How many days can you go without watching television or without using the internet? Perhaps our answers would vary accordingly. But if we really think about it and answer with utmost honesty, we would all probably end up with a somewhat similar answer – not very long.

People of today’s generation are, in my opinion, immensely media-dependent. We rely on various media platforms for our daily dose of information, communication, and entertainment. In most countries, most households would probably own at least one television set, and some households would also have access to cable television and the internet. Hence, it becomes quasi-impossible to remain completely uninfluenced by the media’s sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant magnitudes of influence – since most children literally grow up with the television screen as their babysitter.

In short, the media can influence our way of thinking – our concepts of beauty, class, and society; it can shape our political views and opinions on certain issues; it can set the trend for our lifestyles, and mold our choices as individuals and as members of a larger society. At the same time, it can also swerve our attention away from the important issues; perhaps some of today’s teens wouldn’t care about social and political issues for they are too engrossed with the entertainment aspect of the media. As an audience, we mostly have a one-way relationship with the traditional media; we accept what we are given. Hence, we accept the dominant culture that the media spreads upon its audience.

Renowned journalism professor Maxwell McCombs stressed the media’s great potential for agenda-setting. For McCombs, the news media in particular can “set a nation’s agenda, to focus public attention on a few key public issues.” Hence, in my own opinion, the media can choose to magnify and spread a certain culture or ideology while minimizing or completely ignoring the existence of other cultures.

Edward Said, a distinguished cultural critic, wrote the book “Orientalism” wherein he discussed how Asia has been viewed in a certain way – with racism and prejudice. This stereotype is a result of the dichotomy created by the West – wherein the non-Western is called the “Other.” I borrowed Said’s idea and applied it in the context of the media and society – the media created a hierarchy of cultures, hence labeling one as the dominant ideology or the norm, and all the rest as the “other” culture outside the norm, perhaps deemed as the less important one. This is clearly an example of how globalization and its effects on the media can undermine cultural diversity. The way it works is very subtle and yet the effects are tremendous – we go home, watch TV, surf the internet, read, sleep, interact – this cycle may seem normal, but what we don’t realize is that within our daily media consumption, certain ideologies are being inculcated within us. We are heavily influenced and we don’t even realize it.

For many years, it has become apparent that the media has fostered the dominance of one culture – the Western culture – thus, giving birth to the westernization of the global media. Most of today’s media filled with Western tones – values, ideas, and perspectives. This is a manifestation of how globalization was able to homogenize the prevailing media culture. One could even argue that the media was able to spread cultural imperialism, in which Western ideals are strongly represented as universal, hence trampling over local cultures and individuality. Western depictions of non-western imagery can also be flawed and biased. As a media student, I have observed that stereotypes still persist within the popular media – most of which are discrimination based on class, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sex, and gender. This is highly detrimental because it can lead to a misunderstanding of one’s own culture, hence compromising one’s holistic understanding of the world, in favor of praising and adapting Western ideologies.

Going back to my earlier statement – the media is everywhere we go, each country has its own media empires. If we examine the dominant media culture across the globe, it is difficult to ignore the fact that these media and cultural products may physically exist in different countries, hence within different cultures embedded within different societies; however, their geographic locations do not determine the type of ideology they emanate from, as well as the type of culture they disseminate. Instead of the local contributing to the global, it seems that the global is merely penetrating the local – a one-way process in which Western values are forced upon most societies. It seems that there is a continuous cycle of cultural monopolization within the media industry as a whole.

How long can you go without watching television or without using the internet?

by Fritz Rodriguez