Dang Ngoc Trinh

We are living in the world where the production, distribution and consumptions of the media products happen on the global scale, media imperialism becomes a concept that challenge mass media students to understand the term and its impact on the society. Globalization creates an opportunity for the expansion of technological, economic, political and cultural exchanges. Many media scholars have been arguing that globalization phenomenon is a factor that supports media imperialism and a power arm that help the West promotes its cultural values and democracy to the Third World countries. However, opponents of media imperialism theory like John Tomlinson, Chadha and Kavoori and other media theorists argue that media imperialism is no longer a threat to non Western world for three reasons: the audiences are critical and selective in receiving information; each nations have their own policies to limit the influx of foreign media, and the force of local competitions. This paper will be employed those arguments and provide updated evidences to discuss whether media imperialism is a relevant concept in the digital age.

Even though, media imperialism and cultural imperialism terms are different in literal meaning, but media theorists often treat them as alternatives. John Tomlinson, one of many media scholars who closely work with media imperialism thesis defined cultural imperialism as “systematic penetration and domination of the cultural life of the popular classes by the ruling classes of the West, in order to reorder the values, behavior, institutions and identity of the oppressed people to conform to the interests of the imperial classes”. While media imperialism is a concept that describes the “process whereby the ownership structure, distribution the content of the media or culture in anyone country individually or together are subject to external pressures from the media interests of any other country without proportionate reciprocation of influence by the country so affected” (Tomlinson, 2003).

The question here is why cultural and media imperialism thesis remains most talked about issue worldwide? It is because the cultural and media imperialism thesis stresses the unidirectional flow of culture from the dominant to the dominated. Not like decades ago, in the colonial period, the West uses the military force to assert its power over the nation-states, now the West uses its soft power to maintain its hegemony with the help of a powerful mean as mass media spreading its ideologies, culture, and values into a country. Therefore, Western influences on media landscape have raised concerns to the Third World countries since there may be chances it can lead to cultural invasion and cultural homogenization which is their biggest fear.

To discuss about the media imperialism, we should mention about the concept of globalization. It has been assumed that globalization is just another face of Western capitalist imperialism. Globalization is defined as “a social process in which the constraint of geography on economic, political, social and cultural arrangements recede, in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding and in which people act accordingly” (Waters, 1995). Martin Albrow (1996) moves further, arguing that globalization results in a ‘world society’. He defines globalization as “all those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society, global society”.

Globalization, according to Tomlinson (1999), “refers to the rapidly developing process of complex interconnections between societies, cultures, institutions and individuals world-wide. It is a social process which involves a compression of time and space, shrinking distances through a dramatic reduction in the time taken – either physically or representationally – to cross them, so making the world seem smaller and in a certain sense bringing them “closer” to one another”. Globalization era makes it easier for everyone to expose to other cultures through the mass media.

        – What exactly does globalization have something to do with media imperialism thesis?

Herbert Schiller discussed about the fear of media imperialism and cultural homogenization concerning about the domination of the global media industry by a small number of powerful transnational media conglomerates. As Chadha and Kavoori (2000) implies “a small group of Western countries not only controlled the international media trade but used it to transmit their particular cultural and economic values, particularly individualism and consumerism, to large numbers of developing nations around the world.”Media companies such as AOL-Time Warner, Bertelsmann, Disney, Viacom and News Corporation operate at a global level to produce, distribute, and sell their media products. These companies are originally from European core such as the United States, Australia, Japan or Western Europe (cited in Media Imperialism, Sagepub). This stresses the uneven flow of media products from dominant nations to the less developed nations.

Media scholars have made an attempt to prove that globalization contribute to media imperialism thesis becomes more convincing. However, it may be not sufficient to judge the idea of the West taking over of Asian media landscape based on the globalization concept. Since, globalization does not only create one way flow of media but a two-way flow that allows Asia’s media production as well as popular culture to travel from East to West. For example, it helps the non Western countries introduce their cultures to the West such as anime and manga from Japan, Gangnam style of Psy from Korea, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee from China, as well as food like sushi have become popular in the West. Moreover, there are some more important factors that challenge the media imperialism thesis. Moreover, according to Chadha and Kavoori (2000), there are three elements that challenge the influx of Western media in Asian countries: national gate-keeping policy, the dynamics of audience preference, and local competitions.

