Context of Practice - Lecture: Globalisation, Sustainability and the Media

Globalisation
Socialist
(Globalization) in its literal sense is 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.

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.

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”).  

 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

McDonaldization - George Ritzer

The expanse of the social economy. Describes 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.

A Mc World with Mc Jobs and Mc Citizens

McLuhan - Global Village, written in the 60's believed we would turn into a globalised tribe all connected.

Centripetal forces - bringing the world together in uniform global society

Centrifugal forces - Tearing the world apart in tribal wars

Lots of problems with a globalised world. in a globalised community what happens to tradition and identity. But more importantly if countries and nations states loose their ability to control what will happen. 

It is an new form of imperialism and a form of taking control. In the past you had to invade using armies etc... But now its much more sophisticated and subtle, creating global imperialism. 

One of the main causes is the media. media conglomerates operate as oligopolies. 80% control the whole media, most products.

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 the world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that cant afford it.

Big Brother - created by the same company but franchised out all over the world. 

Media presents an image which implies how to be successful but it has very real consequences. A current trend in india is dying skin white, people buy it because of being surrounded by images telling them how to be successful.

Chomsky and Herman - Propaganda Model - 5 basic filters:

- Ownership

Rupert Murdoch owns News of the World, The Sun, The Sunday Times, The TImes, NY Post, BSkyB, Fox TV and much much more....

They lead a huge campaign against the Labour party and backed Tony Blair who won it. They backed him as they were going to relax the monopoly laws on media.

- Sourcing

If you are a journalist you need to present a sanitised idea of the world or else you are out of a job. You get banned kicked out etc.. people won't want to be interviewed by you if you don't write what they want.

- Funding

- Anti Ideologies

reproduce stereotypes of the world to appeal to mass audience. It makes things seem black and white and this creates a 'us and them' idea whilst also cementing the idea that our world views are correct.

- Flak

An organised group of people who lobby against certain ideas about the world.

Al Gore (2006) 'An Inconvenient Truth'

The film won loads of awards and became influential. 

Groups lobbied this because they realised what would happen if they believed it, their companies would not work.