Globalization in a mediated world

Globalization is not just about economy and transnational corporations and organizations, although this dimension is of course very important. Globalization, to a large degree, also influences the media we watch, the culture we live in and our everyday life. In a more and more global world our national politics, finances and our environment are no longer just a matter for national decisions and debate. Whether we like it or not, we depend on the global contexts, and no matter how weak global institutions and networks may seem at times, they are very important. The global networks are both formal and informal networks, they can be democratic and public or just private. The period pre- and post-9/11 has seen a huge increase in terror networks, just as these terror networks have been met with counter-measures that some researchers and journalists have characterized as 'top secret institutions' beneath the surface and between intelligence agencies globally (Svendsen 2010 and Priest and Arkin 2011). Global threats and challenges tend to create counter-responses of an equally global nature, at least in some areas, and sometimes these responses can challenge our very notions of democracy, the independence of the media and basic human rights. But global networks are not related only to war and terror, and in the world after 2001 many other challenges on a global level have given already existing global institutions and networks new importance. At the same time the whole development of a global network society has reshaped the way we interact and communicate, and the relationship between old and new media.

The challenge of the global realities has also created a strong development of, and change in, the major theories on globalization in general, and within specific areas of globalization in particular. Globalization has, of course, in some form or other, always been part of both ancient and modern societies through trade, migration, war, conquest, travel, communication etc. But the rise of global communication technologies – first telegraph, cable, radio and later visual and digital communication, are important for the speed and intensity of globalization. The degree to which global processes of a global economy and global politics go hand in hand with global communication indicate the stages of modern globalization and the way we experience it. Just as the basic human rights of freedom of expression and access to information and communication have been central to the development of national democracies and national media cultures, they have also been a central dimension of the debate on global democracy and global governance. In the early stages of modernization and globalization, news and communication travelled slowly and mainly just between the financial and political elites in the highly developed countries. Today, history is broadcast almost instantly when it happens, and even in not so developed countries new mobile technologies can make a difference.

This discussion is connected to issues of global inequalities and the question of hegemony and diversity. The fall of communism in 1989 and the end of the Cold War created a new situation for the 'free flow of information' on a global level. The global reach of satellite television, and digital and mobile communication, further developed the technological infrastructure on a global scale. But technological infrastructures are of course still more developed in some parts of the world than others. On a more transnational political level these kinds of questions and problems have been dealt with in, for instance, the UN, UNESCO and the international commission for a New World Order (NWICO) since the 1970s (see Thussu 2006: 33f). The so-called MacBride Commission Report from 1980 reflected very critical positions to the present state of globalization and to the dominance of superpowers on a global level and in global communication. But although the global dominance of big companies and big communication corporations is an empirical fact, the conclusion that the world is dominated by a political, economic and cultural hegemony is also contested in modern globalization theory.

Critical theory and globalization

One of the strongest and most influential theories of globalization is the critical theory based on studies of the global economy and the global media systems. In many ways, this theory expands the theory of imperialism to modern societies and to the role of global media in a new cultural and communicative imperialism. Typical representatives of this theory are Edward S. Herman and Robert W. McChesney's The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (1997), where they argue for a dramatic structural change in the global media culture since the 1980s, from a classical, nationally controlled and defined media system, to a global, commercial system dominated by a group of 30–50 big global corporations. What they argue is that this development undermines a democratic, public sphere, and national and global democracy and citizenship, and brings the media outside democratic and political control. Globalization thus means concentration, commercialization, unbalanced global competition and is seen as a serious threat to political and democratic standards and control. The US–UK case against Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the scandal around and closing down of News of the World in 2011 based on illegal phone tapping of politicians, celebrities and ordinary people, certainly represents a clear example of the relevance of the arguments put forward by Herman and McChesney. The argument put forward here could furthermore be expanded to the global financial sector as such, where global finance, despite global political initiatives such as the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund or the trade regulation organization GATT, in numerous cases has created instability. As we have seen in the worldwide financial crisis in 2010–2011 there is a huge fight going on between transnational political institutions and the global financial sector. Globalization is challenging our national frameworks, media and politics to a very large degree.

In critical theory the global media are American, and this global dominance is, of course, nowhere so symbolic...