National gate keeping policy

According to Chadha and Kovoori (2000), the non Western world employs the gate-keeping strategy to ban on foreign media and limit the investment of Western media because it might be a trigger on culture, politics and nation. For example, countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, China, India impose restrictions on Western media imports that could harm their original culture and politics. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, there are more than 2,000 newspapers, 8,000 magazines, 374 television stations and 150 million Internet users in China, and all of these media outlets and media consumers are subject to government gate keeping and censorship (Wetherbee 2010). As Han Sanping, the China Film Group and its chief executive strongly states that any foreign movie knocking on China’s door must pass through powerful gatekeepers(Cieply 2012). The example of China banned The Dark Night movie due to “cultural sensitivity” and censors in Beijing cut the latest Hollywood blockbuster, Men in Black 3, by 13 minutes to remove all details that cause offence to the Chinese from the film shows that taking over the Asian media landscape of the West seems hard to occur (Hill 2012).

In 2007, the capital of the People’s Republic of China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Many people hoped that there would be chances the Chinese government unrestricted the media policy. However, the government ends up instituting a new policy that foreign journalists cannot distribute stories to the Chinese people unless the articles are passed through the domestic, state-run Xinhua news agency for pre-screening. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, foreign correspondents “shall not engage in activities which are incompatible with their status or tasks, or which endanger China’s national security, unity or community and public interests.” More than one American journalist has been punished for crossing these fuzzy boundaries (McLaughlin 2006).

Another example of China case was on November 16, 2009, President Barack Obama held a town hall meeting in Shanghai, one of China’s largest cities. He gave speech to Chinese students mentioning about the future of U.S. and Chinese relations and about the importance of free media and citizens’ ability to hold their government accountable. Later on, the Chinese government decided to broadcast only a certain part of the speech and cut out the part that emphasizes the American values of freedom of expression and information, and political participation (Branigan 2009).

Chinese’ authorities even ban on the Western TV programs if it contradicts with the values that government try to promote. Many of Chinese Netizens were upset since the government has removed the four popular American TV shows: The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife, NCIS and The Practice on the Internet. Though people who favor the American TV shows because they are thought to simply want to get to know the Western culture and learn English through the shows. However, this even gives the authorities a reason to ban on these media products since they worry through American television, the citizens may desire for the American values, the idea of freedom and democracy as portrayed and promoted in the shows (Ping 2014).

The examples are strong evidences which show that globalization does not necessarily create an opportunity for the West to take over the Asian’s media landscape. The non-Western countries are not passive; they do not just receive whatever information transmits into their countries. Instead, they have their own strategy to limit the flow for the purpose of protecting their cultural values, social stability, and public morals.

Media Imperialism and the active audiences

Beside the gate keeping strategy that challenge the idea of media imperialism, there is another more important element that could decide the relevance of the media imperialism that critics failed to pay attention to, the media audiences. As Tomlinson once argue that, experts who support media imperialism theory often ignore individual consumer, they only focuses on the media content. Michael Tracey has also put it: “Those who favor the idea of cultural dominance through television have tended to study company reports, rather than the realities of individual lives; to describe the flow of communication in the abstract, rather than the cultural meaning of those flows” (cited in Tomlinson 2003). Fejes believes questions of “cultural impact” of the media should be addressed at the level of individual consumers. Boyd-Barrett even made it more clearer: “few critiques of cultural imperialism have addressed the orthodox view of audiences in the West is now one that stresses the social context in which communication are received, and which stresses the individual’s capacity for active selection and selective retention. This view does not seem to have carried over sufficiently to Third World contexts. Individual capacity for psychological compartmentalization and rationalization is underestimated to an extraordinary degree. Much more attention needs to be given to the processes by which individuals and groups interpret, translate and transform their experience of foreign culture to relate to more familiar experiences.” (cited in Tomlinson 2003)

It is believed that American T.V imports do have an impact on the audience whenever and wherever they are shown, however studies show that this is not always the case. The studies of Katza and Libes in 1991 of Dallas proves that audiences are more active and critical in their responding to the American media products than many critical media theorists have assumed. The audiences may reject the cultural values of the show, but still enjoy watching it for entertainment purposes (cited in Movious 2010).

