Globalization, ideologies and well-being: a study of a West African and a North European society

Abstract

Ideologies shape people's belief systems about what constitutes a good life and well-being and how to navigate between considerations of own well-being versus the well-being of others. The present study investigates ideologies in West African Ghana and North European Norway. Comparative, longitudinal analyses of ideological shifts reflected in changes in language usage in public discourse (newspapers) in the two nations revealed how currently globalized ideology (consumerism, individualism and neo-liberalism) merges with local ideologies in unique ways with regard to the balance between individualist and communal values.

Keywords:

• globalization
• ideology
• media
• individualist versus communal values
• well-being

Notes

Notes

1. As we have adopted this theoretical-methodological approach of reciprocal relations between language and ideology in the study of various issues (cf. Nafstad et al., 2007a, 2007b, 2009, in press), some parts are similar to equivalent parts in earlier publications, adjusted regarding to the special issues addressed in this study.

2. Newspapers in Norway have been electronically filed and thereby accessible for analysis since 1984.

3. Last year available when these analyses were conducted.

4. The method is developed as a ‘mixed methodology design’ (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998) in that aspects of both the quantitative and qualitative paradigm are combined throughout most steps of the process of assessing ideological shifts. However, in large scale mappings such as the present study, it is possible to adopt the method purely quantitatively, mapping changes in frequencies of newspaper articles using various key words over time.

5. The methodology used in the Ghanaian society, however, is at about the same level of refinement as the methodology we used in the first studies in Norway. At present we are working to refine the methodology. However, improvements are not dependent upon us only, but also on the owners of the electronic archives.

6. The five newspapers are Bergens Tidende, Dagens Næringsliv, Nordlys, NTB and VG. These newspapers hold different editorial positions on political and ideological issues, and NTB is a press agency delivering articles to all Norwegian newspapers.

7. The two search strings included even though the developmental patterns in Aftenposten do not correlate significantly with the other newspapers are: ‘jeg OR meg’ (I OR me) and ‘vi OR oss’ (we OR us). We suspect that newspapers hold different editorial policies with regard to usage of personal pronouns.