Comprehensive Study Guide: Global Media, Religion, Technology, Lifestyle, and Education

Global Media Cultures

• Definition of Culture: A way of life manifested in tangible objects (material culture) and intangible ideas (non-material culture) that people hold dear.
• Material Culture: Includes tangible objects such as the clothes people wear, the infrastructures built, and physical things created.
• Non-Material Culture: Refers to intangible ideas such as beliefs, traditions, and practices.
• Symbols and Language: Culture is articulated through symbols or illustrations that convey meanings and a system of symbols (language) that enables social communication.
• Foundations of Culture: Observed through values (what is deemed good or important), beliefs (what is deemed true), practices (how things are done), and norms (rules, roles, and expectations relative to society membership).
• Media Cultures: Defined as culture that emerges due to the proliferation of mass media; it represents the intersection between media and culture. Jack Lule describes media as a "channel of communication" or "a means of conveying something."
• Socialization and Exchange:
  • Cultural Socialization: Learning culture from home and community via direct instruction or observation and participation.
  • Cultural Exchange: Experiencing a different culture through interaction with external groups.
  • Acculturation: Adopting certain values and practices of a new culture.
  • Accommodation: Adopting a new culture to a lesser degree, primarily in public settings.
  • Assimilation: Adopting a new culture to a large degree so that the individual begins to resemble the other group.
• Views on Global Cultural Flows:
  • Cultural Differentialism: The view that cultures are inherently unique and remain significantly unaffected by globalization due to barriers (e.g., religious convictions). Huntington's ($1996$) "clash of civilizations" suggests catastrophic collisions between interacting civilizations.
  • Cultural Hybridization: A creative process yielding combinations of global and local cultures. Arjun Appadurai ($1996$) identified five "scapes":
    1. Ethnoscapes: Movement of people.
    2. Technoscapes: Fluid and interlinked global technology.
    3. Financescapes: Movement of huge amounts of money across nations.
    4. Mediascape: Fast production and transfer of information.
    5. Ideoscapes: Movement of political images.
  • Glocalization: The integration of global and local inputs to create a unique hybridized form.
  • Cultural Convergence: Globalization making cultures more similar or uniform (isomorphic). Related concepts include:
    • Cultural Imperialism: Cultures consciously imposing themselves on others.
    • Deterritorialization: When a culture is no longer tied to its original geographical space.
• Eras of Media and Globalization:
  1. Oral communication.
  2. Script.
  3. Printing press.
  4. Electronic media.
  5. Digital media.
• Media Statistics:
  • Pew Research ($2018$): $95\%$ of adolescents have smartphone access, and almost half are constantly online. Highly consumed platforms: YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.
  • Philippines Context ($2016/2019$): Approximately $96\%$ of Filipinos watch television for nearly $4\text{ hours}$ daily. Filipinos are top social media users, spending over $10\text{ hours}$ online daily compared to the world average of $6\text{ hours and } 42\text{ minutes}$. Computer-based internet use averages over $5\text{ hours}$ daily (world average is $3\text{ hours and } 28\text{ minutes}$).
• Issues in Media Cultures:
  • Access: Socioeconomic advantages affecting who can get information (e.g., farmers in far-flung areas).
  • Production and Consumption: The interlinked identity summarized as "you are what you consume" (Servaes and Lie, $2003$).
  • Inclusion and Participation: How media represents women, LGBTQ+, and people with exceptionalities.
  • Cultural Integrity: How media shapes local culture via processes like being a-culturised (no substance), deculturalised (removing specifics), or reculturalised (added cultural touch).

Globalization and Religion

• Definition of Religion: A unified system of beliefs and practices related to faith, the sacred, and higher moral values. Emile Durkheim ($1912$) defines it as a system relative to "sacred things" that unites followers into a single moral community called a "Church."
• Secularization: The diminishing role of religion in society, often manifested in the separation of church and state.
• Glocalization of Religion: The intermingling of universal and local religious beliefs.
• Global Religious Demographics ($2010$):
  • Total Identifying as Religious: $84\%$ ($5.8\text{ billion}$ people).
  • Christians: $31.5\%$
  • Muslims: $23.2\%$
  • Unaffiliated: $16.3\%$
  • Hindus: $15.0\%$
  • Buddhists: $7.1\%$
  • Folk Religionists: $5.9\%$
  • Other Religions: $0.8\%$
  • Jews: $0.2\%$
• Psychological and Social Functions of Religion:
  • Spirituality: Kenneth Pargament ($1997$) defines this as a "search for the sacred," while religion is the broader search for significance related to the sacred.
  • Affiliation Motivation: Seeking positive social interaction and connection.
  • Religious Coping: Providing a psychological shield against life's stressors.
• Perspectives on Secularization:
  • Post-secularity: The return of religious consciousness in the public sphere (Habermas, $2008$).
  • Religious Modernity: Secularization as an active process emerging from social action.
• Religious Pluralism and Tolerance: The Diaspora involves the scattering of people (e.g., the Jewish experience) who carry religious affiliations across territories. Cultural pluralism maintains small group identity within larger society norms, requiring religious tolerance to foster peace.
• Baha'i Faith Case Study: A religion with $7\text{ million}$ followers upholding equality and unity. It has notably moved toward homogenization using Ruhi books as a central doctrine.
• Religious Fundamentalism: Altemeyer and Hunsberger ($1992$) define it as the belief in one set of inerrant truths opposed by forces of evil, requiring a return to past practices. Ylmaz ($2006$) notes two types:
  1. Nonviolent Intolerance: Extreme identification with a particular religion.
  2. Violent Intolerance: Direct use of physical violence.
• Forms of Glocalization (Roudometof):
  1. Vernacularization: Linking universalism with vernacular language (e.g., Arabic in Islam).
  2. Indigenization: Blending universal religious practices with indigenous ones (Christianity in Africa).
  3. Nationalization: Local religions tied with universal ones (Church of England).
  4. Transnationalization: Allegiance to a global religious community (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants in America).

