Daya Thussu begins an interesting conversation on media imperialism in conjunction with his explanation of the dependency theory of international communication and more specifically, cultural imperialism in chapter 2 of his book International Communication: Continuity and Change. Media imperialism theory argues that the national identity of a smaller or lesser developed country is lost due to the overwhelming influence from larger or more developed nations’ mass media.
The theory is seen as a negative influence because it indirectly restricts the freedom of speech, press, etc in the smaller country as well as force a particular ideology on the smaller country through the larger country type and choice of media content. It also supposes a one way flow of media and thus content and information so that anything that reaches the smaller, less developed countries has already flowed through and been interpreted and possibly manipulated by the larger, more developed nations
The theory began to gain popularity, and subsequent criticism, in the 1970s when the decline of European colonial empires and dominance of US technology forced the countries that wanted access to it, to also import American culture. He cites several studies on US cultural and media dominance including Hollywood’s influence in the European movie market, US TV exports to Latin America, Disney cartoons promoting capitalism and the American advertising that accompanies almost all media products promoting an ideology.
I agree that American media imperialism exists and can be a bad thing, but I don’t think it was intentionally promoted by the US government, or how to handle it now. The private sector can only respond to demand. Many international companies are now trying to tailor their media content to the demands of the recipient society, though the channels for them to express that demand must be supported by local government. Simply withdrawing from those markets would be silly and never occur. Any change to the status quo would need to be supported by the public sector and both recipient and supplier country governments. Governments are doing this as well by providing subsidies for local programming, promoting education so that private sector media is able to develop within the recipient country and opening up channels so that the local public can express their demand. If they demand it, the private sector will come.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with what you are saying about how the private sector needs to respond to demand since it is hard in smaller countries to get their own media market like we see in the U.S. I wrote about this a little in my week one blog post as well. It's hard for the media in some companies to break out of the Americanization of media, when they're inundated with these images from the U.S. And since the U.S. is filling avoid in these countries, and the U.S. programs are so popular, then why would anyone try to compete. It made me think of a story my friend told me, she went to Nicaragua to work with kids and they were asking if all high schools were like the ones they saw in "High School Musical." It would be hard for the private sector media in Nicaragua to create a movie like that, so I agree that it seems silly to them to withdraw from the American market when it works and is popular and the channels can make money re-airing the American shows.
ReplyDelete