The Media and Globalization

Terhi Rantanen

Book Review

I selected Terhi’s Rantanen book, The media and globalization, for it’s attempt to
offer us a methodologically innovative path for the study of media, globalization and cultural
life. Throughout this book, Rantanen adopts an original form of empirically demonstrating
the consequences of media within the globalization process. The book has made a significant
contribution in expanding the frontiers of the media and communication in the globalization
debate.

Terhi Rantanen is a Professor in Global Media and Communications and her books
include among others titles like When News Was New (2009), The Media and Globalization
(2005), The Global and the National, Media and Communications in Post-Communist Russia
(2002), The Globalization of News (1998).

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 The director of Master of Science Programme in Global Media and Communication in
the Department of Media and Communications at London School Of Economics and Political
Science “brings her understanding of communication theory and globalization together with
her teaching experience to formulate a most unique, seemingly easy, study of the effects of
media on people's lives.” (Margot Hardenbergh). In the beginning of the book (Chapter one
Theorizing Media and Globalization) the author introduces as with a definition of
globalization that includes media: “Globalization is a process in which worldwide economic,
political and cultural and social relations have become increasingly mediated across time and
space” (Terhi Rantanen, 2005, p. 8). Rantanen argues that a consideration of the role of
media and communications is highly important for the whole concept of globalization and
that such a project has largely been avoided as international communication scholars have
primarily encountered with issues of structure, showing little interest in people, while
intercultural work has privileged people while neglecting macro concerns. Rantanen is
interested in collapsing the macro and micro division that has defined past research in an
effort to interrogate how people engage media through their lives across time and in different
places, and how those experiences with media shape activities and social practices which
contribute to globalization. In the pursuit of this goal, Rantanen offers a new methodology for
studying media globalization, which she identifies as “global mediagraphy” or life histories
of media use and their consequences for a series of three families over four generations or
approximately the last century.

In the second chapter, A history of mediate globalization, the author begins with a
review of globalization and media periodization by combining the work of Robertson on
globalization and Lull and McLuhan on media. While Robertson’s analysis explains the
major factors in globalization, Lull’s analysis contextualizes the media within the process of
globalization, and the two are combined here within individual life histories. The subjects of
Rantanen’s mediagraphy are what she describes as “four generations of three families and
their mediated globalization” (Terhi Rantanen, 2005, p. 14). These participants are all
members of extended families that have experienced various degrees of diaspora, and are
connected to family webs involving five countries: China, England, Finland, Israel and
Latvia. Through this multi-sited connectivity Rantanen’s book serves to explore, lure out and
explain how media globalization “takes place at different tempos in different places around
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the world” (Terhi Rantanen, 2005, p. 12). Drawing on the work of Giddens and Lull,
Rantanen identifies six stages of globalization (Germinal, Incipient, Take-off, Struggle for
hegemony, Uncertainty, Antagonism), with a complementary list of six stages of media and
communication (Oral, Script, Printed, Wired electronic, Wireless electronic, Digital). For
each of the stages, various categories of study are identified. The categories range from
demographics such as education and family structure, the way time is measured, types of
media available, travel, conflicts or wars, and languages spoken, to the more complex
categories of ideology and resistance. These categories offer a framework for the study of
four generations of each of the families. Rantanen looks at family structure, religion,
education and changes in class. The first generations live in Finland, Latvia, and China in the
latter part of the 19th century and they are followed to the present day. The author studies
their sense of time, place, identity, ideology and resistance to ideologies, and finally,
cosmopolitanism. The Professor considers that each generation became exposed to the
different forms of mediated communication in ways that allowed for exposure to modern
content as well as the media being used for mediated forms of interpersonal communication
among families as they moved to different locations.

