Globalization of the Media: Does It Undermine National Cultures?

This essay aims to find out whether globalization of the media tends to undermine national cultures. Current arguments about the relationship between media globalization and national cultures are presented and analyzed. A study of the different functions performed by global media within the context of different economic, technological and cultural situations, from a cultural perspective, was carried out in order to examine the different ways globalization of media can influence national cultures. Media might play a necessary and active role affecting a nation’s culture, but is improbably to be called a “sufficient condition” for cultural resistance or submission. Whether the globalization of media undermines national culture or not also depends on how strong a particular national culture is. On the positive side, economic and technological globalization of media not only recharges the existing media strengths, but also allows new media bodies to emerge and grow. The essay uses the case of India to exemplify that the driving forces behind global cultural homogenization can be weak under some circumstances and that global media may be indigenized in some cases. The national and regional media groups in India, such as Zee TV, develop quickly. Thanks to cultural factors, they have an edge over foreign competitors and play a very important role in the preservation of Indian cultural identity. “Internationalization” is a fashionable, mysterious, and magic word on everyone’s lips. For some people, it is what we must do if we wish to be happy; for others it is the cause of much angst. Most agree that the trend toward internationalization appears to be irreversible, and it is a process that is bound to affect all in one way or another. Although we accept the situation as significant, there are some problems with the term, itself. Does globalization turn our planet into a world society, a “global village”? Or, conversely, does it disintegrate the nation-state system, and dissolve stable national identities? Some theorists support the idea that a global village will encourage universal citizenship and allow national cultures to interact. Others argue that the flow of media from the rich states to the poorer countries may aggravate the already existing power gap between them, or that imported media cultures may threaten the native culture of the receiving country. The terms “internationalization” and “globalization” have somewhat different foci of meanings. The former usually refers to standards and rules, while the latter often identifies social, migratory, linguistic, and economic practices of global integration. For simplification, the terms will be used interchangeably in this paper, which will use the experience of India’s media industry to analyze the influence of media internationalization on national cultures. Globalization