Globalization

Sorry about the late post, I thought this blog was due thursday.

 

Our trip to South High School to exchange our various video projects is a representational example of globalization, in which unique cultures from around the world are spread and shared with one another. This is largely allowed in part by our advances in technology that allow us to reach all around the world and connect with any and everyone in very little time. South High School in itself is a large culmination of cultures as it brings together ethnicities from all over the world. By sharing all of these cultures together and then further spreading it to us at DU, our experiences there are a model example of globalization.

Regarding the reading chapter, one can easily apply the concepts of the global village, cultural imperialism, local cultures, etc to this experience at South High. Because of our ability to connect with these children, we are creating an environment where the cultures of the world are able to commune very quickly with one another, which supports the global village theory. However, as has been shown in that you can find American cultural influence just about anywhere on the globe, there is a clear indication that the sheer mass and momentum of larger cultures can create a hierarchy of cultural spreading, engulfing whole smaller cultures and conforming them to the larger one. South High is but one of many gateways in which this cultural imperialism can spread back to the countries from which they originate and influence the existing culture to be more like that of Americas. This does present a potential problem as the threat of smaller, local cultures being eliminated is a serious threat to global diversity.

This doesn’t sway me to change my video essay however, because it deals with media ecology, which is how society as a whole behaves in the high media content environment, as well as the relationship between the two. Media ecology simply observes and reports the state of how things are, so however the influence of the above shapes our society, or the world’s society, that is the current media ecology.

Blog 6

At South High School there are many cultures and ethnicities so they have a chance to learn a lot about other people.  Showing our videos showed the students at South High School what media cultures are important to us so that they could see another perspective.  This relates to trends of globalization because they were able to see global issues such as the perception of African Americans in Media, the differences in news in China and the US and minority issues.  Our videos made them think about things that are happening all around the world and they can see how everyone is connected in some way through social networking.  Our trip to South also opened my eyes to the local global community of students.

These days you cannot run a successful company if you are not global.  Everyone is connected through technology so that you can have a business in China and operate it from the US.  I liked the concept of the uses of propaganda in the media during big political issues. During World War 2 the mass media crafted this perception on the war and the society ate it up.  As they say in the book “ The uses of propaganda during World War 2 once again promoted concern over the distribution of global information in the mass media”.  (339)Everyone believed the media even if it was not true.  The media creates this flow of information and even if they are bias we still we read it.  One of my classmates di a video essay on this exact thing.  I thought it was really interesting to see that news is presented differently everywhere.  We may not be getting the right information from the media so how can we base our decisions around it. This can be applied today in the presidential elections.  Every source of media is bias so I don’t know what to think because everyone
says something different.

I think that globalization is a very important issue and my essay on media’s perception of beauty was how the media around the world is portraying it too.  I think my essay can also relate to people overseas because they also watch many of the same
commercials we do.  I wouldn’t change what I wrote because I think it ties into the globalization factor.

Neely Globalization

Globalization is a powerful force in international economics and politics. While showing my video at South High School, I wondered if people from all different cultures would be able to appreciate the content of my video. My video was about music websites, which I thought were almost exclusively American and European but I was surprised and pleased when a girl from the high school said that my video was her favorite. I did not realize before our trip to South and before reading this chapter that American exported movies are popular all over the world. This is probably comparable to American music websites like Pitchfork in the sense that the internet connects the whole world and people in any country can and probably do view the same content that I view every day in America.

Globalization has been described as a “flattening of the world”. I think that the internet is a huge contributor to that. I think South High School is a perfect example of a classic “mixing pot”. It is a physical place where people from all different cultures comes together and share ideas with one another. I think that the internet has now become a “cyber mixing pot”. It is still an area where people of different cultures can connect with one another but the difference is that they don’t need to occupy the same physical space.

In conclusion, my video was more relatable to different cultures than I thought it would be and this is a testament to how much American culture is exported around the world  and contributes greatly to Globalization.

