What is globalization?

For my generation, globalization does not seem as monumental as it is. When the world was changing in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, we were infants; oblivious to the development of the technologies that we think of as everyday items.

Globalization is difficult to define without bias. A definition I found to be close to fair was “the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole . . . . concrete global interdependence and consciousness of the global whole in the twentieth century" (Robertson). In other words, the expansion of contact also means the compression of dependency and “uniqueness”; there is more influence towards a “world view.” This expansion and compression also creates a separation.

Globalization can be an opportunity for NGO’s and others to act as a “countervailing force” to traditional organizations (Norris) and expands opportunities for commerce and communication.

It does create more connection than ever between western and northern nations, but globalization also simultaneously creates parallel communication systems, a “global digital divide.” The schism provides for a system for those with income, education, and literally connections that receives and transmits information at low cost and high speed, and another system for those without connections, blocked by high barriers of time, cost, and uncertainty and dependent upon outdated information” (Norris).

The “digital divide” of the two systems shaped by globalization increasingly marginalizes poorer societies at the edge of communication networks (Norris). This can only be labeled as “information poverty.” The most important features of a society, education and health, cannot be improved and updated without access to the most current information and research.

Curran argues that this divide was purposefully created, “the media system was directed toward maintaining control rather than educating for democracy” (Curran 5). So according to Curran, what Norris calls information poverty is provoked by “media imperialism,” or westernization.

Curran, James and Park, Myung Jin. "De-westernizing Media Studies": Edited By James Curran and Myung Jin Park. London: Routledg, 2000. Book

Norris, Pippa. "Information Poverty and the Wired World." Press/Politics. 2000. Editorial.

R. Robertson, Globalization, 1992, p. 8