WK 19 – MEDIA TRANSNATIONALISM

Dr. Carolina Matos

Government Department

University of Essex

Readings for week 19

Required texts:

Appadurai, A. (2010) “Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy” in D. Thussu, (Ed), International Communication: A Reader, pp 383-392. London: Routledge.

Schleisinger, P. (1994) “Europe’s contradictory communicative space” in Daedalus, 123 (2), 28-55.

Tunstall, J. (2010) “Anglo-American, global, and Euro-American media versus media nationalism” in D. Thussu, (Ed), International Communication: A Reader, pp 239-244. London: Routledge.

Additional texts:

McChesney, R. (2010) “The media system goes global” in D. Thussu, (Ed), International Communication: A Reader, pp 188-220. London: Routledge.

Thussu, D. (2010) “Mapping global media flow and contra-flow” in D. Thussu, (Ed), International Communication: A Reader, pp 221-238. London: Routledge.

Core points

• Globalizations and its definitions

• Globalization as homogenization?: “Americanization”, globalization and

cultural imperialism

• “Americanization” or modernization?

• The globalization of “everything” – i.e. the interconnections of various forms

of “globalization”, i.e. movements of people, ideas, global capital:

• Appadurai’s (2010) five dimensions of global cultural flow

• The culture of deterritorialization

• Tunstall’s discussion of the Euro-American media market and other regional

markets

• The European identity, politics and culture and the European media space

• The European public sphere and the public service ideal

• Seminar questions and group presentation

• Readings for week 20

“Globalization of everything ?”

What is globalization?

Globalization became widely used since the 80’s (Giddens,

1994)

Term describes a process with a long history in colonialism and

Western imperialism (Tomlinson, 1997)

Discourse of cultural imperialism set the scene for initial

reception of globalization

“....an aspect of the hierarchical nature of imperialism, that is

the increasing hegemony of particular central cultures, the

diffusion of American values, consumer goods and lifestyles”

(Friedman, 1994, 174).

“Globalization….became more and more used during the

1990s; politicians, journalists and public relations people were

prominent as proponents and definers of globalization….Most

definitions of globalization gave a prominent place to

finance…..and to communications (including both

telecommunications and mass media.)” (Tunstall, 2010)

Some definitions

• “The global economy is much more thoroughly infused with reflexive mechanisms than once it was; and it is increasingly decentred, no matter what power Western states and agencies continue to hold over what was the “periphery”....However critical one might still want to be of the unfettered processes of capitalist enterprise, the target has now become much more elusive....” (Anthony Giddens, 1994, 87)

Americanization, globalization and cultural

imperialism

Debate on Americanization has its roots in the cultural imperialism thesis associated to the dependency theories of the 70’s (Schiller, 1969; Boyd-Barrett, 1977)

View was that the US suffocated local cultures and replaced them by a standardized set of cultural forms tied to consumer capitalism and American political hegemony

Media seen as playing a vital role in the process of exporting American values and lifestyles

Chomksy, Tunstall and McChesney have pointed to the expansion of multinational media corporations, and how American programming continues to dominate media markets worldwide

Critiques of cultural imperialism

Homogenization of media systems worldwide

Hallin and Mancini (2004) stress the trend towards global homogenization of media systems around the world

Homogenization – the convergence of world media towards formats and genres born in the US

Practices detected in other countries include - commercial broadcasting, personalized, media-centered form of election campaigning using consumer-oriented US marketing techniques

Spread of journalistic professionalism and US educational training in the context of the early Cold War period (Tunstall, 1977; Mancini, 2000)

Americanization or modernization? (Hallin and

Mancini, 2004)

• Globalization today refers to a complex set of interdependencies

among different countries and their systems of communications

(Tomlinson, 1991; Thompson, 1995)

• Secularization refers to the changes in the political system in these

Western societies, which have become more individualistic

• Modernization has been proposed as an alternative term, including

the possibility of adaptation and selection of certain US practices

• Problems with the term “modernization” – carries an implicit notion

that change will always be seen as progress

• In post-authoritarian societies, a Foucauldian perspective can be

applied to discuss how discursive practices are linked to the social

and political context of their time (Matos, 2008)

Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy”

(Appadurai, 2010)

• “The globalization of culture is not the same as its

homogenization, but globalization involves the use of a variety of

instruments of homogenization (armaments, advertising

techniques, language hegemonies, clothing styles and the like),

which are absorbed into local political and cultural economies,

only to be repatriated as heterogeneous dialogues of national

sovereignty, free enterprise, fundamentalism, etc, in which the

state plays an increasingly dedicated role……

• “Thus the central feature of global culture today is the politics

of the mutual effort of sameness and difference to cannibalize

one another…. This mutual cannibalization shows its ugly face in

riots in refugee flows, in state sponsored torture and in

ethnocide….Its brighter side in the expansion of many individual

horizons of hope and fantasy……”

“Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy”

(Appadurai, 2010)

Five dimensions of global cultural flow:

• A) ethnoscapes; b) mediascapes; c) technoscapes; d)

finanscapes and e) ideaoscapes.

Makes reference to the concept of “imagined worlds” from

Benedict Anderson:

“These landscapes thus, are the building blocks of what, extending

Benedict Anderson, I would like to call ‘imagined worlds’, that is,

the multiple worlds which are constituted by the historically

situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the

globe (Appadurai, 1989). An important fact of the world we live in

today is that many persons on the globe live in such imagined

‘worlds’ and not just in imagined communities….”

Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural

economy” (Appadurai, 2010)

• 1) Ethnoscape – the landscape of persons which constitute the world we

live in: tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest-workers and other

moving groups….

• 2) Technoscape – the global configuration of technology, which now

moves at high speeds across various kinds of previously impervious

boundaries. I.e. a huge steel company in Libya might have interests from

India, China, Russia and Japan…

• 3) Finanscapes - global capital. I.e. currency markets, national stock

exchanges and commodity speculations move….through national

turnstiles at blinding speed…

• 4) Mediascapes – refers both to the distribution of the electronic

capabilities… (newspapers, magazines….)…and to the images of the

world created by the media.

• 5) Ideoscapes – are often directly political and have to do with the

ideologies of states and the counter-ideologies of movements.

Ideoscapes are composed of elements of the Enlightenment world-view

(i.e. “democracy”, “freedom”, “welfare”, “rights”, etc).

Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural

economy” (Appadurai, 2010)

• Global flows occur in and through the growing disjunctures between ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes.

• What are the differences now to the globalization of the 19th century?

• “First, people, machinery, money, images and ideas now follow increasingly non-isomorphic paths: of course, at all periods of human history, there have been some disjunctures between the flows of these things, but the sheer speed, scale and volume of each of these flows is now so great that the disjuncture have become central to the politics of global culture….”

• Deterritorialization - “is one of the central forces of the modern world, since it brings labouring populations into the lower class sectors and spaces of relatively wealthy societies…. Deterritorialization creates new markets for film companies, art impressarions and travel agencies, who thrive on the need of the deterritorialized population for contact with its homeland.”

“Cultural politics of deterritorialization” (in Appadurai,

2010)

• The role of the nation-state in the disjunctive global economy of

culture today:

• “The relationship between states and nations is everywhere an

embattled one. It is possible to say that in many societies, the

nations and the state have become one another’s projects. That

is, while nations (or more properly groups with ideas about

nationhood) seek to capture or co-opt states and state power,

states simultaneously seek to capture and monopolize ideas

about nationhood (Baruah, 1986; Chatterjee, 1986; Nandy,

1989)”.

• “States find themselves pressed to stay ‘open’ by the forces of

media, technology, and travel which had fuelled consumerism

throughout the world and have increased the craving….for new

commodities and spectacles.”

“Anglo-American, Global and Euro-American Media”

(Tunstall, 1977, 2010)

• “Although Anglo-American media have been world leaders since

before 1900, today’s leading media force is Euro-American…”

• “English language, Anglo-American media already led the world’s

media in 1900. Until 1913 Britain was probably still the world’s

leading power. From 1914 to 1918 the US media became the

leading partner in the Anglo-American media.”

