Globalisation and Media

Globalisation, media and popular culture:

• McLuhan believes that due to the speed of technological change that the world is rapidly becoming a 'Global village'.

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Popular Culture

Popular culture is liked and enjoyed by ordinary people, such as TV soaps and is sometimes called mass culture.

• The term low culture is a derogatory term to describe popular culture, its usage suggests popular culture is of inferior quality to the high culture of the elite.
• Popular culture is everyday culture - simple, undemanding, easy to understand entertainment 📝e.g. like red top newspapers, reality TV shows and soaps.
  • He uses the term to describe how electronic media and satellite technology collapse space and time barriers in human communication. This means that people around the world can now interact with one another on a global scale. The mass media is spreading a common mass culture around the globe, which is becoming the popular culture of millions.

High Culture

• High culture is often found in places such as theatres, art galleries, and museums. These are mainly aimed at upper-class and professional middle-class audiences.

• Such products might include 'serious' news programmes and documentaries, quality news. The Changing Distinction Between High Culture and Pop Culture:

• Globalisation has led to a weakening between these two cultures.

• High culture has become far more accessible to all. e.g. classical music is everywhere and easily consumed/downloaded.

• People can choose/'pick 'n' mix' from all cultures.

• Postmodernist - Strinati - says there are now elements of pop in high culture and vice versa.

• Giddings points out that forms of high culture are now often used to promote products for the mass popular culture market.

• Technology has now made it possible for mass audiences to see and study high-culture products such as paintings by Van Gogh on the internet.

  • High culture is seen as something set apart from everyday life as something to be treated with respect and reverence, involving things of value which are worth presenting like ballet, opera and fine art.

• Copies are now available to everyone and high culture images like the Mona Lisa are now reproduced on everything.

• Classical music is used in marketing and literature is turned into TV series and major mass movies such as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

• The process of globalisation: we have gone from a distant, disparate, low-tech and independent, own culture society to an interconnected, global culture, high-tech, multi-cultural transformation. A03 Evaluation of popular/mass culture:

• Marxists and critical theorists of the Frankfurt school see mass culture as simply mass-produced manufactured products imposed on the masses of global media businesses for financial profit

• Popular culture is a form of social control, giving an illusion of choice between a range of similar dumbed-down, uncritical media infotainment that maintains the ideological hegemony and power of the dominant class.

• Marcuse - suggested the consumption of media-generated mass culture undermines people's ability to critically think about the world. Crothers (2012) – factors that have promoted globalisation in three ways:

1. Relationships created between people all over the world: Sharing of ideas, concepts, technology. Examples: the spread of democracy from a more developed world. However, this is in both directions. For example, yoga has become a mainstream part of global culture and technology and ideas have become part of indigenous cultures.
2. Goods and capital flowing 24/7: People working for the same MNCs, economic knock-on effects e.g. 2008 crash – because we are all connected, we all are affected, "if America sneezes…." People consume the same products globally.
3. Global has become more local - speed of communications: Instantly know about stories, and issues going on. Becomes part of our 'local'. e.g. ISIS YouTube, Al-Jazeera – uses new media to spread the word. Trump tweets 24/7 and we all know. It empowers people in oppressed countries. But is this unprofessional reporting safe, fair and democratic? The Pluralist View of the Media and the globalisation of popular culture

• Pluralists argue that there is no such thing as popular culture or mass culture.

• Modern technology gives consumers across the world a wide diversity of cultural choices.

• Compaine - argues that global competition is expanding sources of information and entertainment rather than restricting them

• People begin to 'pick n mix' and draw on both Western and global cultures.

• New media technology, like smartphones and the internet through websites like Youtube enables consumers to create and distribute their own media products and enable people to generate their own popular culture, rather than being the passive victims of western media conglomerates. The Postmodern View of the Media:

• Postmodernists view media globalisation in ways that are more similar to the pluralist view than the Marxist view.

• They regard the diversity of the globalised media as offering the world's population more choices in terms of their consumption, patterns and lifestyles, opening up greater global awareness and access to a diversity of cultures, bringing them opportunities to form their identities unconstrained by the limited horizons of local cultures.

• Baudrillard argues that we now live in a media-saturated society, in which media images dominate and distort the way we see the world. A02 link - Postman = information hierarchy,

• For example, TV news presents a sanitised version of war, with wars as media-constructed spectacles to gaze at, which have such an air of unreality about them that it is hard to distinguish images and reality

• Baudrillard calls this distorted view of the world hyperreality in which appearances are everything, with the media presenting what he calls simulacra - artificial make-believe images or reproductions.

