Critical Sociology

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Globalization, Media, and the Teacher-Activist's Response Joan Boyle, Upjeet Chandan, Margot B. Hardenbergh, Mark Hedley and Cecilia Rio Crit Sociol 2008 34: 753 DOI: 10.1177/0896920508093367 The online version of this article can be found at: http://crs.sagepub.com/content/34/5/753

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Critical Sociology 34(5) 753-759 http://crs.sagepub.com

Globalization, Media, and the Teacher-Activist’s Response Joan Boyle Dowling College, New York, USA

Upjeet Chandan Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, Durban, South Africa

Margot B. Hardenbergh Fordham University, New York, USA

Mark Hedley Southern Illinois University/Edwardsville, Illinois, USA

Cecilia Rio Towson University, Maryland, USA

Abstract While it has become commonplace for mainstream media outlets to offer report and commentary on trends in economic globalization, it is rare for these same media outlets to exhibit self-awareness with regards to how the media has developed the forces of globalization. In this article, five academics from disparate disciplines in the humanities and social sciences address this impact, describe the negative consequences that the globalization of media has wrought in terms of social justice, and offer ideas concerning how activist academics might challenge the current direction of media globalization, both in their classrooms and in their activist endeavors. Keywords activism, civil society, globalization, media, pedagogy

Introduction We are all teachers-activists combining our knowledge, skills, and passions to formulate progressive strategies in response to globalization. We came together to answer the following two questions: what is the connection between the global economy and the media? And how can a bunch of teachers from disparate disciplines – anthropology, communications, economics, philosophy, and sociology – best understand this relationship so as to foster effective pedagogy? In answering these questions, we had to bridge more © 2008 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)

DOI: 10.1177/0896920508093367


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Critical Sociology 34(5)

than just cognitive differences. We also realized that the process of sharing this knowledge was just as important as the proposals we developed.

Defining Globalization and Media Globalization and media are two terms that have garnered increasing attention over the past decade, and the simultaneous globalization of the media has raised critical questions about which interests govern the circulation of mass mediated knowledge and for what purposes. Globalization refers to the intensification of transnational flows of capital, goods, people, and images across the borders of nation-states, and the concomitant and intersecting economic, political, cultural, and social processes that these flows engender. At the heart of globalization is the compression of time and space (Giddens, 1981, 1984; Harvey, 1989), enabled by the proliferation of high speed transportation, communication, and information technologies. Importantly, this re-configuration of time and space is dramatically transforming social, political, and economic relations. While some scholars emphasize the economics of globalization (Stiglitz, 2002) and others foreground its cultural aspects (Appadurai, 1996; Rantanen, 2005), an emphasis on the role of the media as a globalizing force illustrates the intersection of both culture and economics. In their broadest sense, media refer to channels of communication and the exchange of meaning. Within the context of this essay, the term media has been used inclusively to reference a range of communication technologies including the print press, radio, cable and broadcast television, film, and the internet. More recently, the electronic media have enabled the development of a global community and consciousness (Eisenstein, 1979; McLuhan, 1964).1

The Twin Connection: The Economics of Globalization and Media The media industry and the forces of globalization are intimate bedfellows. It is no longer sufficient to think of the media as merely representing the interests of multinationals and the capitalist elite. They are one and the same. Big media is big business and big profits. The fact that many of these media mega-conglomerates possess a great deal of the globe’s economic resources and political power and are determined to own even more is easily documented. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the News Corporation, one of the largest media-based corporations in the world, for instance, stated: ‘News Corporation is determined to become fully global. We can and will become wholly international. Establishing ourselves outside the English-speaking world in countries where the language and the culture are strange to us. We have an advantage in this’ (quoted in Demers, 1999: 33).2 Since the media has become commodified, and the purpose of a commodity is to extract as much profit as possible, the media can no longer be considered the guardian of the public good. News programs are no longer guided by principles of sound bi-partisan journalism and concerns for the democratic process, but rather by the rating imperative


