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Hyperreality
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This is a view of the world which is created and defined by the media, with the image of an event more real than the event it is meant to be depicting.
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John Tomlinson (1999)
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This pluralist sociologist argues that globalisation does not involve the direct cultural imposition from the Western world, but that there is a hybridisation or mixing of cultures: -People pick 'n' mix and draw on both Western/global cultures and their own cultures. -Increased choice promotes different cultural styles around the world in which a range of local and westernised global cultural influences are combined into new hybrid cultures. -For example, although there may be globalised TV formats, many programmes, such as 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' are 'glocalised' - merging the global and the local - as they are adapted to suit the tastes of local cultures, as was shown in the film 'Slumdog Millionaire'. -This means there is more, not less, cultural diversity in the world. |
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Christian Fuchs (2014)
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This sociologist argues that the owners of transnational corporations not only dominate world trade in popular culture, thereby denying true choice to consumers, but they are also able disproportionately to influence governments, thus threatening democracy and freedom of expression:
-He is very dismissive of the notion of the participatory popular culture championed by Jenkins because he argues: "an internet that is dominated by corporations that accumulate capital by exploiting and commodifying users can never be participatory.". |
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Held et al. (2003)
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These sociologists argue that the cultural imperialism argument makes the mistake of suggesting that the flow of culture is one-way only - from the West to the developed world:
-This focus fails to acknowledge 'reverse cultural flows' - how Western culture is enriched by inputs from the popular culture of other societies.
-These flows are likely to produce hybridisation as people in both the West and the developing world select from the global only that which pleases them and then alter it so that it is adapted to local culture or needs, or mix it with local media to produce completely new forms of media.
-For example, many Western musicians such as Damon Albarn and Robert Plant have worked with African and Arab musicians to fuse genres of music into new forms. |
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Leslie Sklair (2012)
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This sociologist suggests the media, largely American-based, spread news, information, ideas, entertainment and popular culture to a global market: -The media blur the differences between information, entertainment and promotion of products, and sell across the world ideas, values and products associated with what is presented as an idealised, happy and satisfying consumerist American/Western lifestyle. -This encourages acceptance of the dominant ideology of Western capitalist societies, which he calls the 'culture-ideology of consumerism'. -It is Western companies such as Microsoft and Google that have dominated the growth of the internet, which increasingly spreads this same Western culture-ideology of consumerism. |
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Owen Spencer-Thomas (2008)
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This postmodernist sociologist observed that mass anti-government demonstrations in Burma in 1988 failed to receive much media attention because the military regime banned overseas journalists from the country: -In contrast, the mass demonstrations of 2007 received far more global attention as the Burmese people had access to new media technology, such as the mobile phone and the internet, and were able instantaneously to send messages and, in particular, images of the Burmese army's violent reaction to the protests, thereby generating instant global criticism of the Burmese government's actions. |
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Sonia Livingstone (1988)
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This sociologist found that the writers and producers of TV soap operas, a form of popular culture watched by millions, saw them as educating and informing the public about important or controversial social issues, presenting a range of political opinions, generating public controversies and discussion, and giving insights into the sometimes tough and grim lives of others:
-Rather than killing off public debate and lulling mass audiences into uncritical passivity, contemporary discussion about issues that might otherwise rarely get aired in public, or only in crude media stereotypes.
-For example, in recent years the public has been encouraged through soap stories to discuss issues like child rape, incest, homelessness, false imprisonment, lesbianism, child abuse, domestic violence, eating disorders, homophobia, racism, bisexuality, religious cults, paedophilia, drug addiction and relationship breakdown.
-The controversies surrounding these soap stories have frequently dominated the headlines of the red-top tabloid press, promoting public discussions that might never otherwise have happened. |
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Jean Baudrillard (1998, 2001)
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This postmodernist sociologist argues that we now live in a media-saturated society, in which media images dominate and distort the way we see the world: -For example, media images replace reality to such an extent that laser technology and video reportage have eliminated the blood, the suffering and the corpses from war. -The TV news presents a sanitised version of war, with wars as media-constructed spectacles to gaze at, which have such an air of unreality about them that it is hard to distinguish between image and reality, as they appear like Hollywood movies or computer games. -He calls this distorted view of the world hyperreality, in which appearances are everything, with the media presenting what he calls simulacra - artificial make-believe images or reproductions/copies of real events which bear little or no relationship to the real world and which are viewed simultaneously across the globe.
In this media-saturated postmodern world, he suggests we identify more with media images than we do with our own daily experiences, and we increasingly live media-led virtual lives rather than real ones: -We are more likely to get excited about who is the best act in the 'X Factor', or engage with people we hardly know on Facebook or Twitter, or to identify with the lives and communities of television soap characters or reality TV characters, than we are to get involved with our next-door neighbours and the communities we actually live in. -An example of this hyperreality was found in TV soap 'Coronation Street' in 1998, when the character Deirdre Barlow was sent to prison in the show for a crime she did not commit. -The British public started a big grassroots campaign, pleading with Granada Television to 'free the Weatherfield One'. -Even more bizarrely, the real world home secretary involved the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who, with only a touch of irony, attempted to intervene in this unreal world on Deirdre's behalf. |
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Simulacra
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These are media image or reproductions and copies which appear to reflect things in the real world but have no basis in reality.
