The Globalization of Media Culture

46,454 characters2006.12.26

Abstract: In this article, the author attempts to argue that in the contemporary world, economy, politics, and culture alike have all become inseparable from (mass) media—that discussions of globalization cannot possibly proceed in depth while ignoring media technology; furthermore, the process of globalization and the expansion of media culture can almost be regarded as one and the same thing. The author holds that the significance of media culture lies in media itself as a kind of culture, rather than in the information that media disseminates. In the main text, the author lists eleven constituent elements or manifestations of culture: modes of communication and exchange; material entities/products; political/social order; entertainment; values; understanding of the world; environment of growth/tradition; models; habits of life; rhythm/tempo of life; public life/rituals, etc. The article sorts out the hegemonic influence of media technology on all aspects of contemporary culture, and analyzes the intrinsic connection between the self-expansion of media technology, or rather media culture, and the process of globalization.

Keywords: globalization media culture media age technological determinism consumer culture

Introduction: Media as a Kind of Culture

There are many different perspectives on the issue of globalization, but broadly speaking they come down to the economic, political, and cultural dimensions.

What I want to point out, however, is this: in the contemporary world, economy, politics, and culture alike have all become inseparable from (mass) media—that discussions of globalization cannot possibly proceed in depth while ignoring media technology; furthermore, the process of globalization and the expansion of media culture can almost be regarded as one and the same thing!

The reason is really that the era in which we now live—the era of globalization—is also the so-called “consumer age”; the trendier label is the “information age.” What all these names reflect is the same thing.

The so-called “information age” is also the “media age.” McLuhan said long ago: “The medium is the message”—meaning that what exerts a profound influence on our social life is the form of the medium’s composition, not the information carried by the medium. In McLuhan’s words, “The message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”[①]

There has been an endless stream of writings in recent years on media and globalization, but the overwhelming majority of them treat media simply as a tool of communication. What they focus on is how media technology has greatly accelerated the speed of dissemination and exchange, narrowed the distance between regions, and so on; when they turn to cultural questions, many writers focus only on “media and culture,” that is, on how media has become a stage for the dissemination of culture and cultural competition, discussing how transnational media institutions such as Hollywood and CNN “export” culture, and so forth. These perspectives certainly have their value, but they all regard media as something external to human beings, something dispensable; they focus on what media transmits, without noticing that what is actually exerting a decisive influence in the process of globalization is media itself—not the managers of transnational media corporations, nor the information transmitted to the world through transnational media.

As McLuhan said: media, or in a broader sense—technology or tools—are “extensions of man,” things that belong to human beings themselves. Changes in the scale, speed, and mode of this “extension” do not merely mean that people will become taller, faster, or stronger, and the like; they may fundamentally alter the very mode of human existence. When the forelimbs of an animal evolve into wings, this does not merely mean that it can run faster; it means the birth of an entirely new species. And when the media of human communication undergo changes from oral speech to writing, from writing to printing, or from printing to telegraphy, this does not merely mean some quantitative increase or decrease; it means a qualitative transformation in human culture itself.

McLuhan gave the following example: “The ‘content’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or the wheel or the road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure. … This is far more important than the content of the railway message, which is irrelevant.”[②] The railway itself, rather than the cargo carried on it, is what profoundly transformed society—that is an easy idea to understand. In the same way, what profoundly affects contemporary culture is not the information carried by mass media, but mass media itself. The “media culture” I want to discuss does not refer to something transmitted or promoted by media; it refers to mass media itself as a special cultural form.

Of course, the concept of “media culture” in this sense is not my own invention. Baudrillard, for example, has argued that media culture is not a one-way instrument for disseminating certain values, nor for communicating some preexisting ideology, institutional culture. The culture created by media is a world composed of self-referential signs; it is a hyperreal world of “simulation.” It cannot be seen as a simple imitation of reality, because “it fundamentally dissolves any correspondence with the real, absorbing the real into simulation itself.” Baudrillard wrote: “The media are nothing more than a fantastic and boundless instrument that has rendered reality and the real, and all historical and political truth, unstable… We are fascinated by the media, unable to do without them… This result is not because we crave culture, communication and information, but because the operation of the media reverses truth and falsehood and destroys meaning.” Hence, Baudrillard and others are more inclined to think that contemporary media “introduce a new kind of culture into the center of everyday life,” “a new culture placed outside the opposition between Enlightenment rationality and irrationality.”[③]

The Concrete Manifestations of Media Culture and Their Relation to Globalization

The features of this new culture are embodied in every aspect that the word “culture” can encompass (here the concept of “culture” can be understood in the broadest sense, that is, “civilization”). For example, when we say “Bronze culture” or “Stone Age culture,” we are naming them after their most representative technology; when we say “nomadic culture” or “agricultural culture,” we are naming them after their principal way of life; when we say “Yangshao culture” or “Peking culture,” we are naming them after their place of origin… and “media culture” contains all of the above meanings.

