*Globalization and media have created the conditions through which many people can now

imagine themselves as part of one world.

“Global village” by Marshal McLuhan

Three primary ways in which people interact globally:
1. Economics
2. Politics
3. Culture

Globalization and Media: Etymologies

Globalization:
French- La Mondialisation
Chinese- Quan Qiu Hua
Kiswashili- Utandawazi
-Ization words, nouns formed by a combination of –ize verbs and –ation.
*Ization- a suffix that creates nouns indicating the process oe outcome of doing something.
It is not an outcome but a process, including economic, political, and cultural- that may be as old
as humankind and is ongoing today.

Histor(ies) of Globalization- When did globalization began?

Media- a means of conveying something such as a channel of communication.
Globalization- A set of multiple, uneven, and sometimes overlapping historical processes,
including economics, politics, and culture, that have combined with the revolution of media
technology to create the condition under which globe itself can now be understood as “an
imagined community”.

EVOLUTION OF MEDIA AND GLOBALIZATION

5 Periods of Media
By: McLuhan, Innis, Lull and Rantanen
1. Oral (200,000 years)
2. Script (less than 7,000 years)
3. Print (less than 600 years)
4. Electronic (less than 50 years)
5. Digital
1. Oral Communication
-Language allowed human to cooperate.
-Humans eventually moved to every corner of the world, encountering new environment and
experiences, using language as their important tool.
-First civilization was created at Sumer in the Middle East, called the “cradle of civilization”. It
is thought to be the birthplace of the wheel, plow, irrigation, and writing- all created by language.
SCRIPT

-the very first writing- allowed humans to communicate and share knowledge and ideas over
much larger spaces and accross much longer times

● Languange is essential but imperfect. It relies on human memory

● Distance causes trouble for oral communication

● Time causes difficulties

Writing has its own revolution and developed from from cave paintings, petroglyphs, and
hieroglyphs. These 'cuneiform' marks later developed into symbols and eventually led to the
creation of alphabets

Writing surfaces even have their own evolution

•carvings into wood, clay, bronze, bones, stone, and even tortoise shells

•Papyrus- meduim that catapulted globalization

3. THE PRINTING PRESS

>It started the 'Information Revolution' and transformed markets, businesses, nations, schools,
churches, governments, armies, and more

PRIOR TO PRINTING PRESS

• The production and copying of written documents was slow, cumbersome and expensive

• Only selected province and powerful few

• Reading and writing were practices of the ruling and religious elite

• The rich and powerful controlled the information

PRINTING PRESS

• Reading materials suddenly was cheaply made and easily circulated

• Literacy of common people was to revolutionize every aspect of life

• The explosive flow of economic, cultural and political ideas around the world connected and
change people and cultures in ways never before possible

●Historian- Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979)

- profound influences of printing press

2 Overarching Consequences

1. It change the very nature of knowledge

2. It encourage the challenge of political and religious authority because of its ability to circulate
competing views

4. ELECTRONIC MEDIA

-require electronic energy- electricity- to use (telegraph, telephone, radio, film, and television)

● Corporations and businesses were able to exchange information about markets and prices

● Newspapers could report information instantaneously

● Transatlantic cable was laid between the US and Europe

● Telegraph became a truly global medium

1976- telephone (Alexander Graham Bell)

1927- transatlantic cable via radio

1973- cellphone

Television- the most powerful pervasive mass medium yet created

Marshall McLuhan- proclaimed the world as a 'global village', largely because of television

5. DIGITAL MEDIA

- was most often electronic media that rely on digital codes

Computer - is the usual representation of digital media

- most significant medium to influence globalization

- anyone has access to economic information that was a few years ago was in the hands of a
wealthy few

- in the realm of politics, it allow citizens access to information from around the world, even
informations that governments would like to conceal

- transformed cultural life

DIGITAL MEDIA revolutionized daily life

MEDIA AND POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION
 Globalization has transformed world politics in profound ways. And now some argue that
nation- state being weakened as people and borders become ever more fluid in our
globalized world. Though media corporations are themselves powerful political actors,
individual journalists are subject to brutal and intense intimidation as more actors contend
of power.
 The IFJ or international Federation of Journalists estimates that on average close to 100
journalist and media workers are killed in the line of duty each year.
 Globalization has made the world a harrowing place for journalists. Globalization has
increased the frequency of contact among cultures, the world has been given another
awkward term-glocalization.
 The media on one level are the primary carriers of culture. Through newspaper,
magazines, movies, advertisements, television, radio, the internet and other forms, the
media produce, from pop songs to films.
 The practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations.
The daily ‘negotiations’ between local culture and other cultures is key to understanding
globalization, media, and culture.

DARK CONTOURS OF THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

 Lewis Mumford was not fooled. His cold, clear vision of human weaknesses saw
emerging the dark contours of the global village. He saw media technology used not to
better the world but to exploit the world in pursuit of property, profit, and power.
 “They have built a village with large tracts of economic injustice, political
repression, and cultural conflict. They have pit human against nature. They have
despoiled the very globe they encircle.”