1. Media Imperialism Revisited

2. Cover photo from
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/revolution_in_a_box

3. 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!

4. Readings

5. 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?

6. Paradigms of Development
Dependency
• Modernization World systems perspective –
– Western societies as a model – development defined in terms of
emphasis on economic growth center and periphery
– Causes of underdevelopment inherent Underdevelopment ascribed to the
in the countries themselves industrialized capitalist powers of the
West
– Focus on the nation-state
Information gaps – underdevelopment
in the periphery is prerequisite to
– Emphasis on individual freedoms development in the center
– Mass media accorded a central role in The mass media reinforce the
the development process dominance of the metropole over its
satellites
– Vertical pattern of communication –
from the elite to the people. A country in the periphery must strive
for self-reliance and liberation from
the world system
Emphasis on social equality.

7. Context

8. • Development assistance, technology and
skills transfer
• Research, fact finding and dissemination
• Norm setting, principles and declarations

9. 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

10. The New World Information
Communication Order (NWICO)
• The Four “Ds”
– Democratization
– Decolonization
– Demonopolization
– Development

11. Media Imperialism
Key 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”

12. Media Imperlism
• Mass media and reception
"Power is the ability
– Agencies
not just to tell the
– Consent
story of another
• Unequal power person, but to make
• “The West and the Rest” it the definitive story
• Representation of that person".
• Essentialism Chimamanda Adichie:
The danger of a single
• Culture as consumption story
• Mechanism of globalization

13. A look at Francis Nyamnjoh’s work on
Africa’s Media
(see article by Wasserman, 2009)

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

15. 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

16. 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).

17. But is the Media Imperialism thesis
overstated?

18. 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?