Blog 6

 

BLOG #6

 

            While visiting south high school it was nice to get away from DU and experience a different school that works on videos as well. It was nice to get away because we are around the same culture everyday and work in the same environment. Globalization played a major role in that because we got away from the norm. Even though we only traveled a few blocks away from our campus it is completely different in the fact that college life and classes are not the same as high school. We went to a different culture because South High School is very diverse and expressed our knowledge as well as received some from the South High School video class.

Cultural imperialism isn’t something new. For hundreds of years people have tried to gain as much control as possible whether it be gaining land or controlling the media society. Major companies are always going to try and get one leg up on the competition even if they are already blowing them out of the water. Things have not changed. People from different cultures (South High School) are being affected by the western world. Students at South may not be accustomed to the western lifestyle, but they are engaged in it nearly everyday and it is having an impact on them.

When talking about the politics of information I found it shocking that people outside the United States do not have the same access to information. In the US we can find out major news minutes after it has happened due to the Internet and television.  It is something I found interesting because when I want to find out the score of a game I don’t think twice about it, I log onto my computer and find out within seconds.

This experience does not make me want to change my video essay, because I thought my video affected the majority of the population at least in the Unite States. It is unfortunate that people do not get to experience technology, but at the same time it is a major part of the western world and my world.

Blog: Media in a Changing Global Culture

Our interaction at South High relates to trends in globalization in a couple of ways. Globalization relates to the “growing interconnectedness and intensification of connections” as well as the “changing role of geography and physical distance” (326). At South High, we were able to connect with a different, more diverse community of kids. Although we did not share our technology from overseas, we did see communication through kids living nearby. We were able to view new ideas and were able to see different cultures through South High. As globalization describes, “culture becomes more accessible to larger numbers of people.” For example, I believe one of the students from South High was from somewhere in Africa. It was interesting to see and hear his point of view of our media presentations. South High enabled us to interact and view a variety of new content and cultures through media.

I learned a lot about cultural imperialism, the “global village”, and local cultures. First off, I had never really thought about cultural imperialism until I read this chapter. I didn’t realize how much American movies and U.S. productions impacted other countries. I knew “U.S. projects tend to have substantial budgets” (333), however, I did not realize that other countries don’t spend this kind of money on movies, etc. I also thought it was interesting how other countries chose to buy U.S. media products because it is cheaper than their own. I would have thought it would be the other way around – since America spends so much money on movies and television shows, wouldn’t those products cost more? Next, I thought the idea of a “global village” was interesting. McLuhan believes that “the airing of voices and knowledge can promote greater understanding between different nations and cultures” (329). I agree and disagree with this idea. I think it is important that everyone’s voice is heard. As McLuhan states, this would “extend the range of publicly available knowledge about many different areas and aspects of the world” (328). I somewhat disagree that these voices would lead to greater understanding. I think that a “global village” could lead to greater understanding at some point, however, I think it would create many arguments and misunderstandings too. And as of right now, the only voices that are really heard are those of the large media corporations. Last, I learned that local cultures is a strategy corporations use “by exporting the U.S. model while adapting it to local conditions” (338). I thought this was interesting, as I had never thought about this before either. Companies like MTV are able to reach more people in different countries through creating multiple parts such as “MTV Africa” and “MTV Asia” (338). This causes more people to tune into MTV because they can relate to this channel more than other Western oriented shows.

I also learned a lot about politics of information and global media regulation. I think that politics of information is an important aspect of media. I thought it was interesting how “the idea that information should flow freely across national boundaries sounds benign to Western ears, many developing countries came to understand it as privileging the ‘First World’s’ market-driven perspective of information flow” (340). I do think the government should have some say in the media, however, the extent of their involvement may vary. I think under-developed countries want more of a balance between Western news and their local news. Also, global media regulation is an important aspect of the media. I never realized how difficult it must be to regulate “media ownership and programming extending beyond national borders” (344). How do you decide who regulates the media when the media becomes global? I did not find it surprising that “national governments and international organizations are feeling increased pressure from global media conglomerates and transnational private capital” (344). The conglomerates want to have global media regulation to increase their influence and power in the media industry. I also thought it was interesting how some people are “advocating for a more democratic media and creating their own independent media” (345). I believe the issue of global media regulation can relate to several other topics we have learned about in class.

