Draft 2 Summarize and Reader's Response of Globalization of Culture Through the Media

  In Kraidy article, “Globalization of Culture through the Media” (2002), he mentions about the western culture has impacted the globalization of culture over the world. The author also points out various debates between cultural imperialism and globalization as well as how the western countries influence the media and the developing countries. After that, he also discusses about the hybridization and he agrees with that the transnational mass media increase the hybridity that is present in the cultures over the world. Therefore, Kraidy has concluded the media could affect the "cohesion and fragmentation coexists" for globalization of culture, but not the "process of complete homogenization". 

  After finish reading the article written by Kraidy (2002), the key idea that I am going to evaluate is the hybridization. I agree with the point of view of Kraidy that the transnational mass media increase the hybridity that is present in the cultures over the world. According to the article, the cultures have been contacted through in different ways, like western colonialism, migration, or media for a period of time. In the past, majority of the developing countries were colonized by the western counties, which was induced the western and local cultures were hybrid to form a mixed civilizations and cultural forms. Simultaneously, the technologies of the global media have formed transnational images that connect throughout the world. As a result, it helps to speed up the hybridization around the world. While looking at current global situation, the global media also helps to speed up the spread of message around the world. For instance, many Asian countries started to learn spoken English since British Colonial Period, but due to the transnational mass media increase, the usage of English language has been speed up and became the world language throughout the years. Same as Japanese language, some of the countries who have been colonized by Japan were force to learn Japanese during the colonial period. However, after the world war-II, people are getting less interest to learn the Japanese, but due to the impact of global media, it helps to spread out the usage of Japanese and eventually it helps people to build up the learning interest of Japanese. In conclusion, the cultures from different countries were spread out in the past through colonialism or different ways and these countries had used the media as a tool for them to speed up the spread of cultures around the world. 

word count: 403 words

Reference:

Kraidy, M. M. (2002). Globalization of Culture Through the Media. Retrieved February 13, 2014, from University of Pennsylvania, http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1333&context=asc_papers