Friday, November 12, 2010

The Media is Causing all of the World's Problems

“. . . the cosmopolitan outlook means that, in a world of global crises and dangers
produced by civilization, the old differentiations between internal and external, national
and international, us and them, lose their validity and a new cosmopolitan realism
becomes essential to survival. (Beck 2006, p. 14)”

The Cottle article focuses on global crises represented in the international media and the implications of an increasingly global media system. In Cottle’s view, global crises and the media are intertwined, even going so far as to say that “global crises are highly dependent on global news media.”



But if global crises are dependent on media, and, in Beck’s view global crises are transforming and redistributing the way we look at the world and our national and regional boundaries, does that mean that (understanding that if A-->B and B-->C then A must-->C) media is the cause of the transformation of international, internal and external differentiations?



Trying to fully understand the implications of Beck’s quote, I feel like the argument is, essentially, a cosmopolitan outlook will make older outlooks outdated and therefore cosmopolitanism is the only viable option. Really, is the issue reflective of global crises or a theory addressing the crises? In general a new outlook is just that, it changes the perspective in which we receive and interpret information. Indeed, a world that is increasingly changing and within a global system that is becoming more aware of itself we can no longer look at the system in the same way we always have.

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