1. Culture and Globalization
Lesson 11

2. Four important themes Culture and globalization
Much older than modernity… but now more free and wide circulation
CULTURE: symbolic construction, articulation and dissemination of meanings.
1) Sameness/difference
2) Role of the Media
3) global languages
4) consumerism and ecology
Four important themes

3. Americanization = Western values = Cultural Imperialism
G. Ritzer: «MacDonaldization»
B. Barber: «MacDonald against Jihad»
F. Fukuyama: «End of History»
R. Robertson: «Glo-calism»
No clear-cut division of sameness and difference
Less stable post-modern framework, creativity and commodification
Difference/sameness

4. Structural changes and new trends
New trends in newspapers: Post WWII :
1) Changes in ownership, loss of younger readers, loss of market share to electronic media and TV. But. Although, in most post-industrial societies newspapers are still important, without significant reduction of sales.
2) Newspapers (and TV) are associated with basic patterns of socio-economic development: affluent, educated readership with greater leisure time.(Nations and regions: tv-centric vs. newspaper centric)
Structural changes for technological, economic and political innovations changed the interactive process. Introducing new trends. What is the nature of this trends.
Structural changes and new trends

5. Structural changes and new trends
3) Growth of “infotainment”: increased focus on sex, crime and entertainment. IT portable devices: a further push.
A contradictory picture: increased competition brings about “tabloidization” but political coverage does not diminish. Diversification of the market: more politics and less politics at the same time.
Post industrial societies: largely stable circulation of papers but number of newspapers has contracted.
Media merging, acquisitions, multi-media empires. Consequences?
Debate the issue. Dangers of concentration of readership on fewer outlets? Can economic competition change the situation? Local monopoly more dangerous than world monopoly? Some countries have witnessed an increase in the range of newspapers (post-soviet)
Structural changes and new trends

6. Structural changes and new trends
New trends in broadcasting
Similar concerns for TV and Radio standards: under threat? (technology and economy)
Critical factors: proliferation of channels and fragmentation of the audience (cable, satellite, digital, broadband, etc.); breaking down boundaries between audio-visual industries, telecommunications and computers.
Structural changes and new trends

7. Structural changes and new trends.
Role of privatization policies and deregulation in the TV
market development
However… public channels remain popular in many OECD countries. Broadcasting systems seem to maintain a distinct imprint of their origins.
The rise of Internet
Post-industrial societies move towards information society model. World’s online community lives in highly developed nations.
Structural changes and new trends

8. Structural changes and new trends
The rise of Internet
Above the average internet users: Nordic democracies, Anglo-American countries, Asian “tigers”, smaller European nation.
At the bottom of the ranking sub-Saharan African countries.
Possible leapfrog? Development brings internet but does internet enhance development?
Structural changes and new trends

9. Consequences for social-political-economic environment
Consequences for democracy:
is democracy endangered by the rise of IT?
Who owns technology? Who controls the web? Who are
the new gatekeepers, if any?
Is democracy reinforced by IT? Alternative channels of civic engagement? Better information? Possibility to challenge global problems?
Consequences for dictatorships (dilemmas):
Consequences for social-political-economic environment

10. Cyber-pessimism or cyber-optimism
Internet is a Pandora’s box: new inequalities, deeper divisions, benefits to the elite with poorer dropping even further behind
Cyber-optimism:
New possibilities of development, end of censorship, grouping and working together much easier, breaking down hierachy.
Cyber-pessimism or cyber-optimism