Why is it that different stages of human technology, such as “stone” and “bronze,” can be used to mark different cultural forms? Here there is a question worth pondering: does culture create technology, or does technology create culture? Is it because when culture develops to a certain stage, people then invent the corresponding technology, and thus technology can be used to mark culture; or is it because once a certain technology arises, people are inevitably and irreversibly drawn into cultural transformation—in other words, technology itself determines culture? Perhaps these are merely two perspectives, like the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, with no answer. But in any case, the latter perspective is indeed quite reasonable. The birth of the first stone tool, the first telegram, or the first assembly line was either intentional or unintentional; but once they began to “operate,” their expansion and multiplication could no longer be stopped by human power. Technology has its own logic, its own “instinct” for reproduction and expansion. People think technology is a tool of human beings, but from another angle, are human beings not also the “tool” of technology? Are human beings the tool through which “technology” itself carries out its reproduction and evolution?

This line of thought is often called technological determinism. Anything called “determinism” will inevitably have one bias or another, but as a “perspective,” it is undoubtedly meaningful. This is especially true today, in an age when the power of technology is endlessly swelling, and human beings appear ever more insignificant and helpless before it. This powerful technological force does not refer only to assembly lines and automata; it also includes media technologies such as the telegraph, radio, and television. It is they that have fashioned this age.

So why should the significance of media technology for culture be regarded as analogous to, or even more important than, technologies such as stone tools, bronze vessels, steam engines, and assembly lines, and thus be taken as the “mark” of our age? Below, I will briefly list and explain the decisive influence of media technology on the various aspects of contemporary culture:

I am not capable of giving a precise definition of the word “culture,” but it may be easier to list the various aspects that may be involved when people discuss “culture.” Let us first look at the table below:

Aspects of Culture	Before the Media Age	The Media Age
Modes of communication and exchange	Language, writing, printing…	Telephones, the internet; radio, television… mass media
Material entities/products	Painting, sculpture, architecture…	Film, television, CDs, DVDs…
Politics/social order	Diverse	Democracy (initially guaranteed by printing, later dominated by advertising)
Entertainment	Sports, games	Television, film; and media make everything into entertainment
Values	Derived from tradition	The consumer culture celebrated by the media and represented by the media themselves
Knowledge of the world	From myth and history, what is nearby, rumor	Newspapers, radio, and television have become windows for understanding the world
Growing environment/inheritance	Family education, school	Television
Models	Heroes, sages; powerful officials, hermits…	(media-shaped) stars, idols
Habits of life	Customs, etiquette	Reading the newspaper in the morning, watching television at night
Rhythm/tempo of life	The calendar, the clock	Radio, television
Public life/rituals	Celebrations, festivals	Watching television programs together

The table above roughly lists the various factors that influence, embody, or mark cultural characteristics (the first column). We find that today, none of these factors has escaped the influence, or even the control, of media technology. In other words, media influences, embodies, and marks almost all the characteristics of contemporary culture!

Below, the author will discuss the manifestations of media culture in its various aspects and their corresponding relation to globalization.

1、 Modes of communication and exchange

No matter in which era, media are an element of culture, because “modes of communication and exchange” are one important part of culture. Yet earlier eras could not yet be called the “media age,” because today media’s place in culture is no longer confined to this one aspect of communication; they permeate all the other aspects as well.

Looking at the historical development of human interaction, we seem able to sense a certain inevitability behind it—every medium of cultural exchange always moves from speech to writing, then to printing, and on into modern telephones, telegraphs, radio, television, the internet, and so on; its “progress” appears irreversible and one-directional. But I want to point out that this “inevitability” does not stem from the logic of so-called “history” itself, but from the logic of technology. That is to say, it is not some rationality behind history that guides technological progress; rather, it is the powerful “instinct” of technology itself—its expansion and multiplication—that drives its one-way, irreversible evolution. For example, once some writing system has been invented, it will enable the culture possessing this technology to gain an overwhelming advantage over cultures that have not yet acquired any writing technology; and for those other cultures that come into contact with the culture possessing the more advanced technology, they will either be completely overwhelmed by that culture, or else find ways to acquire that technology themselves. This is the logic of technology: once a new technology emerges, its spread becomes unstoppable. Stone tools, iron tools, the steam engine, assembly lines, and automatons are all similar in this respect. There is no logic behind history that guarantees these technologies must appear; it is only the logic of technology that makes it impossible to halt their spread and multiplication once they have appeared.

Many people believe that the development from pictographic writing to alphabetic writing is some historical law of inevitability; this view is obviously mistaken, and the existence of Chinese characters is a counterexample. Chinese characters are of course not alphabetic writing, but neither are they pictographic writing; rather, they are another mode of evolution after pictographic writing. And the reason one can still say that alphabetic writing replacing pictographic writing is some sort of inevitability is that this inevitability itself comes from the power of technology—history itself contains no logic that must lead to the emergence of alphabetic writing; it is only that once alphabetic writing emerges, its expansion is inevitable. Only places like China, relatively isolated from the Western world and having in time created another form of writing technology before any direct contact with alphabetic writing, could maintain a distinctive path. In more closed places, the Inca culture did not even invent pictographic writing, yet it could still rely on other means to sustain the administration and connections of a vast empire. If left to develop independently, who can guarantee that writing would necessarily have been born? What we can guarantee is only this: once it comes into contact with a culture possessing more advanced technology, it will inevitably be assimilated or overwhelmed.

