The document discusses several key concepts and theories related to media globalization: 1) Giddens' definition of globalization as intensified worldwide social relations linking distant places. 2) Cultural imperialism defined as a society being integrated into the modern world system and adopting dominant values/structures. 3) Three schools of thought on globalization: hyperglobalizers, skeptics, and transformationalists. 4) Globalization argued to be a driving force reshaping societies through rapid social, political, and economic changes.

1. THEORIES OF MEDIA
GLOBALIZAITON
LECTURE DELIVERED TO II MA
MASS COMMUNICATION
STUDENTS ON 28 09 2015
BASED ON A CHAPTER ON
MEDIA GLOBALIZATION
BY S ARULSELVAN

2. GIDDEN’S DEFINITION
One of the most ‘neutral’ definitions is by Giddens, who as early as
1990 defined globalization as
the intensification of world-wide social relations,
which link distant localities in such a way that
local happenings are shaped by events
occurring many miles away and vice versa.
(1990: 64)

3. CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
(DEFINITION)
The sum of 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, or even
promote, the values and structures of the
dominating center of the system (Schiller
(1976:9) Communication and Cultural

4. THREE BROAD SCHOOLS OF
THOUGHT AMONG GLOBALIZATION
THEORISTS
Held et al. (1999: 2–10) have distinguished three broad schools of thought
among globalization theorists:
 the hyperglobalizers,
 the sceptics and
 the transformalists.
The hyperglobalizers consist of theorists such as Ohmae (1995) who predict
the end of traditional nation-states.
The sceptics such as Hirst and Thompson (1996) claim that globalization is a
myth, and that it is only about a heightened level of national economies.

5. ARGUMENT OF TRANSFORMATION
THEORISTS
The transformation theorists such as Giddens (1990) and Castells (1996)
argue that globalization is ‘a central driving force behind the rapid social,
political and economic changes that are reshaping modern societies and
world order’ Held et al. (1999: 7).
Think about this : The global telecommunications companies use an
AAA paradigm: `Anything, Any time, Anywhere' (see Negroponte,
1995: 174).

6. HOMOGENEITY VS DIVERSITY
Does globalization lead to increased cultural homogeneity, does it
engender new forms of diversity - or does it do both?
What globalization is and when it began?
Is it a distinct feature of modernity, or even of postmodernity?
Or has it existed for as long as there have been trade routes, cultural
exchanges, empires and major religions that stretched across the
known worlds of the time?

7. AMERICAN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
The term imperialism suggests an empire which conquers territories by force
and then pacifies them.
In a literal sense this did not happen in the case of American cultural
imperialism, or at least,
 the force that was used was
 economic force,
 the power to set prices and quotas, and
 the power of superior technologies,
 superior budgets and
 superior technical skills.

8. AMERICAN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
Yet as Schiller has pointed out, there is a close connection between
America's military-industrial complex and its commercialized culture,
and America used quite aggressive tactics in building its cultural
empire, for instance in forcing commercial broadcasting on countries
that wanted to keep it out.
The American communications system, Schiller has said, utilizes the
communication media for its defense and entrenchment wherever it
exists already and for expansion to locales where it hopes to become
active.

9. TWO ASPECTS OF
AMERICAN GLOBAL MEDIA
PRACTICES
In the second half of the 20th century American media did indeed conquer
many parts of the world, not only by exporting their own media products
but also by infiltrating themselves into local media everywhere, changing
them from the inside out.
Two aspects of American global media practices have often been singled
out, particularly in critiques which, implicitly or explicitly, defended European
national media and high culture:
 standardization and
 simplification

10. STANDARDIZATION AND
SIMPLIFICATION
Standardization has indeed been a key feature of America's
industrialization of creative production.
"Influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is
able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the
courage to keep forever repeating them despite the objections of the
intellectuals (Goebbels, 1948: 22)
Simplification is also an important aspect of Dorfman and
Mattelart's critique of Disney and Reader's Digest. American
media, Dorfman wrote, 'Infantilise the reader':

11. STAGES OF GLOBALIZATION
Six stages of globalization
 1400 to 1750s Germinal
 1750s to 1870s Incipient (mainly in Europe)
 1875 to mid-1920s Take-off
 Early 1920s to mid-1960s Struggle for hegemony
 1969 to early 1990s Uncertainty
 Late 1990s Antagonism

12. Disney, the superheroes and the Digest all propose to their readers,
in one way or another, a rejuvenation of the tired adult world, the
possibility of conserving some form of innocence as one grows up.
Not only the characters, but those who absorb them are offered a
fountain of eternal youth.... The adult - as-spoiled -child of Donald
Duck, or the innocent in the body of the infinite adult in Superman, or
the reader a Adam with all the knowledge of Faut in the Digest - all
complement and answer the needs of a subservient and passive
consumer.... and all are products of the United States of America
whose global preeminence... has coincided with this century's
technological leap in mass communication and left the US in a very
special position to use its media art to engender its most lasting and
popular symbols.

