Hello fellow RTF classmates. I hope you all are having an awesome weekend; and may I just add: 51-17 HOOKE ‘EM \m/. That win that we’ve been longing for definitely made the weekend that much sweeter for me. This week’s blog post I will be discussing GLOBALIZATION and how it connects to CULTURAL IMPERIALISM. I hope you all enjoy my blog post and learn something along the way as well.
What exactly is globalization? According to my “Media Now” textbook, “globalization is reducing differences that existed between nations in time, space, and culture” (Media Now, 503). Globalization of media is accelerated by technological advances, and increases interconnectedness among nations, cultures, and individuals. It brings an increase of opportunities for communication, migration of people across national borders, and exchange of material and symbolic goods. Globalization of communications media has some main issues; among these issues, cultural imperialism is included. Cultural imperialism occurs when one or more countries dominate all others in the media. In cultural imperialism, “cultural flow reflects an imbalance in global power structure. Global media flow has been very unequal in terms of direction and volume” (Straubhaar). In present time, there are only very few U.S. or transnational conglomerates that dominate global media flow. As a whole, the people of the United States have transformed from a nation that saves to one that mainly consumes. Computers are a good example of media that illustrates the ideas of cultural imperialism.
Although computers have the ability to promote U.S. corporate centralization of global operations, computer networks and data transfers also allow for high-end jobs, for example computer programming, to be transferred to lower waged nations such as India. This has become an offshore outsourcing center for several corporations of all sizes. A situation like this depicts an economic opportunity for a number of Indians, but will result in a loss of jobs for a handful of Americans who had previously held the jobs that did that type of work. High-end computer programming and systems analyst jobs are being increasingly exported to India and other countries as well. This reverses the patter of dominance and determines where it is held. “In fact, an increasingly dense and complex integration of companies’ operations between the U.S., India, and lots of other places via the Internet is now one of the most crucial defining characteristics of globalization for many people” (Media Now, 529). This allows for the U.S. to outsource jobs to low labor cost countries, such as India.
I hope you all enjoyed my blog post for this week and learned at least a little something about how globalization connects to cultural imperialism. You all will probably think that this is a really random video that I have given to you below, but, despite that, I’m giving it to you anyways! This is a video that I took at a Michael Buble concert in Dallas, TX this year. For those of you who don't know of him, he is the next Frank Sinatra. He is one of my favorite singer/songwriter/performers, so hopefully if none of you knew him before, you know him now and enjoy his music. Seems to always put me in a good mood! I hope you all enjoy and have an awesome Thanksgiving break!!
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