My experience at South High does not make me want to change my video essay. My group and I made a video essay about the active audience theory and discussed how a variety of factors such as background, age, culture, etc. can influence how people interpret certain media. I think we demonstrated this in our video and the kids at South High helped advocate how several people may have different interpretations about the media.

Blog #6

At South High, a school that is very culturally aware and diverse, our presentations, with some exceptions, were given by primarily white, American students. Although we spoke about global issues such as minority representation in the media and horizontal integration, the majority of our perspectives are from a primarily white, privileged background.

Our time spent at South High, however, also highlighted how electronic media can be used as a tool for globalization, bringing global awareness across great distances through use of the Internet and of YouTube. For example, many of our video essays used clips from You Tube and information from Facebook and Twitter to support global ideas of media conglomeration. The ability to see a clip from Sri Lanka or the Arab Spring would have been impossible in the past, and this advancement in electronic media has changed how people can view the world.

Cultural imperialism encompasses the argument that media products flow primarily from “the West,” or America, influencing Eastern culture with little input from other, less wealthy nations. The term seems to highlight the possibility of “domination,” and suggests that the media industry in wealthy nations has such a large influence over the rest of the world that topics are being skewed and ideas misrepresented and misinterpreted (a very definite possibility).

I found the ideas of the “global village” very intriguing as well – the possibility that the media holds to unite nations shows great possibility for peacemaking and global understanding. However, as the reality of the “global village” is considered, it is seen that this promise is largely unrealistic – the largest and most influential media organizations are born from wealthy, powerful countries – giving little voice and making little difference for smaller, poorer nations of the world. This reality has led to a “homogenization of culture,” and a loss of local cultural awareness. As long as the wealthiest nations hold them most power in the media world, a true “global village” will never be realized.

The League of Nations’ view on globalization as a tool to increase peace and understanding is an excellent way to guide future thoughts and decisions regarding globalized media. While underrepresentation of underdeveloped countries is still an issue, the politics of information flow has the possibility to unite countries in the future. Global media regulation could aid in this process – while media corporations undoubtedly hold huge influence over government protocol, organizations such as Free Press are setting good examples for the future of fair and diverse media.

After reading this chapter and showing my video at South High, I would like to include more perspectives in my video essay, if possible. I think it would be beneficial to focus on the prevalence and use of media in underdeveloped countries as well, instead of only focusing on how media is influencing activism in the United States.

Media Globalization

Media travels in a number of ways, through social networking sites, television, radio, e-mail, and cell phone. The way in which people around the world use and receive media has been revolutionized in the last 100 years. Instead of writing a letter to someone living across the country, which could take weeks—we are able to Skype face to face with them at any given moment. There is no longer a barrier of physical distance but an interconnectedness that has spread around the world, this is known as globalization. This expanding use of media can be seen everyday, even on our trip to South High School.
Not only did our trip to South get us to look at how they used different types of media to spread the word around their campus—it also gave us a good look at cultural imperialism. South is a very diverse campus with kids that represent every part of the world and they all use some sort of media. Even though they are from different backgrounds and culture there is an increasing mix of western media influence on other arts of the world. “There is no denying the overwhelming presence the U.S. culture has in other countries. American television, films, and music are common in most societies across the globe” (333). This influence can also be seen at the kids that attend South High, they are increasingly being influenced and molded to like popular Western culture instead of the culture they were brought up in. A lot of this can be due to the fact that smaller cultures just do not have the means to create a multi billion-dollar industry like the one in America. This in effect causes people to view a very narrow view of the world (through ‘western’ eyes). One of the main fears of this is “that the globalization of media is resulting in the homogenization of culture” (335). There are multiple pros and cons to the globalization of media, another being its effects on politics.
Politics have been around since the dawn of time, however there wasn’t always a way to get politicians messages out to everyone—until now. With media a politician’s views can be read about wherever and whenever. It allows the public to connect with their congress representative whenever they feel the need to. But as a result of this spread of such available media comes the very narrow views that often are shown on the news. Rarely do we see what is going on around the world other than through the 5 big new conglomerates. American news is shadowed and monitored by these conglomerates so that they only show certain views. This is an obviously down fall of media. But like the vast spread of communication between countries also comes the flow of information involving politics. An upside to media comes from the vast available knowledge from sources outside the U.S. like BBC and other various countries news stations. There are both positive and negative effects that come out of the mass globalization of media.

