However, Google’s departure from China would be a blow to antigovernment forces in the country. Google’s compliance with the Chinese government did not help it make inroads into the Chinese Internet search market-although Google held about a quarter of the market in China, most of the search traffic went to the tightly controlled Chinese search engine Baidu. Google’s company motto, “Don’t be evil,” had long been at odds with its decision to censor search results in China. This move highlights the fundamental tension between China’s censorship policy and Google’s core values.
Withdrawing from one of the largest expanding markets in the world is shocking coming from a company that has been aggressively expanding into foreign markets. Because Google has complied (albeit uneasily) with the Chinese government in the past, this change in policy was a major reversal. In addition, Google stated that if an agreement with the Chinese government could not be reached over the censorship of search results, Google would pull out of China completely. On January 21, 2010, Hillary Clinton gave a speech in front of the Newseum in Washington, DC, where she said, “We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas (Ryan & Halper, 2010).” That same month, Google decided it would stop censoring search results on Google.cn, its Chinese-language search engine, as a result of a serious cyber-attack on the company originating in China. While some political and social barriers still remain, from a technological standpoint there is nothing to stop the two-way flow of information and culture across the globe.Ĭhina has more Internet users than any other country. Instead, he said that “America is a nation of immigrants,” and asked, “When Mel Gibson or Jackie Chan come to the United States to produce a movie, whose culture is being exported (Lavin, 2005)?” This idea of a truly globalized culture-one in which content can be distributed as easily as it can be received-now has the potential to be realized through the Internet. It would not be all Starbucks, MTV, or Baywatch, he said, because American culture is more diverse than that. ambassador Frank Lavin gave a defense of American culture that differed somewhat from previous arguments. American popular culture is, and has been, a crucial export.Īt the Eisenhower Fellowship Conference in Singapore in 2005, U.S. This trend has been going on for some time now, for example, with the launch of MTV Arabia (Arango, 2008). TV, especially satellite TV, has been one of the primary ways for American entertainment to reach foreign shores. Globalization in the sphere of culture and communication can take the form of access to foreign newspapers (without the difficulty of procuring a printed copy) or, conversely, the ability of people living in previously closed countries to communicate experiences to the outside world relatively cheaply. At its core, globalization is the lowering of economic and cultural impediments to communication between countries all over the globe. The increase of globalization has been an economic force throughout the last century, but economic interdependency is not its only by-product.
Especially for electronic services such as software, outsourcing over the Internet has greatly reduced the cost to develop a professionally coded site.Įlectronic Media and the Globalization of Culture Communicating with these teams is now as simple as sending e-mails and instant messages back and forth, and often the most difficult aspect of setting up an international video conference online is figuring out the time difference.
Teams of software programmers in India can have a website up and running in very little time, for far less money than it would take to hire American counterparts. Many jobs can now be outsourced entirely via the Internet. The Internet has been a key factor in driving globalization in recent years. In addition to the spread of American culture throughout the world, smaller countries are now able to cheaply export culture, news, entertainment, and even propaganda. Now, almost any news service across the globe can be accessed on the Internet and, with the various translation services available (like Babelfish and Google Translate), be relatively understandable. The Internet has broken down communication barriers between cultures in a way that could only be dreamed of in earlier generations.