Republic of the Philippines

NORTHERN ILOILO POLYTECHNIC STATE COLLEGE

VICTORINO SALCEDO CAMPUS
Sara, Iloilo

Course Code : GE 7
Descriptive Title : THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
Term and Academic Year : 1st Semester, AY 2021-2022
Department and Year Level : BSCRIM 2
Professor : PROF. REGINA C. VILLARUEL

Module 2, Lesson 1
Media and Globalization
I. Introduction
The media plays a vital role in the development and enhancement of countries through globalization. Thus, in
this lesson, you shall be introduced to how media affects and globalization. You shall also be introduced to the
definitions and functions of media as well as to the development of global village and cultural imperialism and its
critiques. This lesson shall also introduce social media and how cyber ghettoes are created.
In order to gain a thorough understanding of this lesson, you have to read the discussion and you are also tasked
to answer the assessment and submit requirements found in the “enrichment activities/outputs” section. Send your
answers through my messenger: Regz CV or email to [email protected].
Time Frame: 4 hours Date of Submission:

II. Learning Outcomes:

At the end of the lesson, you must have:
1. analyzed how various media drive various forms of global integration; and
2. explained the dynamic between local and global cultural production.
III. Learning Contents
Media and Globalization
• Globalization entails the spread of various cultures.
When a film is made in Hollywood, it is shown not only in the United States, but also in other cities across
the globe. South Korean rapper Psy’s song “Gangnam Style” may have been about a wealthy suburb in Seoul, but
its listeners included millions who have never been or may never been or may never go to Gangnam. Some of them
may not even know what Gangnam is.
• Globalization also involves the spread of ideas.
For example, the notion of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities is
spreading across the world and becoming more widely accepted. Similarly, the conservative Christian Church that
opposes these rights moves from places like South America to Korea and to Burundi in Africa.
People who travel the globe teaching and preaching their beliefs in universities, churches, public forums,
classrooms, or even as guests of a family play a major role in the spread of culture and ideas. But today, television
programs, social media groups, books, movies, magazines, and the like have made it easier for advocates to reach
larger audiences.
• Globalization relies on media as its main conduit for the spread of global culture and ideas.
Jack Lule was then right to ask, "Could global trade have evolved without a flow of information on
markets, prices, commodities, and more? Could empires have stretched across the world without communication
throughout their borders? Could religion, music, poetry, film, fiction, cuisine, and fashion develop as they have
without the intermingling of media and cultures?"
There is an intimate relationship between globalization and media which must be unraveled to further
understand the contemporary world.

Media and Its Functions

Definition of Media
• Lule describes media as “a means of conveying something, such as a channel of communication.”
• Technically speaking, a person's voice is a medium. However, when commentators refer to "media” (the plural of
medium), they mean the technologies of mass communication.
- Print media include books, magazines, and newspapers.
- Broadcast media involve radio, film, and television.
- Digital media cover the internet and mobile mass communication.
- Internet media, there are the e-mail, internet sites, social media, and internet-based video and audio.
Functions of Media
While it is relatively easy to define the term media, it is more difficult to determine what media do and how
they affect societies.
• Media reshapes societies which includes social behavior and family behavior.
Media theorist Marshall Mcluhan once declared that the medium is the message. He did not mean that
ideas (“messages”) are useless and do not affect people. Rather, his statement was an attempt to draw attention to
how media, as a form of technology reshape societies. The technology (medium), and not the message, makes for
this social change possible.

