Introduction - Media and Globalization
Since the end of the Cold War, the Internet, television, and satellite technologies have made national borders increasingly porous. Whether Islam and the West are suffering a "clash of cultures," or whether the causes of conflict between them are more straightforwardly economic, their cultures and faiths have been brought more and more into contact by this process, which has been named "globalization."
Because of globalization, Islam and the West now confront each other in ways they never have before. While in the past it has mostly been their armies, governments or financial institutions that have struggled and interacted, today Western culture is so widely visible that the United States and Europe can seem to be culturally invading the Muslim world. What can result is a kind of winner-take-all mentality that may indirectly support terrorism. For as Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek, "The problem is not that Osama bin Laden believes that this is a religious war against America. It's that millions of people across the Islamic world seem to agree." http://www.msnbc.com/news/639057.asp#BODY
Because videos and satellite and cable channels have been powerful vehicles for the dissemination of Western culture, and because news and information sources -- both Western and Islamic -- have helped to define and interpret the events of 9-11 and after, terrorism and globalization cannot be considered apart from the media. The links below provide a sense of the possible connections between terrorism and an increasingly integrated world.
