Globalisation & Media Boston case study

8/30/20201Globalisation & Media
Boston College
Tony Tran
Globalization:
“the compression of the world and the
intensification of consciousness of the
world as a whole” (Robertson qtd. in
Mallelart, p. 54)
Globalization is….
Flexible, fluid, and decentered
Contradictory and full of disjunctures
“The world is becoming more diverse through
standardization and more standardized through
diversification under the marketization of media
cultures” (Iwabuchi, pg. 202).
8/30/20202Appadurai’s 5 Scapes
Ethno
Techno
Finance
Media
Ideology
• What is Ideology?
• What is Hegmony?
Homogenization vs. Heterogenization
Cultural Imperialism/Americanization
localize/indigenize
8/30/20203The West & the Rest
“the West and the Rest tend to be equated with the global
and the local, respectively, and, even in the discussion of
cultural hybridization, the Rest is supposed only to imitate,
appropriate and/or hybridize the West, no matter how
actively producing local media cultures in the process”
(Iwabuchi, pg. 200).
Inter-Asian Media
“The rise of East Asian media culture
needs to be considered in the context
in which cultural power has become
decentralized, dispersed and
interpenetrated by the transnational
alliance of media culture industries.”
(Iwabuchi, pg. 202)
Media & (Soft) Power
“Media Flows and contra-flows form part of the wider
struggle over information flows which define power
relations in the global information economy (Thussu,
pg. 30)
8/30/20204Types of Media Flows
• Global • Transnational • Geo-Cultural
• Cross-border partnership and cooperation among
media culture industries involving non-Western
players are being driven forward, with America as a
pivotal presence…[but] a crucial question is
whether global power relations are fundamentally
challenged and transformed.” (Iwabuchi, pg. 202)
Are contra-flows/de-Westernized media
good?
8/30/20205Homework
• Find one scene and try to break it down using
textual analysis. What messages are the film trying
to express? What is being represented?
• Watch Industry Studies Method
• Think about how Klein performs a cultural industry
analysis. What information are being included?
Where is she looking?
Global • “Dominant media flows” (Thussu, pg. 12) • The “global popular”
• Largely US Based
Transnational • “subaltern flows” (Thussu, pg. 13) • Largely Regional hubs of media
8/30/20206Geo-Cultural • “Caters to specific cultural-linguistic audiences”
(Thussu, pg. 13)