Globalization of Technology

• Definition of Technology: A technique, process, or material good emerging from science to address human problems. It includes physical components, informational components, and knowledge systems.
• Technology Diffusion: The flow of technologies across national borders.
• Industrial Revolutions (IR):
  • First IR: Used coal as energy; created the steam engine.
  • Second IR: Discovered oil and electricity; created the internal combustion engine.
  • Third IR: Computers, robots, nuclear energy, and natural gas.
  • Fourth IR: Use of green energies and the internet. Klaus Schwab describes this as navigating online/offline selves.
• Features of the Fourth Industrial Revolution:
  1. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Simulating human capacities.
  2. Fusion: Integration of various disciplines.
  3. Robotics: Inventions for efficiency (e.g., Sophia-bot).
  4. Internet: Remote and real-time interconnectedness (Internet of Things).
• Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) Theory (Rogers, $1962$):
  • Innovators ($2.5\%$): Try new technology early, even if crude.
  • Early Adopters ($13.5\%$): Adopt earlier than average; need support.
  • Early Majority ($34\%$) and Late Majority ($34\%$): Average and late adoption groups.
  • Laggards ($16\%$): Skeptical; prefer tried and tested methods.
• Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants: Digital natives are born into the digital world; immigrants are those born before but who adapt to it.
• Technological Trends:
  • Telemedicine: Doctors providing medical procedures remotely.
  • Aviation: Digital twins (virtual replicas), AI predictive maintenance, mobile computing, and drones.
  • Architecture and Energy: Green architecture and renewable sources (wind, hydropower, geothermal). Carbon credits represent allowable carbon emissions for trade.
  • Space Science: NASA goals include life on Mars, exploring the Sun and Jupiter's moon. Philippines launched Diwata-1 ($2016$) and Diwata-2 ($2018$) micro-satellites.
• Car Production Statistics ($2018$):
  • Global Total: $95,634,593$
  • China: $27,809,196$
  • USA: $11,314,705$
  • Japan: $9,728,528$

Globalization of Lifestyle

• Definition of Lifestyle: A multidimensional and pluralistic concept referring to how we live daily, influenced by individual and group processes.
• Levels of Analysis (Mikael Jensen, $2007$):
  • Global: Prevailing worldwide trends.
  • National/Structural: Influenced by nation-state policies.
  • Positional/Subcultural: Influenced by social institutions (family, peers).
  • Individual: Personal identity and personality factors.
• Aspects of Lifestyle (Anthony Veal, $1993$): Activities/Behaviors, Attitudes/Values, Individual Processes, Group Processes, Coherence, Recognizability, and Choice.
• Trends in Food: Influenced by urbanization (rise of fast food) and foreign investments (import/export of processed food).
• Trends in Music: Contact among traditions fosters friction and mutuality.
  • Hybrid Genzes: Reggae and Jazz (African and European origins).
  • Filipino Context: Western music assimilation started during Hispanic colonization; Kundiman is a traditional genre. Streaming accounts for $40\%$ of market revenue ($Beltran, 2018$).
• Trends in Sports: Identity formation for nations through Olympics participation.
  • Olympics Viewership Growth ($1996-2012$): Atlanta ($3.2\text{ billion}$), Sydney ($3.6\text{ billion}$), Athens ($3.9\text{ billion}$), Beijing ($4.7\text{ billion}$), London ($4.9\text{ billion}$).

Globalization of Education

• Definition of Education: The process of teaching and learning; facilitating the transfer of knowledge, skills, and belief systems.
• Equivalency: Gauging if achievement is commensurate with requirements for an academic degree.
• Qualifications Framework: Standards used to evaluate qualifications between nations (e.g., ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework or AQRF).
• Transnational Education Statistics: There were $4.9\text{ million}$ international students in $2016$ (UNESCO data).
• Types of International Students:
  1. Internationally Mobile: Physically crossed a border to participate in education.
  2. Foreign Students: Non-citizens enrolled in degree courses, often moved with family.
  3. Credit-Mobile: Taking units from foreign universities without necessarily moving.
• Open and Distance Education: Web-mediated learning taking place in the virtual world.
• ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework (AQRF): Aligned with the ASEAN Economic Community $2015$ Blueprint. Objectives include:
  • Supporting recognition of qualifications.
  • Promoting learner and worker mobility.
  • Validating non-formal education.
  • Encouraging lifelong learning.