Sunday, 18 March 2012

Lecture 12 - Globalisation, sustainability and the media


Globalisation, sustainability & the media
  
The media works as a type of propaganda device which influences popular culture and the government.

Socialist

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. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.

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.

Globalisation

‘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”)’

‘American sociologist George Ritzer coined the
term “McDonaldization” to describe 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’

Marshall McLuhan

‘Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned’ (1964: p.3)
Rapidity of Communication echoes the senses
We can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale.


The Village Thesis

‘The world would shrink to a village where everyone knows each other and is inter connected’

•‘As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibilty to an intense degree’ (1964: p.5).

The internet

•We live mythically and integrally... In the electric age ,when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate... in the consequences of our every action. (1964: p.4)
•‘Electric technology... would seem to render individualism obsolete and... corporate interdependence mandatory’ (1962: p.1)

We are not a unifying culture we are actually moving away from being this. Due to old school methods of land grabbing ect.

Cultural Imperialism

Forcing your culture on other people and making them think in the way you do and making them value the same things you do. The most powerful tool is mass media, it allows content to be legitimised and move forward. Therefore the global village is not a community but more a assimilated one.

‘Media conglomerates operate as oligopolies’

Gaint oligopolies own mass media companies and the one CEO incharge of these, his voice and capitalist opinion gets spread on a micro level across all these platforms.

American companies would buy out channels in Africa and puts global news and media  first above African channels and interests.

Local cultures destroyed in the 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 world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that can ill afford it!

For example big brother, its successful in America and Europe so Africa and india, countries like that think shit this is popular we need to do this as well which then forces American culture onto these countries.

Rupert Murdock

Controls the majority of the media in the uk and the world, any story which contradicts his agendy it does not get published.

Flak

Pressure group funded by major oil companies to pressure the media to cut through any of the myth that the planet is being destroyed. They directly try and contradict things.

Al Gore, (2006) ‘An inconvenient Truth’ Dir. Davis Guggenheim.

·       CO2 neutral
·       Plant more vegitation
·       Recycle
·       Buy a hybrid vehicle
·       Encourage everyone you know to watch this film….
His an idiot basically, getting people to keep buying more to try and fix the problem. Capitalist agenda…

Greenwashing

Making your product have the image of being green and friendly and environmentally friendly when they might not necessarily. To make way more cash yo.










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