Escaping or embracing Media-scapes?

Globalisation, to me, has been about the hybridity of media and cultures and even connecting idea's and spaces through non-physical forms.
Generally within this day and age it’s so difficult to stumble upon someone who doesn’t have access to portable techno-gadgets that hold some form of image capturing feature. Even the older, (Baby Boomers) generation which include my own parents for that matter are using iPhones or Samsung's and more often than not become swept up in the moment to ‘take a quick snap’ and quickly ‘send it to your grandmother’ who also happens to know how to work around modern technology and be able to open an MMS (Multi-Media Messaging).

But mediascapes are more than just media technology. Mediascapes refers “both to the distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information and to the images created by the media” (Rantanen 2005, p.13). So to deconstruct Rantanen’s explanation, I think mediascapes use an electronic means of communicating information that exists outside the physical place of a location. So rather than a singular point of interest, there is a broader availability because the information can be accessed instantaneously on a global scale. Also, Rantanen uses Appaduri’s theory of ‘–scapes’, to note that it is a “multi-sited” (2005, p.13) theory, operating in different places at the same time thus becoming a mediated form of globalisation, whereas, a nation-state is a singular sovereignty.

 My family is positively affected by mediascapes, albeit some are more confused than others but nonetheless embrace it wholeheartedly. Because my family are emigrants from Croatia, some family do still live there. Globalised media has allowed these different countries, through for example Facebook, to upload images and see the growth of our extended families. I’ve been able to see my cousin’s confirmations, weddings and know that majority of them are using iPhones, something that I wouldn’t have been able know unless for various forms of electronic media. For this instance, globalised media, like Facebook, allows the opportunity to actually see what is happening on a broad scale.

 

References

Rantanen, T (2005), The Media and Globalisation, Sage, London, pp. 1-18