OUGD501: Design Context - Globalisation, Sustainability and the Media Lecture Notes

The media's role in perpetuating an ever expanding culture of capitalism.

Definitions of Globalisation :

Socialist
Capitalist

SLIDE HERE.

• Globalisation could be figured as a positive.
• It was a desirable aim, something to be strived for.
• Unification for the common good

• Capitalism needs to create money
• It breaks down state boundaries and spreads the market globally. 

SLIDE ON GLOBALISATION

• Dominance of a western culture
• Particularly America - the heart of global capitalism

• Technology effectively globalises the world

SLIDE - QUOTE FROM MANFRED B, STEGER

• McDonalds-isation
• Complex and multi-layered term
• America are taking over the market of the world. Eg, McDonalds are in every city in the world

• Organising the world
• American idea of organising the world
• Fast food vs Slow food
• Eating quickly without care of health

• Refers to the idea of work under the American capitalist model of the world
• McJob - no one wants to work there but they have to, unrewarding job
• Work contributing to the society is replaced by meaningless jobs

Marshall McLuhan

SLIDE

• Written in the mid 20th century before the internet.
• Technology is going to have a massive effect on humanity
• We can now understand what is going on in the rest of the world.
• Technology is bringing the world together in a global embrace

• Global Village Thesis:
• As electricity contracted, the global is no more than a village. Electric speed at the bringing all social and political functions together in a suffer implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree. (1964)
• He was a profit of the internet. 

The internet:

• We live mythically and integrally

Jihad McWorld

• Centripetal forces - bringing the world together in uniform global society
• Centrifugal forces - tearing the world apart in tribal wars
• The spread of liberal capitalism
• Radical Islam
• These cultures feel that their whole life system of culture is being taken over by the west
• We do not have a global embrace like McLuhan predicted
• Financed capitalism is spreading across the world, this has come from America

Three problems of Globalisation:

• Sovereignty
• Accountability - it is beaching impossible to police the world, one law in UK would not pass in Africa or India. Businesses are more powerful that government. multi national businesses can act outside of the control of government. They have more power on a global scale. They create lots of money which is never put back into the company, only they benefit. 
• Identity - loss of identity

SECOND SLIDE OF MANFRED

• Our ideas are being posed on other people

Cultural imperialism

• Schiller
• Chomsky

• A war being fought out by culture

Media conglomerates operate as oligopolies

• everyone has the same access to the same information - a myth
• Focusing on the media:
• Media tends to be controlled by 5 or 6 oligopolies 
• Oligopolies - large businesses - people with lots of money
• Every part of the media can be traced back to one of the 5 or 6 oligopolies 
• All of these oligopolies are American

Time Warner list of subsidiary interests:

SLIDE

• All of the small companies are controlled by one American company
• That one company controls the cultural output of a vast percentage of the worlds media
• An American take on the world

News corporations divid the world into territories of descending 'market importance'

•  North America
• Western Europe, Japan & Australia
• Developing economies and regional producers (India, China, Brazil and Eastern Europe)
• The rest of the world (Africa)

The rest of the world is last because there is not as much money to be made here.

• They focus their attention of the places where they can make the most money. 
• The concerns of North America will be more prominent than any other
• A very slow and through the back door process of people starting to understand the problems of the first world as their problems
• Accepting the first world culture as their own

Schiller - 

Dominance of the US driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of the world but also inculcates US style consumerism..

Big Brother

• Turned Global
• Western concepts repackaged all over the world

The biggest growth industry in India is skin whitening cream

• American ideologies have been thrust on them which has made them think that this is something which is necessary to fit in
• They are trying to behave more like the people who are dominating them

Chomsky and Herman (1998)

'Manufacturing Consent'

• Argues that the entire media system could be argued as a system of propaganda
• What we are being fed is a constant lesson of what the right way of life is, logical way to organise the world
• This is how life should be

The news:

• We can see the reality of the world through the news
• The news media is one of the key parts of this propaganda

5 Basic filters of the news:

• Ownership
• Rupert Murdoch owns many of the news publications within the world 
• His agenda is to make as much money as he can for himself

News Corporation:

• Murdoch owns a lot of the newspapers in the UK and globally
• He once boasted that it was the Sun who determined the outcome of UK elections
• The Sun used to support Torries 
• Labour made an offer to Rupert Murdoch to support the Labour party and he did
• They relaxed the laws on media which got them elected

Sourcing:

• Things that are reported are things which are allowed to be reported
• It would not be allowed by the government or powerful people

Advertisers pull stories if they do not like what they see.

People have to be wary about the advertisers and keep them happy

• It is all biased and representative of big businesses

Flak:

• Use the media to spread their take on the world
• A group called the global climate coalition - US based they are a lobby group for multinational oil groups
• They get stories into newspapers and adverts into the media and they spread stories which will paint the oil company in a positive light

VIDEO'S…

• Campaign groups are using visual communication to spread their views

Al Gore

An inconvenient truth

• Based on scientific evidence

Flat earthers -

• Jim Inhofe
• Nigel Lawson

Info-graphic SLIDE

• size of the circles reflect the emissions produced by company
• Kyoto summit - they try and find a solution to global warming
• Blocked by the US and China - they want to make money
• Until there is an agreement there will be no change

• To save the planet it is not to over throw the planet
• We must produce less CO2

Solution to the worlds problems is to buy more stuff - consumerism

Sustainability

• Allow society to sustain themselves
• Money is always a factor 
• Never going to be a model which interests large companies
• Not interested in the concerns of the wider world, more bothered about money

Solving the problem of capitalism by capitalism is flawed, it will not work

Does any one care about the environment?

Greenwashing:

• Companies release a green version of a product to tap into a new market

The media plays a role in perpetuating the ideas.

Essay possibility…

• How we treat the world in a way which works for us but not for it.
• selfishness of humanity?
• Conforming to what the media says is correct?
• Is it impossible for a group of people to change the world?
• Are the powerful people making it impossible to change?
• America and China - money grabbing
• Chomsky