• Postmodernists argue that the media no longer reflects reality but actively creates it with reality TV shows like 'I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here' which blurs the distinction between reality and hyperreality. A03:

• Postmodernists assume that people approach the media without any prior experiences of their own and that they do not discuss, interpret or ignore media imagery and messages

• Media images, representations of gender, age, ethnicity and disability, class don't necessarily open up new choices of identity and lifestyle, but present and reinforce stereotypes.

• Digital divide: many people, particularly in the poorest social groups and the poorest countries don't have access to new media. Effects of globalisation and popular culture - Postmodern and pluralist approach:

1)Massive choice (identity is fluid/pick n mix): media have also changed and shaped consumption more aware of the diversity of choices that exist in the postmodern world. Stinati argues that in the postmodern world, the distinction between high and popular culture has become blurred and this has increased consumer choice because popular culture is increasingly assimilating high culture and vice versa.

A03 evaluation: media does not shape people's identities as much as we think and often choice is an allusion.

2)Media saturation/rejection of meta-narratives: People are disillusioned about 'grand stories' or explanations of how society works. Mx and Functionalism are rejected – they're in the past. So much choice and 'vast amounts of truths' and knowledge that they become relative – there is no such thing – 'your truth is different to another's'. People look at the world differently, does not mean one is right and others are wrong. This leads to people being more participatory / making their voices heard.

A03 evaluation: stresses the importance of rejecting meta-narratives but can be classed as one itself.

3)Participatory culture (Jenkins): 'the involvement of users, audiences, consumers and fans in the creation of culture and content.' User-generated enhancing democracy. People feel connected – the "wiring of humanity" has changed. Media has become a shared global resource. Social media – Fuchs: "If it doesn't spread it's dead", empowers consumers. E.g. blogs and people speaking out against the media.

A03 evaluation: digital divide - not everyone has access to the media because of their class, education, geography and so on.

4)Globalisation of popular protest: Murthy - Social media (Twitter) increases political awareness. Helps coordinate movements- Black Lives Matter / Egypt revolution. Spencer Thomas (2008) – Burmese repression ignored by global MM in 1998. 2007 when similar repression happened people had tech to help spread and inform the rest of the world and people took notice and pressure was put on the Burmese government.

A03 evaluation: can also increase political bias?

5) Effects on cultures/hybridisation: Consumers are global and local citizens. Interest in global affairs and also local issues Often global products are adapted to suit more local tastes and needs. The Hollywood movie industry adapted in India to Bollywood. Versions of American-style sitcoms and game shows in various countries.

A03 evaluation: Cohen – people do not abandon their own local and traditional and folk cultures – they 'fuse' them together – 'hybridise' them.

Cultural imperialist (Mx) argument on the globalisation of media and popular culture:

• Frankfurt School (Mx) claim popular culture diverts attention away from the real problems of society. Encourages uncritical thinking and conformity. Marcuse (64) argues this is because media companies encourage people to behave in three ways:

4. Commodity fetishism: people becoming obsessed with products and over-rely on them. People see them as an extension of the self. Feel lost without them (Turkle).
5. False needs: instilling the belief that people need products in order to conform to a certain lifestyle. Convince people they really need when they do not. Deliberately short life spans so people buy replacements. Manufacturers entice consumers in so they find it difficult to get out – Apple? (Adorno).
6. Conspicuous consumption: the belief that some products and brands have more meaning than others. People want recognition from others of the products they have bought i.e. they want status from the right product. Marcuse and Adorno – the aim of the global mass media is to indoctrinate people and make the world a homogenous culture, one where capitalist values are valued and people live in a false consciousness so people do not revolt and challenge the system. This process is cultural imperialism and it is shaped by capitalist values.

Flew: globalisation is actually Americanisation. American culture, products and media are being forced onto weaker nations. American values and lifestyles permeate through social media and people start to want to emulate the American way of life.

• The concentration of media ownership to a handful of American-based MNCs – huge control over media.
• Disney - a massively influential global brand. Through their products, a culture is advocated. Effects of cultural imperialism on cultures around the world:

7. Marginalisation/destruction of cultures – big American brands are seen as more desirable. They replace the rich diverse cultures with bland, sterile, dumbed down and homogenous American culture. Kellner – it is about sameness and not individualism and difference. Crothers – will result in a soulless culture where people will just be looking to buy the next consumable good that they have been convinced they need.
8. Barber – extremism has been on the rise – many extremists (Jihadis especially) see American culture as a threat to people's relationship with God. Attacks on Western targets are seen as justified. (Americanised culture brings on more global risk?)
9. Fuchs - Unhealthy influence over governments by media MNCs which undermines democracy and threatens freedom of expression. Rejection of Jenkins' participatory culture – they are run by the big MNCs, who have only their own interests at heart – money! Keen - Twitter and other social media platforms are too much about 'me culture' to enable change.
10. Turkle – civic disengagement – people not willing to get involved in their online communities, they are too wrapped up in their own media. Proto-communities replacing real communities.