World of Ideas -Global Media Cultures

Globalization and Media: Creating the Global Village

Globalization is a vague, opaque, and difficult word. Indeed,
many people have trouble defining globalization. The word
seems to mean many things – a global economy, international
trade, growing prosperity in China and India, international
travel and communication, immigration, migration, more
foreign films and foods, McDonald's in Paris, Starbucks in
Africa, mosques in New York, an increase in ‘global’ problems
such as climate change and terrorism.
The word can mean everything and nothing.
Many scholars study globalization by pairing it with another concept,
such as globalization and identity, globalization and human rights,
globalization and culture, or globalization and terrorism.

In fact, this chapter will suggest that globalization could not occur
without media, that globalization and media act in concert and cohort,
and that the two have partnered throughout the whole of human
history. From cave paintings to papyrus to printing presses to television
to Facebook, media have made globalization possible.
 In contrast to globalization, media do not seem hard to identify or
define. The word is plural for medium – a means of conveying
something, such as a channel of communication. The plural form –
media – only came into general circulation, however, in the 1920s.
Like globalization, the word ‘media’ came into popular usage because
a word was needed to talk about a new social issue.

In the 1920s, people were talking about their fears over the harmful influence of
comic books, radio, and film. They were worried about young people reading
violent comics, voters hearing propaganda over the radio, couples disappearing
into dark movie theaters. They grouped these phenomena together with debates
over ‘the mass media’. Though the word is relatively modern, humans have used
media of communication from their first days on earth, and, we will argue, those
media have been essential to globalization.
Globalization: A Definition
We are maintaining that historical, political, cultural, and economic forces, now
called globalization, have worked in concert with media from the dawn of time to
our present day, and that globalization and media – two words that only came into
usage in the twentieth century – capture practices that have roots deep in the
history of humanity. Humans have always been globalizing, though they have not
used that word. And humans have always been communicating with media, though
they have not used that word.
 
Globalization is defined as 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’.
Evolution of Media and Globalization
Scholars have found it logical and helpful to organize the historical study of media by time
periods or stages. Each period is characterized by its dominant medium. For example, the
Canadian theorist Harold Innis (1950), Marshall McLuhan's teacher, writing in the 1940s
and 1950s, divided media into three periods: oral, print, and electronic. James Lull (2000),
writing at the close of the twentieth century, added digital to those three. Terhi Rantanen
(2005) places script before the printing press and breaks down the electronic period into
wired and wireless, for six periods.

For our purposes, five time periods usefully capture the study of globalization and media:
oral, script, print, electronic, and digital. We will look at the different time periods and
point out how the media of each time period contributed to the globalization of our world.
This accounting isolates and highlights the essential role of media in globalization over time
and firmly establishes the centrality of media for studies of globalization.
Oral Communication
Speech is often the most overlooked medium
in histories of globalization. Yet the oral
medium – human speech – is the oldest and
most enduring of all media. Over hundreds of
thousands of years, despite numerous changes
undergone by humans and their societies, the
very first and last humans will share at least
one thing – the ability to speak. Speech has
been with us for at least 200,000 years, script
for less than 7,000 years, print for less than
600 years, and digital technology for less than
50 years.
Language was their most important tool (Ostler, 2005). Language helped humans move,
but it also helped them settle down. Language stored and transmitted important
agricultural information across time as one generation passed on its knowledge to the
next, leading to the creation of villages and towns. Language also led to markets, the
trade of goods and services, and eventually into cross-continental trade routes.
Organized, permanent, trading centers grew, giving rise to cities. And perhaps around
4000 BCE, humans' first civilization was created at Sumer in the Middle East. Sometimes
called the ‘cradle of civilization’, Sumer is thought to be the birthplace of the wheel, plow,
irrigation, and writing – all created by language.
Script
Some histories of media technology skip this stage or give it brief mention as a transition
between oral cultures and cultures of the printing press. But the era was crucial for
globalization and media. Language was essential but imperfect. Script needed to be
written on something. Writing surfaces even have their own evolution. Writing was done
at first as carvings into wood, clay, bronze, bones, stone, and even tortoise shells. With
script on sheets of papyrus and parchment, humans had a medium that catapulted
globalization.