The reason I have taken such pains to distinguish the logic of history from the logic of technology is that this issue is especially important in our present age of globalization. Since there is now no piece of land on earth isolated from the world, all cultures have been drawn into global interaction, and thus the logic of technology becomes more easily confused with the logic of history. Technology here includes not only media technology, but also industrial technology and even economic and political technology (for example, capitalism and democracy). People often attribute many irreversible processes of development—such as from book culture to visual culture, from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization, from feudalism to capitalism, from imperial power to democracy, and so on—to the laws of history (or historical rationality, historical logic, etc.), but I believe that the logic behind these developments is technological rather than historical. The significance of emphasizing this point lies in the fact that the laws of history often bring to mind “Heaven’s will,” “law,” “truth,” and the like, and thus naturally lead us to regard all these advances as “reasonable.” But the logic supporting technology is not reason; it is merely “power.” The crude notion that “whoever has the stronger fist has the truth” is only the wishful thinking of barbarians, tyrants, or certain social Darwinists; after all, “strength” and “truth” are different things. An irreversible trend is not necessarily good, benevolent, or reasonable, and even less is it necessarily the only possible path. For example, when we say, “Once fascism rises, war is bound to break out,” that sentence is probably reasonable, but in any case it certainly does not mean that the outbreak of war itself is “reasonable”; likewise, we think that “once media technology rises, globalization is the general trend,” but this claim does not necessarily contain approval of globalization.

Although in any case we still cannot resist the expansion of technology—I will also mention later that globalization and the expansion of media culture are unstoppable—if we realize that what governs development is not reason but force, then perhaps we may be able, from a more sober perspective, to carry out a deeper reflection and self-examination of contemporary technology and culture. Such a perspective and attitude are especially important for academic thought.

2、 Material entities/products

Almost all cultural forms express themselves through certain material entities; it is precisely this that makes archaeology possible. At the same time, material entities are also one of the important carriers of cultural dissemination and inheritance.

Since the appearance of books, “media” has gradually become the most important material carrier of culture, and in the modern era, the rise of mass media has given the material expression of culture many entirely new features. The most important feature is that modern cultural “products,” just like modern industrial products, have entered an age of mass production.

In response to this new feature of cultural products, scholars proposed the concept of the “culture industry” (or cultural industry) quite early on. This concept derives from Walter Benjamin’s 1926 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” where he said: “… art works are no longer unique entities, but can be mass-produced, that is, ‘the culture industry,’ which liberates art works from the monopolistic enjoyment of a few and makes them available for sharing by the many.”[④] This concept was later introduced by Adorno as an important object of criticism in the book Dialectic of Enlightenment, written together with Horkheimer—“It has the following characteristics, like any other capitalist industry: the use of alienated labor, the pursuit of profit, reliance on the competitive advantage provided by technology and machines, and a primary commitment to producing ‘consumers.’ Adorno believed that the function of the culture industry is to numb the mind and to enforce the order of capitalism.”[⑤]

From Adorno and Marcuse to Habermas, the perspective of the “culture industry” runs through a series of critiques by the Frankfurt School. For example, “In Marcuse’s view, the culture industry offers the masses a kind of ‘false need.’ He analyzed this specifically in One-Dimensional Man. He believed that human beings originally have their own true needs, namely the need for creativity, the need for independence and freedom, the need to take hold of their own destiny, as well as the need for self-realization and self-perfection. But these true needs cannot be realized in capitalist society, because false needs turn from guest to host, imposed by specific social interest groups and placed upon individuals, thereby negating true needs. Most popular leisure, pleasure, advertising, consumption, and so on can be classified as false needs. The result of their being regarded as true needs and pursued without end is that individuals become dominated by commodity fetishism in economic, political, and cultural respects alike, becoming one-dimensional people. In the production and satisfaction of these false needs, the culture industry is the chief culprit.”[⑥]

Whatever one’s view for or against it, the culture industry’s transformation of contemporary culture and industrial form is unquestionably profound. The greatest characteristic of the “culture industry” is that its “products” have no “scarcity.” A loaf of bread can only be sold to one person; a doctor can only see one patient at a time; but a music album can be made available to any number of listeners, and the cost of its material carrier is almost negligible; its distribution is limited only by the number of consumers. Thus the audience becomes not only “consumers,” but also “resources.”

In fact, the “products” of the culture industry include not only films, television, records, and so forth, but in a broader sense also branded clothing, athletic shoes, cosmetics, and so on. For in purchasing such a product, the money spent is always far greater than the commodity’s own value (in Marx’s terms, the human labor embodied in it) or its use value; much of the consumption is merely for the sake of its “brand.” “Brand-name goods” may well be one of the most typical products of the culture industry.

A better brand means higher “taste” or “style,” and thus a higher cultural level. This is similar to how people in the past would buy famous paintings, antiques, and other artworks to bolster their image and display their cultural level. But the difference is that those paintings and antiques nevertheless contain some kind of “art,” or the sedimentation of history; these connotations cannot be conjured out of thin air by money alone. As for “brand-name goods,” “fame” is the only decisive factor, and such “fame” is created by media dissemination rather than by the content of the product itself. Thus “media” once again becomes the decisive factor: it provides the material carrier of culture, and it also shapes what that carrier bears.

