ADVANCING

Globalization and Media

Cultural Imperialism and the Global Media Debate

In international communication theory and research, cultural imperialism theory argued that

audiences across the globe are heavily affected by media messages emanating from the Western

industrialized countries. Although there are minor differences between "media imperialism" and "cultural

imperialism," most of the literature in international communication treats the former as a category of the

latter. Grounded in an understanding of media as cultural industries, cultural imperialism is firmly rooted in

a political-economy perspective on international communication. As a school of thought, political economy

focuses on material issues such as capital, infrastructure, and political control as key determinants of

international communication processes and effects.

In the early stage of cultural imperialism, researchers focused their efforts mostly on nation-states

as primary actors in international relations. They imputed rich, industrialized, and Western nation-states

with intentions and actions by which they export their cultural products and impose their sociocultural values

on poorer and weaker nations in the developing world. This argument was supported by a number of studies

demonstrating that the flow of news and entertainment was biased in favor of industrialized countries. This

bias was clear both in terms of quantity, because most media flows were exported by Western countries

and imported by developing nations, and in terms of quality, because developing nations received scant

and prejudicial coverage in Western media.

These concerns led to the rise of the New World Information Order (NWIO) debate, later known as

the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debate. Although the debate at first was

concerned with news flows between the north and the south, it soon evolved to include all international

media flows. This was due to the fact that inequality existed in news and entertainment programs alike, and

to the advent of then-new media technologies such as communication satellites, which made the

international media landscape more complex and therefore widened the scope of the debate about

international flows.
 The global media debate was launched during the 1973 General Conference of the United Nations

Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Nairobi, Kenya. As a specialized agency of

the United Nations, the mission of UNESCO includes issues of communication and culture. During the

conference, strong differences arose between Western industrialized nations and developing countries.

Led by the United States, the first group insisted on the "free flow of information" doctrine, advocating "free

trade" in information and media programs without any restrictions. The second group, concerned by the

lack of balance in international media flows, accused Western countries of invoking the free flow of

information ideology to justify their economic and cultural domination. They argued instead ·for a "free and

balanced flow" of information. The chasm between the two groups was too wide to be reconciled. This

eventually was one of the major reasons given for withdrawal from UNESCO by the United States and the

United Kingdom-which resulted in the de facto fall of the global media debate.

A second stage of research identified with cultural imperialism has been associated with calls to

revive the New World Information and Communication Order debate. What differentiates this line of

research from earlier cultural imperialism formulations is its emphasis on the commercialization of the

sphere of culture. Research into this area had been a hallmark of cultural imperialism research, but now

there is a deliberate focus on transnational corporations as actors, as opposed to nation-states, and on

transnational capital flows, as opposed to image flows. Obviously, it is hard to separate the power of

transnational corporations from that of nation-states, and it is difficult to distinguish clearly between capital

flows and media flows. Therefore, the evolution of the debate is mainly a redirection of emphasis rather

than a paradigm shift.

It has become fashionable in some international communication circles to dismiss cultural

imperialism as a monolithic theory that is lacking subtlety and increasingly questioned by empirical

research. Cultural imperialism does have some weaknesses, but it also continues to be useful. Perhaps

the most important contribution of cultural imperialism is the argument that international communication

flows, processes, and effects are permeated by power. Nevertheless, it seems that the concept of

globalization has in some ways replaced cultural imperialism as the main conceptual umbrella under which

much research and theorizing in international communication have been conducted.

Several reasons explain the analytical shift from cultural imperialism to globalization. First, the end

of the Cold War as a global framework for ideological, geopolitical, and economic competition calls for a

rethinking of the analytical categories and paradigms of thought. By giving rise to the United States as sole

superpower and at the same time making the world more fragmented, the end of the Cold War ushered in

an era of complexity between global forces of cohesion and local reactions of dispersal. In this complex

era, the nation-state is no longer the sale or dominant player, since transnational transactions occur on sub

national, national, and supranational levels. Conceptually, globalization appears to capture this complexity

better than cultural imperialism. Second, according to John Tomlinson (1991), globalization replaced

cultural imperialism because it conveys a process with less coherence and direction, which will weaken the

cultural unity of all nation-states, not only those in the developing world. Finally, globalization has emerged

as a key perspective across the humanities and social sciences, a current undoubtedly affecting the

discipline of communication.

In fact, the globalization of culture has become a conceptual magnet attracting research and

theorizing efforts from a variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary formations such as anthropology,

comparative literature, cultural studies, communication and media studies, geography, and sociology.

