Media imperialism
transnationalized media may well be exagger-
ated. Globally, many distinct regional, national
(and subnational) cultures within Europe and
other regions are still strong and resistant’.
However, as McQuail points out, this does not
mean that the media imperialism thesis has
ceased to be valid, for ‘many features of the
world media situation attest to the even more
powerful grip of the capitalist apparatus and
ethos on media nearly everywhere, with no place
left to hide’.
What is not in dispute are inequalities of
wealth and therefore of cultural and media
provision between so-called core nations and
peripheral nations (see core nations, periph-
eral nations) and the serious and ongoing
information gaps between them; gaps which
are unlikely to be bridged until the structures of
deprivation are removed.
It is not only the inequalities in the distribution
of information which cause concern, but also
the fl ow of that communication. Cees Hamelink
in World Communication: Disempowerment
and Self Empowerment (Zed Books, 1995) says:
‘Information fl ows across the globe are imbal-
anced, since most of the world’s information
moves among the countries in the North, less
between the North and the South, and very little
flows among the countries of the South,’ and
that this ‘diff erential access to the management
of information has put the developing countries
at a serious disadvantage in the world political-
economy.’ This situation ‘compromises their
national sovereignty’ and in so far as developing
nations have increased ‘their import capacity for
communication technology, they have become
more dependent upon the economic forces of
the North’.
More recent contributions to the media
imperialism debate focus on the impact that the
internet is having on traditional structures of
communication and association, assessing the
nature and potential of more popular, diffuse
interactivity, of far more ‘bottom-up’ activity, less
vertical and more horizontal, less organizational
and more individualized. See blogosphere;
demotic turn; global media system: the
main players; intercultural invasion;
hybridization; macbride commission;
mediasphere; mobilization; news agencies;
news aid?; news values; non-aligned news
pool; talloires declaration; world press
freedom committee. See also topic guides
under global perspectives; media issues &
debates; media: ownership & control.
▶Edward S. Herman and R.W. Chesney, Theof consumer capitalism. As such they could be
seen as either reinforcing these values where
they already existed, as for example in Western
European countries, or as undermining tradi-
tional values and supplanting them with those of
consumer capitalism in countries, such as Th ird
World countries, where capitalist modes of
production were non-existent or less developed.
It was, for Schiller, a means by which the US
could encourage, among other things, demand
for its own products.
Schiller’s thesis has met with some criticism.
John B. Th ompson in Th e Media andModernity
(Polity Press, 1995), for example, argues that it
overlooks the multipolar nature of the global
economy in which Europe, Japan, South-East
Asia and China have played an increasingly
important role. Thompson believes that, ‘It
would be quite implausible to suggest that this
complex and shifting fi eld of global power rela-
tions could be analysed in terms of the thesis
of cultural imperialism. The thesis is simply
too rigid and one-dimensional to do justice to a
global situation which is in considerable fl ux.’
Further, argues Th ompson, the thesis tends to
overlook the fact that whilst messages may be
diff used on a global scale, many factors within
the locale of their reception can aff ect the way
in which they are appropriated by the audience.
Both senders and receivers contribute to the
construction of their meaning. Tamar Liebes
and Elihu Katz, for example, in their classic
study of audience reception of episodes of
Dallas, the American soap opera, Th e Export
of Meaning: Cross-cultural Readings of ‘Dallas’
(Polity Press, 1993), demonstrate the impact that
cultural variables can have on the reading of
television texts.
Schiller in later writings did acknowledge some
of these criticisms of his thesis. Whilst there are
now a number of large multimedia corporations
based outside of the US, it is still the major player
within the globalized media market.Whatever
the criticisms of the media imperialism thesis,
the concentration of symbolic power mainly
in the US as a result of the ongoing process of
globalization of ownership within the media
and cultural industries cannot be denied.
Denis McQuail in Mass Communication
Th eory (Sage, 2010) notes that numerous theo-
rists view the process of globalization as being
accompanied by the process of glocalization;
a process in which ‘international channels, such
as CNN and MTV, adapt to the circumstances
of regions served’. He goes on to argue that ‘the
“problem” of potential cultural damage from