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and rules of corporate sponsorship. Journalism is supplanted by sensationalism and entertainment (McChesney, 1999). Moreover, the industry is structured like an oligopoly. There is a strong incentive for these few firms to join interests and act like a cartel, gouging consumers and effectively hampering other competitors’ attempts to enter the industry. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 increased the likelihood of such behavior by deregulating the industry and allowing firms to move into multiple media outlets. These mega-conglomerates are strategically positioned to take advantage of ‘cross sales’ and self-promotion. Take, for example, the media’s common use and self-servicing circulation of terms like ‘America’s War on Terrorism’, ‘smart bombs’, ‘collateral damage’, ‘weapons of mass destruction’, ‘Countdown Iraq’, and ‘regime change’. By producing and circulating such terms, the media produced fear and a war-like vengeance in a post 9/11 world. As a result, they not only stimulate a global market for military, industrial (especially oil) and consumer goods, but also increase the value of entertainment as a way to escape and release anxiety. Such entertainment can then be used to further promote neo-liberal values and anesthetize people to the horrors of war. These practices take on an even more insidious meaning if one makes the connection between these mega-conglomerates and their economic investments in nuclear technology, weapons, and other industrial and consumer goods explicit.3 It is no surprise that many of the industry’s moguls are chief promoters of neo-liberal practices and pro-market policies like GATT and NAFTA. They favor limited taxes as well as limited government regulation, unless of course, it is government intervention on their behalf (McChesney, 1999). They are the direct recipients of the increased concentration of wealth and economic power, after all.4 Understanding the role that media play in the economy is important for scholars and activists who are critical of neo-liberal policies, because it reveals the vested interests media outlets have in promoting globalization. As educators we can translate this understanding into effective pedagogy by teaching our students to analyze the media critically and to seek alternative sources of information on the economics of globalization. The Center for Popular Economics, for example, aims to demystify economics and provide alternatives to mainstream analyses of globalization. CPE offers several ‘globalization briefs’ that are critical of neo-liberal trade policies at its web site http://www.populareconomics.org/globalization. In addition, the Center also offers interactive and participant-centered workshops and institutes that are especially designed to increase the economic literacy of teachers and activists. One of the principal effects of media mega-conglomeration is homogeneity in news content and a lack of democracy in meaning-making. It is not accidental that whether we listen to the radio, read the local or national papers, or watch television news shows, we are subjected to similar perspectives. This chorus of uniformity is dangerous, because many media consumers assume that the voices legitimated on television, in print, and on the radio are ‘objective’. Instead, by relying on official, professional, and ‘insider’ accounts, commercial media outlets perform a spectacle of truth, creating the illusion of debate while silencing more radical critiques (Chomsky and Herman, 2002 [1988]). This understanding is important for activists and educators because if we seek to appropriate media technologies as tools for democratic engagement and critique, we need


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to disentangle how the globalization of the media has re-shaped journalistic standards and knowledge production in the interest of commercial competitiveness (Shah, n.d.). On the one hand, we need to be clear that media globalization in its dominant manifestation is driven by a logic of profit, accumulation, and power. On the other hand, we need to remember that it is impossible to speak of globalization in a singular sense. Indeed, the exercise of global power has engendered powerful resistance on the ground and created opportunities to re-define globalization through the lens of international citizenship rather than global consumption. In this regard, media can be a strategic tool for re-negotiation. The paradox that we foreground, then, involves the subversive use of a globalized media network to challenge the hierarchical pattern of political and economic relationships that enable its existence.

The Response: Activism in Our Classrooms and Networking for Change Social network theory offers instructive insight into how we may effectively make use of a globalizing media to increase media literacy and promote social justice in our classrooms. Social network theory is founded upon the principle that social action has a concrete existence only within social relationships (see Boorman and White, 1976; Wasserman and Faust, 1994; Wellman, 1983; Wellman and Berkowitz, 1997; White, 1992; White et al., 1976). In terms of utilizing network analysis, students can be given assignments where they are to draft informative emails to people in their social network and then ask the recipients to forward the emails to others, each time ‘cc-ing’ the forwarded message back to its original source. In completing this simple exercise, students are able to comprehend in a very concrete way the power of the internet in circulating insurgent ideas outside of mainstream media channels. A similar type of exercise focuses on students creating their own media virus. Students can do this effectively through email trees that direct recipients to websites on which insurgent ideas are expressed. Some students have also produced short videos which, if made available on a website, could be likewise disseminated. When students see that one message sent to 20 like-minded and motivated friends can turn into hundreds of messages sent to an even wider audience within one iteration, they begin to grasp the power of the internet and the possibilities of alternative forms of activism and hopefully more democratic forms of communication. Oneworld TV is particularly helpful in the classroom, as it invites students to produce their own video for airing. Rather than relying solely on a commercialized media culture, which has the tendency to encourage viewers to be passive consumers, these types of exercises encourage students to see themselves as active participants in creating alternative channels of communication. One strategy for expanding network space is to replace strategic action with communicative action. Strategic action describes communication aimed at conformity of behaviors through the exertion of external force with the goal of causal influence or strategy (Habermas, 1998). The goal of communication is to forward one party’s plan of action over the other by means of inducements, extending coercive suggestions, making veiled



