According to O’Shaughnessy and Stadler (2012), Globalisation refers to an international community that is influenced by technological development as well as economic, political and military interests. It is characterised through global interactions and unification (i.e. interdependence, interconnectedness and instantaneity), which could potentially lead to the homogenisation of world cultures, or towards hybridisation and multiculturalism.
According to Appadurai (1990), in order to analyse and evaluate globalisation, we must consider five key dimensions:
- Ethnoscapes
- Technoscapes
- Financescapes
- Mediascapes
- Ideoscapes
On the topic of international communication, the key dimensions that I will be focusing on are technoscapes. Technoscapes are the global and fluid configuration of technology (Appadurai, 2000). Technology has rapidly and relentlessly advancing, simultaneously surpassing impervious boundaries, such as time and space, on a global scale through platforms such as the Internet. The Internet is an example of the utopian view of globalisation. This utopian view is captured in McLuhan’s phrase of ‘the global village’ that suggests no matter where we are in the world, everyone can be brought closer by the globalisation of communication (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, 2012). The Internet is a world where everyone can have a voice and be heard and also enable information to be freely shared with each other or as members of online communities, similar to the image depicted in McLuhan’s ‘global village’.
However, today’s global interactions have created tensions between cultural homogenisation and heterogenization. Negative reactions to globalisation represent a dystopian view, which is exemplified by cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism describes the widespread cultural values and ideas of one culture through means such as the media rather than direct rule or economic trade which is detrimental as it threatens the loss of cultural diversity and a global monopoly (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, 2012). Thus, there are both positive and negative reactions and consequences following globalisation.
References
1. Appadurai, A.1990), ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, Public Culture, Vol.2, No.3, pp. 1-23
2. O’Shaughnessy, M & Stadler, J (2012) ‘Globalisation’, Media and Society, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic, pp. 23-38
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