Kraidy(2002), in his article ‘Globalization of Culture Through the Media’, introduces the debate about how media affects cultural globalization. He firstly explains one perspective that the superiority of media control has helped developed countries gain advantages over developing countries.This is called ‘culture imperialism’. Another perspective is that cultural imperialism has shifted to globalization after the Cold War and media does make a difference in this cultural revolution. However,the level of influence is uncertain according to the author. The author concludes that the media intensify hybridity which is a combination of ‘cohesion and fragmentation of the culture instead of homogenization’.
In the first paragraph, the author has described the trend of the culture flow as‘the entire world has been molded in the image of Western,mainly American, culture’. I don’t agree with this statement as it contradicts the conclusion that this culture revolution is not the homogenization of the culture but the hybridization.This is because that media, which is the route of the culture as believed by the author basically is the bridge between different cultures and the groups of the people. Media promotes the transmission of the culture and it should be a two way transmission.
Western culture does spread around the world, as we can see Western food, clothes and products everywhere.One other fact that also cannot be neglected is that English as the mother tongue language of British people now become the worldwide common language. With the media techniques and control since the colonialism age, the Western culture and ideology have become more and more acceptable by people around the world. However, these years, with the rapid development of developing countries, the culture of these countries also flows into Western world. You can easily find sushi restaurants beside the streets of New York and traditional African tribe ornaments in the shopping mall of Paris. By June 2013, there were up to 435 Confucius Institute and 644 Confucius classrooms in 117 countries or areas worldwide by the official website of Confucius Institute. Movie as the typical example of media industry used to be dominated by Hollywood which suffer depression even in native America and the admission dropped to 1.71 billion in 2011 which is the lowest record in 16 years according to the annual report of Warner Bros Pictures.Therefore, we can see that the developed countries are losing their dominance in the cultural control and the cultural flow tend to reach dynamic balance.In conclusion, the globalization of the culture through media is mutual influence of the culture and will breed the cultural diversity and prosperity.
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