Globalisation

Globalisation

1. Steger defines globalisation as a “set of social processes that are thought to transform our present social condition into one of globality”. He sees globality as a “social condition characterised by the existence of global economic, political, cultural and environmental interconnections and flows that make many of the [current] existing borders and boundaries irrelevant”.

2. Crothers states that a combination of economic, political and cultural factors promotes globalisation in three ways:

   • 1. New and increased relationships between people, social networks and ideas go beyond traditional nation state borders. For example, people in ‘traditional’ societies are now exposed to modern technologies, such as mobile phones, and modern ideas, such as democracy, equality and tolerance for others. However, this goes both ways; modern societies are exposed to and influenced by the values of the developing world with regard to the environment, alternative medicine, religion, and so on.
   • 2. People are linked in new ways as both the production and consumption of goods, as well as the flow of financial capital, take place all day, every day, all around the world. For example, workers in the West and in developing countries may find themselves employed by the same transnational corporations. Economic problems in one part of the world now have a knock-on effect on the rest of the world, as demonstrated by the 2008 meltdown in the subprime mortgage market in America. Products by big brands such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Apple are consumed worldwide.
   • 3. Global events and issues have become local events and issues because of the speed of communication and the expectation of instantaneous contact. For example, Islamist groups such as the so-called Islamic State have taken particular advantage of satellite television channels such as Al-Jazeera, online social networks and smartphones to disseminate live images of beheadings quickly to a global audience.

3. Bell notes that there has never been a form of global media with the power to report and spread events with the speed and geographic reach of Twitter. She argues that “America holds its first television debate for Democratic candidates, Donald Trump live-tweets it. If London Bridge is closing down, Twitter provides the eyewitness reports and pictures ahead of the broadcast news media. Journalists, when they wake in the morning, don’t first switch on the radio; they reach for their smartphones and scroll through Twitter. Their subjects and sources, from politicians to pop stars, do the same”.

   • As people are exposed to this increasingly complex world their ideas and identities are shaped and reshaped. For example, some media sociologists argue that social networks can give people who live in repressive societies the confidence to rebel and take to the streets to demand change. Bell observes that Facebook has 1.2 billion active users worldwide, and these users are constantly engaged in constructing and reconstructing their identities through the posting of textual and visual representations that add up to their personal profile and identity.