Reader's Response Draft 3: Globalization of Culture through the Media - Marwan M. Kraidy

In Kraidy’s article, “Globalization of Culture through the Media” (2002), he mentions about there are various debates on how the Western countries have influenced the media and then impacted the developing countries. The cultural imperialism and globalization are then evolve in these counties. After that, he also discusses on the hybridization, and he agrees that the transnational mass media increases the hybridity that is present in the cultures over the world. Therefore, Kraidy has concluded “cohesion and fragmentation coexists” for globalization of culture, but not the “process if complete homogenization”.

After reading the article written by Kraidy (2002), I am going to evaluate the idea of 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 (2002), the cultures have been connected through different ways, like Western colonialism, migration, or media for a long period of time. In the past, majority of the developing countries were colonized by the Western countries, hereby the western and local cultures were mixed and a hybrid formed. For example, when British attempt to colonize Singapore, the English language was became the domain language in Singapore, but as time passed, English language was mixed with some local languages which formed the “Singlish”. 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 we look at the current global situation, the global media also helps to speed up the spread of message around the world. For instance, people in many Asian countries started to learn to speak English since the British Colonial period, but due to the transitional mass media increase, the usage of English has been speed up and English has become the world language throughout the years. The same was true to Japanese language, when the people of the countries that were colonized by Japan were forced to learn Japanese during the colonial period. After World War-II, people have been getting less interest to learn Japanese. However, due to the impact of global media, the usage of Japanese has increased and eventually this helps people to build up the leaning interest of Japanese.

In conclusion, the cultures from different countries were spread out in the past through colonialism, trade, migration, slavery, and other different ways. These countries had used the media as a tool for them to speed up the hybridization of cultures around the world.

 

word count: 423 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