Media imperialismA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWprocess of growth and reinforcement. Where the
trade went, so followed developing media prac-
tice and technology, refl ecting the values and
assumptions of those who owned and manned
the service.
As developing countries reached indepen-
dence, much concern was felt at the degree of
penetration by Western media. In 1972, the
General Conference of the United Nations
Educational, Scientifi c and Scientifi c Organiza-
tion (UNESCO) drew attention to the way in
which the media of the richer sections of the
world were a means towards ‘the domination of
world public opinion or a source of moral and
cultural pollution’. Subsequently the movement
towards a new world information order grew in
vigour and strength.
In 1973, in Algiers, a meeting of heads of state of
non-aligned countries agreed to take concerted
action to promote a fairer, more balanced
exchange of information among themselves, and
to release themselves from dependence upon
the experts of the richer nations, demanding
the ‘reorganization of existing communication
channels which are the legacy of the colonial
past ...’ By 1978, the UNESCO General Council
agreed its new Declaration on Mass Media,
emphasizing the ‘balanced’ aspect of a concept
of information based on the principle of ‘free
and balanced fl ow’.
Developing countries have long held a heart-
felt belief that Western agencies only report the
bad news of what happens in their countries, and
that this bad news – based upon what Anthony
Smith in his book Th e Geopolitics of Information
(Faber, 1980) terms ‘aberrational’ criteria for
news selection – causes serious harm, especially
when such countries are in need of Western
fi nancial support and investment.
One proponent of the imperialist thesis,
Herbert Schiller, writing in the late 1960s, saw
American television exports as part of an attempt
by the American military industrial complex ‘to
subjugate the world’. He argued that the declin-
ing European empires had been replaced by an
emergent US empire; one arm of this empire
being the US-based, transnational communica-
tions industries which Schiller saw as working in
collaboration with Western (predominantly US)
political and military interests.
These communications industries were for
the most part funded privately by advertis-
ing revenue and were thus extensively tied to
commercial interests. The cultural artefacts
exported – mainly from the US – to other
countries were seen as promoting the valuesTrends in media control have been towards
greater concentration of ownership; towards
ownership by conglomerate organizations
and subsequently a series of ever-diversifying
control networks in which international
fi nance has fi ngers in practically every commu-
nications pie, from newspapers to cinema, from
records to satellites and, in the opening decades
of the twenty-fi rst century, ownership of online
services and platforms.
Running parallel with these trends has been
the development of multi-marketing of media
products – books, films, TV series, video
cassettes, with such products being packaged for
worldwide consumption. Economies of size have
allowed conglomerates to incoporate marketing
and advertising of their diverse products at costs
well below what smaller competitors can match.
Where conglomerates fall short of monopoly,
they synergize with other giants in the field,
making market alliances that become more
exclusive the more powerful they grow. See
global media system: the main players;
new media; normative theories of mass
media; paywall; synergy; world trade
organization (wto) telecommunications
agreement, 1997. See also topic guide under
media: ownership & control.
Mediacy Term first given public prominence
at the 1983 British Association conference by
Michael Weiss and Carol Lorac of the Commu-
nication and Social Skills Project at Brighton
Polytechnic. Deemed as important, in the
education curriculum of the future, as literacy
and numeracy are today, mediacy is defi ned by
Weiss and Lorac as ‘the ability to understand and
manipulate recorded sound and vision. Informa-
tion technology and video are the machinery of
mediacy: its pen and paper’.
▶Kathleen Tyner, ed., Media Literacy: New Agendas
in Communication (Routledge, 2010); Elliot Gaines,
Media Literacy and Semiotics (Palgrave Macmillan,
2011).
Media eff ects See effects of the mass media.
Media: hot and cold See hot media, cold
media.
Media imperialism Term used by some theo-
rists to refer to the activities of the Western
media by which they attempt to dominate devel-
oping countries through global communication
operations. Crucial to the notion of media or
cultural imperialism is the understanding of
the relationship between economic, territorial,
cultural and informational factors. In the age of
Western economic colonialism in the nineteenth
century the flow of information was a vital