Mass Media - Globalisation and the media

The speed of technological change is now so great that the world is rapidly becoming a 'global village' with many people exposed to the same information and messages through mass media. This is part of what in known as globalisation, which refers to the way societies across the globe have become increasingly interdependent, and are exposed to the same cultural products across the world.

The globalisation of popular culture

popular or mas culture has become increasingly globalised, it is highly commercialised, involving mass produced standardised and short lived products often of trivial content and seen by many as having no lasting artistic value. These cultural products are designed to be sold on the global mass market to make profits for the large culture industry corporations that produce them.

High Culture

High culture products aimed at mainly middle class and upper class audiences with what might be viewed as "good taste" might include serious news programmes and documentaries involving detail, analysis and politics. Other examples include classical music, opera, jazz, specialist films, litrerature and art.

Blurring of high and popular culture

Postmodernists argue that the distinction between high culture and popular culture is weakening. Huge expansion of the media - based creative and cultural industries. This means there is now a huge range of media and cultural products available to all:

• Technology - the internet, music downloads, cable, satellite and digital TV, film and radio, printing for both mass production and personal use in the home, the global reach of modern mass media technology and the advertising and mass production of goods on a world scale make all forms of culture freely available to everyone

Strinati - argues that elements of high culture have now become a part of popular culture and vice versa. Eg art has been turned into a product that can be bought by all and viewed by all such as paintings by Van Gogh on the internet. High culture images are now reproduced on everything from socks and t…