In the culture industry, the significance of “advertising” is by no means limited to “selling”; advertising itself is part of “production” (if not the whole of it), because the most important part of a commodity’s exchange value—its fame—is created by advertising rather than by the factory, and the culture industry’s only “resource”—consumers—is also mined by advertising rather than by a mine.

This kind of culture industry is like an entire game of conjuring something out of nothing. Once this game is carried out on a global scale, resistance to it is often futile. Those who refuse to participate in the game will watch, helplessly, as the “industries” of participants grow bigger and bigger, wealth accumulates more and more, while their own competitiveness becomes smaller and smaller, until they are ultimately and mercilessly eliminated by the world market as a whole. The only way out can only be self-enclosure, but shutting oneself off from the world is not a long-term solution; once again, the logic of technology takes command.

In the age of globalization, transnational business corporations and transnational media corporations are tightly linked by “advertising.” Today, the revenue of broadcasting and television industries comes entirely from advertising, and newspapers and magazines also obtain more than 70 percent of their income from advertising. At the same time, as we have noted, advertising provides “resources” and “products” to those transnational business corporations. It is clear, then, that today’s economic globalization is entirely built on advertising and the “culture industry.” On the other hand, the logic of advertising itself must also lead toward globalization, because the effect of advertising lies in its “breadth”; this makes small media companies with a limited range of influence hard to survive. And once the media industry is gradually dominated by large media companies, small business companies also find it difficult to survive, because a small regional retailer not only cannot afford large-scale advertising, but even if it could advertise, what would be the point of a local retailer confined to some small town placing ads in media across the province, the country, or even the globe? Thus media companies and business companies promote one another—larger media companies make larger business companies more advantageous, while larger business companies in turn require larger media companies…

From this, we can easily understand why economic globalization has taken the form of the rise of monopolistic transnational corporations, and why the media industry is one of the fastest-rising and most highly monopolized sectors among them. All of this is inseparable from the “culture industry” of media culture.

3、 Politics/social order

The globalization of politics contains several meanings: first, the global spread of a certain political system and its ideals (American democracy); second, global governance, global cooperation, and so on in the political sphere. And the political system and ideals in the first sense are precisely one part of “culture.”

Politics is a complex and rich dimension of human society. Politics contains elements such as customs, traditions, values, and so on, and it also contains a certain technology of constructing society. But politics is by no means merely an independent technology; any political system becomes possible only on the basis of a particular culture and technology.

In ancient times, agricultural culture and the irrigation works it required gave rise to the so-called “Oriental despotism”; the “city-state” created the direct democracy of ancient Greece. Greek democracy was impossible in ancient China—it could only be practiced within a small city-state of a few thousand people, and was by no means suitable for governing a vast territory. One very important reason is that political systems are affected and constrained by society’s means of communication and connection—media. In modern times, the rise of American democracy is also inseparable from printing technology—“From the beginning to the nineteenth century, America was more obsessed than any other society with movable type and with oratory based on movable type.”[⑦]

In Lincoln’s era, the American public could listen with relish to speeches or debates lasting as long as seven hours, and this became part of people’s political education and political life.[⑧] This is something unimaginable in the modern era. Today, the political life of Western countries has been profoundly influenced by mass media—especially by “advertising.” The United States was originally a rare nation founded by intellectuals, but now America’s politicians are less intellectuals than television stars.

Contemporary systems of universal suffrage are governed by the media. To become President of the United States, one must spend at least hundreds of millions of dollars on media; becoming a senator or a representative requires millions.[⑨] And the media are governed by the logic of “advertising,” so that “on television, politicians give viewers not their own image, but the image viewers want. This is the greatest influence of television advertising on political discourse.”[⑩]

Although this kind of “entertainment-ized” political life is shallow and frivolous, it is precisely what most satisfies the public. Since it is entertainment, after all, it is always happy and stimulating; it gives people a strong sense of political “participation,” while avoiding making the public worry about those dry, serious, and sharp political issues. No matter how polls show that the political enthusiasm of the people in contemporary Western countries has declined, and how boredom with and complaints about elections have increased, people are nevertheless still enjoying themselves. And those people in countries that have not yet “enjoyed” “democracy,” once they learn through the media about such a “happy” political life, will naturally yearn for it. We may say that Western democracy can avoid tyranny, or that it can bring freedom or equality; but its greatest and only indisputable advantage is perhaps this: it increases the sense of happiness among citizens and makes the people of non-democratic countries feel dissatisfied.

As for the contemporary world order, according to the late president of Time Warner, Steven Ross, “this is a world order with consumers as the real rulers,” “a competition directed by consumer tastes and demands”[11] and spreading this order to broader regions is precisely the mission of media companies. Media are the foundation upon which modern democracy and universal suffrage can be promoted, and at the same time, the spread of democracy and universal suffrage is also a requirement of media culture’s own expansion, because only the so-called democratic system can best safeguard the media’s new order. Thus it is no surprise that media magnates like Steven Ross would regard the global promotion of democracy as the inescapable mission of transnational media corporations; he claimed: “We, the producers and disseminators of ideas, by virtue of a keen sense of our own responsibilities as world citizens, ought to promote and involve ourselves in the democratic movement…. We can help bring about a world in which all peoples, regardless of race, religion, or nationality, enjoy equality and dignity.”
[12] Clearly, their efforts have been extremely successful. The globalization of the so-called democratic movement, just like the globalization of the economy, has already become fused with the global expansion of the media, so much so that if any country today still wishes to resist “democracy,” it must first erect barriers in the media.