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or open threats, or using deception. We might cite the Bush administration’s approach to the Iraq war as a reference point. In this sense, strategic action is not truly interactive, as it ‘cannot count inter-subjectivity as an agreement since it does not bring about connections’ (Habermas, 1998: 223). The second kind of social interaction aims at the more exacting goal of consensus arrived at by communicative action, a gradual process of bonding and development of shared community values through communication that evokes coordination of shared motivations based on common convictions (Habermas, 1998). The language of communicative action is oriented toward reaching understanding among actors attuned to cooperative plans. Those who accept a place in such a community tend to feel internally bound to act on their commitments not only because they are convinced by these claims, but because of a mutually contracted social bond. Through classroom assignments and activities, there are concrete ways to illustrate the practical difference between strategic and communicative action and to teach students about the global significance of communicative action. For example, through an analysis of their respective websites, students can critically evaluate the structure and goals of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and compare its methods to those of the World Social Forum (WSF). Whereas the WTO defines itself as ‘the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations’ whose goal is to ‘help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business’, (www.wto.org: ‘What is the WTO?’), the WSF does not see itself as an organization with a united platform. Rather, it is ‘an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking of effective action by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism’ (www.wsfindia.org: from the WSF Charter of Principles). Through a comparative learning activity, students can learn about the practical implications of communicative and strategic action as they shape global events and practices. We could also encourage students to become involved in creating alternative media spaces for debate and critical reflection about issues relating to globalization. Students can become active participants in the production and distribution of alternative, noncorporate stories of current world events disseminated either through the print press, internet, radio, or public access cable TV. Students can volunteer with independent media collectives such as the Independent Media Center (IMC), an open-publishing media outlet for the ‘creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth’, which originated to provide grassroots coverage of the WTO protest in Seattle, WA (www.indymedia.org); they can train with a video collective such as Paper Tiger TV (www.papertiger.org), which for 23 years has been distributing public access series by volunteer producers, educators and activists; students can become NEWSREAL producers or host NEWSREAL screenings in their home locations. NEWSREAL programs examine actions taken by local communities to address pressing issues that affect their lives, such as pollution, reproductive rights, sweatshops, racism, police brutality, and indigenous struggles (http://satellite.indymedia.org). Importantly, these ‘local’ concerns often have important global dimensions.


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Conclusion In conclusion, new pedagogical approaches in our classrooms can enable students to develop a critical analysis of the media and globalization while simultaneously identifying alternative and self-affirming communication networks to promote activist work. One successful pedagogical technique that attempts to strike an effective balance among the many concerns raised in this article is the feminist ‘Head, Heart and Hands’ approach to social change (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, 2001). The use of the head, for instance, highlights the need for an inclusive theoretical perspective that serves as a foundation for activist work. The need for the ‘heart’ refers to the social process of developing an alternative vision – to find the courage and collective strength to ‘dream the impossible dream’. Finally, the use of the hands is a call for communicative action. Through the development of classroom exercises that foster concrete actions like the ones discussed above, teacher and students can play a small, but powerful, role in nurturing local solidarities and developing the necessary cultural cohesion that supports multi-issue organizing in response to globalization.

Notes 1 Some find that historically media technologies have reflected political and economic patterns. The printing press, for example, allowed for the enlightenment, while also encouraging the development of nation-states (Anderson, 1983). 2 Many of the top media industry leaders are mega-conglomerates. Companies like General Electric, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom, and AOL/Time Warner not only own a great deal of the various media outlets around the world, but they also produce a variety of other industrial products and consumer merchandise (McChesney, 1999: 19). 3 In his documentary, Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore suggests that the media has a vested economic interest in sensationalizing violence and raising fear among the American public. According to Moore, a fearful American is a great consumer and a conservative voter (The Donahue Show, 2002). 4 In 2001, for example, Gerald M. Levin, the head of AOL Time Warner, was one of the highest paid chief executives in the world, receiving a total compensation package, including stock options, of $147,551,027, while Jeffery R. Immelt, the CEO for General Electric, received a package of $26,956,298 (Executive Pay: A Special Report, 2002).

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Chomsky, N. and Herman, E. (2002 [1988]) Manufacturing Consent. Pantheon Books: New York. Demers, D. (1999) Global Media: Menace or Messiah? Hampton Press: Cresskill. The Donahue Show (2002) MSNBC, 28 October 2002. Eisenstein, E. (1979) Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge University Press: New York. Executive Pay: A Special Report (2002) New York Times, 7 April 2002, section 3: 8. Giddens, A. (1981) The Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. University of California Press: Berkeley. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. University of California Press: Berkeley. Habermas, J. (1998) Actions, Speech Acts, Linguistically Mediated Interactions and Lifeworld. M. Cooke (ed.) On the Pragmatics of Communication, pp. 221–6. MIT Press: Cambridge. Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell: Cambridge and Oxford. Kirk, G. and Okazawa-Rey, M. (2001) Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Mayfield: Mountain View. McChesney, R.W. (1999) Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. New York: The New Press. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill: New York. Rantanen, T. (2005) The Media and Globalization. Sage: Thousand Oaks. Shah, H. (n.d.) Journalism in an Age of Mass Media Globalization. URL (consulted 20 June 2007): http://www.idsnet.org/Papers/Communications/HEMANT_SHAH.HTM Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and Its Discontents. Norton: New York. Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Application. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Wellman, B. (1983) Network Analysis: Some Basic Principles. R. Collins (ed.) Sociological Theory, pp. 155–200. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco. Wellman, B. and Berkowitz, S.D. (eds) (1997) Social Structures: A Network Approach. JAI Press: Greenwich. White, H. (1992) Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action. Princeton University Press: Princeton. White, H., Boorman, S.A. and Breiger, R.L. (1976) Social Structure from Multiple Networks, Part 1: Blockmodels of Roles and Positions. American Journal of Sociology 81(4): 730–80.

For correspondence: Mark Hedley, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Box 1455, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, Illinois, 62026–1455, USA. Email: [email protected]