• “In 1918 the US had become the leading producer of

films…Around 1900 in much of western Europe, and in Japan, the

press was still only just emerging from state control…. Reuters

and Associated Press were leading wholesalers of news around

the world through the 20th century and neither was a conventional

commercial enterprise….”

• “In recent years, the US media industries have been able to not

only use the UK, but also these other four English-speaking

countries as junior partners in the Anglo media enterprise.”

Some facts and figures (in Tunstall, 2010)

• Four regional groupings (Euro-America, China, Southern Asia and the Arab countries) have about 74% of the world’s population.

• “Euro-America (the whole of America, north and south, and most of Europe) is the largest and most affluent of these groupings. Euro-America has some 27% of the world’s population. It includes most of the world’s leading media exporters – not only the US, but also Brazil, Mexico, France, Germany and the UK. Europe and Latin America include most of the US’ best media export markets.”

• Reverse flows between countries (from the “Third” World to the “First”:

• Into the United States, especially from Mexico, France, Germany and the UK (and from Japan).

• “Euro-America is the home not only of large numbers of English and Spanish speakers but also of other major world languages, including French, German and Portuguese.”

“Anglo-American, Global and Euro-American Media” (Tunstall, 1977,

2010)

Examples of media globalization:

“The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland

can be seen as leading examples of media globalization: these

nations’ newspaper presses also exhibit high levels of market

concentration and foreign ownership.”

Global media exports from Hollywood rely financially on the affluent

markets of western Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia.

“Telecommunications has the most global potential – since the

Internet, consumer credit, and plain old phone calls use

telecommunications networks.”

Argues that the export potential for mass media content (movies,

TV series, news stories) – is lower, as most people prefer to be

entertained by their own culture.

I.e. China has a population of over 1.300 million and supplies most of

its own TV, print and other media output in Mandarin and a few other

Chinese language.

“Anglo-American, Global and Euro-American Media”

(Tunstall, 1977, 2010)

• “The most globalized media systems – the systems that do the

most importing – fall into three categories. One group is small-

population countries in sub-Saharan Africa (where most imports

are from the US, UK and France). Second, in the Caribbean and

Central America, small countries do a lot of importing, mainly from

their big neighbours, the US and Mexico. Third, the best export

market for the US in financial terms continues to be Europe; the

smaller-population European countries do the most importing –

not only from the US but also from their bigger neighbours such

as France, Germany and the UK.”

• “A translated or edited version of a Hollywood product is needed

in all non-English-speaking markets. In less affluent and smaller

countries, foreign language imports are usually subtitled….”

“Direct and indirect media exports” (in Tunstall, 2010)

Some aspects of media globalization:

• Versioning is a variety of editing and translation. An importing TV

network buys eight hours of a TV mini-series and edits it to five

hours.

• Foreign financing – I.e. foreign owners of newspapers, magazines

or satellite TV channels claim not to interfere with the local

editorial team.

• Foreign commissioning of television programming is a common

practice of export versions of American satellite channels that want

to become local.

• A script-sale or format sale – I.e. Cheap device of a new channel

is to purchase the scripts of an American or British comedy. Script

will then be rewritten into the local language.

• Format sales – common in game and reality shows. An importing

TV network acquires access to useful production details and

advice.

Globalization of media genres, news trends, political campaigning

techniques (in Matos, 2008 and Tunstall, 2010)

• Copying of a genre or editorial formula – I.e. If an African or Asian

TV network is about to make its first hospital drama, it may well

look at episodes of American, British, Mexican or Indian hospital

dramas…

• Globalization of media systems - the commercialization of the

media model, which many countries throughout the world began

to pursue since the 1980s’. Global companies (i.e. CNN).

• Global trends included: decline of public service broadcasting;

personalization of politics; human interest stories in news and

focus on celebrities.

• Genres – Big Brother franchise; reality TV; talk-shows, etc.

• News formats, content and journalistic practices (Anglo-

American liberal media model)

• “Americanization” of political campaigning practices worldwide

“Europe’s contradictory communicative space”

(Schlesinger, 1994)

The crisis of political and cultural identity in Europe in the post-Cold War context:

• “Culture takes centre stage as a battleground for the elaboration of identity politics.”