4、 Entertainment

As mentioned earlier, media culture also turns political life into a form of entertainment. Of course, in both ancient Greece and early America, political life was also a kind of “diversion.” But that kind of diversion is utterly different from the carnival-like, irrational, pleasure-seeking “entertainment” of today.

As Neil Postman put it, the key issue is not how the entertainment programs broadcast on television and other mass media are this or that, nor is it how television, as an entertainment device, does one thing or another. “Rather, television has turned entertainment itself into the form in which all experience is presented. Our televisions keep us in touch with the world, but in the process they have always kept on wearing the same unchanging smile. Our problem is not that television shows us entertaining content, but that all content is presented in an entertaining way; that is a wholly different matter.”[13]

It is not only the entertainment programs that have become increasingly vulgar and increasingly “sensational.” Other programs—for example, if we say that the proper function of media is to facilitate communication and spread information—have also been completely turned into entertainment, including the news programs broadcast through mass media, especially on television. This view did not come from critics; it has already become part of the professional identity of contemporary media practitioners. Robert MacNeil, executive editor and co-anchor of *The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour*, said that good television news should be “as brief as possible, not give the audience any sense of mental strain; on the contrary, it should constantly stimulate viewers’ senses with varied and novel actions. You do not need to pay attention to concepts and roles; do not linger for more than a few seconds on the same issue.” He also said that the secret of producing news programs is: “the shorter the better; avoid complexity; no need for subtle meaning; use visual stimulation in place of thought; accurate wording is obsolete.”
[14]

The root of these phenomena remains the same as the view cited above from the late Steven Ross, former president of Time Warner: the global society constructed by media culture “is a competition directed by consumers’ tastes and demands”[15] Media culture contains within it a “consumer culture,” and the logic that governs consumer culture is that of “advertising.” Advertising is characterized by irrationality, decontextualization, brevity, the pursuit of sensory stimulation, the attempt to leave an “impression” rather than provoke thought, making “seeking popularity by any means” its highest goal, and so on. News, commentary, political speeches, and other programs that are originally supposed to be more serious all take advertising as their model.

It is worth noting that the new media order is directed by consumers’ “tastes and demands,” or rather by “ratings,” and not by their “opinions.” For example, in the United States in 1998, the endless investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr into Clinton’s sex scandal—he “spent months digging into the specific behavior of two people, what positions they assumed, what possible variations there were, at what precise place, whether it was only oral sex or something else, and so on”—“dominated most mainstream media, including *The New York Times*, with reports usually on the front page and usually without informing readers of the source. The Associated Press even assigned a dedicated reporting team of 25 people to the matter. In television network news in 1998, the ratio of coverage of the White House sex scandal to coverage of that year’s election campaign was 6:1. At the same time, the media also staged a ridiculous debate: whether the standards for impeachable offenses in the U.S. Constitution included attempts to conceal oral sex with another person… From the beginning of the reporting to the end, the results of public opinion polls did not change much: 50% to 70% of the public consistently believed that, whether the sex scandal was true or false, the media should shift to reporting more important matters.”[16] But the public’s “opinion” does not represent “ratings.” Although many people think in their hearts that there are more important things worth paying attention to, television has never asked viewers to watch with their “hearts.” After all, when a family sits around the dinner table, or lies comfortably on the sofa or in bed, who would want sharp and profound serious thought to disrupt such an easy and pleasant atmosphere?

5、 Values

The generalization of “entertainment” would seem to have no direct relation to globalization, but “entertainment” is precisely the core of a certain value system that is spreading across the globe through globalization. This value system is the consumer culture, or “consumerism,” celebrated by the media and embodied by the media themselves. In this culture, luxury becomes a virtue, the customer becomes God, and advertising becomes the “primary productive force.” The positions of production and consumption, value and price, are all turned upside down—consumption level no longer depends on productivity but the reverse; price no longer depends on value but the reverse.

Many discussions of globalization and the impact of transnational media on traditional values have failed to notice that the crux of the matter is that media themselves represent this modern value system, rather than the sort of entanglement many commentators fall into: Hollywood spreads American culture, so Bollywood spreads Indian culture; China’s vigorously developed “cultural industries” are just spreading Chinese culture… Many people believe that the way to resist the “cultural hegemony” of transnational media corporations is to develop local media. Others even oppose cultural imperialism on the basis of the fact that local programs are often still more popular.

