Reader Response - Draft #2

In the article of “Globalization of Culture through the Media”, Kraidy (2002) discusses the idea of the diametrical perspectives between cultural imperialism and globalization of culture. He states that at one end, cultural imperialism is the enlargement of the prevalent theories of media influence that often assume a homogenous culture and disregard the importance of understanding the local culture. On the other end, globalization is conveyed as a process of exchanging information freely among individuals who can create infinite meanings from the actual cultural product. With the use of existing theories and research results, Kraidy concludes that the middle ground between cultural imperialism and globalization recognizes the critical role that global media play in the process of hybridization, in terms of intensity and speed.

I agree with Kraidy who perceives culture globalisation as hybridization that pay attention on the audience local preferences instead of culture imperialism that promote homogenous culture. Kraidy assumes that the audience-recipient of media message have the power to interpret and assign meanings to the imported media message based on their own cultural beliefs and attitudes. Thus, the media eventually has to indigenize to meet the audience’s needs and wants.

This is evident in several countries such as India, a country that inculcates strong national culture, has made the media to act in accordance to the Indians' needs and wants. For instance, the main foreign satellite channels such as Star TV is forced to adopt Hindi-language programming as Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India. The Indian market was estimated to account for 55 per cent of STAR TV’s revenues in Asia at the time (Jacob, 2002 cited by Chang, 2007). Another example is the globalization of Spiderman 3 that illustrates how mass media successfully adapt to the Indian's local culture. The reason Spiderman 3 becomes the biggest-ever Hollywood hit in India is due to the indigenization of media that dub a Hollywood film in four main Indian languages (Press, 2007).

In conclusion, globalization through media should not be deemed as a process of complete homogenization. A cultural identity is not something that can be easily change and destroy by the globalized media. The way imported media works is by adding and mixing the cultural elements without eliminating and dominating over the uniqueness of local culture.

Word Count: 381

References

Kraidy, M. M. (2002). Globalization of Culture Through the Media. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1333&context=asc_papers

Chang, Y.-l. (2007). The role of the nation-state: Evolution of STAR TV in China and India. Globa Media Journal, 2.

Press, A. (28 May, 2007). 'Spider-Man 3' biggest-ever Hollywood hit in India, sinks 'Titanic'. Retrieved from Pravda.ru: http://english.pravda.ru/news/society