Media Imperialism Revisited

Cover photo from

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/revolution_in_a_box

Self-Intro Video

• A self-introduction, using images, text, and narratives (using a specific image or set of related images as the backdrop for your view of development)

• No more than TWO minutes (could be shorter)• Submit video on the wiki– Instructions posted (pay attention to file naming)

• Technical assistant – ask early!

Readings

Media Imperialism

• Key assumptions?• What are the links between globalization, neoliberalism

and media imperialism ?• Why is this thesis so dominant in the media and

development literature over the last few decades? • Is this popularity justified in terms of its explanatory

power and empirical support?• What accounts for the weaning of the thesis' popularity

in recent years? • What are the changing perspective on “local” versus

“Western” content?

Paradigms of Development

• Modernization– Western societies as a model – emphasis on

economic growth

– Causes of underdevelopment inherent in the countries themselves

– Focus on the nation-state

– Emphasis on individual freedoms

– Mass media accorded a central role in the development process

– Vertical pattern of communication – from the elite to the people.

DependencyWorld systems perspective – development defined in terms of center and periphery Underdevelopment ascribed to the industrialized capitalist powers of the West Information gaps – underdevelopment in the periphery is prerequisite to development in the center The mass media reinforce the dominance of the metropole over its satellitesA country in the periphery must strive for self-reliance and liberation from the world system Emphasis on social equality.

Context

• Development assistance, technology and skills transfer

• Research, fact finding and dissemination• Norm setting, principles and declarations

The McBride Commission Report (1985)

• Self-reliance and cultural identity• international character of the media, their

structures, world-views and markets• Globalization: concentration of media

ownership, monopolization of markets, and a decline in diversity

• Emergence of the information society

The New World Information Communication Order (NWICO)

• The Four “Ds” – Democratization– Decolonization– Demonopolization – Development

Media ImperialismKey claims:

• Negative impact of western media– Lost of identity - homogenization– One way flow of media– Widen the class structure– Profit making through exploitation• Reduce the diversity of programming and content in

favour of market logic • “greenwashing”

Media Imperlism• Mass media and reception– Agencies – Consent

• Unequal power• “The West and the Rest”• Representation • Essentialism • Culture as consumption• Mechanism of globalization

"Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person". Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

A look at Francis Nyamnjoh’s work on Africa’s Media

(see article by Wasserman, 2009)

“A powerful critique of Western liberal model of journalism based on individual autonomy and freedom that ignores the complicated patterns of ‘‘belonging’’ in Africa.”

Critique of Western Media

• Liberal democracy and “the autonomous individual”

• “ideology of hierarchies of culture”

• Unequal power relations

• Profit motive over “creative diversity and cultural plurality”

• Conflation of State and “Market Logic”

• Ignore “personhood and agency”

• The West theorizing the Rest

• Western journalism as model

New Media and Citizen Journalism

‘‘Africa’s creativity simply cannot allow for simple dichotomies or distinctions between old and new technologies, since its peoples are daily modernising the indigenous and indigenising the modern with novel outcomes’’ (Nyamnjoh, 2005, p. 4).

But is the Media Imperialism thesis overstated?

Rethinking Media Imperialism

• Is the power of the Western mass media overstated?

• What are the roles of the state and local organizations?

• What are the roles of the “audience”?• What about local cultural contexts?