In the next two chapters (Time, place and space, Homogenization), Rantanen sets
about the two poles of the consequences of the media/globalization debate: homogenization
and heterogenization. The first was proposed by the cultural imperialism theorists, arguing
that the flow of American popular culture to other nations and cultures eroded national
cultures. This position emphasized the production and distribution structures of dominant
American companies and added a focus on accompanying capitalist consumerism. The
second position was a later response and critique beginning around 1990 with an emphasis on
the active audience and the individual response to foreign content. The author creates Chapter
4 as a review of the arguments in favor of homogenization, but adds that nationalism in
media was perhaps a more important form of media influence than was globalization. In
Chapter 5, called Heterogenization, Rantanen examines the arguments for indigenization of
foreign content and the heterogenization position. At the end of the chapter, the author
examines her three families and finds that both factors are at work in the globalization
process, and that both consequences are good or bad according to the circumstances and the
interpreter's own position.
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 In the final chapter, Mediated Cosmopolitanism?, on cosmopolitanism and in the
conclusion the author makes her case for media's role in globalization and its consequences.
What comes into view is her sense of cosmopolitanism as a result of the growing media and
communication interconnectedness. Her position contradicts the position of other scholars
who argue against identities that go beyond the national localities we inhabit, but she makes
her case with a reference to the "imagined community" of Anderson's analysis of nationalism
in new countries created in the 20th century.

The author’s conclusion is that globalization is promoted by media in very different

ways and with different consequences for the four generations of the families that she has
traced. In the end, Rantanen states that all of the positions seem to have a stake in outcomes
but that the process is complex and nuanced in ways not common in the literature.

Methodologically, Rantanen’s mediagraphy is noteworthy as she pursues the study of

mediated globalization with her research participants through oral histories, self and
comparative introspection, and reflexive ethnography. “This mixing of methods and data
collecting technique provides for some qualitatively rich descriptions, and Rantanen’s
interpretations in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are empirically dense and theoretically provocative.”
(Patrick D. Murphy).

Terhi Rantanen uses media as the fundamental starting point for a discussion of the
theories of globalization and offers a systematic method of studying how lives have changed.
She considers questions concerning the impact of globalization by studying in detail the lives
of these three families over four generations. Rantanen's mediagraphies discover how both
change and consistency coexist. Although the media provide a homogeneous culture, the
nations have countered this with powerful ideologies. People have more opportunities to
interconnect across great distances, but also within places. The professor conclusion
emphasis this: Globalization has brought about changes in the way we live.

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 Rantanen tries to maintain focus on the complex interrelationship between media use,
social context and cultural practice, but within her attempt to look at issues of language,
travel, residency and locality, media sometimes lose attention. Another critique is the lack of
ethnographic voices in her mediagraphy. Not only are the participants themselves rarely
quoted in their own words, Rantanen’s own ethnographic voice doesn’t surface and it is often
unclear as to what constituted “the field” of her mediagraphy. That is, other than the two
pages of acknowledgements located at the end of the book and one photo in which she
appears as a child, we discover little about how the people represented in her mediagraphic
text responded to her, how she met them, who she is as a researcher, or how she interacted
with the people represented in her study.

However Rantanen’s study has much to offer the student of media and globalization
as it is “theoretically rigorous and methodologically imaginative” (Patrick D. Murphy). She
assimilates the micro and macro levels of study and her writing weaves back and forth
between highly abstract theoretical discussions and detailed descriptions of people's lives,
thus connecting theory to people's daily lives. The students are drawn to read on and discover
more about people's lives, each section ending with the current generation.

“This book challenges conventional ways of thinking about globalization and shows
that it cannot be fully understood without studying the role of media and communications. It
explores the relationship between macro- and micro-processes of globalisation and the role of
media and communications in these processes. These life histories of individuals, generally
defined until now only nationally or locally, offer a new starting point for the
conceptualization and understanding of what we can call mediated globalization.” (Terhi
Rantanen LSE)

Rantanen has given us a way to identify and categorize the changes in a fresh way of
looking at the theories of globalization and in an enjoyable read about the relationship of
time, place, and space; the ways women have travelled throughout generations; and the role
of conflict, among other topics (Margot Hardenbergh). The book may be considered an
introduction and review of globalization.
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Bibliography
1. Margot Hardenbergh, The media and globalization. Journal of Broadcasting &
Electronic Media. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m6836/is_4_49/ai_n25120987/

2. Patrick D. Murphy, Media and the Practice of Globalization, Global Media

Journal, Volume 7, Issue 12, Spring 2008

3. Rantanen, Terhi (2005), The Media and globalization, Sage, London, UK.

4. Rantanen, Terhi LSE -

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/whosWho/AcademicStaff/terhiRantanen.aspx