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Our trip to South High School really helped me realize the level of globalization in local community. South High is known for being one of the best high schools for foreign students trying to acclimate to the American way. After watching some of the student’s videos and talking to a couple of them, I got a real world glimpse at the new generation of media users. These kids grew up with social networking and the internet despite coming from far fledged parts of the world. For example, the young man that talked about how the reasons for the Ethiopian-Kenyan conflict very greatly between the media in either country. He talked about how in the Ethiopian media they said they were invading Kenya for political reason when in Kenya the media was saying that the invasion was retaliation for a passed war. Similarly, Di and Li talked about how the Tibetan conflict with China was portrayed as if Tibet had always been a part of China’s domain. This experience helped immensely in understanding some of the varying cultures here in our own community with a large number of the population being from foreign lands. Both experience helped me realize how media is in effect a commodity in other countries around the world. For instance there are some people that believe Facebook played a large part in the social revolutions currently going on. The exchange of culture also helped bring to light the types of regulation going on in foreign lands where the media still serves as the true voice of the people, but also can be used as a controlling device. Here in this country we feel like we have lost control of our media to corporations, but things could be much worse. Our government could use our media to influence our political system and blatantly lie to the general public’s face.

Overall I feel like our video was pretty catchy, but the Old Spice parody is all everyone remembers about the video. From the little feedback that we received it is apparent that the message of our video may have been somewhat lost in the rain shadow that is the Old Spice routine. In the end I feel that we should have made the focus of the video on the message itself rather than the comedic relief of the parody. Other than that I feel that our video was fairly effective to the general viewer.

Media Globalization and Cultural Imperialism

Our interaction with the students at South High both perpetuates and counteracts cultural imperialism of globalization. Many of our media projects challenge media globalization through criticizing the concentration of media outlets, and by critiquing the narrow perspective covered by U.S. media.

Yet, many of the references in our media projects focus on media companies that hold the top tier of power, rather than expanding our attention to smaller, local, or bottom tier media sources. Therefore, we are still perpetuating the “cultural imperialism” theory of media globalization.

For example, there was only one group of international students who exposed us to a point-of-view of a news source external to the U.S.

It is challenging to combat cultural imperialism when our awareness of the “other”  and the other’s resources are so limited. Nonetheless, we can attempt to develop strategies that strengthen our awareness as consumers of media.

• What did you learn about cultural imperialism, the “global village,” local cultures? 

At first glance, the concept of the “global village” is an optimistic theory founded on peaceful incentives; yet, at closer inspection this theory is idealistic, and the globalization of media is clouded with corruption that may be irreversible.

The capitalist-driven free-market has at stronghold on developed and developing economies, and western imperialism drives the content and economics within the media market. The voices of international cultures are constantly at risk of being suppressed, and their traditions lost—comparative to the diminishment of smaller media companies within the United States, which have increasingly been “bought out” by corporate media conglomerations.

