Saturday 9 February 2013

LECTURE TWELVE//GLOBALISATION AND THE MEDIA//OUGD501

GLOBALISATION AND THE MEDIA

Definitions of Globalisation
• Socialist
The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.
• Capitalist
The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result 
GLOBALISATION - desirable phenomenon, fought for by revolutionists, renegade system of production

QUOTE: ‘Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”)’ 

-fifth line- the spreading of the free market, globalisation, economic liberalisation
starting to introduce a dominant western, very specifically, American culture, starting to take over the rest of the globe, Americanisation of the world.  Another side of globalisation, effectively we are now in a situation where communication systems have advanced so much, we;re all connected, communication has made us more globalised.

MCDONALDIZATION - principles of American businesses, rigid hierarchies
‘American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term “McDonaldization” to describe the wide- ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world’ 


MARSHAL MCLUHAN
‘Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned’ (1964: p.3)
Rapidity of Communication echoes the senses
We can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale 

We start to live in a global village, becoming more interconnected as a species.  It should make us more aware of our responsibilities to each other and the rest of the world.  New technology has expanded, you can see everything that goes on, through the close focus of a jet fire weapon.
System of globalisation where a colonising western capitalist global force trying to eat up through economic means as well as intellectual, through war, grabbing and slowly absorbing the world.  Get this global resistance, this system is attempting to divide rather than bring people together.
Cultural imperialism
• If the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.
• Key thinkers- 
– Schiller
– Chomsky 

MEDIA CONGLOMERATES OPERATE AS OLIGOPOLIES 


In this globalised economy we have markets spreading, culture spreading from America, largely, fed to other countries, and the mass media is one of the main mechanisms for doing this.  One idea - the mass media, businesses that produce culture, create magazines etc. a giant free market where all businesses are competing and some are successful and some are not.  The control of all of those goes back to one giant corporation.

News corporations divide world into ‘territories’ of descending ‘market importance’ 

  • North America 
  • Western Europe, Japan and Australia 
  • Developinb economies and regional producers (India, China, Brazil, Eastern Europe)
  • The rest of the world
US MEDIA POWER CAN BE THOUGHT OF AS A NEW FORM OF IMPERIALISM 

Local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shaped, mirroring old school colonialism.

Schiller- dominance of US driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that can ill afford it! 

You can be whoever you want to be by consuming

BIG BROTHER GLOBALISED 
Big Brother Africa, Big Brother India-Big Boss
Make a product in the West, slightly repackage it and have it in other countries, they think its the new thing, lap it up as they don't know any different.


Chomsky & Herman (1998) Propaganda Model- 5 basic filters
• Ownership • Funding
• Sourcing
• Flak
• Anti Communist ideology 

The news operates as a giant system of propaganda.  Culture that if its in a newspaper its got to be true, newspapers are a total pack of fabricated lies.  The news is a tissue of lies pushing the agenda of the rich and powerful.

RUPERT MURDOCH
Ownership

– Rupert Murdoch, selected media interests • News of The World
• The Sun
• The Sunday Times
• The Times
• NY Post
• BSkyB
• Fox TV 

 
Only allowed to publish certain things, controlled by the rich and powerful

SOURCING
Journalists being limited by what they can say
FUNDING
A manipulative system, the effectiveness of that signifies that the mass media have an incredible power to shape peoples lives.  Politicians realise this, more so than before, politicians becoming like movie stars, media savvy.  For their own political means.

Not interested in the fate of one particular country, only interested in making money, expanding industrial production to india because you get cheaper labour, polluting the whole of the world, warning of global eco catastrophe, because of the dominance of capitalism.

AL GORE, 2006
The media is more powerful than politicians 
Retreat of Glaciers
Since 1880 temp on the rise
Keeling Curve- CO2 rising

FLAT EARTHERS
Jim Inhofe ‘Global warming is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetuated on the American public.’ 
Nigel Lawson ‘It is a propagandist’s term. It trips off the tongue nicely’ 
THE LARGER THE CIRCLE THE BIGGER THE EMISSION 
Al Gore, (2006) ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ dir. Davis Guggenheim

• Release less CO2

• Plant more vegetation • Try to be CO2 neutral • Recycle

• Buy a hybrid vehicle
• Encourage everyone you know to watch this film! 


Never have a significant change towards sustainability
‘sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’
Brundtland Commission, (1987) ‘Our Common Future’
• Needs (particularly of the worlds poor) 
• Limitations of technology 


Sustainable development, sustainable growth, and sustainable use have been used interchangeably, as if their meanings were the same. They are not. Sustainable growth is a contradiction in terms: nothing physical can grow indefinitely. Sustainable use, is only applicable to renewable resources. Sustainable development is used in this context to mean: improving the quality of human life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystems. 



Erin Balser, 'Capital Accumulation, Sustainability and Hamilton, Ontario: How Technology and Capitalism can Misappropriate the Idea of Sustainability'
• BIOX Biofuel plant, Canada
• Alternative ‘clean’ fuel
• Renewable
• More expensive to produce 


BIOX- Largest production plant, 2004
• Situated in the Poorest area of Ontario, Hamilton
• Negative social & environmental consequences 

GREENWASHING
People are aware, you now get GREENWASHING, in an attempt to get people to buy the product.
McDonalds Green branded themselves:
Make yourself look green and people will want to buy into it, making people think they are protecting the world, no way you can save the world through buying.

‘Most things are not designed for the needs of the people but for the needs of the manufacturers to sell to people’
Papanek.V, 1983, p46 


G20 PROTESTS
Police in action at protest against G20 Summit, London, March/April 2009    

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