Beyond 'Media & Cultural Imperialism'

The notion of ‘Media & Cultural Imperialism’ began to dominant the belief of many scholars and gained prominence in the 1970s. The objectives of cultural imperialism as Petras (1993) has argued, were planned, and campaigned constructed. He has raised the example about the United State cultural imperialism has two major goals, one economic and the other political (Peter & Phil, 1996). The first goal as he describe is to capture markets for its cultural commodities and the second is to establish hegemony by shaping popular consciousness.

Cultural Imperialism was described and explain as the way that the first world country use large multinational corporations and that include the media to dominated developing country or the third world country (Herbert, 1976 Quoted by Livingston, 2000).

However, the notion of Cultural Imperialism to some extent has really explained the way on how the developed country dominate with the developing country (. e.g. MTV, American Idol, & MacDonald) but the criticisms about this notion are never end. According to Livingston (2000) in his journal, reconsidering cultural imperialism theory, has been gathered all criticisms and weakness of this theory from other researchers and theorists.

The first critic from Livingston (2000) himself is that ‘Cultural Imperialism’ is based partly on the view that no periphery country will ever be able to produce media product of its own. Since the time when the United States was the first country that could produce movie, music and any others product; and start to contribute to the neighboring countries, this notion had developed. The fact is that time flies and thing change due to the time. Nowadays, not only the United State that have a capacity and ability to produced the media product but the other countries though the developing one also can produce their own media product in their own language. TV Globo is also one of the world’s biggest television networks outside of the US, and Globo not only export media programs, also transmit them via satellite into intended regions (Sinclair 344 quoted by Musa 2011).

According to Herb Schiller (1973), the ontological assumption of Cultural Imperialism stated that “human do not have the free will to choose how they feel, act think, and live. They react to what they see on television because there is nothing else to compare it to besides their own lives, usually portrayed as less than what it should be. However, each individual have their own reality about life in the way that they want to construct as potter (1996) has argued.

Another epistemological assumption explains that there is one truth and no matter what that truth never going to change. As long as the third world countries continue to air Western Civilization’s program then the third world countries will always believe they should act, feel, think, and live as Western Civilizations act, feel, think and live. However, Potter (1996) has argued that assumptions that the ways human interpret information about culture are shaped by international media organization, are the very base assumption guiding cultural imperialist thinking.

Another assumption of cultural imperialism is that media play a central role in creating culture (Livingston, 2000). However, this assumption seems to oversimplify that media really have such a power to influence people. One of the most remarkable studies about media from Lazarsfeld is that media do not really have a direct influence on people but rather to reinforce the old belief that people held before (Stanley J. & Dennis K., 2009). In Lazarfeld’s theory, explains that media rarely directly influence individuals and when media do seem to have an effect, that effect is filtered from other parts of the society, for example through friends or social group.

One more point to notice about the weakness of cultural imperialism is that this theory doesn’t acknowledge an audience’s ability to process information and interpret message different based on their individual background (Liebes & Katz, 1990 cited Livingston, 2000). If we go to look at the theory from Staurt Hall (1973), he had developed a theory called ‘Reception Studies’ (Stanley J. & Dennis K, 2009). This theory focus on how various types of audience member make sense of specific forms of content. He explains the three types of how audience makes sense of the content: preferred reading, negotiated reading and oppositional reading. Preferred reading is the way that the audience interprets the message from the producer hundred percent exactly the same as what the producer intended to sent. Negotiated reading when the audience creates a personally meaningful interpretation of content that differs from the preferred reading. Oppositional decoding when the audience develops interpretations of content that are indirect opposition to a dominant reading. The study of the cultural imperialism seem to be broad and over generalized the power of media and ignored the individual differences that would lead this theory becomes weak.