For example, Michael Tracy thinks that the international communications system is far more complex than is usually assumed, and that people have seriously underestimated “the power of national cultures, the energy of language and tradition, the forces still flowing within national borders.” Audiences are also more discriminating than is commonly admitted: “American television programs have never been as popular as supposed, or even as widely circulated… citizens generally prefer homegrown programs.” Moreover, when viewers really are watching American programs, they are not as easily influenced as is usually estimated.[17]

But that is not the key point. Clearly, national cultures are not defenseless, and audiences’ preferences are entirely normal. The fact that American television programs cannot be rapidly, unreservedly accepted by audiences in other countries precisely proves that they indeed carry something different from local cultures. And it is precisely because audiences are not being affected by culture in a sharply conspicuous way, but through subtle and imperceptible “infiltration,” that the problem becomes more serious. More importantly, the point is not what television broadcasts, but the very fact of “television” itself. The United States is not only spreading its culture to the world through media; first and foremost, it is spreading “media culture” itself to the world—together with its rules of the game.

Even if we say that some films produced by Bollywood and competitive in the international market contain certain elements of Indian culture—which is only natural—the very act of “Bollywood producing films and putting them into the international market to compete” is itself made possible entirely by the expansion of media culture. To allow “traditional culture” to take part in global cultural competition means joining the global media order and accepting its rules of the game—accepting its consumer-first, eyeball-first value system, in which profit is the ultimate criterion of success or failure. When someone proudly declares, “Our nation’s cultural industries and our own media companies are already able to compete with large transnational media and have successfully established themselves in the world!” the values on which he relies to make that judgment are no longer anything found in traditional culture.

6、 Knowledge of the world

In the contemporary era, people’s very ideas of the “world” and the “global” are also shaped by the media.

Television is characterized by a strong sense of “reality” and “immediacy.” But at the same time, it also increasingly blurs the boundary between reality and illusion, thereby leading to the loss of “the immediate” and even to the loss of the self.

Today, “what media provide is no longer a reflection but a hyperreality; media themselves represent the world, and the world appears before people in the form disseminated by media. Only what enters the media counts as reality; what does not enter the media is not reality at all.”[18]

In the past, people always perceived “reality” through their own eyes and hands. That reality was around us; we not only touched reality, but also saw ourselves in reality—in our interactions with reality and with others. We could clearly perceive that “I” was living in reality. But today, television has become the window through which people “watch” the real world. What an “objective” perspective this is: our “immediate presence” may be on the other side of the globe, but “we ourselves” are never really “there.” That is to say, what mass media construct for people is a world in which “I am absent.” People become increasingly familiar with what happens in the most distant places, yet the world around them and even “themselves” become strange.

The comprehensive and far-reaching impact of this transformation in the world-picture on modern culture can scarcely be overestimated. As far as globalization is concerned, it is precisely this mode of knowing the world, which makes what is “near at hand” feel strange, that has accelerated the loss of “locality.”

7、 Growing environment/inheritance

Cultural transmission has both a side that operates subtly as “atmosphere” and influences people imperceptibly, and a side that is handed down in a clearer form as “education.” Today, both aspects are governed by the media. Modern children grow up not only in the family or in school, but also under the influence of the media—more precisely, television. “In 1997, French children aged 4 to 10 watched television for an average of nearly 2 hours a day, a 10-point increase over 1996, but this figure was only half that of American children.”[19] “In many American families, television is on for an average of seven hours a day. According to statistics, by the age of eighteen, every child raised in the United States has witnessed 18,000 simulated murderers on the television screen.”[20]

This is the growing environment of children in media culture. People often say: culture is an atmosphere, something people naturally acquire by growing up within it; if one grows up in China, one will inevitably have the traits of Chinese culture. This is not wrong, but the problem is that today’s children are not so much growing up in their “local” surroundings as they are growing up in the world presented by television. A modern child probably spends more time dealing with television than with their native place, neighbors, or even their own family. And the world presented by television—as noted above—is “I am absent,” localized, and homogenized. And what television overtly or covertly celebrates—as noted above—is consumer culture. Thus, as generations of children grow up under media influence, the trend toward globalization and cultural homogenization is likely to become ever more unstoppable.

8、 Models

A “model” is the “image spokesperson” for the character traits and value orientation of a culture or an age—for example, ancient Greece revered heroes, ancient China revered sages, ancient Europe exalted knights, ancient Japan exalted warriors, bureaucratism revered high officials, hermit culture revered recluses, capitalism revered entrepreneurs, American culture revered the suddenly rich, and so on. Under media culture, however, the substantive content of models and the demands placed on their spiritual temperament are weakened, and the prerequisite for becoming a public figure becomes fame itself. In other words, it is no longer the case, fundamentally, that some trait of a person—something admired or longed for by people—qualifies him to become a celebrity; rather, it is reversed: one must first become a celebrity in order to be admired and longed for by people.

This makes it easy to understand the popularity of “talent-show” programs such as “Super Girl” and “Dream China.” That “dream” itself is, in fact, precisely shaped by the media.

“Stars” (especially entertainment stars) become the “image spokespersons” of media culture, and the features of media culture mentioned above—eyeball supremacy, entertainment supremacy, and so on—can all be marked by this kind of “model.”

9、 Habits of life

The concept of “culture” undoubtedly includes elements such as customs and etiquette, i.e. habits of life and patterns of living, and the influence of newspapers, television, telephones, and other mass media on these elements is obvious. This probably does not require much further argument.