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Henry Jenkins (2008, 2013)
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This postmodernist sociologist developed the concept of global participatory culture, which is the involvement of users, audiences, consumers and fans in the creation of culture and content: -This might include contributing to a Wikipedia page, uploading videos to YouTube, writing a blog or the creation of short messages on Twitter. -He argues that global culture and society have become more democratic because users and audiences are enabled to produce culture themselves and to not just listen or watch without actively making and creating culture. -He also argues that participatory culture creates new forms of community because those involved feel connected to one another, in that they care about what other people feel about what they have created.
Along with other sociologists in 2013, he observed that globalisation of popular and participatory culture has been enhanced by the very rapid spread of social media: -If audiences are not encouraged to get involved with actively shaping the flow of content on social media, it is unlikely that the medium with globally expand - "if it doesn't spread, it's dead". -He argues that audience participation empowers consumers - for example, he argues that global social media allow fans of television shows that have been cancelled to speak back to the networks and to lobby for the return of their favourite programmes. -He also celebrates blogs because, he argues, they are a means through which their authors can challenge the meta-narratives associated with the mainstream news media. |
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Lane Crothers (2012)
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This Marxist sociologist states, "The fear is that in time everyone everywhere will end up eating the same thing, reading the same thing, and wearing the same thing. Under such circumstances, cultural diversity will be lost forever. What would be left is a world of soulless consumers just looking for the next thing to buy that is exactly like what everyone else in the world already has and wants until the corporations generate the next must-have item. One culture, consumer capitalism, would dominate the world".
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Daya Kishan Thussu (2007)
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This sociologist argues that the globalisation of television and competition between media conglomerates for audiences and advertising has led to TV news across the world becoming tabloidised or more like entertainment - what he calls 'global infotainment', designed both to entertain and to inform - with an emphasis on celebrities, crime, corruption and violence at the expense of reporting of public affairs: -This US-style infotainment is accompanied by the promotion of a false global 'feelgood factor' based on Western, and particularly US, consumerist lifestyles. -He argues this diverts people's attention away from more serious issues, like wars, the destruction of native cultures by global media conglomerates, the growing cultural hegemony of the West, and global inequality. -This provides evidence for the Marxist view that global mass culture lulls consumers into an uncritical, undemanding passivity, making them less likely to challenge the dominant ideas, groups and interests in society. |
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Steve Fenton (1999)
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This sociologist points out that the term 'global' rarely means 'universal', and normally disguises the domination of Western culture over other cultures: -Most media conglomerates are now based in the United States, and US transnational media and communications corporations, like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL/CNN/Time-Warner, dominate global communications. -This has been described as a process of cocaolonisation which involves cultural imperialism or media imperialism. -This is the suggestion that the media-led global culture-ideology of consumerism described above has led to Western, and especially American, media products and cultural values being forced on non-Western cultures, and overwhelming a good part of the world with the consequent undermining of local cultures and cultural independence. -This global Western dominance is illustrated by the fact that nearly all the 500 top-grossing international films of all time, outside of the United States, are primarily American films. |
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John Thompson (1995)
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This postmodernist sociologist argues that the globalisation of communication has become so intensive and extensive that all consumers of the global media are citizens both of the world and of their locality: -However, he argues that global media products are often domesticated by local folk cultures and this usually creates a hybridised media culture that makes sense within local communities. -Local cultures are not therefore swallowed up by global media culture; rather, local culture adapts to global culture. -In India, for example, Bollywood films are produced by a local film industry that is organised around both Hollywood and Indian entertainment values. |
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Dominic Strinati (1995)
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This postmodernist sociologist argues that elements of high culture have now become a part of popular culture, and elements of popular culture have been incorporated into high culture, so there is no longer any real distinction between high culture and popular culture: -This has increased consumer choice, because popular culture is increasingly assimilating high culture and vice versa. -For example, classical music and opera often accompany television coverage of global sporting events, while classical performers such as Vanessa Mae have adopted marketing strategies similar to those of rock stars. -He doesn't accept the suggestion that there is a single mass culture and mass audience, which people passively and uncritically consume, and points to a wide diversity and choice within popular culture, which people select from and critically respond to.
He also emphasises the importance and power of the media in shaping consumer choices: -Popular culture, such as the culture of celebrity, and media images and messages bombard us daily, through books, magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, advertising, smartphones, tablet computers and the internet, and form our sense of reality and increasingly dominate the way we define ourselves. -In this media-saturated society, the media create desires and pressures to consume, and many of us actually define our identities - how we see and define ourselves and how we want others to see us - in terms of media imagery. -Colour, form and media-induced trends become more important than the content or usefulness of products; it is not the quality of the clothes, drink or mobile phones we buy that matters, but whether they conform to media-induced images, styles, brand names and trends. -The media-promoted designer labels of popular culture become more important than the quality of the products. -In films, it is not the story that matters so much as how good the special visual and sound effects are; not the script or the writing, more the icon and the big-name stars. -There are any number of people who are famous for no reason at all except for being made into celebrities by the media. |
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