Looking for Theory and Understanding

Review by

Thomas L. McPhail, Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders, and Trends, Allyn & Bacon, 2002, 272 pages, $49.00.

The value of this book is registered in the short narrative accounts of global media players. Tucked into several chapters are very accessible summaries of leading North American, European, and other transnational media corporations in music, news, news services, and advertising. Also included are succinct accounts of UNESCO discussions on the New World Information and Communication Order and the changing role of the International Telecommunications Union as it adapts to privatization and commercialization.

Surrounding these worthwhile overviews is a valiant attempt at theorizing changes in global communication by combining the insights of Immanuel Wallerstein’s World System Theory (1974, 1980) with an explanation of contemporary global communication expressed through an Electronic Colonialism Theory (ECT)). For three decades, World Systems Theory has championed a perspective that tracks global economic expansion from a small group of core states to two other zones of nation-states, the semiperipheral and peripheral zones, a relationship that frames all nation-state interaction on economic, political, cultural, and social levels. Of course, as with any macro approach, WST does not attempt to supply the tools or terms for understanding or explaining any particular individual attitude or cultural practice. Thomas McPhail thus proposes a theory of electronic colonialism ECT that seeks to explain some of the contemporary details of global communication from a WST perspective. Electronic colonialism is defined as the unequal relationship that occurs as developing nations become dependent on the West for “communication hardware and software, along with engineers, technicians, and related information protocols, that establish foreign norms, values, and expectations” which alter “domestic cultures, habits, values, and the socialization process itself” (p. 14). ECT finds that “foreign produced, created, or manufactured cultural products have the ability to influence, or possibly displace, indigenous cultural productions, artifacts, and media to the detriment of receiving nations” (p. 243). Ultimately, the electronically disseminated “media images and messages extend the West’s markets, power, and influence” (p. 15). In presenting ECT, McPhail suggests that any understanding of global communication must consider the economic activities of corporations and multilateral agencies such as the IMF and World Bank along with the effects of Western cultural products on the attitude formation of consumers in peripheral and semiperipheral nations.

ECT appears as a creative rendering of some recent global communication practices, although it falls short of providing the purported consequential combinant effect with WST to merit the claim that it is “the most powerful explanation” available (p.245). For starters, much more work would be needed to simply distinguish ECT from observations by Herbert Schiller (1992) that dependence on Western technology, investment, advertising, and media content promotes Western lifestyles including consumerism which undermines the cultural values of peripheral and semiperipheral nation-states. As others have argued, U.S. media dominance does not disappear because media have adopted new business strategies: whether multinationals establish joint ventures, directly invest in foreign media, or second-tier peripheral and semi-peripheral media players adopt the commercial broadcasting model, corporate media commercialization privileges Western advertising, genre, content, and ideology (Thussu, 2000, pp. 167-188). ECT faces a challenge from another direction, as well. Recent ethnographic and cultural studies have discovered a range of cultural responses—from homogeneity to hybridity and “glocalization”—that more fully explore how cultures, communities, and other regional entities contribute to global culture (e.g., Lull, 1995; Robertson, 1992, Straubhaar, 1997). Additionally, one might argue that the still disputed concept of hegemony—which understands that strategies and transactions among competing groups ultimately empower and reproduce any structure (Mattelart & Mattelart, 1992, p. 65), including world systems—does an admirable job of connecting macro and micro approaches by drawing together the perspectives of political economy (Garnham, 1990; Mosco, 1998) with those of critical cultural studies (e.g., Artz & Kamalipour, 2003). Nonetheless, leaving aside the claims of ECT’s theoretical superiority, Global Communication indicates the direction that practical theorizing needs to take by refusing to bracket or privilege either the global market or local cultures.

Global Communication points, but does not lead in part because necessary categorical distinctions are frequently obscured. The contributions of and possibilities for accessible, publicly-owned and operated mass communication are lost in any dichotomous frame of government vs. private. Also missing are significant practical and theoretical differences between corporations and their national headquarters: recognizing that “the United States may be losing its competitive advantage” (p. 104) collapses the United States as a multi-class nation into particular corporate media interests and identities. Of course, all media exports originate in particular countries and thus media have national identities, but counseling that “The United States needs to jump on the merger and acquisition bandwagon” and expressing concern for “U.S. access to [European Union] markets” (p.104) conflates the very contradictory interests of citizen and corporation. Further, unequal access to media production is disguised if media corporations are allowed to represent nations or hide behind the cover of “free flow.” Internationally, giving corporations the legal status of nations, as in the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) or the rights of individuals within nations as in the IMF, has resulted in the drive to media deregulation, privatization, and commercialization in the name of “free flow of information.” Understanding the privatization of the media in Latin America as democratic reform overlooks the appearance of veritable private ministries of information and culture in the form of O Globo in Brazil or the Cisneros media group in Venezuela, for example. The unproblematic reduction of reform to privatization is somewhat troublesome in a book that elsewhere gives a fair account of the NWICO debates over media reform and the international resistance to both government and corporate control. Finally, while claims about increased openness and diversity have some credence when comparing privatized media with past and present government-run systems in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, McPhail seems to contradict his own theoretical premise regarding the new colonialism when he suggests that the world is a better place and more informed because of the global communication of the new electronic colonialists.

Theorizing, investigating, and explaining global communication is no easy task. The tendency to rely on traditional mass communication perspectives and market ideologies remains strong (e.g., Gershon, 1997, Stevenson, 1994), while critical appraisals detailing the permutations of local media and cultural responses are limited (e.g., Herman & McChesney, 1997). Thus, despite some internal contradictions and inconsistencies, Global Communication must be appreciated for focusing our attention on the specifics of who produces global media and for championing a theoretical approach that recognizes the historical, political, economic, and institutional ingredients of international communication.

References

Artz, B. L., & Kamalipour, Y. (Eds.). (2003). The globalization of corporate media hegemony. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Garnham, N. (1990). Capitalism and communication: Global culture and the economics of information. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Gershon, R. A. (1997). The transnational media corporation: Global messages and free market competition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Herman, E.S., & McChesney, R.W. (1997). The global media:The new missionaries of corporate capitalism. Cassell: London.

Mattelart, A., & Mattelart, M. (1992). Rethinking media theory (Trans. J. A. Cohen and M. Urquidi). Minneapolis:MN.

Mosco, V. (1998). The political economy of communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social theory and global culture. London: Sage.

Schiller, H. (1992). Mass communications and American empire. Boulder, CO: Westview. (Original published in 1969).

Stevenson, R. L. (1994). Global communication in the twenty-first century. New York: Longman.

Straubhaar, J. (1997). Distinguishing the global, regional and national levels of world television. In A. Sreberny-Mohammadi, D. Winseck, J. McKenna, & O. Boyd-Barrett (Eds.), Media in global context: A reader (pp. 284-298). New York: St. Martin’s.

Thussu, D.K. (2000). International communication: Continuity and change. London: Arnold.

Wallerstein, I. (1974, 1980). The modern world-system. 2 volumes. New York: Academic Press.

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