Globalization and Communications, Theoretical Backgrounds and Perspectives

This article explores the concept of “globalization” from some principal theoretical perspectives and influential categories in communications. To this end, four concepts of “globality”, “globalization”, “globalizing”, and “globalism” are differentiated and theoretical approaches are discussed based on their attention to the subjects of compression of “time”, “place”, and “space”. Based on this classification that is done by a historical and documentary study, the idea of globalization is formulated on the four basis of the changing experience of space and time, the increasing possibility of interaction between people across geographical and political divisions, the emerging moveability of “capital”, and the accelerating speed of history as a result of new communication technologies. Compression or destruction of place, creation of a borderless world, and overwhelming interactive structures are shown as fundamental components of globalization in modern communication theories. This article elaborates on with “time-space compression” in Castells’ network society theory, “disembodiment” in Gidden’s social theory, “proximity” in Tomlinson’s cultural theory, and “cultural integrity” in Robertson’s social theory. It also considers the theoretical perspective of technological and noetic developments focused on globalization as emersion of mixed, synthetic, fluid, and complex identities which face the two paradoxical dimensions of “global” and “local” in every moment and place.