• “The upsurge of nationalist consciousness in Europe has been notable since the definitive collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989-1990…..Germany has reunified, the Soviet Union has disintegrated into the fissiparous Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)…..the post-Cold War period has produced a general crisis of political identity in Europe.”

• “The Cold War and its politico-economic and military blocs obscured the fact that the continent is still a mosaic of nationalities, not all of which have their own states…….”Europe” is plainly not a single politico-cultural space; nor is “Europeanness” an unambiguous attribute.”

Europe’s contradictory communicative space”

(Schlesinger, 1994)

• What is the potential for the construction of a European common

communicative space via the media?

• Europe’s geo-cultural space is far from clear.

• “At the heart of the debate about Europeanness are questions about what

kinds of political, economic, and cultural attributes both individuals and

collectivities require in order to make a claim to “belong” to Europe.” (i.e.

racism and the rejection of “people of colour and non-Christians)

• “…the present debate over Europeanness may be seen as crystallizing a

wider struggle between secular, civic and inclusive pluralist conceptions of

collective identity and alternative images of community rooted in ethno-

nationalist exclusivism, blood and religious faith.”

• Europe and its “others”:

• “In Europe, growing ethno-national conflict, racism and anti-Semitism have

become increasingly central to the political agenda. In the 1990s, fears of

mass migratory movements from North Africa and Eastern Europe have

fueled the development of a “Fortress Europe” centered on the EC….”

Europe’s contradictory communicative space”

(Schlesinger, 1994)

• The policing of the borders is closely related to questions of culture, and the “racial and ethnic discrimination are integral to its practices.”

• EC as a model for other post-communist states – the democratic model, civic and political pluralism, and the market are seen as the embodiments of contemporary Europeanness.”

• A European audiovisual space:

• In the post-Cold War context, EC policymakers turned their attention to “creating a common culture among the twelve states of the EC….

The European Commission’s Green Paper, Television without Fronteirs (1984) set the context:

• “Information is a decisive, perhaps the only decisive factor in European unification…. European unification will only be achieved if Europeans want it. Europeans will only want it if there us such a thing as a European identity. A European identity will only develop if Europeans are adequately informed. At present, information via the mass media is controlled at the national level.”

Europe’s contradictory communicative space”

(Schlesinger, 1994)

Problems here:

• It assumes that there is an easy connection between media

consumption and collective identity formation.

• “The national level of media production and distribution is seen as an

obstacle to be transcended in the interests of forging Europeanness.”

• “…the desired shape of a new cultural identity is linked to the

transnational distribution of information, that is, to the formation of the

European public sphere.”

• Problems of building a European culture through TV:

• “The project of building a European culture through television was

simply extended from one political level to another without any

serious consideration of what might be involved in moving from a

national community defined by the boundaries of a single state to an

international community defined by integrationist political economics.”

European television programming, public

broadcasting and audiences (in Schlesinger, 1994)

Role of media in constructing a European identity has been defined in

counter-position to the US media:

The Television without Frontiers document was grounded in the Western

European public service broadcasting tradition

From citizens to consumers:

Changing nature of the approach to audiences as a result of the increasing

commercialization of broadcasting:

“In the early and mid-1980s, before the deregulatory trend in

broadcasting became predominant, it was still possible to think of radio

and television as the cultural arms of nation-building and as providing a

public forum for the elaboration of divergent, party-based projects within

a political community composed of citizens. …since the latter part of the

1980s this public culturalist model has been….supplanted by an

individualizing economist conception of audiences as consumers and of

programming as….commodity.”

The European public sphere and public service

tradition (in Schlesinger, 1994) The growth of internationalizing tendencies in European television:

• The Television without Frontiers was enacted with the goal of ensuring equality of access to the market applied to TV broadcasting across national frontiers, implemented in 1991.

• Purpose of opening the market was to create greater opportunities for European audiovisual production in a global market

• Among the cultural objectives of the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Transfrontier Television was the aim to “ensure that the member states did not create national restrictions against the reception and retransmission of programs from other member states.”

