Thursday 21 November 2013

OUGD501 - Context of Practice: Globalisation, Sustainability and The Media Lecture


  • The media is perpetuating an everlasting global system
  • A system of organising the world
  • A world where a series of different cultures was in existence has been replaced by a world of monoculture
  • Globalisation was a desirable aim to strive for
  • In one sense the unification of cultures could be seen as a good thing
  • Capitalism keeps needing to make profit
  • You have to spread to other cultures
  • Capitalism breaks down boundaries globally


  • The spread of a culture
  • Dominance of Western culture
  • America is the heart of global capitalism
  • Community globalises the world



  • Western capitalist markets expanding
  • This has brought with it the spreading of one culture and their values over the world


  • American socilogogist George Ritzer coined the tern "McDonaldisation" to describe the wide-ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world
  • Fast food versus slow food
  • The idea of a fragmented disposable culture
  • The idea of work under the American capitalism culture
  • A Mcjob is a job which has to be done which is unrewarding
  • Work as a way of contributing to society


  • Intelligent writer and philosopher
  • Excellent book
  • Written in the mid 20th century before the internet
  • New techologies are basically going to change the way we think and interact
  • New technologies are like extensions of our senses
  • Radio means we can hear stuff on the other side of the world
  • TV means we can see stuff on the other side of the world
  • We can experience the effects of our actions on everyone in the world
  • We can understand what is going on
  • We can sympathise and empathise
  • This will ultimately bring a harmonious culture together


  • The world has suddenly shrunk
  • The globe shrinks and the world shrinks to becoming a global village and this is what the world will change in to 
  • We are all helping each other out
  • We are all aware of each others problems
  • He was writing before the internet was invented
  • 1964
  • He was a profit of the internet
  • You could argue that the internet has expanded what he said


  • We can see what is going on
  • Actually particularly this embrace is not happening
  • We aren't necessarily sympathetic
  • We are almost desensatised
  • This is the flaw


  • Technology hasn't saved the day


  • What is actually happening is rival global ideologies are happening that tear the world apart
  • It isn't like there is a harmonious spread
  • We aren't sharing common ideas
  • Different cultures are realising that their values are being destroyed in a form of imperialism
  • The dominant rival ideology standing up to McWorld is radical Islam
  • This is about the cultures feeling that their whole culture and life system is being destroyed or taken over by the West
  • In fact globalisation in this sense could be figured much more negatively


  • Sovereignity
  • Accountability - In a pre globalised society governments of particular societies had the right to control businesses and corporations to stop companies forming certain things. When a company is based in more than one country this becomes impossible to police and manage. The same law doesn't apply in every country. Effectively businesses are more powerful than governments. Multinational ones can act outside of governments. A global system where multinational businesses are more powerful than governments.
  • Identity - There is a loss of this in this culture


  • One particular culture is being spread across the globe
  • Our ways of thinking is being forced upon other cultures
  • Being imposed on other people


  • Key thinkers are Schiller and Chomsky


  • Everyone has the shared access to the same information - liberal myth
  • Totally not true
  • Focusing on the media - tends to be controlled by giant clusters of businesses
  • Every aspect of the media we encounter can be traced back to ownership
  • They are controlling the world's media 
  • All of which are American



  • A list of their subsidiary interests (Time Warner)
  • AOL, HBO etc
  • All of those companies are all controlled by one American company
  • Effectively what you could say as a conclusion to that is that that one company control the cultural output of a vast amount of the world's media. Whatever magazine you are reading, what you are actually getting is an American take on the world because the final say is down to them.


  • The large multinational media relations are controlling media output
  • The internet, media etc
  • They divide the world up in to different markets 
  • Africa is bottom of the world and less importance as there is less money to be made
  • They focus their attention on the area of the world where they can make the most money
  • Whatever you are reading because it is a business the concerns of North America will be prioritised in that read
  • You get a very slow process
  • It is a back door process
  • It isn't information about all of the cultures


  • The idea that you are who you are by what you own
  • This logic has been spread to the third world
  • Same consumer logic even though they can't afford it
  • This is tragic, presenting an ideal world which is unobtainable


  • Example of one business all over the globe 
  • Western ideas repackaged and sold all over the world
  • Presented as something unique to the certain culture
  • Making money all for that original source
  • Given the spread of American and Western culture is all pervasive now, it has some really alarming cultural effects