13. GLOCALISATION
The term "glocalisation" entered the vocabulary of theorists only in
the 1990s, but it was originally 1980s business jargon for the global
distribution of products to increasingly differentiated local markets.
Robertson (1990) describes globalisaiton as a long term process that
started in the fifteenth century and went through a number of phases.
In the early 15th century, nation states began to establish themselves
in Europe, while at the same time the world was opened up through
exploration and trade.
This Robertson calls the 'germinal stage' of globalisation (early 15th
to mid 18th century).

14. 'INCIPIENT' STAGE OF
GLOBALISATION
The 'incipient' stage of globalisation (mid 18th century to 1870s) saw
the consolidation of homogenous, unitary nation states, yet also the
beginnings of international agreements and international legislation.
In the 'take-off' stage (1870s to mid 1920s), nation states intensified
the process of regulating their single national languages and
repressing minority languages, and of inventing national traditions
and histories, to ensure that nationality would become a core aspect
of people's identities. And yet it was also a period of increasing
global communication - through new, faster forms of transport and
communication, the establishment of a common calendar and
common system of time zones, and through international
exhibitions, sports events and prizes such as the Nobel Prize.

15. 'RADICAL ISLAM’ - ALTERNATIVE
GLOBALIZATION
the next stage Robertson characterizes as a 'struggle for hegemony'
(mid 1920s to the late 1960s). The independence of nations was still
a key theme, and newly independent, decolonized nations everywhere
began to develop their own national institutions, yet the relations
between all these independent nations became closer, first through
the League of Nations, then through the UN.
The most recent stage Robertson calls an 'uncertain phase'.
On the one had the intensity of global trade and global
communication increases and many new global institutions are
created. On the other hand the oldest and richest nations become
more pre occupied with maintaining their national homogeneity in a
time of increasing immigration, and in the face of alternative
globalisations such as 'radical islam'.

16. Other commentators on globalisation bring the beginnings of
globalisation even closer to the present time. For Giddens (1990)
globalisation is one of the consequences of modernity and he dates
it from the 1800s, while
Tomlinson (1991) sees globalisation as "what comes after
imperialism", situating its beginnings in the 1960s as do
Jameson (1984), who links globalisation with late capitalism, and
Harvey (1989), who links it with post modern condition of time -
space compression and flexible accumulation.

17. A SERIES OF FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES
IN STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY
– Based on the premise that society has changed to such an extent
that one can talk of a new society fundamentally different.
Castells offers articulated argument backed by empirical evidence of
new kind of society.
– Recognizes the importance of both mass media and information
technology in the process of transformation.
– Emergence of new economy characterized by three conditions:
informational, global, and structural change

18. INFORMATIONALISM
Incorporation of information in all in economic production and in society at large -
knowledge-based productivity.
Information network economy saturates all forms of production - production of raw
materials,
manufacturing, service sector.
– simultaneous process of knowledge intensification of production in all forms.
Production in network society follows principle of flexible accumulation.
– break with “Fordism” -
– small units linked together in multiple networks spread globally
– Products tailored for different markets
– Expansion and reduction of scale - individual units of production smaller and at the
same time conglomerates.

19. MEDIA IMPERIALISM
Media Imperialism - developed within broader analysis of cultural imperialism and
dependency theories. Oliver Boyd-Barret defined it as “the process whereby
 the ownership,
 structure,
 distribution of content of the media
 in any one country are
 singly or
 together
 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” (1977: 117).

20. FURTHER READING
Read Dorfman's essay on Readers Digest (Dorfman, 1983: 135-73). What are his
principal points of critique?
John Tomlinson, `A phenomenology of globalization? Giddens on global modernity',
European Journal of Communication 9 (1994): 149-72.
Marwan M. Kraidy `The global, the local, and the hybrid: a native ethnography of
glocalization', Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16 (1999): 456-76.
Read Dorfman's essay on Readers Digest (Dorfman, 1983: 135-73). What are his
principal points of critique?
How to read Donald Duck?