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 Republic of the Philippines
NORTHERN ILOILO POLYTECHNIC STATE COLLEGE
VICTORINO SALCEDO CAMPUS
Sara, Iloilo

Example:
- Television is not a simple bearer of messages; it also shapes the social behavior of users and reorients
family behavior. Since it was introduced in the 1960s, television has steered people from the dining table
where they eat and tell stories to each other, to the living room where they silently munch on their food
while watching primetime shows. Television has also drawn people away from other meaningful activities
such as playing games or reading books.
- The smart phone allows users to keep in touch instantly with multiple people at the same time. Consider
the effect of the internet on relationships. Prior to the cellphone, there was no way for couples to keep
constantly in touch, or to be updated on what the other does all the time.
• Media extend and amputate human senses.
McLuhan added that different media simultaneously extend and amputate human senses. New media
may expand the reach of communication, but they also dull the users' communicative capacities.
Example:
- Think about the medium of writing. Before people wrote things down on parchment, exchanging stories
was mainly done orally. To be able to pass stories verbally from one person to another, storytellers had to
have retentive memories. However, papyrus started becoming more common in Egypt after the fourth
century BCE, which increasingly meant that more people could write down their stories. As a result,
storytellers no longer had to rely completely on their memories. This development, according to some
philosophers at the time, dulled the people's capacity to remember.
- Something similar can be said about cellphones. On the one hand, they expand people's senses because
they provide the capability to talk to more people instantaneously and simultaneously. On the other hand,
they also limit the senses because they make users easily distractible and more prone to multitasking. This
is not necessarily a bad thing: it is merely change with a trade-off.
The question of what new media enhance and what they amputate was not a moral or ethical one,
according to McLuhan. New media are neither inherently good nor bad. The famous writer was merely drawing
attention to the historically and technologically specific attributes of various media.

The Global Village and Cultural Imperialism

McLuhan used his analysis of technology to examine the impact of electronic media. Since he was writing
around the 1960s, he mainly analyzed the social changes brought about by television. McLuhan declared that television
was turning the world into a "global village.” By this, he meant that, as more and more people sat down in front of
their television sets and listened to the same stories, their perception of the world would contract. If tribal villages once
sat in front of fires to listen to collective stories, the members of the new global village would sit in front of bright boxes
in their living rooms.
In the years after McLuhan, media scholars further grappled with the challenges of a global media culture. A
lot of these early thinkers assumed that global media had a tendency to homogenize culture. They argued that as global
media spread, people from all over the world would begin to watch, listen to, and read the same things. This thinking
arose at a time when America's power had turned it into the world's cultural heavyweight. Commentators, therefore,
believed that media globalization coupled with American hegemony (domination or control) would create a form of
cultural imperialism whereby American values and culture would overwhelm all others.
In 1976, media critic Herbert Schiller argued that not only was the world being Americanized, but that this
process also led to the spread of "American" capitalist values like consumerism.
Similarly, for John Tomlinson, cultural globalization is simply a euphemism for "Western cultural imperialism"
since it promotes homogenized, Westernized, consumer culture.”
These scholars who decry cultural imperialism, however, have a top-down view of the media, since they are
more concerned with the broad structures that determine media content. Moreover, their focus on America has led
them to neglect other global flows of information that the media can enable. This media/cultural imperialism theory
has, therefore, been subject to significant critique.

Cultural Imperialism Cultural Homogeny

In the political sphere, cultural imperialism It refers to domination or rule maintained
plays a major role in dissociating people from their through ideological or cultural means. It is usually
cultural roots and traditions of solidarity, replacing achieved through social institutions, which allow
them with media created needs which change with those in power to strongly influence the values,
every publicity campaign. The political effect in to norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and behavior
alienate people from traditional class and of the rest of society (Cole, 2020).
community bonds, atomizing and separating
individuals from each other (Petras, 2000).

Critiques of Cultural Imperialism

Proponents of the idea of cultural imperialism ignored the fact that media messages are not just made by
producers; they are also consumed by audiences. In the 1980s, media scholars began to pay attention to the ways in
which audiences understood and interpreted media messages. The field of audience studies emphasizes that media
consumers are active participants in the meaning-making process, who view media "texts” (in media studies, a “text"
simply refers to the content of any medium) through their own cultural lenses. In 1985, Indonesian cultural critic Len
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 Republic of the Philippines
NORTHERN ILOILO POLYTECHNIC STATE COLLEGE
VICTORINO SALCEDO CAMPUS
Sara, Iloilo