When recognizing how the Western world has used the “free market” flow for the infiltration of media into other countries, Media Society recognizes the others’ view:

“…many developing countries came to understand [the idea that information should flow freely] as privileging the ‘First World’s’ market-driven perspective of information flow.” As a result of “different levels of infrastructure development and capital resources” within various countries, “the operating reality of ‘free’ international information flow was that major advertiser-funded news organizations from developed nations dominated the collection and dissemination of information” (340).

It is as though a road has been paved for all, but actually the only people who can use the road are those with the proper vehicles and elite components. Thus, only people who can financially afford to use the road can use it at all.

• What do you think about the politics of information, global media regulation, and other issues raised in this chapter? 

I think that it is the government’s responsibility to regulate media sources to ensure that people are receiving valuable information from widespread and diverse outlets. So, I do not agree with the “decentralization” that the U.S. government has been passing, which has assisted in strengthening media conglomeration.

In regards to the Canadian defensive measures taken against the heavy saturation of U.S. media industry, I agree with some of their decisions, including their requirement for citizens to learn the French language, and their effort to expand the range of homegrown programming. However, I do not agree with their laws mandating that

“35% of the music played on AM radio and 60% of a television stations’ programming feature Canadian content” (335).

I think that governmental control over the amount of a particular type of content that is included (or excluded) within media stifles free expression, just as media conglomeration stifles the variety of informants available within the market.

•  Does your experience make you want to change your video essay? Why or why not?

After learning more about media globalization, I agree even more with my group’s video essay about media economics.

The effects of the dominant industry business model—in which advertising revenues finance big media, which in turn lowers program quality and encourages media conglomeration and consolidation—is not just a struggle within the media in the United States, but is a struggle in the media industry world wide. This business model creates a challenge for the voices of American subcultures and international cultures to be heard within media.

Blog#6

My interpretation of globalization is simple: the world adapting to the times for better or for worst. What makes the world go round now isn’t everyone getting along and being happy. It is the economy, money, power, and even possibly oil and water. This might be a little drastic or extreme but i mean that is how the real world works. How our interaction with South High can be dragged into globalization has to do with our videos. We all wrote about something that we thought was affecting everyone no matter what age. Whether it be Facebook (for good or bad), Internet, even disney movies. These all affect all of us no matter what class you are or socioeconomic class you might be in. What we all talked about had to do with our society changing, mostly for the worse. Most people today would say globalization is a bad thing due to outsourcing and our current economic uncertainty. It is what it is at this point. No matter what sector you are in, you have to make money to stay in business. Everyone has a reason and purpose for the decisions they are making. South high school is using their well known and established diversity to bring attention and hopefully donors to the school to give money. I think cultural imperialism is something that has been going on for thousands of years. You had places like Rome, England, America. All of these “empires” try to gain and control as much as they can to become world powers and be the best. There is always going to politics and someone pulling the strings for the rest of society. There isn’t a way for there not to be really. The world works on favors and doing something for someone else with the hopes of getting something out of it for yourself in the end. We all need something at the end of the day. I personally wouldn’t want to change my video essay. Yes, there is a lot of issues nationally and world wide, but it is what it is. I obviously have a Facebook like everyone else in the world but I really think it is, and has, changed the way society is run. That isn’t good! Yes, Facebook can be used for good things and help people but lets be realistic, how many times do you get on Facebook and go to a non profit page or Red Cross… exactly. Not to be pessimistic or negative, i am just honest and realistic. Facebook has changed the way my generation and other generations go about their daily lives. That is absurd. I am not perfect either but my life doesn’t revolve around stalking people, updating my status, and putting new photos up. I like talking to people, hanging out, the classic things we use to do when we were in middle school and such. I think there really is a lot of significance to that, that sometime we overlook. I don’t disagree that there are a lot of issues in the world with money, power, politics, and everything else going on. But Facebook, social media, blogging, and writing letters about them isn’t going to fix the issue. My experience with the world, South High school, Denver University, is that once again, it is what is. You can only do so much and what will happen is meant to happen. Enjoy life while you can and do what makes you happy.