogenization. While, heterogenization is for Cultural
pluralism.

Paradigm Global media seen as? Consequences

A.
Communications Homogeneous Homogeneous
and development

B.
Cultural Homogeneous Homogeneous
Imperialism

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C.
Heterogeneous Heterogeneous
Cultural Pluralism

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QUICK RECAP
 The Modernization Paradigm in the field of international communications argues
that developing countries must take the Western path of development of
promoting the free flow of information through the free market ideas.
 Cultural Imperialism views the notion of the free flow of information as a pretense
to the one-way flow of cultural products from North to the South.
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 The Cultural globalization or pluralism model employs a more optimistic

perspective on the role of the audience and its capacity to react, resist, and
recreate information and ideas that media exposes them
 Social Media plays a very important role in today's life, social Media are web-
based online tools that enable people discover and learn new information, share
ideas, interact with new people and organizations. It has changed the way people
live their life today, it has made communication much easier.
 It allows the exchange of user-generated content like data, pictures, and videos.
Social media platforms may come in different forms such as blogs, business
forums, podcasts, microblogs, photo sharing, product/service review, weblogs etc.

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References


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Abelos, A.V., et. al. (2018). The Contemporary World. Chapter 7:
Globalization and Media: Creating The Global Village pp. 93-115. Mutya
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Publishing House, Inc.

 Coronacion, D.C., et.al. (2018). Convergence: A College Textbook in

Contemporary World. Chapter 6: Global Media Cultures pp. 111-124. Books
Atpb. Publishing Corp.

 Lobo, J.L. (2019). The Contemporary World. Chapter 11: A World of Ideas:
Global Media Cultures pp 179-208. Books Atbp. Publishing Corp.
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Name:
Course:
Activity 1 SS Date:
Score:
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Instruction: Visit the Youtube website and search for Pepe
Diokno’s (2013) TEDxADMU talk entitled “Who Killed
Philippine Cinema?” After watching the clip, answer the
following questions within 7-10 sentences only.

1. Who killed Philippine Cinema? What would explain the poor state of the
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country’s movie industry?

2. Why is the South Korean film industry so rich, abundant and successful
as compared to the Philippines’?

3. How is the film industry related to other industries in the market?

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4. How can we revive the Filipino film industry?

5. How important are films in the preservation and the enrichment of the
Filipino Culture?

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SS
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