In Chapter 9,
Judith Martin and Thomas Nakayama talk about how for many of us, the world
exists through popular culture. In a perfect world, we would each be able to
travel the whole world to experience and better understand every culture. In
reality, this is not possible. The main way to experience different cultures is
through popular culture. While the popular culture of the United States is
exposed to much of the world, we as Americans are not as exposed to other
cultures. This makes it difficult to understand other cultures and enforces the
selfish, arrogant “only care about America” stereotype that can be associated
with Americans.
In many ways, the
United States and other world leaders dominate the world through media
imperialism, electronic colonialism, and cultural imperialism. As a student of
the journalism college, I find media imperialism, or domination or control
through media, especially interesting. Encoding is the construction of textual
meaning by popular cultural institutions within specific social contexts. Media
has the power to encode whatever message it desires. Journalism is supposed to
present the facts in a non-biased manner, but yellow journalism highlights the
outrageous stories that catch peoples’ attention even if they are not representative
of entire populations. We see the extreme sides of cultures. Therefore, our
decoding, or interpretation of the text’s meaning by receivers, can be skewed
or can lead to cultural ignorance.
It is clear that
popular culture, media imperialism, electronic colonialism, and cultural
imperialism play a large role in communicating cultural values across the
world. As a journalism student, I believe it is essential to construct messages
that represent individuals accurately along with the cultural group they belong
to. Proper demographic information is also important to understand the size and
portion of the cultural group that is represented. We need to appreciate
popular culture while understanding it does not allow us to understand the
deeper levels of culture.
I like how you explained that popular culture, media imperialism, electronic colonialism, and cultural imperialism are a large role in communicating cultural values across the world. That is a true statement and it's interesting hearing your view of pop culture. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI agree that many times other countries only see the American side of what pop culture is. I wish that we as Americans could see the other side of what other countries see as pop culture or have to share about their culture. I also think that because we are the major producers of pop culture it does lead to a negative affect on America. We can say many don't know enough about other countries therefore not all things may be true in pop culture or very stereotyped, but I do think that whoever is producing the things involved with pop culture should be more educated or try and break the stereotypes many have picked up in ones life time.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good reflection on the chapter, and I agree with much of what you said. I believe this media imperialism is also a two way street on the other hand. Yes much of what is fed through to us through the media is controlled by those in power, but often times the information that comes to us is the type that we get because we crave that certain type of information. People enjoy outlandish and sensational stories, and the more we want them, the more we can get them, and it can get to the point where this is all we see of a certain culture. Those in power may not be the only ones at fault.
ReplyDeleteI am glad concepts surrounding media imperialism spoke to you. As a journalism students, you are particularly well positioned to critically look at how cultures are portrayed in media. Yes, yellow journalism, sentimentalization, focusing on the bad sides of other parts of the world are pretty common practices of bad journalism. Mass communication theories of framing, agenda setting etc interest me a lot. I can see that you will be one of the interculturally competent journalists.
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