Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

Globalization: three engines of

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scrutiny seasoned with alert scepticism. Hafez’s

own scepticism arises from what so-called

globalization is failing to achieve – connectivity

and system change. Even where communities are

equipped with the technologies that potentially

bring about cross-border, cross-cultural fusion,

there is as much chance of intolerance of other

occurring as tolerance and the will to connect.

Referring to multiculturalism, which has

often been named as one of the benefi ts arising

from globalization, Hafez asserts that ‘there

is no causal relationship between integration

and media. The recent assumption that the

local is simply relocated through migration and

globalization is just as misleading as the one

that crossing borders works to open up cultures’.

A key focus for commentators on globalization

is the part that is played, and might be played,

by the internet in bringing about a world in

which peoples are more tolerant of each other,

exercise greater equality and benefi t from cross-

border interaction in what has been termed

‘civil society’. Hafez is not convinced, referring

to uncertainties of information fl ow which ‘are

generating an often “virtual” knowledge of the

world, which is almost impossible to harmonize

with verifi able reality’.

Sparks in ‘What’s wrong with globalization?’

reminds us that 25 per cent of the world’s

population is without access to electricity: ‘No

electricity, no Internet’; and leaves his audience

with the comment, ‘A theory that is blind to the

facts is blind to reality.’ See conglomerates;

consumerization; convergence; culture:

globalization of; europe: cross-border tv

channels; globalization, three engines

of; global media system: the main players;

glocalization; localization; mediapolis;

workers in communication and media.

See also topic guides under global perspec-

tives; media issues and debates; media:

ownership and control.

▶Colin Sparks, Globalization, Development and the

Mass Media (Sage, 2007).

Globalization: three engines of According

to the Group of Lisbon publication Limits

to Competition (MIT Press, 1995), the three

engines seen to be driving globalization are

liberalization, deregulation and privatization,

the fi rst permitting companies to move capital

and operations to locations off ering competi-

tive terms (such as low wages). deregulation

allows liberalization and, as a consequence, leads

to privatization of public utilities.

Ultimately, many commentators fear, these

three engines of global fi nancial and industrial

and cultures, or heterogenization (diff erence), or
both occurring simultaneously?
In short we are swimming in a sea of uncer-
tainties. If we are considering the way globaliza-
tion has been heading, we can discern what on
the face of it appear to be contradictory trends

• convergence and diversity. Convergence refers
  to ownership and control and focuses on multi-
  national corporations extending their business
  across the globe. Diversity focuses on the ways in
  which individual communities adapt or appro-
  priate the (predominantly Western) fl ow of news
  and entertainment to their own cultural uses and
  vision; what has been called ‘the domestication
  of the foreign’.
  Colin Sparks, in a paper entitled ‘What’s wrong
  with globalization?’ presented to the Interna-
  tional Communication Association in New York
  in 2007, argues that ‘there is no theory of global-
  ization that commands common consent’. Th e
  term gets mixed up with modernity and media
  imperialism and can mean ‘anything that a given
  author wants it to mean’. What we have in place
  of evidence is opinions. Sparks is not among
  those commentators who see in globalization
  major shifts away from Western (particularly
  American) political, economic and cultural
  dominance. Th e centre of gravity continues to
  rest ‘very fi rmly in the developed world’.
  A critic of the perceived benefi ts to communi-
  ties of globalization is Tehri Rantanan. In Th e
  Media and Globalization (Sage, 2005) the author
  writes that ‘globalization is without doubt, a very
  uneven process, which brings much misery
  into people’s lives, either because they are
  excluded from it or because they are part of it’.
  Rantanan believes media analysis should agree
  the ‘response necessary to address the negative
  consequences of globalization’ and engage with
  such issues as how far the lives of people (all
  people) worldwide are benefi ting from global-
  ization; what are the upsides and what are the
  downsides and what part do the media play in
  the process?
  Perhaps the most serious questioning of the
  media’s role in globalization comes from Kai
  Hafez in Th e Myth of Globalization (Polity, 2007,
  translated by Alex Skinner), who sees fact being
  mixed with ‘exaggerated projections’, fusing
  ‘truth and falsehood’. This isn’t to reject the
  ‘myth’ out of hand but to probe it with a view to
  reaching ‘an undistorted view of the world’.
  Hafez argues that ‘casting light on the myth
  of “globalization” as it affects cross-border
  communication does not mean exposing it as
  pure fi ction’; rather it demands more exhaustive