This course focuses on interactions between media, globalization and identity. The course will highlight the social, cultural and political implications of media’s dissemination across the globe, especially in relation to issues such as identity-formation and representation, community and belonging. 

The first part of the course will provide students with an introduction to the historical context of global communication and will introduce the key theoretical debates around globalization and culture. The expansion of media and telecommunications corporations in the context of deregulation and liberalization will be studied, with particular reference to the impact of such growth on audiences in different cultural contexts and from regional, national and international perspectives. Operating off an understanding of media as a primary agent of socialization, and a powerful vehicle for affecting social identities, communicating ideas and constructing meanings, we will consider how the instrumentalization of global media—and how the reception of media images and portrayals of particular social groups—function in multiple ways. Global media can disseminate specific ideologies; reflect the evolving agendas and aesthetics of diverse players and cultures; inform the development of personal and collective identities. Global media serve as a modern day “watering hole,” both planting harmful misinterpretations and stereotypes, and fostering connectedness across geographic distance and sociocultural divides. This course is laid out in the following five sections: 1) the history of the field; 2) the forms of global media; 3) how institutions use mass media; 4) how media influences public discourse, social interactions and self-perceptions; and lastly, 5) a deep dive into the unique institution of “the internet.” 

Develop a firm grasp on contemporary theories of globalization, global communications, socialization and identity formation;

Examine the chief forms of global media, their main characteristics and constraints; 

Assess the instrumentalization of global mass media—who is using it and how?; 

Understand the role and impact of “media flows” from the West to rest of the world, and “counter-flow” from non-Western contexts;

Analyze how globally mediated information contributes to socialization, identity formation, and the construction of knowledge;

Think critically about what it means to be a “person,” being able to articulate multiple social theoretical perspectives on that question, as well as identify a range of social processes and structures that are relevant to the formation, disturbing, and changing of personal identities over the course of a lifetime;

Examine the sociology of the internet and its seemingly borderless platform for virtual identities, digital communities, and distinct cyberpsychological effects on a “glocal” level;

Develop interdisciplinary, cross-cultural knowledge of the evolving, mutually influential relationship between global media, selfhood and community belonging.

COURSE WEEKLY OVERVIEW:

UNIT 1: THE HISTORY OF THE FIELD 

Week 1: Overview and introduction. 

The historical context of media globalization.

Week 2: Theoretical approaches. 

An overview of theories of global media, globalization, socialization and identity formation. 

UNIT 2: FORMS OF GLOBAL MEDIA 

Week 3: Global media survey. 

Critical issues in the relations between personal and collective identity and News, Entertainment, the Internet and Consumer Media 

UNIT 3: HOW VARIOUS INSTITUTIONS USE GLOBAL MEDIA 

Weeks 4 and 5: Global Media and The Man: Political and Economic Implications of Globalization 

We explore the “media flow” from the West and cultural globalization at the hands of big conglomerates such as Google, Facebook, big business and international news networks. We describe this “McWorld” of global marketing and consumer culture, globalized taste-making and trendsetting, celebrity and the implantation of desire—and how the “Hollyworld” and forces of “Coca-colonization” are in tension with identity, autonomy and neighborliness. We examine how the phenomenon of cultural globalization allows for the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities, and how that surfaces largely as an ideological, colonialist act of homogenizing Americanization. A major inquiry of this session will whether and how media are instrumentalized by companies and nations to enforce dominant ideologies.

Week 6: Global Media and The Women: The "Global Brothel"

Through topics of international sex trafficking, online pornography, and the internationally-distributed Cosmopolitan Magazine, we will examine pressure exerted upon women's identities and actions via global media forces. 

Week 7: Midterm review and exam.

SPRING BREAK. 

UNIT 4: COUNTER FLOW.

Week 8: Counter flow. 

Counterbalancing our overview of the Western “media flow,” we look at the other side of the story and how media “counter flow” from non- Western contexts destabilizes the imperialist perspective on globalization and offers new ways of understanding the local uses of media in terms of agency and identity formation. Case studies will touch on Al-Jazeera and Bollywood, Bollywood in Nigeria & Nollywood cinema, and Korean Hallyu.

UNIT 5: THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL MEDIA ON REPRESENTATION AND SELF-PERCEPTION

Week 9: Global media and identity politics. 

This week we explore the connections between global media, formation of self-identity and in-group. In late modernity, media plays a major role in knowledge of self and community, and in the internalization of norms and aspirations. Mass media is thus a crucial vehicle of the self-reflexivity that today defines much of the religious quest for self and identity. As theorists of late modern social life such as Anthony Giddens has suggested, the project of the self is perhaps the dominant concern of the age. In these class sessions, we return to social scientific theories of identity formation, the social construction of reality, and media as an agent of socialization, asking specifically about how globalized media portrayals are determinant for collective and individual identities, worldview development and opinions, and orienting attitudes toward “the Other.”

Weeks 10: Global media and local community: representation, public discourse and stereotypes. 

Our primary textbook author Jack Lule describes how “globalization and media are combining to create a divided world of gated communities and ghettos, borders and boundaries, suffering and surfeit, beauty and decay, surveillance and violence.” Zygmunt Bauman wrote that globalization divides as much as it unites, creating a more homogenous world and an ever-widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Global media has allowed for increasing awareness of diverse religious lifeways, as well as for biases confirmed through media misrepresentations. The media are now the context within which the most widely-held discourses in national and global culture take place, and local and individual discourses must find their way within that larger context. As Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann acknowledged that “conversation is the primary vehicle of reality maintenance,” we can see the power of media representation to influence discourse and, in turn, attitudes and behaviors among groups. The capabilities of various media to not only heighten global awareness of diverse cultures and religions and stimulate cross-cultural exchange and integration, but also to position non-normative identities against Western norms, shows that media are "consciousness industries," conveying and positioning cultural symbols and forms. We will discuss the role of global media in public discourse, considering it both as an agent of cultural literacy and also of negative stereotyping and generalizations, touching upon the “Dune effect,” coined by researchers at Stanford to explain how the media is a powerful agent for establishing the public’s opinions and social relations.

UNIT 6: THE INTERNET 

Weeks 11 and 12: The sociology of the internet. 

Virtual identities and cyberpsychology. Digital communities, gaming, social networks and political activism. The borderless, unmonitored world of online activity creates profound potential to persuade and recruit new friends, supporters, and even followers. Gamers testify to the vibrancy of their online relationships. These days, it is increasingly common to meet significant others online. The gay community has found the internet to be a haven for resistance, community, and strategy. We will survey the unique position of the internet in our study of global media and identity, and discuss global communications infrastructure (Undersea Cables, Satellites and Data Centers, oh my!).

Week 13: Putting it all together: Summary and Conclusion. AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHY DUE.

Week 14: Final Exam Review.