“There is a great unevenness in the way people encounter and deal with this emergent global space of media, technology, and culture. Experiences of mobility and displacement differ widely, and the resources for moving, settling, and rebuilding lives and social networks are distributed in highly unequal ways...Power-geometry of globalization in which some people are more in charge of it than others; some initiate flows and movement, others don’t; some are more on the receiving end of it than others; some are effectively imprisoned by it.” (Keywords, pg. 86). South Africa is a great example of the issue of unevenness and unequal access to media and technology as well as the power-geometry how different groups of people are effected by media globalization. South Africa, as described in the article is massively unequal both socially and economically. In South Africa, there is unequal representation and voice because South Africa is considering the public as those who have access to media leaving out the many that barely have access or do not have access to media at all. Because of this, only a small population of society is being considered the public. The people with access to media are more in benefiting are of the power-geometry of media. From this, political change or or participation from the public is not really the public at all, but only those that have the access to media and technology. Globalization actually was the reason the South Africa was able to democratize in the 1990′s. Even though globalization enabled to South Africa to be able to gain allies and become involved internationally and not be isolated, the representation is still an issue. South Africa’s media is criticized for only benefiting those with access to media. The small percentage of those with access to media have benefited drastically. They have large and broad range of access to media. They have not only opportunities of media consumption, but of production. They also are able to have access to much of social media. The article describes this small percentage of people as the elites of South African society. This issue in South Africa brings to light how much different the effects of media globalization are in the global south compared to global north where the majority of people have access to all sorts of media and large amounts of each kind of media. Some people in the global south can flourish in media and use media while others can be sort of suppressed in a way and imprisoned by it like the definition of power-geometry describes. The next step for the global south is how to make media and technology available to as many people as possible to create more representation, better lives, and more connectivity of the media and the technological world.
