Mass Media and Globalization

Mass Media Definition

• Mass media involves technologies broadcasting information to a large audience.
• Its primary role is to convey diverse messages through platforms like television, movies, advertising, radio, the internet, magazines, and newspapers.
• Mass media enhances globalization by enabling cultural exchange and information flow via news, TV, technology, film, and music.
• Mainstream media was mainly national before the 1990s, but is now global.

Globalized Media

• The media industry suits globalization due to its nature for global trade beyond political borders.
• Lower media costs can lead to larger profit margins by reaching a wider market.
• Shipping costs do not affect media due to it being information.
• Some posit that media partially causes globalization, instead of being only another globalized industry.

Content Origin

• Much of globalized media content originates from the West, especially the U.S.
• U.S. culture and media drive consumerism through advertising, which may encourage foreign cultures to adopt consumerist ideals.
• Globalized media may create demand for U.S. products.
• Some worry that this one-way transmission of ideas and values can displace indigenous cultures.

Transfer of Cultures

• Globalization lowers economic trade borders and has cultural implications.
• Just as transferring industry and technology encourages outside influence and opens up new markets, the same occurs with culture.
• As globalization progresses and communities mirror the U.S. economically, they may adopt and personalize U.S. cultural values.
• This cultural spread may lead to homogenization (a local culture becoming more like U.S. culture) or heterogenization (the coexistence of U.S. cultural aspects alongside local cultures, enhancing diversity).

Cultural Standards

• Concepts such as "Fair and Lovely" altered traditional beauty standards in diverse regions.
• Focus on those altered beauty standards can lead to feeling insecure and pressure to conform to Western beauty ideals.
• Markets capitalized on these demands, creating whitening products for profit.

Media Imperialism

• American culture's global export happens through globalization, with U.S. media outlets relying on sales of their content.
• American culture is tailored not only for US citizens, But also global audiences.
• Foreign markets offer large profit potential, and movie success overseas can boost interest even if domestic performance is weak.
• The movie "Titanic" is a prime example of how global culture and marketing can be successful.
• "Titanic's" foreign box-office success allowed the film to be made.
• Only about one-third of "Titanic's" total box-office receipts came from the domestic market, while it earned $1.2 billion in foreign box-office receipts.

Media and Cultural Image

• How foreign affairs are reported can influence the cultural image of a country.
• News agencies like Reuters, AP, UPI, and AFP were said to have helped disseminate a global agenda and foster particular perceptions of the South as a place of "corruption, coup, and disaster" targeted at Western audiences.
• Western dominance in news broadcasting was viewed to repeat colonial biases - news agencies faced criticism from Third World critics during the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).
• Western news agencies faced allegations of insufficient coverage of developing countries and the reinforcement of biased imagery.
• The US and UK rejected these perspectives, being threatened by fair flows requests, and then revoked support from UNESCO.