  • The biggest growth industry in India is for skin whitening cream because their culture has been dominated by Western cultures
  • It is not harmonious like McLuhan thought
  • The world is changing for the worst
  • Want to be like those who dominate them
  • The entire media system could be argued as a system of propaganda
  • A constant lesson that this is the way of life
  • This is the way you should act
  • This is the good life
  • The news is one example of this


  • We can watch the news and see what is going on - Chomsky argues no
  • There is five basic functions of the news (ownership, funding, sourcing, flat and anti communist ideology


  • A large percentage of our newspapers are owned by one particular man
  • He has a particular agenda to make as much money for himself as possible
  • In the reporting of the news most run stories as if they are factual but actually are really self serving for the news corporation


  • All of these different papers, cable channels etc
  • He once boasted that it was The Sun that determined the outcome of UK elections
  • Labour party made an offer to Rupert to support the labour party
  • They relaxed the laws
  • The Sun used to support the Tories
  • The biased is in the interest of capital expansion


  • The things that are reported is only what is allowed to be reported by political interests and editorial interests
  • The funders would also not allow it


  • They are there as businesses to make profit
  • Get advertisers who withdraw their money so you have to keep them happy
  • Get a sanctioned middle ground
  • Get the multinational companies controlling politics
  • All representative of big business
  • If this doesn't work they set up Flak organisations


  • Use the media put stuff out in the media that perpetuates their particular take on the world
  • Global Climate Coalition are a lobby group for big multinational oil companies who have invested a lot of money
  • They get stories in to newspapers and adverts on TV
  • Spend more on arresting anti global warming people
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Focus
Global warming - Glaciers
  • Key examples of this propaganda process disguised as news



  • Big businesses have realised the power of the visual image in a way to transform the way people think
  • That power in a certain extent is in our hands
  • Visual communication is an incredibly powerful medium
  • An Inconvenient Truth video - Based on scientific evidence saying temperature is on the rise etc. To save the planet it isn't to overthrow US or China it is to release less Co2, plant more vegetation, try and be Co2 neutral, recycle, buy a hybrid vehicle, encourage everyone to watch the film. The solutions are all to buy more stuff - If you have a light bulb buy another light bulb. Create more stuff and make more money for capitalist businesses.


  • Competitive Enterprise Institute





  • Info graphic - The size of the balls reflect emissions of CO2. The size of Africa and the amount of emissions compared to the US and China and even the UK. Every year the world gets together in a Kyoto summit (global warning) every sanction is blocked by the US and China as this would mean a limitation of profit
  • Once the two are still polluting the world then nothing is going to change



  • Concept introduced in the 80s with a view towards effectively stopping head long race to the depletion of the world's resources and also to allow societies to sustain themselves in the face of capital expansion.
  • If you have a system based on capitalism and profit they are only going to be concerned about the needs of the present and not the future.
  • Fundamental contradiction under the capitalist society



  • A plant to create bio fuel in Canada
  • Easily renewable because things grow
  • An attempt at sustainable design
  • This is much more expensive than normal fuel
  • There is actually less profit because you have to invest more to make it
  • They aren't really interested in the concern of the wider world
  • Put in the poorest area where land is cheap. In the middle of a housing estate. Started to produce noise pollution where windows were smashed because of the noise. Pollutants. Causing more problems that it is actually solving.
  • Any idea of trying to solve the problems of capitalism by capitalism are flawed from the start


  • Companies are greenwashing and exploiting the fact that everyone is concerned about the environment and the planet being destroyed
  • People would be more inclined to buy it if it is green




  • Changed all restaurants to green as well
  • Tapping in to a new market
  • Ford Taurus engine - it made little or no difference to the pollution of the car
  • Performance of the car was worse
  • People buy it because they think they are saving the planet
  • The idea that you can buy eco is a total myth
The media plays a role in perpetuating the system.

Blackspot Sneaker


  • Bamboo chair
  • Sneaker
  • AdBusters sneaker made out of recycled organic materials (First Things First)
The way you solve the environmentally catastrophe formed by capitalism is by challenging the very system that is causing this in the first place.

Papanek Visual




About what people really need in the world. Down to ETHICS here. What people really want and what people are told that they want. 

G20 Protests




  • People are realising




No comments:

Post a Comment