International communication has been an active interlocutor in this debate because media and information

technologies play an important role in the process of globalization. Although the media are undeniably one

of the engines of cultural globalization, the size and intensity of the effect of the media on the globalization

of culture is a contested issue revolving around the following question: Did the mass media trigger and

create the globalization of culture? Or is the globalization of culture an old phenomenon that has only been

intensified and made more obvious with the advent of transnational media technologies? Like the age-old

question about whether the egg came before the chicken or vice versa, the question about the relationship

between media and the globalization of culture is difficult to answer.

One perspective on the globalization of culture, somewhat reminiscent of cultural imperialism in

terms of the nature of the effect of media on culture, but somewhat different in its conceptualization of the

issue, is the view that the media contribute to the homogenization of cultural differences across the planet.
This view dominates conventional wisdom perspectives on cultural globalization conjuring up images of

Planet Hollywood and the MTV generation. One of the most visible proponents of this perspective is political

scientist Benjamin Barber, who formulated his theory about the globalization of culture in the book Jihad

vs. McWorld (1996). The subtitle, "How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World," betrays

Barber's reliance on a binary opposition between the forces of modernity and liberal democracy with

tradition and autocracy.

Although Barber rightly points to transnational capitalism as the driving engine that brings Jihad

and McWorld in contact and motivates their action, his model has two limitations. First, it is based on a

binary opposition between Jihad, what he refers to as ethnic and religious tribalism, and McWorld, the

capital-driven West. Barber (1996, p. 157) seemingly attempts to go beyond this binary opposition in a

chapter titled “Jihad Via McWorld," in which he argues that Jihad stands in "less of a stark opposition than

a subtle counterpoint." However, the evidence offered in most of the book supports an oppositional rather

than a contrapuntal perspective on the globalization of culture. The second limitation of Barber's book is

that he privileges the global over the local, because, according to him, globalization rules via transnational

capitalism. "[T]o think that globalization and indigenization are entirely coequal forces that put Jihad and

McWorld on an equal footing is to vastly underestimate the force of the new planetary markets .... It's no

contest" (p. 12). Although it would be naive to argue that the local defeats the global, Barber's argument

does not take into account the dynamic and resilient nature of cultures and their ability to negotiate foreign

imports.

Another perspective on globalization is cultural hybridity or hybridization. This view privileges an

understanding of the interface of globalization and localization as a dynamic process and hybrid product of

mixed traditions and cultural forms. As such, this perspective does not give prominence to globalization as

a homogenizing force, nor does it believe in localization as a resistive process opposed to globalization.

Rather, hybridization advocates an emphasis on processes of mediation that it views as central to cultural

globalization. The concept of hybridization is the product of interdisciplinary work mostly based in

intellectual projects such as post colonialism, cultural studies, and performance studies. Hybridization has

been used in communication and media studies and appears to be a productive theoretical orientation as
researchers in international media studies attempt to grasp the complex subtleties of the globalization of

culture.

One of the most influential voices in the debate about cultural hybridity is Argentinean Mexican

cultural critic Nestor Garcia-Candini. In his book Hybrid Cultures (1995), Garcia-Candini advocates a

theoretical understanding of Latin American nations as hybrid cultures. His analysis is both broad and

incisive, covering a variety of cultural processes and institutions such as museums, television, film,

universities, political cartoons, graffiti, and visual arts. According to Garcia-Candini, there are three main

features of cultural hybridity. The first feature consists of mixing previously separate cultural systems, such

as mixing the elite art of opera with popular music. The second feature of hybridity is the deterritorialization

of cultural processes from their original physical environment to new and foreign contexts. Third, cultural

hybridity entails impure cultural genres that are formed out of the mixture of several cultural domains. An

example of these impure genres is when artisans in rural Mexico weave tapestries of masterpieces of

European painters such as Joan Mira and Henri Matisse, mixing high art and folk artisanship into an impure

genre.

In media and communication research, the main question is "Have transnational media made

cultures across the globe hybrid by bringing into their midst foreign cultural elements, or have cultures

always been to some extent hybrid, meaning that transnational mass media only strengthened an already-

existing condition?" There is no obvious or final answer to that question, because there is not enough

empirical research about media and hybridity and because of the theoretical complexity of the issue. What

does exist in terms of theoretical understanding and research results points to a middle ground? This

position acknowledges that cultures have been in contact for a long time through warfare, trade, migration,

and slavery. Therefore, a degree of hybridization in all cultures can be assumed. At the same time, this

middle ground also recognizes that global media and information technologies have substantially increased

contacts between cultures, both in terms of intensity and of the speed with which these contacts occur.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that transnational mass media intensify the hybridity that is

already in existence in cultures across the globe. Consequently, the globalization of culture through the
media is not a process of complete homogenization, but rather one where cohesion and fragmentation

coexist.

Source: Kraidy, M. (2002). Globalization of culture through the media. In J. R. Schement

(Ed.),Encyclopedia of communication and information (Vol. 2, pp. 359-363).

New York, NY: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved from

http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/325.