Script allowed for the written and permanent codification of economic, cultural, religious,
and political practice. These codes could then be spread out over large distances and
handed down through time. The great civilizations, from Egypt and Greece to Rome and
China, were made possible through script (Powell, 2009). If globalization is considered the
economic, cultural, and political integration of the world, then surely script – the written
word – must be considered an essential medium.
 
The Printing Press
It started the ‘information revolution’ and transformed markets, businesses, nations,
schools, churches, governments, armies, and more. All histories of media and globalization
acknowledge the consequential role of the printing press. Many begin with the printing
press. It's easy to see why. Prior to the printing press, the production and copying of
written documents was slow, cumbersome, and expensive. The papyrus, parchment, and
paper that spread civilizations were the province of a select, powerful few. Reading and
writing, too, were practices of the ruling and religious elite. The rich and powerful
controlled information. With the advent of the printing press, first made with movable
wooden blocks in China and then with movable metal type by Johannes Gutenberg in
Germany, reading material suddenly was cheaply made and easily circulated. Millions of
books, pamphlets, and flyers were produced, reproduced, and circulated. Literacy
followed, and the literacy of common people was to revolutionize every aspect of life. The
explosive flow of economic, cultural, and political ideas around the world connected and
changed people and cultures in ways never before possible.
 
Electronic Media
Beginning in the nineteenth century, a host of new media would revolutionize
the ongoing processes of globalization. Scholars have come to call these
‘electronic media’ because they require electromagnetic energy – electricity – to
use. The telegraph, telephone, radio, film, and television are the usual media
collected under electronic media. The vast reach of these electronic media
continues to open up new vistas in the economic, political, and cultural
processes of globalization.
The ability to transmit speech over distance was the next communication
breakthrough. Though not always considered a mass medium, the telephone surely
contributed to connecting the world. Alexander Graham Bell is credited with
inventing the telephone in 1876. It quickly became a globally adopted medium. By
1927, the first transatlantic call was made via radio. The creation of the cell phone in
1973 was especially crucial in the context of globalization and media.

Radio developed alongside the telegraph and telephone in the late 1890s. The
technology was first conceived as a ‘wireless telegraph’. By the early 1900s, speech
indeed was being transmitted without wires. By the 1920s, broadcast stations were
‘on the air’, transmitting music and news. Radio quickly became a global medium,
reaching distant regions without the construction of wires or roads. For much of the
twentieth century, radio was the only mass medium available in many remote
villages. Along with the telegraph, telephone, and radio, film arose as another
potent medium. Silent motion pictures were shown as early as the 1870s. But as a
mass medium, film developed in the 1890s.
Television brought together the visual and aural power of film with the
accessibility of radio: people sat in their living rooms and kitchens and viewed
pictures and stories from across the globe. The world was brought into the
home. The amount, range, and intensity of communication with other lands and
cultures occurred in ways simply not possible before. For some scholars, the
introduction of television was a defining moment in globalization. Marshall
McLuhan proclaimed the world a ‘global village’, largely because of television.
 
Digital Media
Digital media are most often electronic media that rely on digital codes – the long
arcane combinations of 0s and 1s that represent information. Many of our earlier
media, such as phones and televisions, can now be considered digital. Indeed, digital
may even be blurring the lines among media. If you can watch television, take
photographs, show movies, and send e-mail on your smart phone or tablet, what
does that mean for our neat categorization of media into television, film, or phone?
The computer, though, is the usual representation of digital media. The computer
comes as the latest and, some would argue, most significant medium to influence
globalization.
 
World of Ideas -Global Media Cultures
Media and Political Globalization
Globalization has transformed world politics in profound ways. It led to the
formation and then the overthrow of kingdoms and empires. It led to the creation
of the nation-state. And now some argue that the nation-state is being weakened
as people and borders become ever more fluid in our globalized world. Some argue
that transnational political actors, from NGOs (non-governmental organizations)
like Greenpeace to corporations to the United Nations, now rise in prominence in
our age of globalization. When we add the media to the admixture of globalization
and politics, we touch upon some key features of modern life.
 
