Abstract
This is a descriptive cross-sectional study which aims to present the contemporary youth culture in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, with an emphasis on the underlying role of cultural globalization. To meet the objective of the study, a survey was conducted in 2012 among the students of three leading private universities in Dhaka city. The central theme of the study revolves around the idea that globalization as a process transforms our cultures and affects our lives wherever we live. There has been a heated debate among the researchers on the issue of media effects on the youths. The debate mainly centers around the question: Does what our young generation watch on the global media really influence their behaviors and choices, or the norms and values associated with those behaviors and choices are strictly learned through the guidance of parents, teachers, peers, and the society at large? This study documents that the global media have large-scale impact on the audiences who are exposed to them. As the survey findings indicate, the urban youth culture in Bangladesh is no longer identical to her long-standing traditional patterns but is found to be melting into western norms of dress-codes, food habits, attitude, and life styles. The study demonstrates that the young generation in urban Bangladesh prefers trendy clothes, fast food, western style of marriage and family, western music, movies, festivals, and so on, reflecting a shift toward a consumer culture with global values.
Highlights
In this era of globalization, people from different parts of the world simultaneously experience the same events thanks to the advances in communications technology
The objective of this study, was devoid of such value judgment; rather it was an attempt to only present the existing youth culture as it was, which was assumed to be a creation of the global media in general and the satellite television in particular
A distinctive urban youth culture does exist in our contemporary society in which global media are playing a central and obvious role
Summary
In this era of globalization, people from different parts of the world simultaneously experience the same events thanks to the advances in communications technology. While the media systems were primarily national in the past, in the 1990s the societies throughout the world witnessed the emergence of a global commercial media market through which the media giants established their powerful distribution and production networks within and across the national boundaries (McChesney, 2005). This media globalization, broadly known as cultural globalization, has profound implications for the way we make sense of our own lives and of the changing society we live in. Slowly but steadily the food that the peoples eat, the clothes they wear, and the life-styles they lead begin to change (Tomlinson, 1999; 2006)
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