• The European mediascape includes Murdoch’s News International, the Luxembourg-based CLT, Germany’s Bertelsmann and Italy’s Fininvest.

The European audiovisual space, national identity and the

public sphere (in Schlesinger, 1994)

Since World War I, American popular culture has been seen by cultural

elites as a threat to national culture:

• “The development of European television programming has been encouraged

via regulatory measures and conventions.”

• The MEDIA program has sought to strengthen the EC’s internal market

across national boundaries.

• The importation of American programming is still high:

• “The EC’s 1991-1995 MEDIA program cost some $ 280 million. But such

support for production is dwarfed by what is spent by European countries on

programs imported from the United States. In 1992, the EC member states

spent a combined total of $ 3.7 billion on audiovisual imports, which far

outweighed the $ 288 million spent on European productions in the United

States.”

• I.e. France – the global clash between Francophonie and the Anglo-Saxons.

The European audiovisual space as cultural

defence? (in Schlesinger, 1994) • The forging of a common European culture through television and cinematic

production has been viewed as a form of cultural defence

• Problems here again:

• 1) Language barriers:

• “Television programs (and films) produced in Europe tend to be so nationally

specific as to offer limited scope for audience identification elsewhere on the

continent. ….with the exception of productions in the English language,

television and film productions do not travel extensively outside their

language area.”

• “…the real common currency of the European audiovisual space is actually

the output of the American television and film industries……Hollywood

unquestionably dominates the European box office.”

• Conclusions: “Linguistic and sociocultural differences….account for the

failure to create a pan-European televisual market via direct broadcast

satellite.”

The European public sphere and public broadcasting

• Habermas’ concept of the public sphere as an ideal behind articulations of the European public sphere

• “Particular attention has been given to the role of public service broadcasting in providing a forum for a range of views and interests to be articulated, a diversity of cultural forms to be represented, and thus, a framework for the national culture to be reproduced in ways accessible to the generality of citizens.”

Principle of “cultural exclusion”:

“European countries have been accused of censorship by excluding the US product, and the sovereignty of the consumer has been invoked for good measure. The European position is that films and television programs are cultural artifacts and are not thought to be the same as other traded commodities…..it has been argued that a principle of cultural exclusion should apply to the audiovisual sector, which is officially represented as being at the center of European cultural and democratic life

Euronews – desire to produce an European perspective (compete with BBC/CNN).

Essay question For week 23:

• Examine in detail any two theories of your choice and apply in detail one of these perspectives to an in depth analysis of a particular case study.

• The theories you may consider are:

•

• Development and modernization theories

• Media and globalization or cultural globalization

• Public sphere

• World Systems

• Political economy

• Agenda setting or framing

• Critical Cultural Studies

•

Seminar activities and questions

• 1. Discuss Appadurai’s five dimensions of global cultural

flows. How do they interact with each other?

• 2. Why does Schlesinger say that Europe’s communicative

space is contradictory? What is the relationship between

national consciousness, the European public sphere and

communications? What are some country examples that he

gives?

• 3. Think about a particular country of your choice. What are

the global media companies there? What programmes,

genres, news content and political campaigning practices

have been “imported”? Use Tunstall’s text to help you.

• Group presentation: Rantanen, T. (2007) “The

cosmopolitization of news” in Journalism Studies, 8 (6), 843-861.

Readings for week 20

Required texts:

Boyd-Barrett, O. (1997) “Global news wholesalers as agents of globalization” in A. Sreberny-Mohammadi et al (eds.) Media in a Global Context: a reader, London: Arnold, 284-298

Matos, C. (2012) “Mass media and globalization” in Wiley-Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of Globalization, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1329-1338

Additional:

Curran, J. and Park, M. J. (eds.) (2000) “Beyond Globalization theory” in De-Westernizing Media Studies, London: Routledge, 3-19

Herman, E.and McChesney, Robert W. (2004) The global media – the new missionaries of corporate capitalism, London: Continuum

Morris, N. and Waisbord, S. (eds.) (2001) Media and Globalization: Why the State Matters, Oxford/NY: Rowman and Littlefield Publications