Ang studied the ways in which different viewers in the Netherlands experienced watching the American soap opera
Dallas. Through letters from 42 viewers, she presented a detailed analysis of audience-viewing experiences. Rather than
simply receiving American culture in a "passive and resigned way," she noted that viewers put a lot of emotional energy
into the process and they experienced pleasure based on how the program resonated with them.
In 1990, Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes decided to push Ang's analysis further by examining how viewers from
distinct cultural communities interpreted Dallas. They argued that texts are received differently by varied interpretive
communities because they derived different meanings and pleasures from these texts. Thus, people from diverse
cultural backgrounds had their own ways of understanding the show. Russians were suspicious of the show's content,
believing not only that it was primarily about America, but that it contained American propaganda. American viewers
believed that the show, though set in America, was primarily about the lives of the rich.
Apart from the challenge of audience studies, the cultural imperialism thesis has been belied by the renewed
strength of regional trends in the globalization process. Asian culture, for example, has proliferated worldwide through
the globalization of media. Japanese brands-from Hello Kitty to the Mario Brothers to Pokémon are now an indelible
part of global popular culture. The same can be said for Korean pop (K-pop) and Korean telenovelas, which are widely
successful regionally and globally. The observation even applies to culinary tastes. The most obvious case of globalized
Asian cuisine is sushi. And while it is true that McDonald's has continued to spread across Asia, it is also the case that
Asian brands have provided stiff competition. The Philippines’ Jollibee claims to be the number one choice for fast food
in Brunei. Hello Kitty remains proof of Japan's continued influence over global culture.
Given these patterns, it is no longer tenable to insist that globalization is a unidirectional process of foreign
cultures overwhelming local ones. Globalization will remain an uneven process, and it will produce inequalities.
Nevertheless, it leaves room for dynamism and cultural change. This is not a contradiction; it is merely a testament to
the phenomenon's complexity.

Social Media and the Creation of Cyber Ghettoes

By now, very few media scholars argue that the world is becoming culturally homogenous. Apart from the
nature of diverse audiences and regional trends in cultural production, the internet and social media are proving that
the globalization of culture and ideas can move in different directions. While Western culture remains powerful and
media production is still controlled by a handful of powerful Western corporations, the internet, particularly the social
media, is challenging previous ideas about media and globalization.
As with all new media, social media have both beneficial and negative effects. On the one hand, these forms of
communication have democratized access. Anyone with an internet connection or a smart phone can use Facebook and
Twitter for free. These media have enabled users to be consumers and producers of information simultaneously. The
democratic potential of social media was most evident in 2011 during the wave of uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
Without access to traditional broadcast media like TV, activists opposing authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and
Libya used Twitter to organize and to disseminate information. Their efforts toppled their respective governments.
More recently, the "women's march" against US President Donald Trump began with a tweet from a Hawaii lawyer and
became a national, even global, movement. The massive protests of the Arab Spring were largely enabled by social
media.
However, social media also have their dark side. In the early 2000s, commentators began referring to the
emergence of a "splinternet" and the phenomenon of "cyberbalkanization” to refer to the various bubbles people place
themselves in when they are online. In the United States, voters of the Democratic Party largely read liberal websites,
and voters of the Republican Party largely read conservative websites. This segmentation, notes an article in the journal
Science, has been exacerbated by the nature of social media feeds, which leads users to read articles, memes, and
videos shared by like-minded friends." As such, being on Facebook can resemble living in an echo chamber, which
reinforces one's existing read conservative websites. This segmentation, notes an article in the journal Science, has
been exacerbated by the nature of social media feeds, which leads users to read articles, memes, and videos shared by
like-minded friends." As such, being on Facebook can resemble living in an echo chamber, which reinforces one's
existing beliefs and opinions. This echo chamber precludes users from listening to or reading opinions and information
that challenge their viewpoints, thus, making them more partisan and closed-minded.
This segmentation has been used by people in power who are aware that the social media bubbles can
produce a herd mentality. It can be exploited by politicians with less than democratic intentions and demagogues
wanting to whip up popular anger. The same inexpensiveness that allows social media to be a democratic force likewise
makes it a cheap tool of government propaganda. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has hired armies of social media trolls
(paid users who harass political opponents) to manipulate public opinion through intimidation and the spreading of
fake news." Most recently, American intelligence agencies established that Putin used trolls and online misinformation
to help Donald Trump win the presidency-a tactic the Russian autocrat is likely to repeat in European elections he seeks
to influence."
In places across the world, Putin imitators replicate his strategy of online trolling and disinformation to clamp
down on dissent and delegitimize critical media. Critics of the increasingly dictatorial regime of Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan are threatened by online mobs of pro-government trolls, who hack accounts and threaten violence.
Some of their responses have included threats of sexual violence against women."
As the preceding cases show, fake information can spread easily on social media since they have few content
filters. Unlike newspapers, Facebook does not have a team of editors who are trained to sift through and filter
information. If a news article, even a fake one, gets a lot of shares, it will reach many people with Facebook accounts.

