Download MEVI 347: Democratic Culture: Media, Communications and

Studying the relationship
between
media and globalizatiton
Ole J. Mjøs
University of Bergen
Norway
16 August, 2013
ECREA Summer School
University of Bremen
“Globalization invites more to controversy
Than consensus, and the areas of consensus
are narrow by comparison to the controversies.”
(Nederveen Pieterse, 2004: 8)
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004) Globalization and Culture: Global Melange.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
“There is no single theory of globalization upon
which all social scientists, let alone everybody
else, are agreed.” (Sparks, 2005: 20).
Sparks, C. (2005) The Problem of Globalization. Global Media and
Communication,1, 1: 20–23.
“the rapidly developing process of complex
interconnections between societies, culture,
institutions and individuals world-wide.”
Tomlinson, J. (1997) Cultural Globalization and Cultural Imperialism,
pp. 170-190 in Ali Mohammadi (ed.) International Communication and
Globalization. London: Sage.
“(The) broad task of globalization theory is
both to understand the sources of this
condition of complex connectivity and to
interpret its implications across the various
spheres of social existence” (Tomlinson,
1999: 2)
Tomlinson J. (1999) Globalization and Culture, Cambridge: Polity
We can study the processes of media
globalization—taking place within the
media and communications’ sphere—by
answering the following questions:
-How is this condition created?
-In what way are the opportunities for
global mediation and communication
utilized?
Specifically we may do this by exploring:
-
The emergence of a cross-national and
increasingly global media and
communications infrastructure, and;
-
The characteristics, intensity and limits
of the specific activity taking place
within this infrastructure
1.The development of a global
communications infrastructure.
2.Central theoretical concepts and
understandings of the relationship
between media, culture and globalization.
3.A case study from my own research on
media, cultural practices and
globalization.
1.The development of a global
communications infrastructure.
The Silk Road extending from Southern Europe through Arabia,
Somalia, Egypt, Persia, India and Java until it reaches China.
2.Central theoretical concepts and
understandings of the relationship
between media, culture and
globalization.
“Theories have their own
history and reflect the
concerns of the time in which
they were developed.”
Thussu, D.K. (2006) International Communication: Continuety
and Change. London: Arnold.
1. Critical political economy
. 2. Cultural studies i.e. audience/
reception studies
1. Critical political economy
- influential since the 1960s;
- the significance of questions of power and
. ideology in particular through economic,
political and symbolic power interacted in the
cultural sphere.
- economic structures of dominance in the
media and communications industries promotes
the circulation of dominant ideas – limits
diversity of ideas.
- 1960s/1970s; cultural imperialism & media
imperialism
(Thussu, 2006)
Cultural Imperialism
“The sum of the processes by which a society is brought
into the modern world system and how its dominating
stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes
bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or
even to promote, the values and structures fo the dominant
centre of the system.” (Schiller, 1976: 9)
Schiller, H. (1976) Communication and cultural domination. New York:
International Arts amnd Science Press.
Boyd-Barrett’s concept of ‘media imperialism’,
mirrored the notion of cultural imperialism and
domination, by drawing attention to the uneven
distribution of power between countries and the
dominating role of the US and primarily Western
countries, specifically within the international
media sphere (Boyd-Barrett, 1977: 117).
Boyd-Barrett, O (1977) Media Imperialism: Towards an International Framework for an
Analysis of Media Systems. In: Curran, J, Gurevitch, M, Woollacott, J (eds) Mass
Communication and Society. London: Edward Arnold, 116-135
2. Cultural studies – i.e. audience/
reception studies
“If, for much of the 1970s, the audience
was largely ignored by many media
theorists in favour of the analysis of
textual and economic structures which
were presumed to impose their effects on
the audience, the 1980s, conversely, saw
a sudden flourishing of 'audience' (or
'reception') studies (…)”
Morley, David (1991) 'Where the Global Meets the Local: Notes from the
Sitting Room', Screen, 32(1): 1-15.
MTV has neither in the 1990s nor later threatened
the position of European national broadcasters.
Television produced specifically for a national
audience remains the most popular.
Such developments led to a critique of theoretical
concepts such as cultural imperialism as; ‘frozen
in the realities of the 1970s, now a bygone era’
(Sreberny, 2000: 96)
Sreberny, A. (2000) The Global and the Local in International Communication. (pp. 93-119) In J. Curran &
M. Gurevitch (Eds.), Mass Media and Society. London: Arnold.
“Globalization may be distinguished
from imperialism in that it is far less
coherent or culturally directed
process.” (Tomlinson, 1991)
Tomlinson, J. (1991) Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Globalization and culture: Three
Perspectives on the development and
consequences:
1.
Cultural differentialism or lasting difference,
cultural heteorogenization
2.
Cultural convergence or growing sameness,
cultural standardization
3. Cultural hybridization or ongoing mixing (incl
glocalization)
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004) Globalization and Culture: Global Melange.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
“Globalization invites more to controversy than
consensus, and the areas of consensus are narrow
by comparison to the controversies.”
(Nederveen Pieterse, 2004: 8)
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004) Globalization and Culture: Global Melange.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
“There is no single theory of globalization upon
which all social scientists, let alone everybody
else, are agreed.” (Sparks, 2005: 20).
Sparks, C. (2005) The Problem of Globalization. Global Media and Communication,1, 1: 20–23.
3. A case study from my own research on
media and globalization
We can study the processes of media
globalization—taking place within the
media and communications’ sphere—by
answering the following questions:
a) How is this condition created, and to
what extent, and:
b) In what way, are the opportunities for
global mediation and communication
utilized?
Specifically we may do this by exploring:
1) the emergence of a cross-national and
increasingly global media and
communications infrastructure, and;
2) the characteristics and intensity of the
specific activity taking place within this
infrastructure
The approach resonate with calls for more nuanced:
“… approaches which can deal both with the global-local
dynamic of these cultural processes at a substantive level,
and with the need to articulate the micro- and macrodimensions, so as to integrate more effectively our analyses
of the domestic, the local, the national and the international
aspects of communications.” (Morley, 1991: 15)
Morley, D. (1991) Where the global meets the local: notes from the sitting room Screen. 32
(1): 1-15
Mjøs, O. J. (2012) Music, Social Media and Global Mobility. London and New
York: Routledge.
The Corporatization of Social Media
Year of Acq. Social Media
Acquiring Company
Price (in mill.)
2005
MySpace.com News Corporation
$580 (est.)
2006
YouTube
Google
$1.650
2007
Facebook
Microsoft
$240 (1.6%)
2008
Bebo
AOL/Time Warner
$850
The Users’ experience of Social Media
“I think I do not exaggerate when I say that (social media) are
the most important. The social media form the spine (of our
music practice) in a way. But, a spine without arms cannot play
the guitar. But, it is like that. Since MySpace emerged, then I
think social media have been, yes, the spine in the system,
actually. So, therefore, I think it is good that more of them have
arrived.”
(Fredrik Saroea, Datarock, October, 2010 in Mjøs, 2012).