10、 Rhythm and pace of life

The rhythm and pace of life are an important element of culture that is often overlooked. Every culture has its own “time.”

In antiquity, this element was embodied in calendars; every larger culture necessarily had its own calendar and system of dating, and whether its calendar was lunar or solar, whether its dating system was cyclical (such as the cycle of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches) or linear (such as the Gregorian calendar), and so on, all marked different cultural characteristics. In modern times, the Christian calendar has become the global “common calendar,” which is also part of cultural globalization. In fact, the Gregorian calendar’s becoming a global common calendar beyond the Christian world is only a matter of the last few decades, and its rise is not unrelated to the expansion of media technology—on the one hand, the global interactions and global “synchronization” brought by media require a unified order of “time”; on the other hand, media themselves have taken on the role of provider of “standard time.” In antiquity, the sun or moon provided time; in ancient China, people determined the era name according to the emperor’s will; in late medieval Europe, people synchronized time by looking at the large clock on monastery spires; and today, people set their watches by the hourly time signal on radio or television. The authority that controls time is often the most dominant force in that culture, which also indirectly reveals the status of media in contemporary society.

11、 Public life/ritual

Public life, as well as rituals, festivals, celebrations, and so on, is also one aspect of a culture’s rhythm and pace of life. These activities give people a kind of shared sense and coordinated feeling, making them feel that culture is a whole. Newspapers, radio, and television were once an important platform for public life and played a significant role in shaping the cohesion, solidarity, and identity of the modern nation-state.

For example, Martin-Barbero, from the perspective of Latin America, holds that the key role of the media is “to transform the masses into the people of a nation, and the people of a nation into a nation.” He points out that in many Latin American countries, what matters most is that “the development of the national radio and television system provided people in different regions and provinces with first-hand daily national information.” As he noted, the construction and emergence of national identity cannot be properly understood without taking the role of communication technologies into account. These technologies allow people to have a “space of identification”; not merely to reawaken shared memory, but more precisely to “experience conflict and mutual dependence.” Thus, the nation should not be regarded merely as an abstract concept, but as an experience made possible by radio and television technology. The achievement of radio and television technology lies in “transforming the political concept of the nation into lived experience, emotion, and everyday things.”[21]

At the dawn of the rise of the mass media, the media themselves also consciously took on the mission of cultural cohesion. David Morley mentions that “at the beginning of the BBC’s establishment, broadcasting was deliberately used to ‘link audiences dispersed in completely different places with this symbolic center of national life.’ In the postwar period, television then took on the central mechanism of national collective life and culture. Broadcasting and television in succession ‘formed a culture shared by the entire nation, a wholly new common social life.’ Historical facts show that radio and television bore a dual responsibility: on the one hand, they were the public-service industry of the nation-state; on the other, they were the center of identification for national culture. One might say that, on both sides of the Atlantic, radio and television have become a key social institution; because of their influence, listeners and viewers have come to see themselves as members of the national social collective.”[22]

However, as David Morley then points out——“now things are changing, … after the change, the situation is no longer that audiences are treated from a political angle, that is, no longer as citizens of the national social collective, but as economic entities, as components of the consumer market.”[23]

In just a few decades, the mass media have gradually shifted from a centripetal force of national culture into a certain kind of centrifugal force. Apart from programs such as China’s News Broadcast and the Spring Festival Gala, whose influence has also been waning, the media can hardly any longer provide that sense of cohesion and of shared fate and mutual concern that comes from public social life or a common focus of attention. Still, in any case, this latent power of the media to shape public identity has not been lost.

A Brief Summary

The lengthy argument above amounts to nothing more than this: media technology governs every aspect of the culture of the contemporary world, and indeed every aspect of economic, political, and social order; and the various questions about globalization should all be discussed under the overarching historical backdrop of “media culture.” At the same time, the author has also hinted that the expansion of media culture—in other words, the trend toward globalization—is hard to restrain. But what is strong is not always reasonable. Globalization is certainly an irresistible current of the times, but this current is perhaps a destructive flood. And when faced with a flood, we must not lose ourselves in admiration of its overwhelming momentum and forget that our own fields and homes are about to be washed away by it; nor should we cling stubbornly to our own ways and turn a blind eye, shutting our doors and drowning in self-intoxication. The proper attitude toward a flood is neither to ignore it nor to block it, but either to manage and channel it as Yu the Great did; or, like the ancient Egyptians, to grasp its规律, its regularities, so as to avoid it in time when it overflows, while using the nourishment it leaves behind to reclaim the land; or else to trace it back to the source and govern it upstream… In any case, a calm perspective and rational reflection are of primary importance.