In an age of political globalization, the opposite hypothesis appears to be true:
governments shape and manipulate the news. It is another key feature of media
and political globalization. Officials around the world are extremely successful at
influencing and molding the news so that it builds support for their domestic and
foreign policies.
Media and Cultural Globalization
The media, on one level, are the primary carriers of culture. Through newspapers,
magazines, movies, advertisements, television, radio, the Internet, and other
forms, the media produce and display cultural products, from pop songs to top
films. They also generate numerous and ongoing interactions among cultures,
such as when American hip hop music is heard by Cuban youth. Yet, the media
are much more than technology, more than mechanical conveyors of culture,
more than simple carriers of editorial cartoons or McDonalds' advertisements.
The media are people. These people are active economic agents and aggressive
political lobbyists on matters of culture. They market brands aggressively. They
seek out new markets worldwide for their cultural products. They actively bring
about interactions of culture for beauty, power, and profit.
Cultural differentialism
suggests that cultures are
different, strong, and resilient.

Cultural convergence suggests that

globalization will bring about a growing
sameness of cultures. A global culture, likely
American culture, some fear, will overtake
many local cultures, which will lose their
distinctive characteristics. For some, this
outcome can suggest ‘cultural imperialism’, in
which the cultures of more developed nations
‘invade’ and take over the cultures of less
developed nations. The result, under this
outcome, will be a worldwide, homogenized,
Westernized culture (Tomlinson, 1991).
As globalization has increased the frequency of contact among
cultures, the world has been given another awkward term –
glocalization. In this perspective, the media and globalization
are facts of life in local cultures. But local culture is not static and
fixed. Local culture is not pliable and weak, awaiting or fearing
contact from the outside. Local culture is instead created and
produced daily, drawing from, adopting, adapting, succumbing
to, satirizing, rejecting, or otherwise negotiating with the facts,
global and local, of the day. The local is built and understood
anew each day in a globalized world.
 
Popular Music and Globalization
 
Popular music serves here as the gateway to
explore the representations and meanings
associated with music making in the time of
globalization. A brief overview of the literature
in the social sciences and humanities on the
relationship between music, place, identity and
society and how they are intertwined in the
context of globalization will act as a starting
point.
Popular Music and Musicians in Society:

From the Local to the Global, When the terms

globalization and music are put together, they
tend to conjure up critical reflections regarding
the notions of culture, place and identity. They
also underline anthropological and
ethnomusicological understandings of music
making as an important catalyst in the
generating of various representations and
ideologies associated with such notions.
Capital: The Technologies and Ethics of World Music

Anthropologist Bob White defines world music today as ‘the umbrella category under
which various types of traditional and non-Western music are produced for Western
consumption’ (White, 2012). Ethnomusicologist Steven Feld goes further considering it a
‘label of industrial origin that refers to an amalgamated global marketplace of sounds as
ethnic commodities’ (Feld, 2012). In their critique, both underline the interplay of capital
with historical inequalities and violent encounters as central to the making and marketing
of world music.
World music is but the latest in a long line of musical genres to be sampled and put to use,
not only to sell music and imagined access to the world of the other, but to sell products
targeting specific audiences. In fact, he argues that it is through samples of world music
used in advertising and not through records by Western or non-Western artists or world
music festivals that world music, as imagined by the culture industry, has had the
strongest impact on the soundtrack of the twenty-first century (Taylor, 2012b). Citing the
growing presence and popularity of sample libraries which offer artists and composers a
digital archive of excerpts of pre-recorded music of all kinds which they can, in turn,
select, copy and paste onto their computer-generated compositions, Taylor explains how,
through these samples ‘world music has insinuated itself into more mainstream kinds of
pop and rock music, including … music used as soundtracks for film, television, and
advertising, where world music has been replacing classical music in commercials for
expensive goods’ (Taylor, 2012b).