The Growth in Internet Use Has Affected Cultures Around the World, Leading to a Westernized, Homogenous World Culture
The concept of globalization is sometimes discussed as an undesirable feature of the current geopolitical realities of the world. However, in reality, globalization is an immutable feature of the current human race. Human beings have been striving to travel and to stretch their legs since their earliest days. Some might ascribe some early form of imperialism to this behavior, while others might suggest that human beings, as a species, have a distinct curiosity that compels them forward. One of the impacts of going out to explore the world is that cultural interactions take place. These cultural interactions have been happening at a much greater frequency now that technology has improved; these changes make some people extremely nervous.
The growth of the Internet has undoubtedly affected cultures around the world—there are no countries that are entirely untouched by Internet technologies, except perhaps North Korea. However, while there are certain features of the western world that are pervasive, the new culture that has been created on the Internet is much more of a global culture; while an argument can be made that the western culture is dominant, it would be an oversimplification to state that the western culture is destroying other cultures and driving the creation of a homogenous world culture.
There is no doubt that there are more people on the Internet than ever before, and that the use of the Internet is largely governed by accessibility (Badie 2000). There are huge swaths of information available to an individual if he or she is able to access the Internet, but there are still many places in the world where internet access is minimal at best and nonexistent at worst (Badie 2000). The wealthier an individual is, regardless of country, the more likely that person is to be able to access the Internet and take advantage of all the various benefits of being connected (Badie 2000; Nakamura 2013). While this does not preclude people from all countries, there is definitely a technology access gap between western nations and some of the smaller, more economically disadvantaged nations (Nakamura 2013). As such, Internet users are much more likely to be individuals from western nations, where access is much more prevalent. However, this does not mean that there are not huge numbers of people who are connecting from the developing world; both India and China have masses of people who are just now beginning to have easier and better access to Internet technologies (Nakamura 2013; Pearce and Rice 2013).
Western culture has indeed been spread through the Internet: it is easy to see the impact of the spread of western culture in political activities like the Arab Spring and other pro-democracy movements around the world (Nakamura 2013). There have been a number of political movements that have been modeled on the western political philosophies; while these political philosophies have always been discussed in academics, there is some truth to the reality that today, technologies allow people to organize and act based on these political beliefs which would have previously been kept underground. The Internet has, effectively, an anonymizing effect: when people are able to be anonymous, they are also able to discuss ideas and thoughts that would have been problematic or dangerous for them in their home country (Nakamura 2013; Badie 2000; Barfield et al. 2012).
Social media is the other part of this equation. The introduction of social media technologies is something that cannot be overstated: social media allows people to connect and organize in real time, something that would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible. Countries and governments around the world have recognized the power of social media, as have governments; many of these governments have modeled their emergency response notifications on the use of social media and mobile technologies (Brenner and Smith 2013; Tomlinson 2000). Social media allows people to connect on a global scale—and the language that they communicate in most frequently is English (Brenner and Smith 2013; Ferdinand 2000; Goggin and McLelland 2010). English has indeed become the global language of both business and the Internet; to be highly successful in the international business world, a businessperson needs to be able to functionally communicate in English or he or she will likely need an interpreter (Nunan 2001). On the Internet, the Latin alphabet has become the predominant way to type in URLs and other important features, which also points to the domination of western culture on the Internet (Goggin and McLelland 2010).
While there are some ways that the global internet culture has become homogenous, it is a mistake to see the entire internet culture as homogenous. Homogeneity suggests that everything is the same culturally, and this is factually untrue. There are pockets, trends, and folds within the Internet that cater to everyone and everything; for instance, one can easily sign on to Facebook or YouTube and access the site for the American Civil Liberties Union. However, one can also sign onto the Internet and access sites run by the Islamic State, ISIL. In a virtual world where these two sites are equally easy to access, it is really difficult to suggest that “homogeneity” has been achieved (Goggin and McLelland 2010). In fact, the Internet is massive; it is so huge that it is difficult to appropriately quantify. While there are certain sites that seem to tend towards a certain dominant culture—YouTube, Facebook, Google—there are billions of sites available to the average user that cater to different cultures and different tastes.
Even though there is not a dominant culture on the Internet, it is easy to see that the Internet is made up of users. Without the users, there would be no internet. Shim (2007) suggests that many of these users are young people, and that these young people are indeed drawn to pop culture. However, there has been more exploration than ever before because there is so much to explore; one needs only to see the growth of stars like Psy in the United States to see that while there is an exportation of culture happening, there is also an importation of culture happening via the Internet (Ronen et al., 2014). Both China and India have massive populations, which obviously contributes directly to the culture of the Internet. While China has its own versions of Facebook and YouTube, there are many users who interact with both types of social media. The overall effect is a kind of cross-fertilization of culture, rather than the development of a single homogenized culture as some of the literature purports (Goggin and McLelland 2010; Yu 2015).
The growing numbers of Indian and Chinese users on the Internet will undoubtedly have an interesting overall effect on the culture of the Internet. While some users will undoubtedly choose to stay within their own cultural group and perform their daily Internet activities, some will also undoubtedly stray into different groups and different subsections of culture. The overall effect of this will not be to form a westernized dominant culture on the Internet, but instead to form a global culture that is a hodgepodge of different types of people talking about many different kinds of things on one of the only truly open forums that exist in the world. This should be seen as a potentially positive development for the world as a whole, rather than a catastrophe: the development of global culture could produce better business partnerships, reduce geopolitical tensions, and so on (Tomilson 2003).
There is no global culture on the Internet. Although an argument can be made that there is a dominant culture on the Internet, to say that there is one culture that is dominating all others is to ignore many of the realities of the Internet and many of the things that make the Internet such a powerful tool in the hands of so many. It provides people with the ability to learn nearly anything at the tips of their fingers, which is incredibly important for people in developing nations in particular. To close the technology access gap would be very beneficial to people around the world, regardless of their ethnicity, current location or country of origin. The world has yet to see all the benefits—and the potential pitfalls—of global communications and technology.
References
Badie, B., 2000. The imported state: the westernization of the political order. LIT Verlag Münster.
Barfield, C.E., Heiduk, G.S. and Welfens, P.J. eds., 2012. Internet, Economic Growth and Globalization: Perspectives on the New Economy in Europe, Japan and the USA. Springer Science & Business Media.
Brenner, J. and Smith, A., 2013. 72% of online adults are social networking site users. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Ferdinand, P., 2000. The Internet, democracy and democratization. Democratization, 7(1), pp.1-17.
Goggin, G. and McLelland, M. eds., 2010.Internationalizing internet studies: beyond anglophone paradigms. Routledge.
Nakamura, L., 2013. Cybertypes: Race, ethnicity, and identity on the Internet. Routledge.
Nunan, D., 2001. English as a global language.TESOL quarterly, 35(4), pp.605-606.
Pearce, K.E. and Rice, R.E., 2013. Digital divides from access to activities: Comparing mobile and personal computer Internet users. Journal of Communication, 63(4), pp.721-744.
Ronen, S., Gonçalves, B., Hu, K.Z., Vespignani, A., Pinker, S. and Hidalgo, C.A., 2014. Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(52), pp.E5616-E5622.
Shim, Y.S., 2007. The Impact of the Internet on Teenagers’ Face-to-Face Communication. Global Media Journal, 6(10), pp.1-22.
Tomlinson, J., 2003. Globalization and cultural identity. The global transformations reader, 2, pp.269-277.
Yu, A.Z., Ronen, S., Hu, K., Lu, T. and Hidalgo, C.A., 2015. Pantheon: A for the Study of Global Cultural Production. arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.07310.
