Globalization and Media Spectacle: From 9/11 to the Iraq war (Dossie IX - Seminario Internacional Da Comunicacao‪)‬

Today I want to discuss the connections between globalization and media spectacle and particularly the role of media spectacle in both national and global cultures. First, I will characterize and present an overview of my concept of media spectacle, then I'll discuss different categories and types of media spectacle, and finally I'll illustrate my analysis of global media spectacle with discussion of the complex media spectacle of the US/UK war on Iraq from 2003 to the present in order to illustrate my conception of the reversal of the spectacle and how media spectacle is a contested terrain. I will also indicate how my analysis of spectacle is influenced by the French thinker Guy Debord and how my own conception differs from Debord. My thesis is that in media systems with highly competitive corporate media, the presentation of news and information often takes the form of media spectacle. In an arena of intense competition with 24/ 7 cable TV networks, talk radio, Internet sites and blogs, and ever proliferating new media competition for attention is ever more intense leading the media to go to sensationalistic tabloidized stories which they construct in the forms of media spectacle that attempt to attract maximum audiences for as much time as possible, until the next spectacle emerges.