Media simultaneity alone is insufficient to create a global social form

Evidence

As Harvey has argued (1989, pp. 239–59), increasing time compression is a characteristic of the whole process of modernity and of postindustrialization. A similar argument had been advanced by McLuhan (1964, p. 358), who proposed that electricity establishes a global network of communication that enables us to apprehend and experience media-transmitted events nearly simultaneously, as in a common central nervous system. To date, however, few media events are simultaneously transmitted across time zones, and media content is adapted to local cultures and locally reinterpreted. We argue that many other mechanisms and infrastructures—and in fact, a secondary economy of information collection and transmission—need to be established to create a global social form. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures, 93

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘secondary economy of information collection and transmission’ that underlies apparent global simultaneity is an article-worthy reversal of the McLuhan ‘global village’ trope.
• XREF: connects to: Global media consumption does not produce convergence in attitudes and beliefs — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 159; Mechanised communication is the bedrock of modern cultural globalisation — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 191; Simultaneous media alone cannot create a global public; infrastructure must — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 93

Related

• Simultaneous media alone cannot create a global public; infrastructure must (similarity 0.93)
• Global media consumption does not produce convergence in attitudes and beliefs (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Global media consumption does not produce convergence in attitudes and beliefs #corroborates (0.85) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 159
• Mechanised communication is the bedrock of modern cultural globalisation #expands (0.75) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 191