Media Analysis

Media Analysis

Thesis statement

The role of the media becomes increasingly important when nationalism goes through a period of transformation, as happens for example when the physical boundaries of the nation-state change or there is a need to include or exclude new people. However, globalization poses a new challenge to national identity. Traditionally, the media served a national function that increasingly is no longer necessarily the case. Again, this underlines the importance of media and communications, and their contribution to the consequences of globalization (Yousuf, 2007). One of the challenges in the multi-local analysis is to see both the global and the national in the everyday life of individuals. If we acknowledge the role of media and communications in globalization, it would be prudent to acknowledge that the outcome of this marriage can either be homogenization or heterogenization or both, depending on the historical situation and circumstances. In a multi-sited analysis, the challenge is to be able to see how people are connected to each other not only in their reception, but also in their use of media and communications (Yousuf, 2007).

There are various reasons that enlighten the shift from cultural imperialism to globalization. To begin with, the end of the cold war as a global framework for geopolitical, ideological, and economic rivalry calls for review of the analytic categories and paradigms of thought (Pascale, 2005). Secondly, globalization replaced cultural imperialism because it represents a process that is inconsistent and lacks direction, which might result into the deterioration of cultural unity of all countries, not only those in the developing world. Lastly, globalization has surfaced as a key component across the humanities and social sciences, a trend undoubtedly affecting the discipline of communication. Yousuf (2007) further notes that globalization of culture has become a theoretical magnet of theorizing efforts and attracting research from an assortment of disciplines and interdisciplinary formations such as comparative literature, anthropology, communication and media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and geography. It is an undeniable fact that the media is a key ingredient for cultural globalization, but the size and strength to the effect of the media on cultural globalization is a contested issue. Therefore, this begs the question; did the mass media trigger and create the globalization of culture?

One perspective on the globalization culture, somewhat reminiscent of cultural imperialism in terms of the consequence of media on culture, but to some extent different in its conceptualization of the issue, is the observation that the media often leads to the homogenization of culture differences across the planet. In this context, media globalization is critically discussed in terms of the further penetration of American cultures and worldviews (Perera, 2009). Nonetheless, such a view would be unproductively US-centric if it were to take no notice of the increase in exports that are not of Western origin and non-Western intraregional flows. In the past decade, a “West vs. the Rest” paradigm has been seriously contested in the studies of media and cultural globalization with the increase in the media flows from non-Western regions. In many parts of the world, media and cultural flows have been significantly de-Westernized or de-Americanized. Perera (2009) notes that this development can be positively regarded as evidence of the relative demise of the western, especially American, cultural hegemony as well as a salutary corrective to a West-centric analysis of media and cultural globalization. However, it can also be read symptomatically in relation to the development of cultural globalization, whereby more non-western media contents are circulation and being promoted in the global markets (Perera, 2009).

Another notable trend of media globalization is the increasing centrality of localism based on cultural adaptation. While cultural globalization is often discussed in terms of the homogenization of world culture, cultural specificity and diversity are no less articulated in the process. As demonstrated by the term globalization, the strategy of tailoring cultural products to local conditions has become a marketing strategy for transnational media corporations in order to achieve global market penetration (Pascale, 2005). Another perspective of media globalization is cultural hybridization. This observation calls for an understanding of the boundary of localization and globalization as a vibrant process and hybrid product of cultural forms and mixed traditions. Hence, this viewpoint does not give any significance to globalization as a homogenizing force, nor does it consider domestication as a resistive process in comparison to globalization. To a certain extent, globalization of media calls for emphasis on processes of mediation that it views as fundamental to cultural globalization. The theory of media globalization is a result of interdisciplinary work that deals with academic projects such as cultural studies, post-colonialism, and performance studies (Perera, 2009).

An important part of contemporary globalization is the globalization of modern information and communication technologies and new media, and the impact this has had on globalization generally. The global communications industry has a general influence on what we can roughly distinguish as both the contents and the forms of media which contribute to cultural globalization and bear upon its impact on globalization in the wider sense. One interpretation ties  cultural globalization to the “cultural imperialism thesis” in such a way that the dominance of especially American culture over other cultures is leading to a spread of western values and the weakening of local cultures (Perera, 2009). For people living under oppressive political regimes or in poverty, visions of democracy, affluence, and consumer lifestyles on television have certainly fed dissatisfaction with local practices values, traditions, aspirations, and misery and poverty for Western lifestyles, identities, practices and so forth.

In general terms, globalization is the fast developing process of intricate interconnections between cultures, societies, individuals and institutions world-wide. Globalizations shrinks’ the theory of detachment between various cultures by reducing the time taken to cross the distance that physically separates them (Yousuf, 2007). As a result, the world seems smaller, and in a certain sense it brings human beings in closer contact with each other. More often than not, it has been stated that globalization media will lead to devolution of power and create room for more bottom-up control. However, according to detractors of globalization, global communications are mostly connected with notions such as media imperialism and cultural imperialism. In this case, they see global communications as a vehicle whose main aim is to invade, undermine, and control, other cultures. The transmitted ideological or cultural pattern has often been seen as an invasion of Western values, particularly by those of America.   While some people criticize Western culture as being voracious, another school of thought supports it because it is the face of the free market and they often consider the disparity of flow as an attribute of the wider media market, which has the benefit for all (Perera, 2009). On the other hand, the theorists of free flow tend to think that global media has little voracious effect because its audience is voluntary, thus they argue that the content of global media is ideologically innocent and culturally neutral (Golding & Harris, 1997).

