Media in Globalization

      Globalization is all around me at any given place and time. If globalization can be defined as, “The intensifying flow of capital, goods, people (tourists, immigrants, and refugees), images, and ideas around the world” (Lavenda and Shultz pg189). In this current time and in the United States it is near impossible to go to a place that is not affected by globalization. So what I look at as affecting me the greatly when it comes to globalization would be media.

      There are advertisements on television and magazines that tell what I should eat, wear, listen to, places to visit, products to buy, who to vote for, etc. Starting from a young age not only children in the United States, but children around the world are shown advertisements which depict unrealistic pictures. The children strive to be like the people in the pictures, or have the products that are being sold.

     Another aspect of the media and globalization effecting me would be in advertising the products that are being sold in the stores that I shop in. The products being sold in stores here are not only from the United States, but they are more likely with globalization to be imported from other countries in the world that are involved in the global market. It is cheaper to have products be made overseas in other markets and then have them imported back here to be sold in stores. Some of the more prominent countries that make these products are China, India, Japan, some countries of the Middle East (this does not mean that products are not made in Europe, South America, Africa, and Australia as well).

     With tools such as the internet and live television the media can provide an instant connection that ties two very far (or they could be close as well) places in the world together. News from Japan could be streaming live on-line and on the television...and 50 years ago this would not have been possible. The media brings transnational and global markets together and provides ways to introduce them to new locations with new consumers.

      Even with just the media aspect of globalization greatly affects not only me but people across the world. It ties into products sold in stores, images that are presented to people from a young age onward, and provides an instant connection of news from different regions of the world. Having these connections be so instant and normal is something very different from life before global markets existed as they do now.