Lecture 12 notes// Globalisation, sustainability and the media..

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.

- Fast food restaurants are beginning to dominate the world.

- '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'.

Marshall McLuhan


- Rapidity of communication echoes the senses.
- We can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale.

Global village thesis//

'As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden awareness of responsibility to an intense degree'


- Centripetal forces// bringing the world together in uniform global society.
- Centrifugal forces// tearing the world apart in tribal wars.

Three problems of Globalization//

1: Sovereignty challenges to the idea of the nation state.

2: Accountability transnational forces and organizations. Who controls them?

3: Identity who are we? Nation, group, community.

Cultural imperialism//

If the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.

- Rigging the 'Free market.'

- Media conglomerates operate as oligopolies.

- 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.

Chomsky and Herman (1998) Propaganda model: 5 basic filters.

- ownership
- funding
- sourcing
- flak
- anti communist ideology

Sustainability//

'Sustainability development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'.