According to Chadha & Kavoori (2000), studies show that the audience often chooses regional media over foreign media for two reasons: cultural considerations and linguistic reasons. Tunstall (2008) also points out that US media companies, especially Hollywood movies and TV series, create a huge foreign revenues, however they are no longer dominant in terms of market share or audience time, since the audience in world spend more time on local media than foreign media.

Tunstall concludes that people prefer their own national culture and language, and prefer to consume their own national and regional media (cited in Movius 2010).

Even though, English is known as a universal language, especially in the globalization era, English language plays a crucial role as it is used to interact between nations. However, when it comes to media consumption, Asia’s inhabitants prefer their mother-tongue language over the foreign language because it is easier to comprehend. According to The Nielsen Upper Middle and Rich (UMAR) survey (2009), which aims at studying the lifestyle habits of the affluent in Indian society, states that 98 per cent of the individuals watch TV in regional languages while only 70 per cent read English dailies in India. Tanvi Sirari, Research Scholar, Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) also said that:

“English language gives wider perspective of general knowledge and news happening all across the world. People want to assert their modernity by reading in English but at the same time they want to keep themselves connected with their roots through television programmes in their mother tongue.” (Journalism of Courage Archive 2009).

The active audience thesis proves that presence of the media products is not qualified enough to judge the validation of media imperialism concept. They are critical and selective in choosing and interpreting what they media they consume. It is not necessarily the correlation between media consumption and ideology effects.

Local Media Competitions

As Chadha and Koovori (2000) discussed, the forces of local media competitions is the factor that create the barrier for the West to control over the global media. Hollywood believes that China will continue to choose American-produced movies over local media products and that Chinese market is easy to beat up. It appears that the West tends underestimate the China media industry. In September, the report shows Chinese markets experienced a nearly 150% increase in local ticket sales, while imported film ticket sales dropped in the same market; this has been a warning to the Hollywood’s part(Hill, 2013).While, revenue comes from Iron Man 3, Pacific Rim, and Man of Steel, has risen only 3.8 percent (Palmeri, 2013). Indeed, Hollywood film industry is suffering from the growth of interest in local productions of Chinese media market. Yet, it is stated that the Hollywood have made a few attempts to understand what Chinese audiences really want and approaches to the Chinese market has been clumsy at best, offensive at worst(Hill, 2013).

Moreover, the state-produced media has more opportunity to grow when they closely work with and is supported by the government. In 2010, the Chinese government stopped playing Avatar in theaters nation-wide to encourage viewership for the state-produced Confucius, a biopic about the unfailing wisdom and moral uprightness of the philosopher. This switch-up exacerbated, but was not the only cause of, the widespread dislike for the film: unfailing wisdom was apparently not riveting to viewers (Hill 2013).

          To sum up, it’s hard to deny the power of globalization since it’s turning the world into a smaller village. Media theorist concerns globalization will create opportunity for the West to promote its democracy and superiority to the World. However, it does not mean that globalization leads to cultural and media imperialism. There are three things that make the media imperialism difficult to occur. Firstly, the Third World countries are not passive, they come up with their own strategy to limit the Western media flow to preserve their national security, social stability as well as to protect political and culture values. Secondly, the audiences found to be more critical and selective in receiving and interpreting information. Their media of choice is depended on linguistic reason and cultural proximity. Finally, since evidence shows China’s media industry revenue has risen up, while the foreign media revenue has dropped. The Western media is no longer dominated in Asian countries.

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