Globalization: A Basic Text, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 9HIGH-TECH GLOBAL FLOWS AND STRUCTURES TECHNOLOGY, MASS MEDIA, AND THE INTERNET

• Technology, Time-Space Compression, and Distanciation
  • Medical technologies
  • Space-based technologies
  • Leapfrogging
• Mass Media
  • Media imperialism
  • “Media were American”
  • New global media
  • Indymedia
  • Thinking about the global media
• The Internet and Social Media
  • Online social networking
  • Spam and computer viruses
  • The Internet in China
  • Internet surveillance
  • Global Internet governance
  • Wikileaks
  • Social media and social movements
  • High-tech flows and barriers
• Chapter Summary

This chapter deals with three of the most cutting-edge aspects of the social world in general, and globalization in particular. Grouped under the heading of high-tech global flows and structures are technology, the media, and the Internet. While for discussion purposes many technologies (e.g. containerized shipping, universal product codes [UPCs]) are treated separately in this chapter, the media and the Internet are themselves technologies. Further, the Internet encompasses many crucially important new technologies, and the media are being transformed by a variety of new technologies (including the Internet – for example blogs are increasingly supplanting newspapers) that facilitate and direct global flows, and in doing so compress time and space. However, some flows can be threatening to governments and transnational corporations that have constructed a variety of barriers to stop, slow, and monitor certain types ...