People who are in support of the idea that globalized media is more or less the same as cultural imperialism tend to assume that global mass media is a procedure for cause and effect, to the extent that the media relays ideas and opinions from senders to receivers, and from one place to another. As such, new voices have supported media globalization. Scholars have observed that the cultural imperialism perspective on globalization as forming the dominant perspective on globalization as forming the dominant perspective used to explain the implications of globalization and its impact on local/national cultures. On the other hand, other scholars have articulated a critique of globalization and its influence of national cultures that generates the parallel argument of media imperialism (Yousuf, 2007). Media imperialism suggests that because media play a central role in shaping cultural processes and practices and is dominated by Western ownership, the cultural products and media outputs in lesser developed countries are forced to occupy a position of subordination, not only on the international scene, but on the local one as well.

Cultural imperialism theorists see the impact of globalization as a hegemonic scheme that comprises the cultural integrity of recipient cultures. The values espoused by imported cultures are not reflective of those espoused locally, and so do not contribute to the building of national consciousness. Notwithstanding the strengths of their arguments, proponents of the cultural imperialism strain of globalization have been widely criticized by theorists who view their perspective as decidedly romantic and curiously oblivious to available empirical evidence that suggests otherwise. Aided by a postmodern theoretical sensibility, the global cultural perspective contends that globalization instead of overpowering indigenous cultures and engendering a mono-culture, leads to cultural hybridity (Perera, 2007). As a result, those who are in support of global cultural perspective chide the cultural imperialism argument for its assumption that the media audiences of respective countries are cultural simpletons incapable of negotiating or even resisting such messages. The cultural proximity argument is further elaborated on when theorists draw attention to the enlargement of culture that occurs through globalization when so called peripheral actors themselves become exporters of cultural commodities.

One cannot study the consequences of globalization without acknowledging that the outcome can either be heterogeneous or homogeneous, or even both depending on specific circumstances. It is not easy to understand the complex nature of globalization where connectivity has become increasingly mediated. Not only does this represent a standardization of content, but also a subversive globalization wherein cultural imperialism is a perpetuated in a more subtle form. Recognizing the significance of cultural proximity television executives attempt to indigenize these imported formats usually by employing a local talent. Indigenization should also draw upon the traditions and cultural specificity of a locality. Unless this is so, imported television formats are more representative of the genetic homogeneity of content where formats of global media output are increasingly standardized. The role of the media becomes increasingly important when nationalism goes through a period of transformation, for example when the physical boundaries of the nation-state change or there is a need to include or exclude new people (Finley & Diversi, 2010). However, globalization poses a new challenge to cultural identity. This is because electronic media is able to bring about not only national, but global communities in their quest for crossing borders. Even though this underlines the importance of media and communications, but it also helps to shed light on the consequences of globalization (Yousuf, 2007).

It is evident that various cultures, in their capacity to maintain distinctiveness of identity attachments, have been affected by globalization in one way or the other. The tensions and complexities introduced by the multiethnic constitutions of societies arising from global population movements, which is a constant feature of all present-day nation-states often poses obvious problems for the continued cultural binding. Therefore, it is essential to take a more intricate view of the globalization process in comparison to how it has been adopted, certainly in the polemical discourses of the anti-globalization movement, where globalization is often described as the globalization of capitalism, attained in its cultural aspect via a complicit western controlled media system. This intricate, diverse conceptualization, often views globalization as operating concurrently and interrelated in the economic, cultural, political, and technological spheres of human life.   However, the cultural implication that is rather agreeable to some is that globalization is not about the simple imposed distribution of a particular western lifestyle such as capital-consumerist or possessive individualist, but a more complicated dissemination of the entire range of institutional features of cultural modernity (Finley & Diversi, 2010).

Furthermore, modernity also institutionalizes and regulates cultural practices, including those that belong to a place or community. More often than not, the mode of such imagination is often known as cultural identity usually in the context of self and communal definitions based around specific, usually politically inflicted differentiations such as sexuality, gender, race, religion, class, nationality, or ethnicity. As much as globalization is a source for institutional features of modernity across all cultures, it is also a catalyst of identity especially where in the past there were possibly more specific, more inchoate, and a reduced amount of socially policed belongings. Hence, it can be said that this is the most noteworthy cultural consequence of globalization, a consequence felt at the basic level of cultural experience. This cultural consequence might, on a narrow reading, be seen as cultural imperialism because this modern institutionalization of cultural attachments clearly arose first in the West.   For those people who like to detect the play of logics in the cultural process, globalization could be seen as involving a social process which runs from ethnic groups to national societies, super-state blocs and eventually a world-state society.