Module 2, Lesson 1 The Contemporary World, Media and Globalization Page | 44

 Republic of the Philippines
NORTHERN ILOILO POLYTECHNIC STATE COLLEGE
VICTORINO SALCEDO CAMPUS
Sara, Iloilo

This dark side of social media shows that even a seemingly open and democratic media may be co-opted
towards undemocratic means. Global online propaganda will be the biggest threat to face as the globalization of media
deepens. Internet media have made the world so interconnected that a Russian dictator can, for example, influence
American elections on the cheap.
As consumers of media, users must remain vigilant and learn how to distinguish fact from falsehood in a global
media landscape that allows politicians to peddle what President Trump's senior advisers now call "alternative facts"
Though people must remain critical of mainstream media and traditional journalism that may also operate based on
vested interest, we must also insist that some sources are more credible than others. A newspaper story that is written
by a professional journalist and vetted by professional editors is still likely to be more credible than a viral video
produced by someone in his/her bedroom, even if both will have their biases. People must be able to tell the
difference.
Conclusion
This lesson showed that different media have diverse effects on globalization processes. At one point, it
seemed that global television was creating a global monoculture. Now, it seems more likely that social media will
splinter cultures and ideas into bubbles of people who do not interact. Societies can never be completely prepared for
the rapid changes in the systems of communication. Every technological change, after all, creates multiple unintended
consequences. Consumers and users of media will have a hard time turning back the clock. Though people may
individually try to keep out of Facebook or Twitter, for example, these media will continue to engender social changes.
Instead of fearing these changes or entering a state of moral panic, everyone must collectively discover ways of dealing
with them responsibly and ethically.
IV. Learning Assessment
A. Short Essay
Answer the following questions in 3-5 sentences each. Write your answer on the extra sheet provided. (10 Points
Each)
1) Compare and contrast the social impacts of television and social media.
2) Do you think globalization leads to cultural imperialism? Why or why not?
3) What strategies can you use to distinguish between fake and factual information on the internet? Give at
least 3 strategies.
Scoring Guide:
Each answer shall be evaluated using these criteria:
Content 5 pts.
Organization of ideas 3 pts.
Language facility 2 pts.
Total score: 10 pts
V. Enrichment Activities/Outputs
A. Asian Music and Globalization
Instructions:
• Pick an Asian music artist or group that became internationally famous and answer the following questions
below. (5 points each)
Questions Answers

1. Where did the music artist originate?

2. In which countries did the artist become

famous?

3. How did the artist become famous?

4. Why do you think the artist became famous?

VI. References
Claudio, L. & Abinales, P. (2018). Media and globalization. The Contemporary World. Quezon City: C &E Publishing Inc.

Cole, N. L. (2020). What is cultural hegemony? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-hegemony-

3026121#:~:text=Cultural%20hegemony%20refers%20to%20domination,of%20the%20rest%20of%20society

Petras, J. (2000). Cultural imperialism in the late 20th century. Retrieved from
https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/154/25597.html

----End of Module 2, Lesson 1----

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