Republic of the Philippines

POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

Santa Maria Bulacan Campus

Course Subject: The Contemporary World

Lesson 4: A world of Ideas

- Global Media Cultures
- The Globalization of Religion

Overview:

The globalization of culture is often chiefly imputed to international mass media. After
all, contemporary media technologies such as satellite television and the Internet have created a
steady flow of transnational images that connect audiences worldwide.
Technology allows for quick communication, transport, and mass marketing, greatly
contributing to a globalized marketplace. Media economies of scale achieve much larger profit
margins by using digital technology to sell information instantly over a global market.
Foreign markets offer excellent profit potential as they contribute to media companies’
economies of scale. The addition of new audiences and consumer markets may help a company
build a global following in the long run.

Lesson Objectives:
After successful completion of this lesson, you should be able to:

1. analyze how various media drive various forms of global integration.

2. explain the dynamic between local and global cultural production; and
3. explain how globalization affects religious practices and beliefs

Course Materials:

Globalization is 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 “an
imagined community”. Globalization and media have created the conditions through which many
people can now imagine themselves as part of one world.
To understand further the study of globalization and media, it is important to appreciate
five periods of the evolution of media and globalization.
 Five Periods of Evolution of Media Globalization

1. Oral Communication
- Language allowed human to cooperate.
- It allowed sharing of information.
- Language became the most important tool as human being explored the world and
experience different cultures.
- It helped them move and settle down.
- It led to markets, trade and cross-continental trade.
2. Script
- Language was important but imperfect, distance became a strain for oral
communication.
- Script allowed human to communicate over a larger space and much longer times.
- It allowed for the written and permanent codification of economic, cultural, religious,
and political practice.
3. The Printing Press
- It started the “information revolution”.
- It transformed social institutions such as schools, churches, governments and more.
- Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) surveyed the influences of the printing press.
- It changed the nature of knowledge.
- It preserved and standardized knowledge.
- It encouraged the challenge of political and religious authority because of its ability to
circulate competing views.
4. Electronic Media
- The vast reach of these media continues to open up new vistas in the economic,
political, and cultural processes of globalization.
- Radio- quickly became a global medium, reaching distant regions.
- Television- considered as the most powerful and pervasive mass medium. It brought
together the visual and aural power of the film with the accessibility of radio.
- The electronic media and communication sector, which ranges from
telecommunication networks and the Internet, through to radio, television and film, is
itself among the most active in the current drive for the globalization of production,
markets and trade
5. Digital Media
- Digital Media are often electronic media that rely on digital code.
- Many of our earlier media such as phones and tv’s are now considered digital media.
- In the realm of computer, it allowed citizens to access information from around the
world.

Role of Media in Globalization

Mass media plays a key role in extension of globalization process. The media components
such as television, Internet, computers etc. are considered to have a paramount influence on
globalization. Radio is one of the easiest and cheapest media sources.
Media fosters the conditions for global capitalism. Though media corporations are
themselves powerful political actors, individual journalists are subject to intimidations as more
actors contend for power.
Media on one level are the carriers of culture. It generates numerous and on-going
interactions and the globalization will bring about and increasing blending or mixture of cultures.
 Moreover, the media industry is, in many ways, perfect for globalization, or the spread of
global trade without regard for traditional political borders. The low marginal costs of media mean
that reaching a wider market creates much larger profit margins for media companies. Because
information is not a physical good, shipping costs are generally inconsequential. Finally, the global
reach of media allows it to be relevant in many different countries.
However, some have argued that media is actually a partial cause of globalization, rather
than just another globalized industry. Media is largely a cultural product, and the transfer of such
a product is likely to have an influence on the recipient’s culture. Increasingly, technology has also
been propelling globalization. Technology allows for quick communication, fast and coordinated
transport, and efficient mass marketing, all of which have allowed globalization—especially
globalized media—to take hold.

Religion and Globalization

According to Meknes 2013, Religion and globalization persistently engage in a flexible

relationship in which the former relies on the latter in order to thrive and flourish while at the same
time challenging its (globalization’s) hybridizing effects.
Globalization due to the advent of communication and transportation technology and the
roles played by the media–has contributed to the deterritorialization and the blurring of
geographical spaces and boundaries. This has resulted apparently in making the world a small
village where people, cultures, and identities come in daily face-to-face contact with each other.
Undoubtedly, religion is not immune from these changes and their burgeoning effects brought
about by globalization. However, religions still have their respective homes in specific territorial
spaces where they originally appeared and where their respective shrines exist.
The inner nature of religions and the purpose to be embraced and practiced by people all
over the world prompts it to spread throughout all the world’s geographical spaces. In order to
emerge and spread, therefore, religions make good use of the technologies of globalization.
Having geographical boundaries and frontiers blurred and dissolved, religions find it easy to spread
and reach every part of the world.
Since globalization, according to many scholars, is aimed at the hybridization of the world
cultures around the pattern of the Western culture; and since it entails liberal values and norms,
religion (particularly Islam) constitutes a challenge to it. This is because Islam’s norms and values
are incompatible with the liberal values of globalization.
Globalization has played a tremendous role in providing a context for the current
considerable revival and the resurgence of religion. Today, most religions are not relegated to the
few countries where they began. Religions have, in fact, spread and scattered on a global scale.
Information technologies, transportation means, and the media are deemed important
means on which religionists rely in the dissemination of their religious ideas. For instance,
countless websites providing information about religions have been created. This makes pieces of
information and explanations about different religions readily at the disposal of any person
regardless of his or her geographical location. In addition, the internet allows people to contact
each other worldwide and therefore hold forums and debates that allow religious ideas to spread.

Watch:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1xBpBaBbrA
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KziW-hKozyE
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t47Bar5oI1I
Read:

- Chapter 22 of textbook: “Globalization and the Media Creating the Global Village” by Jack
Lule
- Chapter 10 of Textbook: “Religion and Globalization by Victor Roeomeof
- Global Media Cultures: A Research Programme on the Role of Media in Cultural
Globalization
By Stig Hjarvard
https://www.nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/kapitel-pdf/37_hjarvard.pdf
- Globalization of Media
https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_understanding-media-and-culture-an-introduction-to-
mass-communication/s16-05-globalization-of-media.html
- Religion and Globalization: Benefits and challenges
- https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/01/75121/religion-and-globalisation-benefits-
and-challenges/

Review:

- https://www.slideshare.net/titserRex/a-world-of-regions-the-contemporary-world

Activities / Assessments:

1. Is it possible for globalization to occur without media?

2. To what extent do global media serve guardians of free speech, democracy and justice?
3. How globalization affects religious practices and beliefs?
4. What is the relationship between religion and global conflict and global peace?

Assignment:

1. Make a shot research on global city and global demography.

2. How cities served as engines of globalization
3. Explain the theory of demographic transition as it affects global population.