If there is an emergent global society, the impetus would seem to be coming from social and cultural frameworks and the activities of specific groups of people and other collective agents such as nation-states   which further these developments in terms of their potential as forms of empowerment. It is evident that the trend of growing worldwide interconnectedness or globalization has been gone along with various clashing aspects of cultural difference. The rising salience of cultural divergence is part of a wide-ranging cultural turn, which involves an extensive self-reflexivity of modernity. Globalization can be compared to steamroller because it has been advancing, hence; erasing biological and cultural diversity in its way, thus not only the gains, but also the losses are becoming apparent (Gordon, 2008).

It can be argued that globalization of the last half of the 20^th century is nothing new, but rather is a continuation of a previous wave of globalization. The globalization landscape is vast and the constituting elements multiple (Pascale, 2005). In this regard, it would be prudent to analyze how gender shapes and curves the globalization landscape and vice versa. This can be done by simultaneously looking at how globalization shapes the lives of men and women in a local setting and by looking at men and women as actors in global and cultural processes. In the steadily growing literature on globalization, a gender perspective is missing; while in the literature on gender and globalization, the phenomenon of globalization is taken for granted and, thus, stays underexposed. The analysis of the relation between gender and globalization tends to be restricted to either a global perspective such as social and political restructuring, neo-liberal economic, or a perspective concentrated on local effects of global influences (Friedman, 2010).

Different practices, in particular local settings, produce different meanings of gender. Therefore, gender seems to be crucial in the production of differences in global/cultural dynamics. Globalization only appears as an economic process of restructuring, leaving out questions on social, political and cultural changes. Also, globalization is often considered as a process beyond the control of women. Women seem victims without being an active part of the cultural changes, but at the same time women are called upon to awaken and resist globalization. Hence, the impact of globalization is fixed and sometimes even assumed at the local level. In the process of analyzing along these lines, gender issues are being reduced to poverty issues and gender is substituted by women (Finley & Diversi, 2010). As a result, this representation of globalization does not address the complexities of global restructuring; instead it pictures a homogenous and one-dimensional process. Attention to gender and globalization is a welcome contribution to that bulk of literature on globalization that has no attention for gender. Nevertheless, by portraying globalization only as a monstrous phenomenon in which women reappear as victims, gender becomes this one-dimensional category.  Moreover, globalization also appears as a monolithic phenomenon, destructive and negative. Globalization disconnects culture and gender from a specific locality. This is because, it is not only people and tangible things, but also ideas and images such as modernity, democracy and gender relations that travel (Finley & Diversi, 2010).

In conclusion, it is evident that globalization is bringing about change in a social way.  Regardless of the fact that globalization is a fiercely contested phenomenon, there is some conformity that globalization involves a new structure of bridging social distances. Although individuals and families are affected by this phenomenon, not much interest has been has been focused on the social side of globalization. This lapse has taken place, in spite of a general awareness that in a global framework the meanings of the various groups that are a part of globalization have been changed. Currently, the analysis of globalization continues to focus almost entirely on the political and economic areas. In fact, for many, globalization primarily describes the transformations in the world economy. However, conventional approaches to globalization do not look into the effects of this phenomenon on cultures, families, individuals, and societies. Globalization is often perceived as an autonomous force removed from social interactions. Critics of this approach point out that globalization itself is a construction of a specific account of global space and interaction, and that incorporating families, societies, communities, and societies with a grasp if national and transnational economies and politics, gives them a greater insight into the effects and dynamics of the observable fact. In other words, globalization is only an economic or political force, but globalization is collectively constructed; a dynamic fact that is itself constantly under renovation, in part through human activity. By reducing globalization to economic or political concept or variable, its impacts are shortchanged, while the enormity of the phenomenon is diminished.

 

References

Finley, S., & Diversi, M. (2010). Critical Homelessness: Expanding Narratives Of Inclusive Democracy. Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 10(1), 4-13.

 

Friedman, J. (2010). Journal of the American Ethnological Society. Globalization as a discourse of hegemonic crisis: A global systemic analysis, 40(2), 244-257.

Gordon, N. S. (2008). Media and the Politics of Culture: The case of Television and Privatization and Media Globalization in Jamaica (1990-2007). Florida: Universal-Publishers.

Pascale, C. (2005). There’s No Place Like Home: The Discursive Creation Of Homelessness. Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 5(2), 250-268.

Perera, S. (2009). White shores of longing: ‘Impossible subjects’ and the frontiers of citizenship. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 23(5), 647–662.

Yousuf, Z. (2007). Unravelling Identities: Citizenship And Legitimacy In A Multicultural Britain. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(3), 360-373.

Last Completed Projects

Are you looking for a similar paper or any other quality academic essay? Then look no further. Our research paper writing service is what you require. Our team of experienced writers is on standby to deliver to you an original paper as per your specified instructions with zero plagiarism guaranteed. This is the perfect way you can prepare your own unique academic paper and score the grades you deserve.

Use the order calculator below and get started! Contact our live support team for any assistance or inquiry.

[order_calculator]