Pieterse (2009, p.44) considers theories of globalisation fixating on the unequal distribution and imperialism of global ‘interconnectedness’ (especially those arguing it leads to McDonaldisation), as underestimating the power of cultural hybridisation afforded by such connectivity.
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| Image via
http://sayedkhadri.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/dirk-gently-holistic-detective-agency/ I will always be a fan of Douglas Adams for his appreciation of the concept of interconnectedness and its use in his novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. |
Broadcast media - TV, Newspapers and Radio - were once synonymous with the concepts of ‘news’ and ‘current events’, and were gatekeepers to information that made them perfect discoursive vehicles of cultural hegemony.
The effects of interconnectedness can be seen as the dominance of broadcast media wanes, in terms of the content and context (what is considered to be ‘news’), but even in the punctuation of our everyday lives.
The recent Melbourne earthquake is a good example; pre-social media, I would have waited until the radio or television brought the news to me, with more detailed coverage and analysis usually perhaps found in the paper the next day.
Social media and the interconnectedness of our informational and social networks enables me to chase the information in a self-mediated fashion: Google leads me to the overloaded official site, so I moved to Facebook, Twitter, and then to Reddit, finding the personal, mixed with the professional, selecting the information, analysis and conversation that I required.
The question remains, however, is this model is less susceptible to the operations of hegemony?
Pieterse J.N. 2009, Globalization and culture : global mélange, Plymouth : Rowman & Littlefield.
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