1. WK 19 – MEDIA TRANSNATIONALISM
Dr. Carolina Matos
Government Department
University of Essex

2. 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 221238. London: Routledge.

3. Core points
• Globalizations and its definitions
• Globalization as homogenization?: “Americanization”, globalization and
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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

4. “Globalization of everything ?”

5. What is globalization?
 Globalization became widely used since the 80’s (Giddens,
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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)

6. 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)

7. Americanization, globalization and cultural
imperialism
 Debate on Americanization has its roots in the
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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

8. 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)

9. Americanization or modernization? (Hallin and
Mancini, 2004)
• Globalization today refers to a complex set of interdependencies
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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)

10. 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……
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“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……”

11. “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….”

12. Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural
economy” (Appadurai, 2010)
• 1) Ethnoscape – the landscape of persons which constitute the world we
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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).

13. 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.”

14. “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.”

15. “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.”

16. Some facts and figures (in Tunstall, 2010)
• Four regional groupings (Euro-America, China, Southern Asia and the
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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. EuroAmerica 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.”

17. “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.

18. “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 smallpopulation 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….”

19. “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.

20. 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
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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 (AngloAmerican liberal media model)
“Americanization” of political campaigning practices worldwide

21. “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 19891990…..Germany has reunified, the Soviet Union has disintegrated into
the fissiparous Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)…..the postCold 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.”

22. Europe’s contradictory communicative space”
(Schlesinger, 1994)
• What is the potential for the construction of a European common
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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 ethnonationalist 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….”

23. 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.”

24. 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.”

25. 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.”

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. The European audiovisual space as cultural
defence? (in Schlesinger, 1994)
• The forging of a common European culture through television and cinematic
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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.”

29. 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).

30. 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:
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Development and modernization theories
Media and globalization or cultural globalization
Public sphere
World Systems
Political economy
Agenda setting or framing
Critical Cultural Studies

31. 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.

32. 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