Media Globalization

1. Media Globalization The Global and the Local in Media Cultures

2. The Globalization of American Culture • Is globalization another term for Americanization? • Justifications for this assumption: • Communication hardware and software both owned by US transnational corporations. • US entertainment (film, television, music, advertising) and information networks (news, documentaries, online information) have the widest appeal. • These promote a shared media culture or a global village based on the English language and Western lifestyle. • Amongst these communication mediums ‘Television’ plays a central role in creating this “global mass culture” by merging entertainment and information.

3. The Globalization of American Culture • Consequences of cultural invasion: • This Western mass culture influences the way people conceive their regional and national identities. • The predominantly Americanized messages confuse them about their own identities. • The practice of Consumerism has been globalized modeled on US commercial culture.

4. The Globalization of American Culture • Rationale behind this Acculturation: • US media products are successful worldwide because they are promoted and marketed by huge media conglomerates and the advertising industry. • Children and young people are especially targeted and their impressionable age exploited. • Products are especially designed and fashioned to attract these younger audiences. • Between 1996 and 1999, more than 50 children’s channels were launched with the majority being in English. • Children's television has a close relationship with global toy market as it is deemed central in expanding the demand for new toys.

5. Questioning the Flow of International Television Programs • Global, not national markets are considered foremost while producing, marketing and distributing media products. • Studies confirm that a one-way traffic of entertainment oriented programming from the Western countries to the rest of the world takes place.

6. Hollywood Hegemony: Rationale • Hollywood films are shown in more than 150 countries and their television programs broadcast in over 125 international markets. • This worldwide influence has awarded it the nickname of “ a little State Department”. • Hollywood films fare best in theatres across the globe with the World’s Top 10 grossing films being from Hollywood. • The demand for Hollywood films has initiated the growth of film-based channels in world markets, especially China and India. • Trade liberalization has allowed nations more and easier access to media products. • Economic growth, technological development and modernization in developing countries has allowed the dramatic increase and proliferation of Hollywood and US products.

7. Concerns for Cultural Diversity • An imbalance exists in the global flow of media products – United Nations. • Asymmetries in the flow of ideas and goods and the unequal economic and political powers of countries, industries and corporations causes some cultures to spread and others to whither - UNDP. • The ‘standardization’ of programs on world TV screens and cinema’s will risk the disappearance of cultural and linguistic identities in societies around the globe. • From the EU to the Islamic world, to China and India, concerns have been raised about the impact of media globalization or ‘Americanization’ of cultures. • The US has always argued against regulating the global media market as it earns the most revenue from this industry.

8. English: the language of the Globe • Since the past 200 years English has emerged as the language of global communication and commerce. • The British control of more than half of the world communication cables and telegraph networks led to the popularization of English as the main language of international trade and services. • US assumption of power over communication networks later, ensured the continuation of the English language. • English is the main language of exchange in multinational interactions as in the United Nations, transnational corporations, international media including the Internet and scientific and technological publishing. • English being the language of the colonial powers has psychological implications for many nations which consider it a language of power and prestige. • English also plays an important role in the international publishing world where Western publishers determine the literary agenda of the world. A practice detrimental to the interests of the writers of other languages. • Literature from the global South becomes visible internationally only when it has been chosen, published, translated and reviewed by Western sources.

9. Regionalization and Localization • There has been a growing trend towards regionalization and localization of media content to suit the cultural priorities of audiences around the world. • Transnational media corporations operating globally have to adapt their products to attract indigenous consumers and become commercially viable. • Local cultural resources are utilized to promote their products as people prefer their own language over foreign ones. • Therefore there is a trend towards publishing regional or local editions of newspapers and magazines and transmitting and even producing television programs in local languages. • However the content of these programs remain standardized. This homogenization creates the impression of a McMedia being created, shaped by the globalization of media economics and pull of national cultures.

10. Global Media, Local Audience • Global media messages are mainly of Western origin employing a range of regional and local strategies in their advertising and marketing efforts to gain maximum audiences. • However imported program consumption is by no means a passive, receptive process. • It has been observed that domestic programming tops the rankings over foreign material. • People first ‘filter’ than reorganize what comes from hegemonic cultures, hen integrate and fuse this information with their own historical memory. • However, those watching western programming might be few but they are generally those who hold the most power and influence (politicians, industrialists). • These ‘Westernized elite’ will promote western values of liberalization and democracy as defined by the West.

11. Global Media, Local Audience • The Outcome: • The global-local cultural interaction is leading to a hybrid culture that blurs the boundaries between modern and traditional, high and low culture, and the national an global cultures. • Such a phenomenon is called ‘glocalization’, characterized by cultural fusion. A result of the adaptation of Western media genre to suit local language, style and cultural conventions, using new communication technologies.