One question had been avoided in my previous discussion—what exactly does media culture refer to, a culture or a culture? We know that what is meant by bronze culture, oral culture, written culture, and so on, is a certain type of culture; within bronze culture, too, there can still be all sorts of different cultural entities. So is media culture also a broad category within which diversity still exists? Unfortunately, for the moment, there is no obvious diversity within media culture, for the following reasons: first, the rise of media culture on a global scale was a one-time event, and it emerged in an environment of universal global interconnection (an environment that was itself also brought about by the media), unlike bronze culture and the like, which arose independently in different corners of the world many times over, with different cultures able to grow in isolation from one another; second, media culture rose too quickly and has not yet had the opportunity to differentiate itself; third, and most crucially, the inner tendency of media culture is toward emptiness of content, toward the erasure of difference, toward homogenization. If we compare the technologies that in the past served as cultural markers to different kinds of brushes—say, pencils, brushes, fountain pens, and so on—then one brush produces one type of painting, and beneath that broad category there would still be rich and varied styles; but what the mass media correspond to is not a brush, but an eraser! Its function is to smooth out differences, and its inborn nihilistic quality makes it seem that from the very beginning it resists diversity. Of course, perhaps the situation is not quite so pessimistic; while accepting media culture and at the same time being guided by one’s own cultural tradition to shape diversity within media culture, that too is not impossible.

Main References

Xu Zhenglin: *A History of European Communication Thought*, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 2005

Jiang Yuanlun: *Media Culture and the Age of Consumption*, China Translation & Publishing House, 2004

[U.S.] Neil Postman: *Amusing Ourselves to Death*, trans. Zhang Yan, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004

[U.K.] David Morley: *Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries*, trans. Si Yan, Nanjing University Press, 2001

[France] Jean Baudrillard: *The Consumer Society*, trans. Liu Chengfu and Quan Zhigang, 2nd ed., Nanjing University Press, 2006

[U.S.] Ben H. Bagdikian: *The Media Monopoly (Sixth Edition)*, trans. Wu Jing, Hebei Education Press, 2004

[U.S.] James Curran and [U.S.] Micheal Gurevitch, eds.: *Mass Media and Society*, trans. Yang Ji, Huaxia Publishing House, 2006

Edited by Li Qiqing: *Globalization and Neoliberalism*, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2003

[U.S.] Robert W. McChesney: *Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times*, trans. Xie Yue, Xinhua Publishing House, 2004

[①] [Canada] Marshall McLuhan: *Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man*, trans. He Daokuan, Commercial Press, 2000, p. 33

[②] Ibid., p. 34

[③] See [U.S.] Mark Poster: *The Second Media Age*, trans. Fan Jinghua, 2nd ed., Nanjing University Press, 2005, p. 14 (p15)

[④] See Xu Zhenglin: *A History of European Communication Thought*, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 2005, p. 250

[⑤] Ibid., p. 251

[⑥] Ibid., p. 255

[⑦] [U.S.] Neil Postman: *Amusing Ourselves to Death*, trans. Zhang Yan, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004, p. 53

[⑧] Ibid., pp. 57~58

[⑨] See [U.S.] Ben H. Bagdikian: *The Media Monopoly (Sixth Edition)*, trans. Wu Jing, Hebei Education Press, 2004, p. 204

[⑩] [U.S.] Neil Postman: *Amusing Ourselves to Death*, trans. Zhang Yan, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004, p. 174

[11] See [U.K.] David Morley: *Spaces of Identity*, trans. Si Yan, Nanjing University Press, 2001, p. 15

[12] Ibid., p. 16

[13] [U.S.] Neil Postman: *Amusing Ourselves to Death*, trans. Zhang Yan, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004, p. 114

[14] Ibid., p. 136

[15] [U.K.] David Morley: *Spaces of Identity*, trans. Si Yan, Nanjing University Press, 2001, p. 15

[16] See [U.S.] Ben H. Bagdikian: *The Media Monopoly (Sixth Edition)*, trans. Wu Jing, Hebei Education Press, 2004, p. 18

[17] [U.K.] David Morley: *Spaces of Identity*, trans. Si Yan, Nanjing University Press, 2001, p. 109

[18] Xu Zhenglin: *A History of European Communication Thought*, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 2005, pp. 262~263

[19] [U.S.] Robert W. McChesney: *Rich Media, Poor Democracy*, trans. Xie Yue, Xinhua Publishing House, 2004, p. 115

[20] [U.K.] Robin Cohen and Paul Kennedy: *Global Sociology*, trans. Wen Jun et al., Social Sciences Academic Press, 2001, p. 389

[21] [U.K.] David Morley: *Spaces of Identity*, trans. Si Yan, Nanjing University Press, 2001, p. 90

[22] Ibid., p. 14

[23] Ibid.

Latest Comments

UNIC
2006-12-28 23:36:40

Were you busy with this these past few days?
A major work; I’ll read it carefully over New Year’s.
The stuff in MS is a problem I’m very concerned about.
Gu

2006-12-29 10:14:18

Of course, these past two days I wasn’t busy only with this; in fact, this took me just one all-nighter. There are still piles of other exams—things to memorize, things to recite, books to read~~~~~~
UNIC

2007-01-01 17:10:24

“他们关注的是媒介所传递的东西，而不没有注意到在全球化进程中起决定性影响的其实是媒介本身……”
Shouldn’t “而不没有” be “而并没有”?
“This is a new culture placed outside the opposition between Enlightenment reason and irrationality”
I don’t understand.
“Technology has its own logic, its own ‘instinct’ to reproduce and expand itself. People think technology is a tool of human beings, but from another angle, aren’t human beings the ‘tool’ of technology itself—tools through which technology reproduces and evolves?”
Well said.